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Or not.

Comic health issues

The lovely Ian Williams has done me the honour of including TMNTITW and Sole Searching on his Graphic Medicine website dedicated to promoting comics associated with all aspects of medicine. Along with highlighting such classics as Harvey Pekar's Our Cancer Year, David B's Epileptic and Charles Burns' Black Hole, it features the work of Thom Ferrier whose strips give us an insight into the doctor-patient relationship from a GP's perspective. Disrepute is a beautifully handbound collection of probably autobiographical stories while Fear of Failure is also a cracking story that you can follow online.
I have been having plenty of NHS dealings recently, mostly positive, what with getting my mother back into the system after a more than forty-year absence from this country. Nick had a fall resulting in another trip to A&E and yet another fetching scar on my darling hubby, only accentuating his Oliver Reedness – I'm not complaining. My own mishap involved a tiny invisible bump on my face that I decided should get checked out. I was sent to the melanoma clinic, just in case, where the attending doctor told me it was benign and proceeded to blast it with liquid nitrogen. I attended my nephew's beautiful bucolic wedding sporting an enormous crusty burn on on my chin, giving me the appearance of someone in the tertiary stages of syphillis. After four weeks it is finally clearing up...

Sole searching

Lucy went down with a nasty bout of flu last week. While she was on the mend, in an idle moment we looked up swine flu on the NHS site. Instead of a list of symptoms, they have a questionnaire. Having replied No to all of the questions she ticked Yes to feeling some aches and pains (a pretty normal flu symptom) and was immediately directed to this screen!
We ignored it. The next day she felt much better.
Been putting recent experiences into strip form.
With a bit of luck (and less slacking) should have a new mini out for 176 which will be upon us before we know it - only four weeks to go!
Oh yeah and for the first time ever I did a quiz on facebook only to find out that I am a manic depressive. Five multiple choice questions, some of which didn't offer any appropriate answers - it's got to be true innit??

Out on a limb

Well whaddayaknow?
Nick turned out to have a broken arm after all...
In between my stints as ministering angel/Baby Jane (whatever happened to her?), I've kept up my cultural quota by fitting in a ballet, I mean contemporary dance, at Saddler's Wells where I saw William Forsythe's very challenging show, a quick trip to the V&A jewellery collection, as well as a club night at the Queen of Hoxton – You look Rough (I certainly felt it the next morning). I didn't overdo it, just getting too old for all that malarkey.


Pubdraw was on last night, after curry in Kenton, but here are a couple of NHS sketches as I have been spending an inordinate amount of time in their establishments of late.