Nice people thread part 4 - sugar and spice and all things

PasturesNew

LydiaJ wrote: »

...the breakfast room ...

Posh alert!!!

If we'd had one, apart from the fact it wouldn't be allowed inside the house, the only space big enough for it would have been a 10' long hallway.

PasturesNew

Doozergirl wrote: »

She's okay now, she wants to write a letter to the tooth fairy asking her some pertinent uestions :dance:

There's only one.... HOW MUCH???

PasturesNew

LydiaJ wrote: »

We got the AA.

We just started getting it for the old after the first one expired. They could have been claiming for 2-3 years minimum, but did that old people thing of soldiering on, adapting their lives to not include things that could no longer be done - and not wanting the Govt to know what they had.

Now we're in the realms of the upper AA, getting the forms. Old (I think) gets it on the basis of needing to be kept safe from wandering, with evidence that they can/will do this as the H have hosted the old for the past month due to just such an event occurring and nearly ending in death.

treliac

vivatifosi wrote: »

Last year was five years after having my tumour removed. So I've got through five years of being alive and with no noticeable effects (other than a scar).

Wonderful news viva. Hope everything bodes really well for you now. :dance:

vivatifosi

silvercar wrote: »

:j to Viva :j

Did you need chemo / radio in case it was melanoma?

Sorry to take so long to answer silvercar. I went out this morning and there were trees down everywhere, blocking all the main roads, so I was out far longer than I expected today.

It's not quite as normal to have radio/chemo with melanoma as it isn't particularly successful as a treatment. There are adjuvant drug treatments that you can take if you have a really bad tumour but realistically the prognosis under such circumstances is not great. For most tumours in the UK the standard treatment is to have an excision, followed by pathological review. In the event that the tumour indicates melanoma, or chance of melanoma, then the norm is to take a second "wide local excision" which removes more skin around the area to ensure that all of the cells are removed with safe margins. This is what I had. If they aren't sure if they have spread, then a sentinel node biopsy is not unusual. In my case I didn't have that mostly because there was such uncertainty as to what I actually had and you can get false positives from the benign one too.

If you catch a tumour early enough the prognosis is excellent. I have a relative who was diagnosed as a 21st birthday present and is still alive and well in his forties. Another rel didn't and died. This is why I stress so much in my sig the importance of getting checked. The issue with mine was that it was unusual. When I went back to have another different bit chopped out my Derm (who deals with melanoma day in day out) said they still hadn't seen another case of it.

treliac

vivatifosi wrote: »

If you catch a tumour early enough the prognosis is excellent. I have a relative who was diagnosed as a 21st birthday present and is still alive and well in his forties. Another rel didn't and died. This is why I stress so much in my sig the importance of getting checked. The issue with mine was that it was unusual. When I went back to have another different bit chopped out my Derm (who deals with melanoma day in day out) said they still hadn't seen another case of it.

I seem to remember you once saying you had lived in Australia. Is my memory serving me correctly and, if so, could that climate have had something to do with it. Your family seems to have a predilection?

zagubov

PasturesNew wrote: »

Have you considered cryogenic freezing? If I was sitting on a pile of money and had a warning I was about to expire I'd think about chucking the cash at that just because it's an option and it'd be interesting if it did work and you woke up in 100 years.

PN, if you enjoy interesting stories and ideas, you might try "Instructions for living Another Person's Life" by Mil Millington- it's about a man who goes to sleep in the 80s and wakes up in the noughties - kind of the reverse of the Replay book.

Or the Raw Shark Texts by Stephen Hall- the villain of the story, Mycroft Ward who when he finds out he's dying, decides to reject death and abandon his body, becoming immortal but without using supernatural means or high tech inventions either. He becomes the first man to survive the death of his physical body at the end of the nineteenth century but the way he does it makes him the villain of the story.

Or the short story The Marching Morons by C. M Kornbluth where a man is accidentally frozen and then revived to find out that everyone in the future are all idiots, because brains and reproductive success aren't linked in modern society. Public domain- you can dowload it on my link. The others would be in a library.

vivatifosi

treliac wrote: »

I seem to remember you once saying you had lived in Australia. Is my memory serving me correctly and, if so, could that climate have had something to do with it. Your family seems to have a predilection?

I try not to think about the Aussie link tre because my Mum feels terrible about it. In reality though, my Mum is one of six siblings and there is skin cancer in all but one of the six branches of that tree.

But I'm still really happy! That was the point of my original post. Going through something like that really makes you value life, even the really sh*tty bits. I'm quite an optimist by nature but when I heard the news this morning about mel and realised that it was now over five years I was looking around and no much how much gales were lashing I just felt surrounded by sunshine. I'm going to stop typing now because it looks like American psychobabble, which I hate, but I'm still very happy:o.

treliac

PasturesNew wrote: »

My olds always had completely separate money. They earnt their money, they kept/saved their money.... thing was, in their wills they left their money to each other.... and the deceased old would be mortified that their life's savings were now going to be handed over to pay for care home fees.

If my remaining old keeps plodding along, that'll be goodbye to £250k .... and what's doubly annoying is that people who are being paid for by the Govt get charged less than people who are paying. Most homes are full of people not paying a bean and the Council pay about £150-300/week less than private payers.

It'd seem fairer if we were paying the same as the Council pay.

Most couples don't realise that some of their assets can be protected by changing ownership of their property to 'tenants in common' which can at least preserve 50% of capital held in the property. Sadly, it's too late once there is only one partner left.

Have you asked for a 'continuing care' assessment to see whether NHS funding could possibly be arranged, though it's not easy and advice/support of an organisation such as the Alzheimers Society or Age UK may assist.

There are alternatives to selling. Information from Counsel & Care may be of assistance http://www.counselandcare.org.uk/finding-and-paying-for-a-care-home

zagubov

vivatifosi wrote: »

I try not to think about the Aussie link tre because my Mum feels terrible about it. In reality though, my Mum is one of six siblings and there is skin cancer in all but one of the six branches of that tree.

But I'm still really happy! That was the point of my original post. Going through something like that really makes you value life, even the really sh*tty bits. I'm quite an optimist by nature but when I heard the news this morning about mel and realised that it was now over five years I was looking around and no much how much gales were lashing I just felt surrounded by sunshine. I'm going to stop typing now because it looks like American psychobabble, which I hate, but I'm still very happy:o.

That's great news about the milestone!

Regarding the country where the disease may start -it's not entirely about environment - it's also how your genetic makeup contributes usually via melanin levels. Apparently the three most susceptible ethnic groups are white Australians, white South Africans and Irish people, but nobody's really completely free from risk regardless of their skin colour.

A fellow-student from Africa had albinism and said that in his home country skin cancer was practically inevitable for people with those genes by the time you reached your twenties. And depending on where you lived there's other problems too, due to superstitions. .

In some warmer countries I'm told clothes are labeled with a sun protection factor number just like sunscreens, as most clothes less sturdy that say a duffel coat actually let some light through.

There was an anti-skin cancer drug being developed recently that was nicknamed the Barbie drug (as the side-effects included weight loss and a fake tan) but I don't think it's completed clinical trials so I don't know if that's a long term advance in cancer prevention.