A second fainting spell, fifty years apart

Just a lift too high

He lifted my right leg by the foot towards the back, and I was out. I cannot tell how long I was out for, but I eventually came to, and considering he neither panicked nor called for help, it could not have been that long.

That was fifty years ago, around this time of the year. We had gone cycling together into the wilderness among the tin mines of Jos, near Rayfield. This was both adventurous and dangerous. We once came upon a gathering of menacing men who not only shooed us away, but they were also quite threatening, though it is unlikely that reporting them to the police would have made much difference.

On that day, we had ridden out on an uncharted route around the paddocks, too deep to approach, with standing water that spelled danger and death by drowning, with the possibility that one may not be found at all. However, that was a story of childhood.

Woozy, down and out

What brought back that memory was suddenly standing up, and I had a serious woozy feeling, very much like when I took my eighth COVID-19 booster on Monday. I had willed myself back from the pharmacy to the office and sat down; everything seemed to sort itself out in minutes.

This time, I grabbed onto something, thinking I was holding on until I heard a crashing sound. It was me hitting the floor, and I lapsed into a kind of dreamland, believing I was still holding on and about to get up.

I was out, quite totally out, and I cannot remember how long for; I just realised I was picking myself off the floor and made for the sofa to sit down and gather myself together. What just happened? I had a fainting spell.

A bit delicate, I realise

Until this afternoon, I had handled these sudden drops in blood pressure caused by standing or sitting up quite well. I think it was exacerbated by my medication, which, as an alpha-blocker, could accentuate light-headedness and, in some cases, lead to passing out.

It was not a side effect I had associated with the medication, having only learnt of this usually rare side effect from a YouTube video this morning. [The NHS: About Tamsulosin]

While I have tried not to feel too delicate in my recovery stretch, the reality suggests that I need to be more careful and considerate of the unforeseen events that could put me at great risk and peril. The knowledge is helpful, and I am doing quite well after that episode.

Postscript: The medication for the treatment of benign prostate hyperplasia (an enlarged prostate), also treats high blood pressure.

Photons on the Prostate - XVIV - I Just Can't Wait

Whither the weather

As we reach the end of spring with the impending arrival of summer, the little sunshine that offers a sense of warmth might lead you to do silly things.

That is how I left home yesterday evening in shorts and a shirt without a vest or singlet. It felt warm enough to be daring. And since I wanted to make up my steps for the day, the exercise would serve as protection against the elements.

On the first leg of my outing, everything felt fine until dusk crept upon us unawares. The first supermarket I visited had the lamb I sought to buy, but I was not particularly enamoured with the brands of tomato puree.

Getting across town

I knew I had to get to the other side of town to a shop that carried the brand I needed. With barely 70 minutes to spare before the shop closed, I boarded a bus back into town and then another out to the shop. The bus traversing the route directly from the supermarket to the shop was not expected for another 24 minutes.

By the time I boarded the bus from the city centre to the shop, a cooler breeze was blowing, and I could feel it on my legs and through my flimsy clothes. The added discomfort meant I had to find conveniences when I alighted at my intended bus stop.

I just can’t wait

The shopping centre was closed; I walked into the nearest public establishment, a casino, and asked to use their toilets. The receptionist was about to tell me the toilets were only for customers, but I showed her my Just Can’t Wait card on my mobile phone.

The Just Can't Wait card in the Bladder & Bowel Community app.

She quickly retrieved a key from her desk drawer and directed me to the toilet. What a relief that was. As I handed back the key, I thanked her for her understanding. This is the second time I have had to brandish the card. When you are pressed, you can only press for the conveniences, to handle that pressing need.

Blog - Men's things - XXIV

Blog - Photons on the Prostate - XVIII

Dreamscape: I said hire me

Untouched by Touch

It was one of those contactless payment nightmares, and it truly was a nightmare. I was with a close family friend, and we had boarded a train within the city to travel from one location to another.

Upon arrival at my destination, my mobile phone simply refused to provide the NFC-related information and contactless payment interaction to let me through the exit barriers.

Despite my efforts, my friend easily exited and waited for me as I began to look like a fare dodger. However, I had indeed touched in where my journey began and was struggling to touch out.

A Free Pass Granted

One of the staff came to help, first directing attention away from us before moving us outside the perimeter of the checking system. Effectively, I was beyond the exit barriers and could go on my way.

However, having touched in, if I did not get a legal touch out, I could potentially be fined almost 10 times the cost of travel. I needed this resolved before I was subject to a cash grab from my account.

Finding a Solution

Upon reviewing transactions on my phone, I found that the entry contactless system had failed to register my touch-in properly, posting an Error 21, indicative of a fault with the system rather than a mistake of my own making.

