Ona Gritz: "I had spent more than enough time hiding and pretending"

There are ways to cover for the fact that you can’t run like the other kids, or skate, or climb fences, or ride your flowered banana seat bike without training wheels. My own strategy was to suggest alternatives, offering to bring out a board game, colouring books and crayons, or my brand new, unopened jigsaw puzzle with the picture of a farm scene on its box. If my friends countered by asking to play hopscotch, a game that would require each of us to stand first on one foot, which I could do fine, then on the other, which I couldn’t do at all, I’d act like the idea was too dull to consider. If they suggested we play cards, I’d say yes, but reluctantly, willing someone else to insist on shuffling since it takes two good hands to bend and riffle each half of the deck. More often I told them, truthfully, that I’d rather grab our dolls and play house or store or any other game of pretend.

Pretending, after all, was the thing I was best at. It was the magic that allowed me to inhabit any capable, agile, graceful body I chose.

In our crowded box of curled family photos there is only one picture that includes the leg brace I was made to wear because of my cerebral palsy, though even here it is barely visible. A slight bulge beneath the fabric of my pants, a hint of metal peeking from the hem, the single angled strap that attached it to my shoe. I’m three years old in the photo, the same age I was the first time I held it in my hand. “Oh,” I said. I’d seen posters for the March of Dimes with images of children leaning on crutches or sitting in wheelchairs, and now I saw that I was like them in some way. This struck me as nothing more than an ordinary fact. “Oh.”

Shortly after that picture was taken, my doctor decided I only needed to wear the brace in bed at night. Daytimes, it lived in the back of my closet, tucked in a brown paper grocery sack. My mother allowed me to leave it home whenever I slept at a friend’s house, or in its hiding place when a friend slept at mine. Maybe this was how I got the idea that my cerebral palsy could and should be kept secret. This, coupled with the fact that my father never mentioned it, and that my mother, when she did discuss it, said, “It’s nothing, hardly noticeable”, dismissively waving her hand. To me, my body was simply my body, the only one I’d known, and so I thought the brace was my disability. As long as I kept it out of sight, I fitted in with my friends.

“Let’s pretend we walk like people who limp,” Lisa Lowenstein suggested one muggy afternoon in our sixth summer. She slid off the stoop and began hobbling in a circle, and though the game made me uneasy, I got up and did my best to imitate her awkward moves.

Lisa paused to observe me. “Just walk like you always do,” she advised. “You walk like people who limp.”

“Oh,” I said, just as I had when I first saw the photo where I’m wearing my brace. Only this time my throat tightened around the word.

In middle school, I found it helped to carry novels in my backpack. That way, if my friends decided to pay handball at the park or zip around the neighbourhood on their 10 speeds, I could pull out my book and say, “I’m too caught up in this right now”, which, soon enough, would be true.

I also got good at finding the girls who were happy to sit inside, listening to records, and the few left who, like me, were slow to give up Barbies and other daydreaming kinds of games.

Ona, aged three, with the leg brace she had to wear.

“What do you want to do?” Jody might ask me.

“I don’t know. You?”

“I don’t know.”

“Rock star wives?” one of us would finally ask, sighing like it was a last resort.

“I guess.”

After that we’d play for hours, immersed in the elaborate stories we created for Elton, Paul and beautiful grownup versions of ourselves.

Still, the next time Jody and I got together, whoever asked would be tentative about it, afraid the other would be the first to outgrow the game.

By high school, pretend games were no longer an option, unless you count pretending to have my period so I could sit on the sidelines in gym class. Or claiming to be too behind in homework to join my friends at the ice rink. Or acting as though my dislike of disco was the only reason I stood pressed against the wall at dances while the other girls mastered those perfectly synchronised steps.

“Why don’t we go to the movies?” I was always the one to suggest. There, in the comforting darkness, all I had to do was sit perfectly still, along with everyone around me. Row by row by row, we imagined together, lost in the drama of fictitious lives. The movies offered a means of playing pretend that was still sanctioned, a way to be social that asked nothing of my faulty limbs.

For college I chose a small, artsy school where the only team sport offered was Ultimate Frisbee and there were signs posted on the bulletin boards throughout campus that proclaimed It’s Okay to be Gay. I extrapolated from this that here, in this heady oasis, it was OK to be different. Among my classmates were girls with unshaven legs, boys who wore lipstick, kids of both genders with spiky magenta hair and splatters of safety pins on their clothes. Still, while I admired these outliers for their boldness and originality, I hid my uneven legs under long gauzy skirts in my usual attempt to blend in.

If my new classmates noticed my limp, or my childhood friends had seen through my excuses, they were kind enough not to say so. This allowed me to believe my own fabrications. I see it now as a wilful and instantaneous form of amnesia. As soon as I succeeded in avoiding a physical challenge or a potentially embarrassing moment, the memory, along with any thoughts about my disability, dispersed.

The young Ona: ‘If my new classmates noticed my limp, they were kind enough not to say so.’ Photograph: Leonard Gritz

Even so, as I settled in at college, an unnamed tension left me. I now lived in a place where I could curl up with my books hour after hour, not because my friends were off having adventures I couldn’t keep up with, but because this was the adventure. I majored in literature and had plans to become a writer. As I read and honed my craft, it felt as though the body, my body, with its limits and awkwardness, was the least of who I was. Finally, I could live the life of the mind. How perfect was that? Except, of course, it was only part of the story.

One afternoon in the campus library, I highlighted this line in my slim paperback copy of Virginia Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own:

“Women have served all these centuries as looking glasses possessing the magic and delicious power of reflecting the figure of man at twice its natural size.”

I marked the sentence, having brushed past and already forgotten this, from earlier in the same chapter, about the fact that so many men have written books about women:

“…it was flattering, vaguely, to feel oneself the object of such attention provided that it was not entirely bestowed by the crippled and the infirm…”

Had I, a 19-year-old crippled girl, flinched when I read this? Had it stung? I don’t know. I’d forgotten those words existed, and only discovered them now, decades later, while searching for the looking glass quote that has stayed with me all this time. This was precisely how my self-protective amnesia worked. Virginia Woolf devalued people like me in a chapter about the importance of confidence? But I loved Virginia Woolf, so the insult quietly left through some back door in my mind.

Ona at home: ‘A poetry workshop, I sat beside a man named Dan.’ Photograph: Gene Smirnov for the Observer

What did interest me that afternoon was the metaphor of the mirror, and the idea that men used us to build themselves up. I’d recently joined a feminist consciousness-raising group, and had begun insisting, sometimes petulantly, that I be referred to as a woman rather than a girl. When I marked Woolf’s words it was because they struck me as poetic and true. What I couldn’t yet see was that I had begun to use men similarly, not to reflect me at twice my natural size but as attractive enough. As OK.

This is where my college life wasn’t all disembodied intellect. I had also begun seeking validation through sex.

Here is another truth. I wasn’t at all beyond the prejudices expressed in Woolf’s forgotten passage. The young men I pursued had to be not just smart, creative and interesting, but handsome too. It went without saying that they were also able-bodied. Everyone I knew was able-bodied. There may have been a handful of other students with disabilities on campus, but I paid them no mind.

