R.I.P Colin Saul-Death of a quiet man.

 Born on the 19th January 1933, passed away on the 22nd December 2011. You are forever Imprinted in my memory Colin R.I.P

Colin Saul was a unique man of intellect the likes of which I/we will never see again and he will be sorely missed.

You see Colin was not only my Brother in Law but my friend. Colin helped me through the formative years of my marriage to his sister Beryl whenever troubles struck and asked nothing in return. He was a generous man, not only of deed but in body, who gave his time freely without aforethought and had no malicious thoughts or intentions in his well read head. He seen the best in everybody, even though they did not warrant it, which I am sure I did not many a time.

Colin, if I recollect rightly, was the first from the Saul family to go to college and wanted to be an optician but that was not to pan out, he ended his working life in the petrochemical industry and used to take samples regularly from huge tankers back to the lab for analysis. I'm sure that taking these samples was a contributory factor in him contracting Vascular Dementia. Colin was a never smoker.

You succumbed, my friend, to that robber of mind, body and soul that is called Dementia. But you did not give in to this thief lightly, you hung on as if you were clinging to life it's very self and we whom are left behind new this, we applauded in our very hearts and hoped amongst all the odds you would survive your ordeal...but alas this was not to happen.

Good night Colin, and God bless.

Colin at College, extreme right.

Colin as a young man.

Something was wrong.

Around that time in 2007, when I thought something was wrong with Beryl's mental health I also noticed she kept complaining about a non nondescript 'stinging' in her left arm. That was the excuse I made to see the doctor, making sure it was s female doctor as I was thinking that that would be less of an ordeal for her as she infrequently saw doctors on a regular type basis, even for checkups that she deemed 'invasive' (I'm thinking of the smear test, you ladies know what I mean). She went, not long after the menopause, for a smear test and she found it an ordeal and never went again, she said it was painful too.

So she was never too keen on seeing doctors and nurses, like much of her, and my generation, we only made appointments to see them when it was really, really necessary. The younger generation forget their history and think the NHS has been here forever but there was a time, before the National Health Service was born in 1948 and overseen by the Labour leader Aneurin Bevan and ordinary working folk had to pay for a consultation and prescriptions or buy health care insurance to see them through illness, a lot of which was brought on by deprived living conditions and work in industry. It was instilled into people of our generation that the NHS was god sent to the hard working classes and to this day I am proud of this countries commitment to the NHS but not proud of the way it is going and have many misgivings. But I digress.

The doctor was marvellous and noticed from Beryl's files that she had not been to the surgery for a long while and decided to give her the 'full works.' Beryl's heart and blood pressure were fine and her blood samples came back negative...she, to the layman was as "fit as a fiddle". During the middle of all this I spoke up about my concerns about Beryl's mental state and all she could do (the doctor) was refer her to the Memory Clinic.

Memories!

Our first visit to the memory clinic was, Er, memorable. The first person you have to see is the clinic nurse who goes through an evaluation process straight out of a manual. I was told at the outset not to interrupt or try and give Beryl any help in phrasing answers etc but could give my thoughts afterwards. The usual questions ensued:

What day is it?
What month is it?
What year is it?
What Season is it?
Who is the president of the USA?
Who is the Prime Minister of the UK?

All standard stuff that I had expected but then the nurse went on for over nearly an hour with diagrams, phrases and, in the middle of all this, would talk about a scenario involving two or three people but would stop half way through and say that she would come back to it then somewhere down the line would ask Beryl to recall the scenario and give answers to her questions about it...well, I couldn't remember most of this type of questioning and felt for Beryl. There is now doubt though that she has the disease though. The next thing was a brain scan. And since then nothing, Nada. We are totally alone with Alzheimer's and I think I prefer it that way.I couldn't bear leaving her with someone she does not know as she looks for me whenever I am out of sight. The time will come though when I have to leave her in the care of others but now is not the time.

I think I am up to the present now and will blog other times about the day to day workings of someone who has Alzheimer's.

To be continued...

The first inklings that something was wrong.

It was around 2006 when I thought something was not right with Beryl. She kept saying the same things over and over as if she had just mentioned whatever we were talking about for the first time. I took no action and let it slide, as it were.

In early 2007, around February or March, I was asked by my consultant to come into hospital for around a week as my skin complaint had burst out all over my body. They were treating me for Eczema but were stumped as how to treat it. I went into hospital with much trepidation. One thing that bothered me was that I could not smoke and a nationwide smoking ban was looming. I'll leave the smoking ban aside for the moment as my main concern was leaving Beryl alone for a week. Luckily there was only one blip where she was concerned. She phoned me up because she'd forgotten how to set the microwave. Anyway I found a place to smoke with the other smoking patients that was not too far away from my ward but had a run in with a doctor there who pointed out the no smoking signs outside and I told him in no uncertain terms that it was not against the law to smoke outside. He was and odious anti smoker and had upset one woman by calling her names.

