Thursday, June 22, 2017

Sleep assessment

I have just returned from St John’s hospital after an overnight sleep assessment.  I arrived at around 8.45pm and descended into the bowels of the hospital to try and find the Sleep Unit.  After being redirected several times, I found it and was allocated my room and told to get into pyjamas ready to have all the electrodes attached all over my body.  For info about all those wires see here.
The sleep technician, Marikah, attached all the electrodes and went to the control console to test the connections.  There were a couple of electrodes that had to be replaced and then the function test began.  Blinking of eyes; eye movements, pointing toes etc, all passed the test.  I found the tangle of wires a bit constrictive of my usual tossing and turning during sleep and the duty technician had to visit several times during the night to change or reset electrodes.

Both young lady technicians were pleasant especially Marikah who had around 50 minutes with me setting up and testing all the wiring.  We covered a few stories (admittedly, mostly mine) whilst she was with me.  At one stage she took my blood pressure and it was 166 over 85....a bit high!     I attributed it to having a very attractive technician fussing over me.

Click image to enlarge

Sunday, June 11, 2017

Memories of a wild land

Yesterday had a visit from a friend Greg, who recently returned from one of his regular business trips to Papua New Guinea.  He brought me a most welcome gift package of two PNG coffee mugs featuring the names of 20 provinces of PNG and a collection of PNG newspapers all in a ‘Steamies’ shopping bag.  Steamies is a large department store which as well as supplying townspeople in Port Moresby with their goods, ran a small shipping line supplying goods to coastal government stations around the coast of Papua when I first taught in PNG starting in 1962.

In the 10 years I taught in PNG, I taught in six of those provinces.

Click images to enlarge


Inside the cups...'it's finished'
Pidgin English

Thursday, June 8, 2017

Visiting Ralph in care

My friend Dennis and I visited another oldie in a nursing home Wednesday.  We try to make a weekly visit and also catch up with him (Ralph) when his wife collects him to get together for our weekly gathering of oldies.  
Ralph’s residential is quite nice.  It houses and cares for, around 100+ clients.    The building is largely powered by massive banks of solar panels. Ralph has his own room and the carers seem to be nice people mainly it would seem, from the Philippines and Southern Africa.  Ralph can no longer walk and has only around 10% sight.  He has been in care for approximately six months and seems to be coping reasonably well.   In the home is an elderly woman who hovers near the front door and attempts to escape when visitors are entering and leaving.  The main office is near the door and a call for a carer is made to thwart the escape.

Another friend’s father was in a similar situation and that establishment had built a replica of a bus stop and shelter within the grounds.  Most would-be escapees just sat waiting for the bus to Fremantle.