I chose men for the wrong reasons and, in turn, none of them chose me for anything more than an occasional intimate night. Then, when I was 25, I met Richard. He was athletic and handsome in the way of the popular boys who were completely out of my league in high school. The two of us had very little in common. Richard’s passions included skiing and mountain biking, and though I could never join him on either terrain, he was passionate about me too.

Richard was earnest, playful and affectionate. He was also hot-tempered and impossible to please. Nonetheless, I invited him to move into my apartment. Soon after, we got engaged. All the while, my friends looked on warily.

One friend told me she had always imagined that the man I’d wind up with would be someone she found amazing.

“Someone smart and really kind. The type of guy I’d love for myself, only I’d be so happy for you I wouldn’t be jealous.”

She watched me carefully and I realised that her comment had not just one subtext, but two. First, and most obvious, Richard, who was more conventional and less intellectual than my previous love interests, didn’t meet her expectations. Worse, it seemed she’d always believed that only someone amazing and really kind could possibly choose me. What hung in the air, unspoken between us, was the reason she thought it would take such a remarkable person to love me. I was defective. This made me cling to my handsome boyfriend all the more.

One weekend, while Richard was off mountain biking with friends, I decided to spend an afternoon in the city. After a movie and lunch at a cafe, I found myself following a strange woman down a winding street.

Is that what I look like? I wondered, carefully studying her from a distance. She’s pretty enough, but how much does her limp detract from that?

Over the following weeks and months, for the better part of a year, I kept an eye out for women with physical disabilities. When I found them, I trailed them. For a while, my curiosity remained on the surface. Could women who moved like me still be considered attractive? Did I find them so? But as I continued my stalkerish experiment, something shifted. I began to want to know about their lives.

The best way I knew to process this, as with most issues I grappled with, was through writing. Alone at my desk, I entered into a kind of dialogue with these strangers I was too reticent to approach in person. I did this by writing a poem in the voice of a nonverbal quadriplegic woman who was in the news at the time.

By now I had completed an MFA in creative writing and had found my place in a community of poets. One winter afternoon, I ran into an acquaintance who invited me to take part in a poetry reading and panel discussion for Women’s History Month. Each participant would be from a different cultural background, she explained. She’d already lined up an African American poet, a Latina poet, and she wanted me there to represent disability. My initial response was to take a step back when she said this. But then I felt a stirring of interest.

“I’ll be there,” I heard myself say.

I had the persona poem, and one about my mother helping me on with my nightbrace, and a third, titled What the Mirror Knows, that used my partial disability as a symbol for other ways I felt divided. At the reading, I surrounded these pieces with poems that made no mention of disability and that, to my mind, proved I led a perfectly normal and interesting life.

The panel discussion ended with questions and comments from the audience. There was one woman, seated a few rows back, whose insights caught my attention. She referred to writers I loved, and made connections that surprised and intrigued me. Afterwards, as I was gathering my things, I looked up to find her waiting to talk to me.

“I really liked your poems.”

“Thanks. I liked hearing what you had to say.”

We smiled shyly at each other. “Well,” she said, “I should probably use the bathroom before I head home.”

It wasn’t until the woman, who had introduced herself to me as Hope, started to walk away that I noticed her palsied gait. What could I do but follow her into the restroom?

Cerebral palsy is caused by damage, most often at birth, to a part of the brain that controls motor skills. There are various forms, and it affects people to widely differing degrees. Many don’t have enough balance to walk or need crutches to do so. Some have uncontrollable tremors. Some are intellectually disabled, while others are assumed to be because their facial muscles are affected and their speech is unclear.

Hope and I both have relatively mild cases and forms of the disability that affect only half our bodies. She has diplegia, which means the palsy is just in her legs. I have hemiplegia, which means the split is vertical. The muscles of my right limbs are tight and underdeveloped, and the fingers of that hand lack the dexterity, tactile sensitivity and fine motor skills of those on the left.

“It’s lucky she’s left-handed,” a doctor once told my parents during a consultation, “since she’ll always have to depend on that side.” I was nine at the time, old enough to resent being spoken about in the third person, and also to see the flaw in his logic. Maybe I was born left-handed, maybe not. The body learns to compensate, just like the mind.

Years later, I read an article suggesting that right hemiplegics are likely to be more creative and less practical than our counterparts whose disability is manifested on the left. The hypothesis is based on left /right brain differences. Left hemiplegics have undamaged left hemispheres, which is where pragmatism lives. Meanwhile, we right hemiplegics need to rely on our intact arty and imaginative right hemispheres.

The theory appealed to me. It fitted me so well. But then, just as I understood at nine years old, when it comes to cause and effect it’s hard to assess the true order. Certainly, my cerebral palsy and my drifty, daydreaming ways are connected. But to what extent is this due to the physical brain as opposed to the simple desire to escape the confines of a limited and disappointing body by imagining it away?

Hope and I spent several hours in a coffee shop that late afternoon, commiserating about what it felt like for each of us to be the one kid on the block who couldn’t run, climb fences, or ride a bike without training wheels. I learned I wasn’t the only one who coped by making excuses, hiding behind books, and living too much in my head. This was the first time either of us had ever spoken about these experiences. It was also the first time that I could remember when I wasn’t expending effort and energy to pretend my cerebral palsy didn’t exist.

While Hope took the fuel of our connection and almost immediately got involved in disability activism, I went home to Richard and my belief that his love for me meant that my cerebral palsy was, as my mother had assured me all those years ago, nothing, hardly noticeable.

A few months later, Richard and I married. With Hope now in my life, I had a growing consciousness about disability that came close to acceptance, but it was a place I visited, not yet one where I lived. More real to me was my marriage licence, which I saw as a kind of passport. It proved that where I really belonged was in the enviable world of the unscathed.

Something I had wanted since I was a child trying to coax my friends away from their games of hopscotch and tag to play house with me was to one day be a mother. Six years into our marriage, Richard and I agreed the time was right.

Through my pregnancy, my midwife never once mentioned my cerebral palsy, so neither did I. She did suggest a number of tests to rule out potential birth defects. Always I declined, feeling vaguely insulted, though I couldn’t have said why.

The daily and very physical tasks of caring for a baby forced me to recognise my disability for what it actually was

Our son Ethan was perfect: seven-and-a-half pounds, 14 inches, with active limbs, the right amount of digits, and a hearty cry. For the first hours after his birth, Richard and I sat together in the hospital room and stared at him in wonder. Eventually, a nurse came in to help me with breastfeeding.

“You need to lift your elbow so his head sits a little higher. Not working? How about we try the other side? Can you shift him so he’s in a better position? Let me show you something called the football hold…”

Nothing we tried worked so she brought in another nurse and then a third. They piled cushions around us until I could finally hold Ethan at the right angle and height.

“There we go,” the nurses said once he began to suckle.

“Problem solved,” Richard put in.

This tiny new person nuzzling at my breast depended on me. Yet, somehow, as I’d drifted through my pregnancy, daydreaming as usual, it had never occurred to me that I wouldn’t be able to meet his needs. Now, as I touched his cheek with the one hand that could really feel him, I understood that I didn’t have the balance or coordination to be this fragile, trusting person’s mom. I may have learned early in life to cover for being unable to run, skate or climb fences, but there would be no covering for being unable to safely bathe a newborn, carry him on stairs, or walk any distance while he flailed in my arms.

