A Precious Dream

A ten minute dream
Or so it seemed
Telling each other, with a joyful smile
How much we are in love
A quick hug, the smell of your hair
Then awakening to darkness
Loneliness that will never end
My heart torn to pieces once more
With tears flowing freely
As I’m trapped in this world
Please my love, take me from this hell

Corona virus versus Cancer

The (almost) invisible enemy

#coronavirus is dangerous, it infects around 1 in 100,000 people (very tough to estimate worldwide figure). It stopped nations, destroyed jobs, wrought heartache, allowed governments to lockdown its people in the millions and we are giving up what was left of our privacy rights.

But it is serious, so excuses are made and accepted.

With #Cancer, 1 in 2 people will get it in their lifetime (that’s you, sorry). Where is the media outrage, the never ending analysis, the desperation to find a treatment??

Cancer has been treated (with acknowledged advances) with the same poison, chemotherapy, for 50+ years, and it has gone from 1 in a 100,000 people contracting it to 1 in 2!

Where is the medical miracle? The urgency to fund treatment? The willingness to fund whatever it takes for an answer? The rush to develop a solution?

Is it really just the big pharmaceutical companies making a fortune on chemotherapy, wanting to keep it going as long as they can? Perhaps follow the money.

I know how to develop a different treatment, a kinder one on the body, perhaps a cure, within 5 years – Make it illegal for companies to administer chemotherapy to patients in five years time.

Then sit back and watch the fevered research for a real fight against cancer, using all drugs (and non drugs, some chemotherapy is based on the yew tree) with real results and lives saved in their countless millions.

Are you with me?

Dreams

As the years pass, my childhood dreams pass me by, one by one.

Whether incomplete, unsuccessful, untried or made impossible, they fade and leave a hole no new dreams can fill.

Lying here in full body pain, constant dizziness, nausea, headaches and chronically fatigued, I have no dreams but to see tomorrow. To hope for a less painful day, to get outside and sense the world again.

Don’t grow up to be me.

I am grateful for what I accomplished prior to my illnesses. Memories are all I have, and I have many to last.

Remaining positive is my toughest test.

Backwards again…

There I was, feeling a bit better and hopeful of some more improvement.

Then my ME, CFS and Fibromyalgia decide to hit me with another dose of their vile junk. Who knows why, or what, as still so little research is being done into these illnesses. Millions of us around the world suffer but with so much illness these days (we must be poisoning ourselves somehow, it cannot be a coincidence) the research dollars go to areas of focus, which our ailment lacks.

Still, if I can feel better before then I can do so again, just need to get through this downturn and hang in there.

Please, if you suffer like me then try and do the same. There are better days ahead.

There have to be.

Election – Australia

In a week’s time Australia will vote for its seventh Prime Minister in nine years.

Not the most flattering record to have, and one which a country like Australia does not deserve. In these times stability of leadership is crucial yet here we are at it again.

Admittedly four of those Prime Ministers were not elected but voted by their own parties for self-preservation and quests for power. Either way both major parties indulged in this high stakes game and both have lost voter confidence because of it.

I voted early so the current bombardment of political advertising is lost on deaf ears, and my guess is even if you haven’t voted already you have tuned them out.

Please let us have some stability. It’s really all we ask.

Boredom, the new disease

So I have ME/CF (I refuse to put the ‘S’ at the end for it is NOT a syndrome) and Fibromyalgia and am taking all sorts of medication, but the worst (after the symptoms, and the symptoms the drugs cause) is the boredom.

I, like most others with a chronic illness, still think and feel the same now as I did before my diagnosis. Yet I have zero (mostly negative) energy to do anything. Which leaves me with thoughts and feelings I cannot act upon for lack of energy.

Meaning I’m bedbound yet crave to do all the things I have always done, but even going to the local cafe by myself is impossible as I have no way to get there. No car (can’t afford a second one) and I can’t walk that far.