I approached the staff who called in a technical architect to review the error. While acknowledging the error was not my fault, he opted to do nothing about it as he prepared to take his dogs out for a walk. As far as he was concerned, the cost was too minuscule to warrant concern.

Meanwhile, in my examination of the information related to the error, the company admitted fault and offered compensation for the inconvenience. As the architect was walking away, I inquired about the compensation, and he promptly signed off a few free tickets for daytime and nighttime travel.

Fighting My Corner

It was his attitude that was grating, inconsiderate, and failed to recognize the needs of the customer. To which I vocally stated, for all to hear, “If your company needs a technical architect with an eye for detail and solutions to help the customer, please immediately hire me.”

That was completely out of character for me; I am not typically one to express myself in that manner. However, I felt irked and disrespected; it needed to be said. All that agitation, and it was only a dream.

Men's things - XXIV - A presentation

Sharing my prostate cancer story

Within the last fortnight, I attended a gathering of black men in Manchester and Liverpool, where I was invited to tell my story about my experience with prostate cancer.

The story on its own could be compelling, as I do have friends and acquaintances, even strangers asking for advice and direction about how to navigate these issues, that I term, "Men’s things".

However, in such a semi-formal setting under the auspices of a registered charity, I felt it should not be a typical story-telling setting, but one where whoever listened learnt something and could act on it.

What the prostate gland does

To that end, I created slides with some images, because in all previous presentations I have attended on the topic of prostate cancer, the issue of the function of the prostate gland as a muscular switch between urination and ejaculation was not clear. For instance, I learnt this long after I had commenced radiotherapy treatment for prostate cancer.

Secondly, I had only found one image that gave a close-up view of how an enlarged prostate gland can present symptoms of difficulty or discomfort with the ease of urination. That visual image alone seemed to get men thinking about having checks on their prostate health.

Courtesy of NHS Overview of Benign Prostate Enlargement

Your active participation in your health, matters

On this perspective, I wove a story around my curiosity about some unusual blood test results outside normal ranges, through insistence to my GP for tests, the referral for further investigation, leading to a cancer diagnosis, then the treatment of prostate cancer, and the post-treatment side effects.

Beyond that is the need for black men to participate in surveys, especially when invited for bowel cancer screening, why men’s things should be more widely and openly discussed, and how early detection saves lives.

What I hoped men would take away from my presentation was that, “All prostate issues are not indicative of cancer, but every prostate enlargement should be investigated for cause and possible treatment.”

My presentation slides

Blog - Men's things - Prostate Cancer blogs

Blog - Photons on the Prostate - XIII

References

MedScape: International Prostate Symptom Score (IPSS) Calculator

Prostate Cancer UK: Risk Checker

Home as you left it

Strewn yet hewn

When I returned home late in the night a week ago, it never occurred to me how if anyone had seen a dog in the window of my apartment over the weekend, they could come back on my return, point to the dog and ask how much it was.

In fact, I could have left my bathroom scales in my wine rack (I did not do that, someone else did) and expected to still find it there or carelessly left the fridge door open and met it undefeated by gravity or the rotational forces of the earth in the same position I had in my forgetfulness abandoned things.

That lack of trepidation as to the condition of my home that always seemed to leave me a total stranger in my own home after any sojourn away, was bliss. None of the disorderliness which to the mind of another was their order, or apparent disarray was due to poltergeist activity, I simply had a trusted house sitter.

Behold an earthquake

Trusted is being generous to a fault, because except for the entirely immovable things, everything moved, changed places, or just disappeared. The lack of care for the very basic things even though to his thinking he was keeping the place tidy, robbed me too many times of the enjoyment of home, yet overwhelmed to a masochist trait, I submitted myself to more abuse.

However, after a 16-hour journey back from Cape Town, still barely at 60% of my strength, I stepped into my home and though he was present, I found myself running the vacuum cleaner through my apartment before I even took my jacket off. When I opened the fridge, a hurricane had swept through it with pieces anywhere but where they should be.

That I was still finding things out of place five months later is testament to his genius that has a madness to its method, but the day after I returned, I asked him to give me back the keys to my apartment and I bought myself the unimaginable treasure of space, independence, and wallowing in the mess of my own making. I could live with that.

Peace with my pieces

The next time we saw each other, it was at a waving distance attending a funeral, I bear no animosity toward him, I consider him a friend, even if he thinks otherwise. It was a necessary intervention, rescuing myself from the throes of the unmentionable trying to articulate the indescribable.

Just to have your home unspoiled and be able to suggest the best price for the dog in the window the stranger saw the other day and get a good exchange without rummaging through the depths of Hades for the upper set of your false teeth and the missing tail of the dog. You do not want to know what I still cannot find in my own home.