From that moment on, the daily and very physical tasks of caring for a baby forced me to recognise my disability for what it actually was. A set of very real and specific limitations I had to either work with or around. There were constant puzzles to solve, along the lines of, I’ve arrived home with a baby and a bag of groceries in his carriage and now I find that the one elevator in our apartment building has broken down. What do I do? Often the only answer was to ask for help from a neighbour. The first few times I did so, I stammered and felt myself flush. Then one day I simply stopped feeling apologetic. So, I had a disability. It was what it was.

Meanwhile, Ethan had begun reaching his perfect pudgy little arms towards me the moment we were together in a room. His absolute acceptance, despite my funny walk and clumsy touch, struck me as both lovely and familiar. It reminded me of my three-year-old self, noticing my brace in a photo without judgment.

It’s tempting to end the story here with the happy ending of a renewed self-acceptance. I would, except it gets even better.

It’s neither a surprise nor a tragedy that my marriage to Richard ended when Ethan was still small. Richard remains active in Ethan’s life and the divorce proved to be the best choice for us all.

One holiday weekend, when Ethan was eight, he stayed at Richard’s while I went to a writers’ retreat. There, in a poetry workshop, I sat beside a man named Dan, who had a soft-spoken gentle manner and, I could tell from his responses to poems, an incisive mind. When he brought out his own poem to be critiqued, I liked him even more. His piece had rhythm, wit and heart. This was definitely someone I wanted to know.

I watched him read and take notes by tapping on a braille laptop, his guide dog sprawled at his feet. After the workshop ended we stayed in our seats an extra few minutes talking, then he slipped his hand into the crook of my elbow, and we strolled together to the next event. I wondered if he noticed the lilt in my walk, and actually hoped he did. I wanted Dan to know that, along with poetry, disability was something we shared.

A week later, Dan called me and we stayed on the phone for four hours. In many ways, it was like my first conversation with Hope in the coffee shop. We were so happy to share our stories with each other, and while, in this case, the details of our disabilities bore no resemblance, when I talked about the long and circuitous road I took to making peace with mine, he let me know he’d been there too.

Still, I thought about how, as a young woman, I’d considered my disability a cosmetic flaw, akin to having a bad complexion or being a bit overweight. My concern had been whether people noticed. Now, it occurred to me what an indulgence that was. Born blind, Dan never had the luxury to pretend.

When we met, Dan and I lived a hundred miles apart. This meant we only got to be together on weekends. The rest of the week, we talked on the phone, building our relationship on a foundation of ideas and conversation. From the start, I was captivated by how smart he was, and by how intently he listened. Of course Dan listens well. Hearing is the sense he relies on the most. But I’d never met a man who did so with such presence and interest, and somehow I knew that this had more to do with who he was and what he valued than with the fact that he was blind.

Long before Dan and I got to know each other, he’d begun to write beautifully and candidly about his life as a blind man. He also had a community of friends who were writers and artists with disabilities. I wanted in, and they embraced me without hesitation. Soon, I began to seriously take on disability as a subject in my work. It felt scary at first, a little like pulling my childhood brace out of the closet and putting it on display. But I had spent more than enough time hiding and pretending. I wrote as truthfully as I could about how it felt to live in my particular body, which allowed me to see how universal my experiences actually were.

Dan and I were married on a bright, breezy day in June. Hope slept on our couch on the nights bracketing our wedding day. Ethan stood with us at the altar, holding my palsied hand.

We have been together for 12 years now. The work we do includes disability awareness presentations, literary readings and panel discussions about disability poetics. During one such event at a large poetry festival, a member of the audience, a man with a visibly awkward gait, took the microphone during the Q&A portion and asked in a shaky voice, “How did you learn to like yourselves?”

There were four of us up on the stage and for a long moment we were silent, touched by the vulnerability in the question. I thought of Hope who’d approached me after hearing my first tentative poems about disability. I thought of Dan and our community of disabled friends, including those with us up on that stage. It struck me that, in some way, we were each a pleasing and accurate mirror for the others.

“Do you like us?” I asked.

The man nodded.

“Well, that’s a start.”

Ona Gritz is the author, most recently, of On the Whole: A Story of Mothering and Disability (Shebooks, 2014) and the poetry collection Geode, which was a finalist for the 2013 Main Street Rag poetry book award. Her essay, It’s Time, which appears in the Rumpus, was named a Notable Essay in Best American Essays, 2016

Ona Gritz: "I had spent more than enough time hiding and pretending"

Did walking help Theresa May decide on a snap election? | Daniel Glaser

It was during a walking holiday in Snowdonia, says Theresa May, after ‘long and hard’ reflection that she made the decision to call a June election. So much for walking and creative inspiration. But is there a connection between the two?

Neuroscience would say that depends on the difficulty of the task. Using a mathematical example, you can test this out for yourself. When you start with an easy challenge like counting in fives, fast walking isn’t a problem, but try multiplying 37 and 23 and you’ll find your feet slow down no matter how hard you try and keep up the pace.

We only struggle to walk and problem solve when the task is sufficiently difficult (if deciding on an election was a no-brainer for May, it’s unlikely her walking pace suffered). Various theories have been advanced to explain the finding, but really it’s down to attention being a limited resource in the brain. It’s not as good at multitasking as you’d expect. In May’s case, it could even be that the opposite was happening; the effort required to maintain a steady walking pace distracted her from the everyday preoccupations of running the country, enabling her to hatch a fiendish plot to steal a march on the opposition.

Dr Daniel Glaser is director of Science Gallery at King’s College London

Did walking help Theresa May decide on a snap election? | Daniel Glaser

Jack Monroe confirms general election bid and thanks Katie Hopkins

Writer Jack Monroe has announced she is standing in the general election and thanked her “campaign sponsor”, Katie Hopkins.

Monroe, a food blogger who also campaigns on poverty issues, said she will stand in the Southend West constituency.

She announced the news on Twitter and retweeted a post by the National Health Action (NHA) party that said it was “delighted” that Monroe was standing.

Earlier this year, outspoken columnist Hopkins was ordered to pay £24,000 damages to Monroe at the end of a case dubbed “Twibel” by media pundits.

The former Apprentice star, who faces a costs bill running into six figures, was also ordered to pay £107,000 on account within 28 days.

Monroe had complained that two May 2015 tweets accused her of “vandalising a war memorial and desecrating the memory of those who fought for her freedom, or of approving or condoning such behaviour”.

Hopkins’s defence was that her tweets did not bear the meanings complained of, were not defamatory and it had not been shown that they caused serious harm to Monroe’s reputation.

But Mr Justice Warby ruled in Monroe’s favour and said the publications “not only caused Ms Monroe real and substantial distress, but also harm to her reputation which was serious”.

Jack Monroe (@MxJackMonroe)

Aaaaand we’re off. It’s official. I’m standing against David Amess in Southend West, for our NHS. https://t.co/FajeOVp8nA

April 28, 2017

Responding to Twitter users suggesting that she will lose her deposit, Monroe wrote: “For all those gloating that I may lose my deposit, I may well do, but you should be directing your glee to my campaign sponsor, Katie.”

And she rounded off the series of tweets by thanking Hopkins.

Jack Monroe (@MxJackMonroe)

So from the bottom of my heart, thankyou Katie for your generous – if unwitting – contribution to saving the National Health Service.

