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| All good things
come to an end, but it would have been nice
to have chosen when. In the spring of 1982
I became unwell with flu like symptoms. I
took a few days off and went back to work.
A couple of weeks later the same thing. This
kept happening and eventually in July I went
to the doctor. He found nothing wrong. |
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| In
September I had the worst attack yet and realised
that I was having problems walking. My knees
had become extremely stiff and painful. Again
I went to the surgery. My own doctor was not
there, a locum was standing in for him. How
he came to be a doctor I have no idea. He
did not have a clue. First he gave me a prescription
for pills, before he had decided what was
wrong and claiming there were no side effects.
No side effects? It would be the first drug
ever. I asked the pharmacist and he said there
were several possible side effects. |
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| By
October I could barely put one foot in front
of the other. I tried going to work but after
three days I was forced to give up. The doctor
now sent me for tests. These proved nothing.
He came out with two comments that I thought
were quite extraordinary. One was "I
don't know what the future holds for you",
very reassuring. The other was "I think
your best bet is to throw yourself in the
river". Was he mad? I lived downstream
from a sewerage works. |
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| And
so it was that without knowing what was wrong
with me and getting no help from the medical
profession, at the end of June 1983 I had
to leave the job that had changed my life.
I had frozen on unheated buses in winter and
baked on crowded buses in summer. I had directed
traffic and tried to put out car fires. I
had had a passenger die on the bus and I had
somehow avoided having someone give birth.
So many things I had done that working in
a factory or an office I would never have
dreamed of. |
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| Now I was going to have
to start again somewhere else. What new adventures
awaited me? First I had to learn to walk again.
After that, well that's another story ....
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