Dear LPG, 

I have often heard it said and now I can confirm that as you get older you get slower and that is what can really upset you, but until now I have always been too busy to worry about being old.  

I became a landlord when I inherited my family home.  I could have sold it but like so many others I count the house where I grew up as one of those things that I couldn’t part with even though I have another home of my own.  So, this was my solution, and it has kept me busy throughout my last 15 years of retirement.  But the other day I managed to fall while doing a simple repair and my hip has paid the price. 

I thank the lord that I am still here, and after two weeks that I missed altogether, I have spent a further two in hospital where I have had far too much time to think about far too many things.  First there are all those negative thoughts about how well I will recover, and I also found myself doing a lot of reminiscing about my life through its different stages and the people who have entered and left it over the years.  

In the past, I have spent a lot of time visiting people in hospital, and I remember trying to find interesting things to tell them and hoping that I don’t run out of things to say, but I never realised how much time you must just think once you get to the stage where your brain is working well but your body is taking a little time to catch up.

When the shoe is on the other foot it is true that all the things that the nurses must do on a regular basis go some way towards keeping your brain occupied, but there is a lot of time to do nothing but think about the worst that could happen and all the implications of your illness.  

Visitors are a good thing and, now that they don’t have to visit with Covid rules thrown in, there have been a few more than before and, with my own experience of being a visitor, I have had a lot of time to see them try to find things to talk to me about.  I worked out that while I would not be able to write my thoughts down myself, getting my visitors to do it for me was not a bad idea.

My nephew has been a regular visitor over the past fortnight, and I got him to get me a notebook.  I have been getting my visitors to write down some of the thoughts that have been going through my head while I have been lying in my hospital bed. This has been good therapy for my brain and, having a bit of a plan when they come makes working out how to entertain your hospital host less of a challenge.  Now that I am home again, I have had time to look and make some into messages, like this one, to share with LPG.  

Even though I am not completely recovered yet, I think that writing stuff down has got me thinking more positively and when I find myself in the visitor’s chair again, depending on how much thinking they can, or want to do, I would suggest doing a bit of thought writing as way of spending some of the time to the people I visit…

EA, Grove Park.