The New Beachhutman Blog

I don't do ill very well. I don't do man colds either. And I'm not too good with ill people.

Yesterday I had to come home early. I had one of those low-profile, annoying viruses, just enough to make my joints  ache, tire me out, give me a temperature and a light headed feeling. It may have caught me when I got the aircon cold last week. Anyway, I felt rubbish, and cried off early and went home, where I plugged the laptop into the bedroom rable, selected Radio 4 on Realplayer, my recent downloads on VLC, put a big bottle of squash and a pile of chocolate and wicked snacks on the other side, and dozed through the next 18 hours half awak and half asleep, sweaty and cold in turns. I have just arisen, and still feel crappy, but am winning the fight - more of a scrap -  I think.

One of the fears I don't let myself have is fear of illness. Not that I haven't had any. I had malaria twice in Africa, pretty nasty stuff. I had two bad bouts of depression in UK, and the usual childhood stuff. But on the whole I don't get ill (*touches wood*) and try ont to fear it.

I have been thinking about it lately though,  and even looked into health insurance for my time here, but as one can expect, when you become a potential health risk (ie more than about 40) they push you out of the schemes by outrageous premiums. At my age and in my situiation, the monthly premium for good cover would be around 30%  of my take home, because I am high risk (age and occupation) in a high risk country with poor health services.  So I have decided that I just have to continue to take out single trip insurance with medical costs and medivac cover each trip, and hope for the best. In Spain I qualify for "emergency care" whatever that is, and I hope I don't need to find out. One day, bits will start to fall off, but I guess I can deal with that when the time comnes. If I ever make it.

But there is one big question that hovers. Regular readers will recall when my neighbour in Harrogate, Joan, developed Motor Neuron Disease.There's a suumary at the entry for Friday, June 9, 2006,

I watched her going, and only well into the course of the illness realised, such was my ignorance, that through all the dreadful loss of her faculties, the incontinence, the choking, loss of voice, loss of control, she would have retained her mental faculties.She could understand what was happening.

So cancer I might take a punt on, let the doctors give me some hope, unless it was clearly too late. But if I was diagnosed with terminal MND, it would be the large bottle of vodka - actually, I might treat myself to a decent brandy, and several weeks supplies of paracetemol, and maybe just to be sure, a bag over the head, before it was too late to make  my own decisions.

Gosh, the things you let yourself dwell on when you get a bit sniffly.