Car parking...

...in town.

I park in this pub's car park, and as long as I buy a at least a drink (coffee as I am driving) and give them my car number they will allow me to leave my car as long as I want and go off and do other business in the town.

This morning I bought a breakfast too as I had a long busy day.

I went on to a cochlear implantee meeting, where we discussed inadequacies of the hospital system and its impact on us. The main gripe is information we give the hospital about how the implant affects ourselves does not appear to be passed on to Cochlear itself. There were some specific instances where people were told...'Oh give it time you'll get used to this thing...or it will settle' and so on, BUT (without going into specifics cos this is other people's details), there were some serious instances where not enough notice was taken by the hospital, and one ended up seeing a neurologist in the big city down South, where they were told that it was the cochlear operation that had caused nerve damage which was causing their problems which were having a big impact on their lives. Yet the hospital had not taken their concerns seriously and was telling them give it time it will settle. I have been fobbed off too when I have had concerns. The conversation got a bit noisy and heated. What it boils down to is you the patient/customer has been 'sold' a product i.e. the implant and the processor, but the proper aftercare is not there. Nor is the gathering of information on it collected, and passed on to the manufacturer of the product.

I managed to fit in a reflexology session which I sorely needed after yesterday. We were discussing something similar that I had been that morning, and she is involved in a centre which is forward thinking and combining alternative therapies with conventional medicine in a sensitive way.

Then in the car again and off to my fibromyalgia meeting. That turned out a noisy session too. A lot of new people, and a lot more new ideas from them, and different ways each of us has coping strategies. And how we manage to get out of bed in a morning after a bad night of fibromyalgia symptoms leaving us feeling we have woken up being run over by a truck. There were a lot of confident people there today. One of my contributions was when I get very negative thoughts was not to deny them nor say go away to them, but to look on them as shadow-boxing. And be grateful for this shadow-boxing making me alert and aware of stuff. This way the negative thought does not have a negative impact on me. The others looked a bit puzzled, but the organiser understood me and expanded on it, saying that all negatively and negative experiences were are part of us that we can learn to build on in positive ways. I dunno if I am explaining this well. I am very tired after a long day and 139 miles of driving when all I wanted to do today was just sleep all day.

The photograph above? That was a mirror behind me where I sat in the pub having my breakfast!