A mandolin, I traverse

My kitchen lessons

While we are estranged for reasons, she quite easily forgets in impactfully unguarded expression that cannot be misconstrued by the listener, there are benefits to that unsteady relationship that have served me well. I guess the biological relationship has met too many issues of ego and standing to develop into a friendship of any significance, and I am fine with that.

From an early age, I was invited into the kitchen, whether by my personal interest or her coercion, what I have learnt therein has meant when I am as inclined and disposed, I can fend for myself and attend to the cravings I need to satisfy, if alternatives would not suffice.

Doing it myself

A case in point was when at one time in Cape Town, I could not find anything like Agege bread, even in the shops purveying Nigerian fare. I was soon out looking for a baking tin with a lid, that I could not find anywhere in the shops, that I ordered one for delivery to home in the UK.

I made do with what I could find and started baking, it was when I returned home that I got the Agege bread recipe to a level of satisfactory achievement and was later able to give Brian the true experience of what that kind of loaf was all about.

It is probably laziness and lethargy that gets the better of me when there are things I could do at home that I end up spending money on at the local supermarket. For instance, I hate chopping onions, I can do that with a mandolin, and I have had one about the house for about three decades.

The mandolin in this context is not the musical instrument, but a kitchen utensil used for slicing, there is a difference in spelling between English and American English which takes an ‘e’ on the end.

Cost-saving benefit

On one supermarket shelf, I saw a bag of chopped onions going for a song and I bought them, the price looked reasonable enough until it went up by 50%, how I can tell prices have changed, I cannot explain, but in my subconscious, I notice how prices fluctuate on the everyday goods that I get. There is a threshold beyond which I would whisper to myself, almost spitting out in disgust and disdain, that I am not paying that much for that.

I returned home to my red onions, prepared them for the mandolin and apportioned quantities to zip lock freezer bags, then wondered why I had never done that in the first place. That is the case with a few other things that I have learnt from domestication encouraged by my mother from childhood. It is one of those things to celebrate, despite the other things.

In praise of loyalty schemes

Asserting Customer Loyalty

I consider myself an advocate for loyalty schemes, as I have participated in a few, some of which offered benefits I never utilised when I was unable to take full advantage of them.

However, I have found the best perks in the hospitality industry. The benefits and rights you receive as a loyal customer can greatly surpass those of a casual, unregistered user of a service.

One case in point was when I had the Accor Favourite Guest Card, which I lost almost 15 years ago. While visiting Berlin and checking into a hotel I had used many times before, a Mercure brand hotel, the check-in clerk informed me that the hotel was fully booked.

That was not what the Accor Favourite Guest Card guaranteed; I had a room in the hotel of my choice secured, no questions asked, and I asserted that fact. Their suggestion was to put me up in another hotel for one night and return to my chosen hotel for the last three nights.

I refused, stating to the clerk that I didn’t want to be moving around Berlin like a prostitute. I gave them twenty minutes to come up with a better proposal: a booking in another hotel of the same standard or better for the four nights, which they did, even paying for the taxi to transport me to a hotel suite in an even more exclusive part of Berlin.

The Tangible Value of Loyalty

Without my loyalty program, I would not have been able to negotiate that outcome. After leaving the Accor Favourite Guest Card scheme, I joined the Hotels.com rewards program, which gives you a monetary average of every accumulated 10-night stay as a reward night to help offset the costs of staying at hotels booked through that app.

Since 2013, I have saved over £4,500 using my loyalty reward nights, but they have changed the scheme. Aside from not understanding how the new system works, I feel it is not as beneficial. Additionally, I have secured some good deals through Booking.com.

Having once lived in the Netherlands, I became a frequent flyer with KLM, which later merged with Air France as part of the SkyTeam alliance. Over the years, I have earned statuses and miles that covered my return flights to India in 2011 and to South Africa in June 2024.

With this loyalty scheme comes priority boarding, extra baggage allowance, a choice of seating, an air mile multiplier for each Euro spent, depending on status, along with complimentary access to the lounge if you hold a gold status. For years, I had platinum status until the aftermath of the pandemic reduced it to just Silver.

Choose and Stick with It

In my view, everything must be done to maintain at least a minimal loyalty allegiance, rather than starting from scratch again. My frequent flyer miles and hotel reward benefits have been invaluable in saving upfront costs. Choose a brand carefully, study what they offer, and how it compares to the competition, then make a commitment.

It might be pricier, but your patronage amounts to something significant; there is value in storing loyalty rather than endlessly chasing the most affordable price from anyone offering a service. Being a creature of habit by adopting a loyalty scheme is not such a bad thing.

With loyalty store cards, you occasionally receive discounts from the retail price, which can be up to 50% or more. As one supermarket suggests, “Every little helps.”