Jack Monroe confirms general election bid and thanks Katie Hopkins

Trump picks former anti-abortion leader for health and human services post

Donald Trump has appointed the former president of a leading anti-abortion group to the top communications role at the Department of Health and Human Services (DHSS).

Charmaine Yoest, who for several years was head of Americans United for Life (AUL), will be HHS assistant secretary for public affairs. AUL played an instrumental role in the recent wave of anti-abortion laws by feeding model legislation to state lawmakers.

Under Yoest, the group pushed model bills that outlawed abortion after 20 weeks, required abortion providers to gain admitting privileges at local hospitals, and mandated counseling and waiting periods for women seeking abortions. AUL is also opposed to the use of the morning-after pill and IUDs.

Between 2010 and 2016, states have enacted 288 restrictions on abortion. The AUL directly credits its own work for several dozen of those laws. Its model legislation may have inspired countless more. Abortion rights advocates have managed to block many such measures in court.

As AUL president, Yoest played a key role in framing abortion restrictions as necessary to protect women’s health, although the medical evidence for such claims was often dubious. AUL’s ultimate goal is to end abortion.

Since leaving AUL, in 2016, Yoest has been a senior fellow at American Values, an anti-abortion, anti-same-sex marriage nonprofit. In her new role, she will set communications strategy for the entire health department.

The agency is headed by another staunch opponent of reproductive rights, former Georgia congressman Tom Price, who as chair of the House budget committee oversaw passage of a measure that defunded Planned Parenthood.

Price has also voiced hostility toward the requirement, put in place by the Obama administration, that health insurance plans cover contraception with no co-pay, once challenging a reporter to “bring me one woman” who struggled to afford contraception on her own.

Trump picks former anti-abortion leader for health and human services post

Using Ayahuasca for Anxiety And Depression Treatment

Ayahuasca has been brewed and consumed by tribes in the Amazon for centuries. They use it in healing ceremonies for its spiritual properties.

Lately, the psychedelic drink has attracted the attention of biometric scientists as possible treatment for depression and anxiety. Researchers in Brazil recently ran a study on Ayahuasca with some surprising results;

The Study

The study included just 6 volunteers with no placebo group, within a few hours the depression reduced and a sense of well-being and euphoria hit all 6, the effect was still present three weeks after the study ended. They are now conducting much larger studies, which they hope will support their findings.

Altering Your Mood and Brain

It’s possible that ayahuasca could treat depression and anxiety – the plant actually contains compounds that alter the concentration and mood-regulating neurotransmitter (serotonin) in the brain, which is exactly what commercial depressants do!

These compounds include the hallucinogen N, N-dimethyltryptamine, which binds to serotonin receptors, and also the chemicals harmine, tetrahydroharmine and harmaline, which are thought to inhibit an enzyme called monoamine oxidase A, which prevents the breakdown of serotonin and other neurotransmitters.

It Has Treated Millions

Millions of people travel to camps where they are treated by a real Shaman. The people experience enlightenment and transformation after taking it. Let’s not get this wrong here, ayahuasca is 100% natural and is grown in the Amazon of Central and South America. Take the Ayahuasca retreat in Iquitos for example; the prevalence of rainforest in the surrounding regions and the availability of facilities throughout the year enhance the healing process.

The vine enables a unique experience into the unknown. Some people return to their childhood memories while others see their future. Although Ayahuasca makes one hallucinate, it is not a drug. Rather, it’s a medicinal plant.

Three Reasons Why People Take It:

1. 
   

   Emotional Healing: Ayahuasca is a kind of medicine which heals the body and mind. When you drink the medicine, past emotions come up. Your hidden traumatic emotions will pop to the surface and then you get to face it head on. You will be able to resolve it as your emotional burden lessons, and so does your karma.

   
   


2. 
   

   Spiritual Advancement: Get out all of the questions that you have had on your mind and go through them one by one – such as “Is there a god?” I am not saying you will get all of the answers. However, you will get a better grip on reality and what is real.

   
   


3. 
   

   Finding Your Purpose: Got anything you always wanted to do but you felt too scared to do it? Whatever your purpose is, it will become a lot more clearly and you will be able to do what you have always wanted to.

   
   

More Resources:

A Personal Story – A personal success story of someone taking Ayahuasca retreat in Iquitos.

A Scientific Study– A study on Ayahuasca.

I have been interested in health from such an early age, this threw me into the blogging world. Lately I have been looking up the herbal and 100% natural drug of Ayahuasca, those who wish to take it can experience a wide variety of visions. This helps depression and anxiety in the most natural form, for more information please visit the Shama Retreat

Using Ayahuasca for Anxiety And Depression Treatment

Power plants will have to cut toxic emmisions under new EU rules

Power plants in the EU will have to cut the amount of toxic pollutants such as nitrogen oxides they emit under new rules approved by member states and widely applauded by environmental groups.

Friday’s decision imposes stricter limits on emissions of pollutants such as nitrogen oxide, sulphur dioxide, mercury and particulate matter from large combustion plants in Europe.

“Air pollution is the prime environmental cause of premature death in the European Union,” said Enrico Brivio, a spokesman for the European commission.

Large combustion plants account for a big share of air pollutant emissions across the EU: 46% of sulphur dioxide, 18% of nitrogen oxide, 39% of mercury and 4% of dust, he added.

NGOs say the new rules could save more than 20,000 lives every year by reducing pollution from coal-fired power plants alone.

The EU’s industrial emissions directive, its main instrument regulating pollutant emissions from industrial plants, entered into force in 2011. It sets EU-wide emission limits on large combustion plants for certain pollutants which can cause respiratory diseases.

However, the directive has been criticized for exemptions which have allowed more than half of Europe’s coal plants to exceed limits for harmful pollutants, according to a report by environmental groups last year.

Several countries which are heavily reliant on coal, such as Poland, Bulgaria, Germany and the Czech Republic, were opposed to the changes.

“EU coal power plants will now either have to reduce their pollution or close down,” said Darek Urbaniak, senior energy policy officer at WWF. “It is about time Europe quits its dirty coal addiction for good and invests in energy efficiency and renewables instead.”

There had been concerns in some countries, such as Bulgaria, that power plants would be forced to close down or that electricity prices would go up, but Brivio said “the European law does not require the closure of Bulgarian plants and will not increase the price of electricity.”

National authorities will be able to use a derogation, or form of exemption, when costs would be disproportionate compared with the environmental benefits, Brivio said, while respecting environmental safeguards.

The stricter limits will apply to all 2,900 large combustion plants in the EU – including coal-fired power stations and peat, oil and gas power plants – and will have to be met by 2021.

Power plants will have to cut toxic emmisions under new EU rules

Ian Paterson: the "likable" breast surgeon who wounded his patients

When Ian Paterson first started working at the Heart of England NHS foundation trust in Birmingham in 1998, the organisation had significant waiting list problems. The only breast surgeon was struggling to deal with the increasing numbers of patients, and Paterson’s appointment was seen as “a significant blessing” by managers.

After he applied for the job, a senior manager at his previous employer, Good Hope hospital, telephoned one of the medical directors at the trust to tell him that Paterson had been the subject of an investigation and temporarily suspended in 1996 following an operation which had “exposed the patient to a significant risk of harm”. The trust hired him anyway.