The consultants eventually decided that I did not have Eczema but Psoriasis.

Anyway after I got out of hospital and been put on a drug called Azathioprine the symptoms soon went, I am on Azathioprine for the rest of my natural life.

The impending smoking ban took over my life as I was incensed that our government could be so cruel to force people, whatever their age or infirmity, out of pubs, clubs and bingo halls into the harsh British winter days and nights, especially using the mythical SHS fraud (Second Hand Smoke) to push through such draconian legislation. I went onto the Internet to find out if I was the only one that was opposed to such a dreadful and divisive law. I soon found out I was not alone.

I found a forum called The Big Debate that was soon to transform itself into Freedom2Choose. We then formed local Freedom2Choose branches for us to meet each other and form action committees in our local areas. I started the F2C North East branch which met at The Tardis in Redcar, not a million miles from where I live. After a couple of meetings there we moved to a pub in Drighlington where the manager and his wife were opposed to the ban and had a banner up on their building to say so. The Tardis went the way of most pubs after the smoking ban and no longer trades as a public house and is now a cafe. I now had to get on two trains and then a bus journey to get to the Painters Arms in Drighlington which was made all the more harrowing because you are not allowed to smoke on trains and now many train stations do not let you smoke on their open air platforms. It was still worth the effort though and I made many videos for Youtube about our meetings and watching those videos I could see something missing when I saw Beryl's eyes and demeanour, she seemed lost and not quite 'with it'.

It was late December 2007 when it was finally brought home to me that Beryl was entering a stage of dementia. She asked me where her mother was, a question that had me in tears as her mother had died in 1981, the year that Princess Diana and Prince Charles got married. How was I going to get her to see a doctor? That was my main problem as getting Beryl to do anything was a hardship so I had to resort to subterfuge because she was never one to bother doctors and had great physical health up till then.

To be continued...

36 hours

I am deviating from my own set timeline as Beryl's heath took a turn for the worse in Monday.

On that day, around 5pm, Beryl complained of a stomach ache which I assumed would pass but by 7:30 pm it persisted and I told her she should go lay down for a few hours and see if that eases it. At midnight she started vomiting and was more unresponsive than usual to my directions when getting her up to be cleaned and remove the soiled bedclothes. She also became very lethargic. After cleaning her and the bed being remade she went back to sleep only to wake up around 5am vomiting again. First thing come 9am I called the Doctor out. He examined her thoroughly and concluded that she had a 24 hour bug and prescribed tablets to stop the vomiting. All day yesterday she still was unresponsive and lethargic but, thankfully, the vomiting had stopped. It really was a worrying time for both of us.

Beryl slept relatively easily during last night and this morning. Today she is able to get up and sit in the living room and has become less lethargic and a little more responsive. Her Alzheimer's made her sickness all that worse and I feared that this bout of sickness would have serious consequences but am glad that she is recovering. She is not eating properly but I hope this will change as the hours go by. Time is the best healer, or so they say.

To have and have not.

Suffice is to say that our marriage had many ups and downs, as most marriages do but when you are going through those 'ups and downs' you feel as though you are the only one that is experiencing them. We, like most couples, lurched from one crisis to another but in hindsight it was the making of us and was the glue that kept us together.

I had no misgivings about the age difference between us but Beryl had at times talked about her inability to give us kids, as if it was something to do with her and her age. I never thought of going for a test to find out who had the problem because I was of the mind that if it does not happen, then it does not, that's life and what it throws at you, except it or forever be in pain of self doubt. However I got the impression that Beryl thought that she had let me down for not producing children and often asked me if I was 'dissapointed' in her not producing, as it were.

Beryl, who was 32 when we married, had her periods* for another 14 or 15 years after the consumation of it and had every opportunity to concieve...but it just did not happen. Every now and again throughout our marriage she would bring this subject up and beat herself up with anxiety over it, there was no need. I will not cry over something that I have no control over but have sympathy towards those who do.

Anyway, needless to say our marriage survived over the many obstacles that life throws at us and we got to our Ruby Wedding anniversary on the 14th of August 2011.

Beryl was riddled by Alzheimers by then so a get together for our aniversary was out of the question.

We got no cards from any of our families on our Ruby wedding aniversary which tells me that we are alone in this crisis and it is just me and Beryl up against the rest of the world...just as I knew it has always been.

*It irks me that men have a problem with a women's menstrual cycle and are 'frightened' to ask a chemist, or buy from a supermarket that that their partner needs. I regularly went to the chemist for tampons for Beryl when she had the need and did not turn a hair...until I saw what she did with them...ewwwwww. And us men think we suffer!

