In sickness and in health

The past week or so seems to have been one continuous round of accident and illness. I have spent part of almost every day at the Accrington Pals Memorial Health Centre: nice new posh building, at least I'm becoming familiar with it!

It began on Wednesday, 23rd when Geoff complained that his knee was painful. As he sat watching TV, not particularly doing anything with his knee it gradually became more and more painful to the extent that when he tried to stand up to go into the dining room he was hobbling and limping. By the end of the evening he could put no weight on the leg at all and his knee looked rather red and swollen. He tried some massage cream, a heat lamp and a bandage before going to bed but nothing proved effective and by the time for bed he couldn't even lift his leg off the ground. Needless to say he couldn't go to work the following day. He couldn't even drive the car to get there let alone drive a coach once he had.

So we made the first trip to APMHC on the Thursday morning by taxi with his sliding himself horizontally onto the back seat because he couldn't even bend the leg. The doctor prescribed two lots of enormous tablets (poor Geoff hates taking tablets) and said if the swelling hadn't started to go down by the next day he would have to go back to have fluid drained off! It seemed to concern him that some infection could spread into the knee joint. Fortunately the swelling did start to go down and by Monday he was able to go back to work.

The second trip to the Health Centre was with Em and her back and shoulder on the Friday. She ended up with liquid medication because she can't take tablets at all.

On the Monday morning it was Myrra's turn. Her lower back had been plaguing her for a while but it began to trouble her more so before going to college she made a trip to the doctor and as she had never been to the new Health Centre before I accompanied her. She was given a course of tablets and off she toddled to college.

On Tuesday she developed a sore throat which had become so bad by the evening that she was unable to speak and didn't go to Youth which she'd been looking forward to as it was a 'New Beginnings' evening to welcome the new ones coming up from Primary to Young Women and as the Laurel's representative Myrra had written a little talk and made some hand outs. She scribbled the talk out on paper for someone else to read and Em took the hand outs to hand out.

By Wednesday morning Myrra's throat was so bad and her glands seemed swollen, no over the counter medication was helping so it was yet another trip to the Health Centre and a course of penicillin. The doctor isn't sure if it's tonsillitis or glandular fever. We're hoping the penicillin will fettle it.

So far I'm the only one who hasn't been struck down with something. It's like the seven plagues of Egypt around here!


Sunday at Church

The Relief Society lesson went really well.

I'd prepared a visual aid to illustrate the 'Good, Better, Best' idea with a jar half full of wheat (the good stuff) some ping pong balls to represent the better stuff and a plastic tennis ball to represent the best. The idea has been used in the past to illustrate that if you put all the small stuff in first as priority one it's hard to fit in the larger more important things represented by the ping pong balls. It can be done but it's a struggle.

I'd asked for volunteers - Janelle came out first and tried desperately to squeeze in the ping pong balls amongst the rice and just about succeeded. June was my second volunteer and I gave her the tennis ball and asked her to put that in as well. The ping pong balls were right at the top and almost out of the jar. She looked at me and "You're joking!" She did have a brave attempt but it just wasn't going to go in. The sisters were giggling and finding it all very amusing which I hope will mean that they'll remember the lesson because I told them that the tennis ball was the most important thing and that it mattered that we choose that first - the best.

I then tipped the wheat and ping pong balls out of the jar and put the tennis ball in - best stuff first. Then I dropped in the ping pong balls (the better than good things) around it. Angela then volunteered to pour in the wheat. Now she already has a reputation for spilling wheat when we made some hot wheater bottles years ago so she was determined not to spill any this time and spent most of the rest of the lesson trying to make sure every little grain went in that jar.

I was hoping that she would actually spill some and then I could tell them that it didn't matter if some of the good things got missed. It mattered more that we didn't miss better or best things by concentrating on the good. However, it didn't look like I was going to get chance to point that out as she was so determined to make up for past wheat loss and told the tale of her ill-fated hot wheater bottle which again brought waves of giggles. (We'd all sewn our bottle shapes out of pretty patterned material and my late husband was going round everyone with the correct measure of wheat for each 'bottle' and carefully pouring it in. When he got to Angela's a great deal of wheat ended up on the table and she was telling him to be more careful as he was missing the bag. He insisted he wasn't missing the bag as he was pouring it directly into the hole. Then she held the bag up and wheat came pouring out of the bottom - she hadn't sewn it up properly! We've laughed at the memory of that for years.) So this time Angela was determined that no wheat would be spilled.

As it happened, by doing so she proved an added insight into the subject because she was concentrating so much on getting every last grain of wheat into the jar that she hadn't a clue what happened in the rest of the lesson, which rather illustrated Elder Oaks' point that by making too much of a fuss over the good things we may end up overlooking the better things and miss out on the best things.