Tag Archives for illness

WTF is homeopathy?

My first exposure to the word ‘Homœopathic’ was at Hampton House, a hall of residence at Bristol University which was an ex-homœopathic hospital (and is now the student medical centre). All I knew was that it was a magnificent building that used to be a hospital of some sort – but I never really thought about what the ‘Homœopathic’ bit meant – I just assumed it was another branch of medicine. Continue reading →

Failings of ‘parental intuition’

I am concerned by all the irresponsible, selfish and stupid parents of the world. The ones that upon reading this would be moved to comment along the lines of “you’re not a parent, so you don’t know anything” – because that is how arrogant and self-righteous the sort of parents I am thinking of are.

parenting

Being a parent does not make you immune from criticism, it does not make you an expert in rearing children and it does not make you medically qualified, intelligent or well informed. It may, however,  make some people more selfish, overly-defensive and irrational. Not only do some parents think that society owes them for having children (I for one didn’t ask them to have unprotected sex), but they also seem to think that their ‘little darlings’ are beyond reproach and any trouble that they get into is somebody else’s fault. Continue reading →

Wishful thinking

Mary, my mother-in-law is seriously ill in hospital with a nasty case of pneumonia. There’s a substantial chance that she won’t make it. She just turned 51 and the last time I saw her, just a few weeks ago, she was the life and soul of the party.

My wife has flown back to Ireland and is sitting with her mum, who the medical staff are trying to stabilise enough to transport to the nearest hospital with a dialysis machine, because her kidneys have failed. Everyone is worried, scared, disorientated and utterly powerless. Continue reading →