“To be honest, when we heard he was coming … it was, you know: ‘What’s gone on then?’” one senior radiologist told Sir Ian Kennedy, in his 2013 report into Paterson’s practice. “His reputation was well-known as being difficult and having open rows with a colleague at Good Hope … It’s always a surprise to us why they took him on when they knew he was trouble.”

As early as 2003, Paterson’s colleagues started raising serious concerns that he was not removing enough breast tissue during lumpectomies and mastectomies, increasing the risk of cancer recurring. But it took four investigations, four reports and nine years before Paterson was suspended by the General Medical Council in October 2012.

The first of hundreds of civil claims against the trust came around 2010. So far, 256 cases have been settled, with 25 still outstanding. The trust has paid nearly £9.5m in compensation to date, with the highest single settlement being around £250,000. A criminal investigation into Paterson’s practice was launched in 2012 and criminal charges were brought in January 2016.

Paterson, who received his medical degree from the University of Bristol in 1981, was described by his patients as having a good bedside manner. Mike Diskin, who was treated by Paterson in 2006, described him as “an incredibly likable man, great bedside manner, very personable, a great listener”.

Jo Luton, a patient in 2007, said Paterson was well-spoken and empathetic. “He had a brilliant bedside manner and really seemed to know his stuff.”

Another patient said: “Even though he was a consultant, he spoke on your level.”

His colleagues were less complimentary. According to the Kennedy report, Paterson was “not a team player”, and was given to being “autocratic and high-handed to the point of being dismissive of colleagues”. The words “arrogant”, “aggressive” and “bully” were used by several staff members and two surgeons left the trust after run-ins with Paterson.

“He didn’t want anyone to get in his way,” said a surgeon who had trained and worked with Paterson. “Because of his personality he tended to be isolated and he quite liked that, so people would avoid him, go around him and not deal with him, so he never got questioned or hauled up.”

One of the explanations given in the Kennedy report for the inconsistent amount of breast tissue that Paterson was removing during surgery was the speed at which he worked. Dr Martin Lee, a surgeon who was asked to observe Paterson’s surgeries in 2008, likened his technique to a whirlwind.

“He would breeze into the theatre, a sort of constant impatience with things and just try and get on as quickly as possible and that is something I have not seen very often,” he said.

At the time, Paterson lived with his wife, Louise, a physiotherapist, and their three children in an eight-bedroom grade II-listed Georgian house in Edgbaston. The family sold the house for around £1.25m in 2013, after accusations of Paterson’s malpractice were first published in the press.

Former neighbours in Edgbaston described the Patersons as a lovely family. “She was nice and very gentle,” said one neighbour of Louise Paterson.

She said she rarely saw Ian Paterson, but was shocked when she saw police parked outside the family’s home. “They were a very nice family, with very nice children, and one morning I was going out early, about 8.15am, and there were all these policemen and police cars.”

In his report, Kennedy says Paterson saw himself as “a good patient advocate [...] pushing for a good cosmetic result from surgery as well as effective treatment”. He says other surgeons took the view that “curing the patient’s cancer is paramount”, with any cosmetic outcome being secondary.

Dr Misra Budhoo, who worked with Paterson for several years, summed up the difficulty of dealing with him: “[Paterson’s] personality is such that he lacks insight into what his problem is [...] The very first thing [needed] to change somebody is they have to understand that there is a problem. I do not know if Ian has actually accepted he has a problem anyway.”

Ian Paterson: the "likable" breast surgeon who wounded his patients

Surrey students offered meningitis B jab after undergraduate"s death

Students living on campus at the University of Surrey are being offered the meningitis B vaccine after a student died and two others were taken to hospital with the bug.

John Igboanugo, a first-year physics undergraduate, died earlier this month following a sports trip to Rimini in Italy.

Two other Surrey students also fell ill with meningitis but have now been discharged from hospital.

Public Health England (PHE) said laboratory reports had confirmed two of the students had meningitis B while the third was thought to have contracted the B strain of the bug as well.

About 4,200 full-time students living in halls on the Guildford campus – around a third of the total student population – are now being offered the jab to protect against meningitis B.

The vaccine is normally only routinely given on the NHS to young babies.

Prof Max Lu, vice-chancellor of the University of Surrey, said: “We are greatly saddened by the death of our student, and our hearts go out to his family and friends during what continues to be a very difficult time.

“The health and wellbeing of everyone on campus is of the utmost importance.

“We are working closely with PHE on a targeted vaccination programme and are reassured that the risk to staff, students and visitors is still very low.”

Prof Kamila Hawthorne, associate dean for medicine at the University of Surrey, added: “We appreciate that when cases of meningitis B occur there is increased concern about the potential spread, but evidence shows that meningococcal infection is not highly contagious, comparatively rare and the risk to the wider community remains very low.

“Only people who have prolonged, close contact with an ill person are at a slightly increased risk of becoming unwell.

“If anyone is in any doubt or concerned about their health, or the health of others, please call NHS 111 urgently.”

The university said there was no direct link between the three cases.

The two students who were taken to hospital had not been on the sports trip to Italy.

PHE said passengers on the coach trip had been offered antibiotics as a precaution.

It said the wider population in the town and non-students who visited but did not live on the university campus were not considered to be within the at-risk group.

Dr Peter English, consultant in communicable disease control from PHE in the south-east of England, said: “Meningococcal infection is comparatively rare and the risk of transmission is relatively low.

“People who have prolonged, close contact with an ill person are at a slightly increased risk of becoming unwell in the following days.

“This is why immediate contacts of the cases have already been offered antibiotics as a precautionary measure.

“After considering the medical evidence, we have decided to offer vaccination to around 4,200 students living in halls of residence at the university to reduce risk of further cases next term.

“I would like to reassure other students, teachers, their families and the local community that the risk of catching this infection remains very low, and any higher risk is confined to those being offered the vaccine.”

Students are regularly offered a vaccine against other strains of meningitis, known as the Men ACWY jab.

Meningitis can develop rapidly and is sometimes mistaken for flu. Those who survive can be left with life-changing disabilities.

Symptoms include a high temperature, feeling or being sick, exhaustion and irritability, a headache and aching joints, stiff neck and dislike of bright lights, confusion and a rash.

Surrey students offered meningitis B jab after undergraduate"s death

NHS pays out millions to patients of surgeon convicted of needless breast operations

The NHS has been forced to pay out almost £10m in compensation to more than 250 patients of a rogue surgeon found guilty of carrying out needless breast operations on patients who were left traumatised and scarred.

Consultant surgeon Ian Stuart Paterson, 59, was convicted on 20 counts of wounding with intent and unlawful wounding against nine women and one man on Friday. But he could have more than 1,000 more victims, among them hundreds of private patients who may never be compensated for botched and needless operations.

Paterson had denied the charges, which related to procedures he carried out between 1997 and 2011. The jury at Nottingham crown court had heard claims that the surgeon – who saw hundreds of patients a year – carried out the operations for “obscure motives”, which may have included a desire to “earn extra money”.

He denied misrepresenting patients’ test results to dupe insurers into paying for surgery, but other former patients have told the Guardian that the surgeon exaggerated or simply invented the risk of cancer and – in some cases – claimed payments for more expensive procedures that those he had carried out.

Paterson was employed by Heart of England NHS trust in 1998 – despite having been previously suspended from the Good Hope hospital in Birmingham – and also practised at privately run Spire Healthcare hospitals in the Midlands over a 13-year period.