So what to do all day? Reading sometimes brings on a dizziness attack, walking to the living room leaves me breathless so the rest of the house is pretty much out of bounds.

And I hate daytime TV.

Last year I wrote a book on my phone, one hundred thousand words by thumbpressing, but do I have the energy to go to my computer, turn it into an ebook and upload it to Amazon after finding out how to do that? Nope.

I have no money so I can’t online shop and get excited about a delivery. The only mail I receive are bills.

So what to do? Damn good question.

Lyme disease, in Australia?

The Australian Government strictly states that Lyme disease does not exist here.

This is despite over a hundred doctors recently gathering from around the country to discuss this insidious disease and the fact it does exist here and the Government needs to change its stance.

For now, if a GP notes on a patient record ‘Lyme Disease’ they are taken to task and given hell. Treatment is non considered as it doesn’t exist.

Yet I check the symptoms and damn, they’re pretty darn close!

I recently went on a drug, when all others had failed over the last two-and-a-half years, that treats diseases like Lyme and have noticed a small improvement. No more than 4-5% but at least something.

Note for the Australian Government – denying something exists does not make it so. But then they believe this on so many levels, why any different for a disease making thousands of people’s lives miserable? Better for them to be miserable and lose their jobs and futures than admit an error, surely.

An expert in this field was told my symptoms and his response was immediately, “So what bit him?” But no it doesn’t exist!

So now I’m being treated for something that bit me, although we don’t know what, or even if, because tests for Lyme Disease are so inconclusive here as to be useless.

Just like the Australian Government.

Trump claims he gave troops 10% pay rise – lie

When US President Donald Trump visited troops in Afghanistan recently he claimed, no boasted, that he got them all a ten percent pay increase this year.

He also claims he was counselled to only give two, three or four percent but no, the magnanimous President insisted on ten percent.

Only it was 2.4%, according to the full story at news.com.au.

He also claimed they hadn’t had a patriae in ten years. In fact they have received one every year. More last year in fact.

So the Donald Trump personal fake news train rolls on, with self agrandising lie after lie. US citizens now know what it is like to be have Vladimir Putin as President.

A Christmas poem

A merry Christmas to all

And to all a wonderful day

Be thankful for what you have

And for what comes your way

Sick or healthy, put on a smile

Others will know, and love you

Give more than you receive

Know it’s not what, but who

Reindeer or not, remember

Presents are bested by hugs

So take it slow and enjoy

And drink champagne from a mug!

Don’t be stressed or run around

See who you can and love the rest

The thought really is all that counts

For soon it will be Christmas next!

Why I don’t believe the major companies mobile phone sales figures

How can anyone justify spending around $1,500AUD ($900US plus the Australia tax) for a phone? When so called ‘experts’ are saying the latest Google Chromebook, a laptop, is too expensive at the same price, how can they then recommend the latest iPhone, Huawei or Pixel handset?

Because writing about mobile phones is sexy and if you are popular enough they probably send you a free one to review.

Unfortunately I’m in the category of ‘sanity’ and not sexy so no free phones for me. I also wonder at people who bemoan the shortcomings of a $500 laptop yet apparently spend three times that much on something smaller, slower and with fewer functions.

That is why the sales figures quoted (20 million Huawei phones sold in three months) I say are unbelievable, and plain wrong.

Can people really be that stupid? I still have the same phone I purchased three years ago. Yes I would like a new one but I’m also not a rich idiot with $1,500 to throw away for something that does essentially the same thing, only slightly faster.

Look at me, I spend $1,500 a year to not make phone calls. There are around 60 million (estimated total handset sales) of these people every three months? I sincerely doubt it.

It is like buying lobster that tastes like chicken. Why not just buy chicken? Everyone is happy and you have one less mortgage.

The sales figures must be for those buying a phone for the first time, you say? But in a saturated market again the figures are way too high.

Maybe they shipped 20 million handsets to stores, but I bet half will be sent back when they don’t sell.

Please, tell me the world isn’t that crazy that they would buy them!??