Awareness

I suppose most of us have friends or family who don't enjoy good health.  That number does increase as we age.  

The number of people with serious health problems that I meet from time to time has exploded since I started my voluntary job at the hospital, driving a courtesy car, mainly from the car parks to the main entrance.  I certainly appreciate how lucky I am.  I'm not overly happy about having osteoarthritis increasing it's grip on my aging body but I'm so grateful my knees, at least so far, have been spared.  I see a good cross section of the community on a weekly basis and I find it quite distressing that so many people, especially men, have dodgy knees.  If it's distressing for me to see people struggling to walk, I imagine how much worse it must be for them.  So many are waiting, in pain, for an operation but this post isn't a rant about the terrible state of our public health system although, goodness knows, it is appalling enough.  And, not one person I've met who is on a waiting list, ever complains about the doctors and nurses, just the system that our government insists is working well.  Bah!  They are constantly economical with the truth.

Where I'm going is to tell you about my newfound carefulness as a driver.  I don't think I've been a reckless driver but I don't think I've been a very mindful driver either.  Of course, when driving a hospital vehicle I'm naturally very careful.  But having met so many people who have driven themselves to the hospital for medical appointments who should obviously not have done so, has made me aware of how many people I could be sharing the road with at any one time who just aren't fit to be driving.  A young lady with a sick baby on her lap, those blokes with the dodgy knees they can barely move, the lady who told me she suffers from double vision but is having a good day.  Twice now I've been asked to park cars for people.  Should they be driving if they can't park their car?  

I haven't driven my car anywhere since my most recent day at the hospital. On my way home I got caught up in a police car chase and came so close to being hit. 

I have to back up a bit here.  I haven't mentioned my new hearing aids, have I?  I'm still adjusting to sounds I haven't been hearing for quite some time.  The tick tick of my car indicators, I swear my car is about to fall into pieces there are so many squeaks and rattles, birds on the roof sure do make a racket, that sort of thing. I now know one of the new sounds I least enjoy is police car sirens.  The roar of the speeding car (which was a getaway car in a jewelry story robbery) as it came out of nowhere (or so it seemed), passed on the inside of me and mounted the footpath was truly frightening.  Thank God three young boys who had been on the footpath leapt away quickly enough to avoid being hit.  I wonder if they know how lucky they were.  It was so close!

And then the police sirens, I don't know how many.  Six or seven I think.  They seemed to be inside my head.  I pulled over as soon as I could safely do so, took the aids out, put my head in my hands and cried.  And it takes a lot to frighten me that much.

I've been wearing the hearing aids again but needed a bit of down time before driving again.

The good news is the police caught the thieves quickly.  I'm amazed they could get so many cars on the road and give chase so fast, I'm wondering if there wasn't a tipoff.  That's me probably being over imaginative.

I left out a lovely exchange I had with a passenger last week.  It was a horrible day, a bitterly cold wind and shattered scowers.  Oops.  Couldn't resist.

Anyway, an elderly man got in the car half soaked from one of the showers and when I commented about the nasty showers he replied with a big smile, “No rain, no flowers."

 Soon it will be spring!