The NHS has so far paid out around £9.5m, settling 256 cases, with 25 outstanding, the Guardian has learned. But hundreds of Paterson’s private patients may never see a penny after Paterson’s insurance company – the Medical Defence Union (MDU) – said their cover was “discretionary” and had been withdrawn. Paterson had a limited separate insurance policy of £10m, which solicitors say will not nearly cover the compensation and costs of all private patients.

Spire Healthcare, which runs the Parkway and Little Aston hospitals where Paterson treated private patients, have settled some cases but argue that as Paterson was not technically their employee, they are not responsible for his actions. The company would not divulge any details about compensation.

Sarah Jane Downing, who set up a petition, demanding compensation for Paterson’s private victims, said she had been left “shocked and appalled” at the lack of redress.

Sarah Jane Downing. Photograph: Teri Pengilley for the Guardian

“Many of these people chose private healthcare because they bought into those promises in the glossy brochures. And now we have realised that those promises are not worth the paper they are printed on. It’s utterly devastating.”

At a recent coffee morning for former Paterson patients, many described the consultant’s “brilliant” bedside manner. “He was so lovely, I thought I was so lucky – I thought I was being looked after,” said Elaine Diskin, who had eight operations by Paterson over as many years.

Her husband, Mike, also had a deep respect for the surgeon – so much so that when he had a pain in his chest, he went to him and did not hesitate when the surgeon said he suspected lipoma and that they “had to get it out”.

“Sinister was the word he used,” Diskin said. “I had no reason to doubt him because he was looking after Elaine so well.”

They trusted Paterson so much they also recommended his care to a friend, who went on to have a lump removed. “We used to joke that we’d paid for his skiing holidays,” said Elaine Diskin.

After the Diskins were recalled for a review of their treatment in 2012 they discovered that at least seven of the eight operations Paterson had done on Elaine – along with both performed on her husband and their friend – were unnecessary.

A civil case with seven “test” cases – which will determine to what extent Spire can be held liable for Paterson’s work in their hospitals – is scheduled to be heard in October, but looks likely to be delayed. The outcome will affect all the private patients who have brought civil claims – and who fear they may get nothing.

Solicitors familiar with the case say Spire has made a handful of payments – the largest about £150,000 – to former patients in the private sector which include unnecessary removal of lumps and the received“cleavage-sparing mastectomies”, a controversial operation that left breast tissue behind after the removal of cancerous cells.

Concerns about Paterson were raised as far back as 2003. But despite several internal and external investigations and complaints from patients, GPs and other surgeons he was only suspended by the General Medical Council in 2011. “In every profession you get rogue operators – but there are checks and balances to stop terrible things happening,” said Mike Diskin. “Why were there not in this case, or why were they ignored?”

Timeline

1998: Paterson is hired as a consultant surgeon at the Heart of England NHS trust, despite being previously suspended from the Good Hope hospital, and also sees private patients at Spire Healthcare hospitals Little Aston and Parkway.

2003: Paterson is investigated because of concerns about “cleavage-sparing mastectomies”. Recommendations are not followed through.

2007: Breast surgeon Hemant Ingle is appointed and with others raises concerns. Further investigations are carried out and Paterson is told to stop performing “cleavage-sparing mastectomies”. Mark Goldman, chief executive of the Heart of England NHS trust, informs Spire that the trust is investigating Paterson.

2008: Two GPs complain about Paterson’s treatment of a patient, saying he gave misleading information about pathology reports, over-treated patients and disregarded the multidisciplinary team meeting process. Another report is critical.

2009: A Spire Parkway patient makes a formal complaint about Paterson. No action is taken. Heart of England NHS trust recalls 12 patients who have had “cleavage-sparing mastectomies”. West Midlands Cancer Intelligence Unit submits two further reports.

2010: The General Medical Council (GMC) tells Spire Parkway executives about a complaint from an NHS patient. .

2011: Parkway were informed Paterson had carried out a “cleavage-sparing mastectomy” in 2009 after being told to stop in January 2008. A month later the GMC informed Spire about another patient complaint. A total recall of all Paterson’s patients begins.

Paterson is suspended by the NHS in May 2011 but continues to perform breast surgery for Spire until 31 May and general surgery until 8 June 2011. He is paid until November 2012.

NHS pays out millions to patients of surgeon convicted of needless breast operations

Spice ruins lives and costs taxpayers a fortune. It doesn’t have to be this way | David Nutt

Last year I wrote to the health and home secretaries with suggestions on how antidotes for spice could be developed. Their replies revealed a complete lack of appreciation of the magnitude of the synthetic cannabinoid problem and lack of interest in the idea of an antidote.

Spice-induced “zombie” outbreaks in New York and in Manchester have hit the headlines in the past year. Use of these new damaging and powerful forms of synthetic cannabinoids is rife in our prisons and by homeless people, with estimates of up to 50 deaths last year. They can produce extremely strong psychotic states often with very violent behaviour. Sometimes a frozen unconscious state results. Either of these outcomes are health emergencies that consume vast amounts of police, prison officer and health professionals time, and so waste a huge amount of public money.

Spice is a generic term for the hundreds of synthetic versions of cannabis that are used instead of herbal cannabis. The first synthetic cannabinoids were made in the 1970s as potential medicines, but initial human testing found them to be so unpleasant and potent in their actions that none were marketed. Since then they have been sold as legal alternatives to cannabis, and called spice.

The problems with spice are multiple. The first is lack of any quality control: the amount of synthetic cannabinoid in each unit is not known. Second, these substances have little, if any, safety data. Third, many of them are much more potent than traditional cannabis, up to a hundred times more potent in the test tube and have never been tested in animals – let alone humans – so there is no data on real-world safety.

Most are not detectable by current testing processes which is why prisoners prefer them. This high potency means they are very profitable drugs. A spice solution costing a few pounds can be soaked into a single A4 sheet of paper, which, when dried, can be cut up into about 100 units, each of which will give a decent “hit” at £5 each.

The government’s response has been to ban these drugs in a series of amendments to the misuse of drugs act. So now all synthetic cannabinoids are illegal. But, as with other drugs, banning spice doesn’t stop its use. Heroin has been illegal for 50 years yet deaths reached an all-time peak in England and Wales last year.

So what should the government do about spice? First, it must recognise that this problem is not going to be dealt with by simplistic approaches such as more bans or more severe sentencing of users. We should understand that the authorities’ focus on herbal cannabis use is the main reason for spice emerging in the UK. So we should stop testing for cannabis in prisoners and others to encourage a move by users back to herbal cannabis.

The Manchester police commissioner has now publicly wondered if the problem has been exacerbated by the Psychoactive Substances Act which has taken synthetic cannabinoids out of “head shops” and into the underground marketplace. Perhaps we should develop a harm reduction strategy by allowing the sale of safer versions of synthetic cannabinoids, or even cannabis itself, back in head shops?

But to deal with the current epidemic of use we need urgently to develop cannabis antagonists as antidotes to spice for use by health professionals.