...To be continued.

What's a neverous breakdown anyway?

Fueled by that 'flee in my ear' by married soldiers that extolled the virtues of married women in the forces should unreservedly follow their spouses I hassled Beryl to come join me and give up her adherence to making a home for ourselves and saving money to do so. She gave up her solid work to enter serfdom as an army wife, a roll that took it's toll on her mentally.

Munster, Germany was a turning point.

We were given, as our army abode, the top floor of a shambolic house which is commonly known as the attic. To say it was spartan is a disservice to Spartans, it was a shithole! The old and decrepit woman who ran it was fond of saying in her best English "no hot water!."

But hey, there was a pub just across the road and I, with my army mates, availed myself of it and on certain nights (most nights if I am to be truthful,) it was MEN ONLY.

Beryl was a woman that believed in woman's rights and she would stick to it rigidly, she would not see women being treated as mere dogs that should be kept in their kennels and only bark when their masters say so. She was forthright and did not shy of saying what she believed in and if she was wrong she would say so. She was that type of woman. Her humanity was taken away from her when I 'forced' her to follow me in Germany.

And in Germany I saw her disintegrate from a caring, compassionate woman to a casualty of my fantasy of having a wife at my side that did my bidding, no matter the consequences!

One day we 'lads' were having a drink over the road when Beryl walked in saying she wanted some company and then got herself a drink and sat with us. Needless to say the 'man buddies' of mine were not impressed and never let an opportunity go to tell me what to do to keep my 'woman' in check.

True to the idiot that I was, when we got back to our dismal attic flat, I became John Wayne and drunkenly took her over my knee and 'spanked' her before paying for it handsomely.

A few days later Beryl had a 'nervous breakdown'.

In the army hospital I was told by a psychiatrist that the forces have no thought to 'army wifes'. They allow husbands to bring them over to a country where they do not understand the language nor the culture and the husbands go on 'exercises' which takes their menfolk away for weeks or months at a time! Some hardy women can take this but not every woman is cut out to be an army wife. There is more that I can say on this but I will not, I will just tell you that Beryl's breakdown was my primer to get out of the army as she was more imprtant than it.

I will reflect to the past sometimes in this blog but I want to start dealing with the here and now and with  my wifes Alzheimer's because, as I write, her condition worsens. I will have all the time in the world to write when this terrible disease takes it's final toll.

To be continued...

The cheapness of...

One of those on the 'front line' was a young chap who, god forgive me, I cannot remember his name, went home that Christmas with a spring in his step knowing that the worst excesses of Northern Ireland were behind him. I will never forget that he lived in a town that I thought was a figment of my Glaswegian imagination, Auchtermuchty.
He, like most of us those days, would think nothing about thumbing a lift and give no thought to mad axe murderers or pedophiles, people were thoughtful and would decide if picking up a passenger was a wrong move and most of the time it was not.


My friend, after serving 4 months in Northern Ireland, was walking along a big stretch of road on his way to Christmas merryment when a car ran into him and, the spineless bastard, drove off leaving him for dead, he was around my age then, 19 FFS! The driver that killed him was never found. I was one of the coffin bearers at his funeral and it was one of the most painful days of my life!
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At 19 years of age I was a very nieve young man, newly married and had a stint in NI during the 'troubles' under my belt, troubles that I had a bit of resonance with as my mother is Northern Irish and I had many relatives there. I stupidly wrote to one of those relatives and asked If I could come visit when I had a few days off...I was sternly told to keep away!

I never joined the army to fight a dirty war in a country that was supposed to be part of the UK, I joined up after being turned down by the merchant navy (I was 16 at the time) and then seeing a poster for the army, a poster that showed soldiers enjoying a skiing trip in some far flung country that I would not normally go to if I had the chance, the poster just looked enticing!


I turned twenty in December 1971 but became no wiser!


We, me and Beryl, had a blinding Christmas, as you would expect, then I got the call that I was being sent to Munster, in Germany.


Beryl was still working at the GEC as a bank wirerer and saving the pennies for a deposit on our first home.

Once we soldiers got to Munster, and after we unpacked, we went to the NAFFI that very first night and quaffed many beers. One of the things I remember most was, due to the cheapness of cigarettes there, that everyone that smoked lit one up and promptly stuck it into an unused glass of beer, they were so cheap that we could not believe how cheap they were compared to the UK's inflated, and much taxed, prices were. And they [in Germany] allowed you to watch porn on the tv??? I thought I was in heaven!


While the drink, and cigarettes, flow, brains go out of the window!


During our merryment one of the older, married, soldiers laid a flee in my ear."you should bring your wife over here, the army gives cheap housing you know and it is her duty to follow her husband!" The other married men around me agreed and I was sent on a course that was to change our lives.

To be continued...