The success of naloxone as an antidote for heroin overdose is now well recognised to save lives, and is given to opioid users and their friends for this reason. Several antagonists at the cannabis receptor are known and one, rimonabant, has extensive safety data in humans. It was licensed in Europe a decade ago as a treatment to stop weight gain after people stopped smoking. However post-marketing surveillance found that in some people rimonabant was associated with an increase in depressive reactions, sometimes with suicidal thinking (though not suicides). This led to it being taken off the market for having too low a benefit-risk ratio for this medical indication. But for spice reversal these considerations do not apply – it would only be used once to reverse a bad reaction, and hopefully keep people from harming themselves or others.

The other approach is to develop the herbal antidote THCV. This is made in the cannabis plant alongside d9THC and many other cannabinoids. It has recently been shown to have antagonist actions against the psychosis produced by d9THC and so would almost certainly attenuate spice intoxication. Sadly, just a few months ago, the Advisory Council for the Misuse of Drugs refused to make it available for this purpose on the spurious grounds that a note in a 1974 paper said that when given intravenously in high doses it was a little like d9THC.

Surely it is time for government to push to develop such an antidote to spice if not for humane and health reasons then for economic ones?

Spice ruins lives and costs taxpayers a fortune. It doesn’t have to be this way | David Nutt

Britons could lose health cover in Europe after Brexit, report warns

Millions of Britons could have their access to free health insurance taken away after Brexit, a parliamentary report has said.

MPs on the health select committee urged the government to offer more guarantees for Britons visiting the continent after hearing evidence that without the right to receive treatment in countries that are part of the European Economic Area, people with cancer could find it too expensive to go to Europe.

In a strongly worded report on the effect of Brexit on health and social care, the committee said the challenges created by losing reciprocal health arrangements should not be underestimated.

British travellers can currently use the European health insurance card, which guarantees access to healthcare free or at a reduced cost in Europe. The EU member state providing treatment is able to claim back costs from the patient’s home country. Some estimates suggest that up to 27 million Britons have the cards.

The inquiry heard evidence that losing this agreement could create challenges for many travellers, including disabled people and those with mental or physical health conditions. Prof Martin McKee of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine said a week’s full private health insurance for a holiday in France for someone with diabetes or mild depression would cost between £800 and £2,500.

The report also noted that hundreds of thousands of expats living abroad could lose reciprocal healthcare rights, leaving some facing hardship. McKee, a professor of European public health, said many Britons in Spain have properties that are now worth little. “Many will come back in a state of poverty because they bought properties in Andalusia and other places … They will be throwing themselves on the mercy of the state when they come back,” he said.

Christopher Chantery, a British resident in France, told the committee many pensioners moved to the country “in good faith on the implicit promise that these arrangements would continue. Suddenly, something happens that brings those arrangements to an end. It is absolutely terrible for many people”.

British nationals living abroad have to get an S1 form, which gives them health cover, paid for by the UK, within Europe.

The committee, which includes Labour and Conservative MPs, called on the government to preserve the existing system as opposed to seeking a new arrangement. What was currently in place offered taxpayers good value for money, it said.

In the same report, the committee warned that the Brexit vote could lead to a brain drain, with morale among EU nationals in the NHS low due to uncertainty about their future. It called for more reassurances and said the government should continue to be able to recruit the “brightest and best from all parts of the globe” after Britain leaves the EU.

The Department of Health could not comment due to general election purdah rules. But when asked about reciprocal healthcare at the start of the year, the health secretary, Jeremy Hunt, said it was one of the rights of those who retired to Spain or France and he wanted to secure it early on in negotiations, but could not guarantee this.

Speaking to the Guardian, Prof Jean McHale, the director of the Centre for Health Law, Science and Policy at the University of Birmingham, said: “If questions of healthcare provision and patient mobility are not included in the negotiations, if there is not a transitional period and we move to hard Brexit, there will be major practical questions. What happens at midnight on Brexit D day to the person in hospital in another EU member state who has been in a car accident?”

Britons could lose health cover in Europe after Brexit, report warns

Thousands of cancer patients denied wish to die at home

Tens of thousands of people with cancer are dying in hospital every year even though they would rather spend their final days at home or in a hospice.

Although only 1% of cancer patients say they would prefer to die in hospital, 38% do, according to research by Macmillan Cancer Support, equating to 62,000 people a year across the UK.

A lack of health services outside hospitals, such as district nurses, to support people in their homes in their last days has been cited as a key reason behind the discovery.

But Macmillan said “a crisis of communication in the UK when it comes to death” and especially cancer patients’ reluctance to talk about their feelings, including their death, was preventing people achieving their own preferences. .

“There is a stark difference between a ‘good’ and a ‘bad’ death. We want everyone, where possible, to have a death that’s pain-free and in the place of their choosing. This is where the power of talking about death in advance is crucial,” said Adrienne Betteley, the charity’s head of health and social care.

Macmillan’s research, among 2,005 people who had been diagnosed with cancer, revealed that three in four had thought about the fact that they might die from the disease and one in five thought about it constantly or often.

However, 35% of those questioned had not spoken to anyone else about how they were feeling and just 8% had discussed matters with any of their health professionals.

Macmillan suggests people with cancer more readily relay how they are feeling, especially about where they want to die.

“The only certainty in life is that we will all die. What is less certain is where and what experience we will have when it happens. It’s only by talking about dying that we can agree what is really important to us, and put plans in place to make that happen,” said Lynda Thomas, Macmillan’s chief executive.

Amanda Cheesley, the Royal College of Nursing’s professional lead for long-term conditions and end-of-life care, said: “This country sadly still has serious work to do when it comes to end-of-life care. We must help patients to express their wishes, but we also need to make more options available in the first place. Declining numbers of community and district nurses and a lack of social care mean too many have to stay in hospital whether they want to or not.

“The nursing shortage is making a bad situation worse. With fewer nursing staff on wards, many are unable to facilitate discussions about death, and two-thirds of nurses say they don’t have the time to deliver the high-quality care that dying patients need.”

Thousands of cancer patients denied wish to die at home

A moment that changed me: the loss of my brother to alcohol-related illness | Eve Ainsworth

This year it will be 17 years since my brother died, aged 40. I have so many regrets – regret not only for Kev, who was finally killed by the addiction that overtook him, but regret that I didn’t try to understand him more when he was alive. It is only now that I have begun to appreciate the pain and entrapment inflicted by alcohol addiction and how the man I thought I knew became swamped by this misunderstood and deadly condition. My brother deserved so much more. For so long, I questioned why drink always won, without realising that for him it was never a question of winning or losing. It was just about surviving each day.

One of my earliest memories of Kev was when I was sitting miserable and uncomfortable with chicken pox. I was around five years old and stank of calamine lotion – my entire skin was cracked pink with it. I hated missing school and was bored silly at home. Then my older brother walked into the house, carrying a bag of books. My day suddenly lit up. In my early life, Kev’s long hours as a nurse meant he didn’t often visit, but when he did he brought a different energy to the house, and a kindness.

He was the one who’d take me out for surprise shopping trips, or for weekends away at his house where he and his wife would take me to amazing firework displays and other outings. Kev always seemed full of life – talking, laughing and coming up with ideas. He loved reading and talked about books. He made me appreciate the wonder of words. I didn’t know then that he was working long hours, that he was struggling, and drinking to cope. I just saw the mask he painted on. The happy Kev, rather than the cracks. But of course all cracks deepen in time and the mask begins to slip.

His marriage fell apart and soon his drinking meant Kev was signed off from a job he loved and excelled at. He was forced to move back to our house. That’s when I saw the true problem. I was 10 years old, and I had an older brother who now spent most of his days sitting in his bedroom. His appearance had changed. His face was more red, speech slurred, eyes swollen. We still talked though. He gave me his old computer to type on and encouraged me to write.

Kev didn’t think it was silly that I wanted to be a writer: he actively encouraged me. He talked about the importance of plot structure and leaving the reader wanting more. It was just sad that he didn’t read himself any more. He still listened to music though: to David Bowie, Leonard Cohen and the Clash. He taught me to listen to the words and hear the real meaning. He told me to sound words out loud and hear how they worked. Above all, he told me not to give up on my dreams. He always looked sad when he said that, like he’d already given up on his.

Eve Ainsworth aged 4, around 1982. Photograph: Eve Ainsworth

But as a teenager things changed. I’d changed. I’d become ashamed of him. He’d become bloated and sick and would often do or say things to embarrass or shock people. I’d look at his closed door and imagine a monster behind it, consumed by alcohol, no longer recognisable. I didn’t want to be in his company any more. He frustrated me, and I couldn’t understand why he had chosen this existence. Finally, he moved to a house of his own and I suppose I was relieved. At least now his drinking was contained somewhere else. I could kid myself he was OK really. But he wasn’t. The reality was that he was just getting sicker and sicker.

When I became ill myself, hospitalised with quinsy, I begged my brother not to visit. I didn’t want people to see how bad he was. When I came home, he phoned me. “I’m glad you’re better,” he said. “That should be me in hospital. Not you.”

He collapsed a week later; his liver had finally failed him. I was at work when they made the decision to turn off his life support. I tried to go and see him, but I couldn’t get there in time. Guilt raged through me. I’m not religious but I found myself in a small church, lighting a candle. Praying for forgiveness. Ashamed.

The guilt affected me for a long time afterwards. I resigned from my job. I spent most nights out drinking with friends. I felt like I was lost. One night I drank too much and found myself vomiting in a toilet wondering if this had been what his life was like. I woke up feeling wretched and ill and knew I could never drink to excess again. Even now I struggle being around people who are excessively drunk.

I wish we could have helped Kev. I wish we could have saved him. But we couldn’t

It took me a long time to get over his death and in many ways perhaps I never will. But it changed me because I knew I never wanted to feel like that again. I tried to remember Kev for the man he was, not what the drink made him. And I carried on writing, because I knew then that life was short and cruel, and I had to try and achieve my goals in the time I had. When my first book was published I remembered my brother’s early encouragement and belief in me, and knew how happy he would be.

Now I’m almost at the age my brother was when he died – and that seems wrong somehow. It makes me realise how young he was and how much life he had yet to live. He had so much talent, wisdom and kindness. I wish we could have helped him. I wish we could have saved him. But we couldn’t. And I’ll never stop regretting that. But regrets are wasted. So instead, I just have to be thankful for what he gave us instead.

A few days after he died I had a vivid dream in which my brother appeared in a beautiful, peaceful setting. In the background Bowie’s lyrics played on a loop, like a soothing lullaby – “I’m happy, hope you’re happy too.”

I am happy, Kev. And I’d like to think in some way you are too.

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A moment that changed me: the loss of my brother to alcohol-related illness | Eve Ainsworth

NHS needs £25bn in emergency cash, Theresa May told

NHS leaders are urging Theresa May to give the health service an emergency cash injection of £25bn before 2020 or risk a decline in the quality of care for patients and lengthening delays for treatment.

An influential group representing NHS Trusts says that the care provided by hospitals and GP surgeries will suffer over the next few years unless the prime minister provides an £5bn a year for the next three years – and a further £10bn of capital for modernising equipment and buildings.

NHS Providers is preparing to release its own manifesto next week, calling on the Conservatives and Labour to end what it calls the austerity funding of the health service. Saffron Cordery, the director of policy and strategy , said its analysis showed that there was a “revenue gap” of £4.5bn-£5bn a year in 2017-18 and “each of the subsequent two years as well.”

Hospitals needed that sum, said Cordery, to get rid of their deficits, which are running at £800m-£900m a year, deliver new NHS commitments on cancer and mental health and improve their performance against key waiting time targets.

The NHS also needed a further £10bn for capital spending on building and repairing premises, buying new equipment and moderning how care is provided, she added. That is the sum which a recent report commissioned by the Department of Health said the service needed for those purposes.

May inherited a pledge from David Cameron and George Osborne to provide a £10bn real-terms increase between April 2014 and April 2021. So far in the election campaign, the prime minister has refused to be drawn on how she might fund the health service, telling journalists that they would have to wait for the publication of the party’s manifesto.

A second group, the NHS Confederation, which represents hospitals and ambulance and mental health services, urged May to commit to giving the NHS £8bn-a-year annual budget increases after 2020-21, when the current funding settlement expires. The Department of Health’s budget is due to reach £133.1bn by March 2021.

Niall Dickson, its chief executive, said NHS services were so stretched that it would have to go back to getting at least the 4%-a-year budget increases it enjoyed historically between its creation in 1948 and 2010. After that, the coalition government limited rises to only 1% annually.

“It’s quite unsustainable for the shackles to remain on the health and care system and for society to expect the levels of need that will arrive over the next 10-15 years to be met unless it is willing to fund them,” Dickson said. “If we aren’t ready to put significant extra resources into the NHS then difficult choices will need to be made about things that we are going to do.”

Prof John Appleby, chief economist at the Nuffield Trust thinktank, said that returning to 4% a year rises, which the NHS used to receive regardless of which party was in power, “would require a cash increase of around £8bn in 2021-22.”

While Tory backing for such large sums was unlikely, “this could change if the NHS continues to miss its headline performance targets and the concern the public are starting to express about the NHS continues to rise”, he added.

The two interventions put pressure on May on an issue that some polls show is top of voters’ list of priorities in the general election, even ahead of Brexit.

Jeremy Hunt, the health secretary, has said several times that the NHS budget will need to rise by a significant amount after the current funding schedule ends in March 2021. For example, last October he told the Commons health select committee: “It is a given that over coming decades we will need to put more into the health and social care system … if we want a high quality healthcare service, yes, we need to continue investing more.”

Simon Stevens, the chief executive of NHS, England, has voiced concern that per capita health funding will decline in 2018-19 and 2019-20. It is due to fall from its current level of £2,223 per head this year by £16 next year and £7 in 2019.

Anita Charlesworth, the director of research at the Health Foundation thinktank, said the NHS could no longer make ends meet by holding down pay and reducing investment in equipment and facilities. “Cracks are evident – access to new drugs is being restricted, waiting times have increased and recruitment and retention are growing problems across the NHS. The health service can always be more efficient but it cannot bridge the gap between pressures rising at 4% and funding at 1% for much longer without quality and access suffering”, she said.

A Conservative spokesman said: “A strong NHS needs a strong economy. Only Theresa May and the Conservatives offer the strong and stable leadership we need to secure our growing economy in future and with it funding for the NHS and its dedicated staff.

“We’ve protected and increased the NHS budget and got thousands more staff in hospitals – but we know that progress is on the ballot paper at this election.”

NHS needs £25bn in emergency cash, Theresa May told