From our Sunday School Days (Lift up our hearts)

Very very sad to hear of Rodney's passing. I & my family knew him when he was a teacher and coach at The City of Coventry Swimming Club when the Three Spires section were based at the Livingstone Road baths back in the late 70's & early 80's.

Good afternoon, Sometimes, just being open & honest, or accepting failure can be such a stress reliever. Some of you know that I suffer with a frayed optic nerve, the condition being compounded by a huge differential between my left & right eye, my right eye being very good, but my left eye needs a glass bottle spectacle. No-one is sure what triggers a period where I lose my vision, sometimes for just half an hour, sometimes much longer. That's why I have stopped driving, amongst other things. Most times, when I feel a vision loss on its way, a bit like a migraine but with no headache, just by stopping whatever I'm doing, it clears. The worse thing that I can do is try to carry on regardless. Last Sunday was a dreadful day for me. First thing in the morning, I was fine. I posted the weather on here. About ten, when I was waiting for my lift to church, I suffered a real blinder. It was the middle of the afternoon before it started to clear up. Fortunately, the church service had a pre-recorded backup, as any attempt by me to play the organ or piano, I might have been better wearing motorcycle gloves. It was quite humiliating, being sat in my organ alcove, not able to do what I so look forward to doing. Like a dummy I was. Even amongst folk that are very understanding & know my vision history. Since Sunday afternoon, my vision has been as good as anyone's anywhere, & remains so as I'm typing this. This is, I hope not just selfishly, why I so appreciate our forum, the ability to share issues that anywhere else we might feel reluctant too. It's another reason why I value politeness & understanding amongst our forum community, even when differences of opinion arise from time to time. Often we don't know what afflictions folk have to contend with. A leg missing is fairly obvious, but someone struggling to hold a domestic situation together, family illness, or a disability of their own, we might not know anything about. Please think of this whenever we get entrenched from a difference of opinion into an argument, because when that happens, most rational members simply switch off, some have never switched on since. We all get things wrong sometimes, I know that I do. Best wishes.

What a heap we are. In the series The Gaffer, I remember one episode where the Bill Maynard character cheerfully admits 'everything I've got that still works, leaks'. Even as a teenager that rang a bell. I've had a few migraines in my life but thankfully very rarely. My mum saw the reverse C too, MR, so perhaps there is a physical reason for it? I just get flashing diamonds in different colours that work their way from one point to another. Indigestion medicine helps my symptoms. My dad swore that putting a TENS machine across his upper spine cleared it very quickly. What I do get 2 or 3 times a year is patches of extreme itchiness under one or both eyelids that are only soothed by antihistamines, cooling and closed eyes. Even the slightest movement of my eye scratches and itches all the more so I can't use the good eye without punishing the bad one. You'd be surprised how often you can blink with both your eyes already shut! The longer I leave it before doing the right thing, the longer I suffer. I can still see and negotiate around the house but I can't imagine being without my sight completely. My sympathies all round.

Midland Red, as a teenager I had regular bouts of migraine which started with the flickering crescent and developed into the debilitating headache. I eventually seemed to grow out of only occasionally usually when I relaxed after being stressed. I have had the crescents again over some years but one place I used to get them was when we visited Astley Book Farm. They have a barn they call the ten bob barn where the books are all 50p. This building has a florescent light which I can see flickering, 5 minutes in there sets off the flickering crescent and I can't see a thing for some time. Needless to say I stopped going in the barn. No problem since.

If I may just put my case forward, for what it's worth as I do sympathise with you and my problem does not seem half as severe as yours. I had to go for an eye test a few months ago with the intention of a new pair of 'readers'. I informed my optometrist of a few rare moments when I experienced the strange sparkly diamonds effect creeping over my left eye, just for a few moments. He did ask if I had had any headaches and I answered no but the problem had started around 18 months ago. I had put it down to my age, also being an avid reader. However, he did ask if I was stressed in any way and of course I was, many times, even over the slightest upset it could happen. He advised me to stay calm and let others do the worrying. Easier said than done. His advice was to drop what I was doing and concentrate on something else or go outside into the fresh air maybe. I have not had this moment again yet but I have a feeling I will, so I will give it a try. Not a serious problem, he said, so that was some comfort, as I was thinking the worst and that is my downfall, I must always look on the bright side (if you will please excuse the pun). I am now thankful I have not suffered the migraine as you have suffered and realise my problem is very minor. PS. What would I do without my daily dose of HCF. It's lifted my heart very often.

Good morning all, they do say getting old is dangerous. Disclaimer... I'm not a Doctor! Anyway, reading all your "sparkling eye" problems you may wish to have a look at this link. If you are going to have a problem, it may as well have an interesting name!

Nice to know I am not alone. I also have the reverse C, which starts as a small blur in the centre of my eyes then slowly expands and disappears out of the top right of my eyes. This is fine as it leaves no after effect. It is when I get normal C but this one disappears out of the top left side and leaves me with a depression which can last hours. This started in 1988 and stopped in 1999 to be replaced with Cluster headaches also known as the Suicide headache. You would have to look that one up, to hard to describe. It is a headache you can set your watch to as it starts the same time each day, lasts the same length time then stop and leaves you debilitated for roughy the same length of time as the headache. To me seven hours of the day wasted to the headache. That headache can also attack the teeth so you have toothache in one or every tooth at the same time. Luckily they started to diminish two years ago, fingers crossed Just thought, the headaches have been replaced with the reverse C, but not as bad as before.

Hi all, I had no idea of the scenarios & ailments that our members have to contend with. I'm heartened by the courage of sharing, our bonds of care on our forum run so deep. All the more reason for us all to value the existence of our forum, where we have the delight of sharing memories of our city. Thank you all so much.

Thanks for all the responses. I'm heartened to know that the reversed 'C' does exist with others, although obviously sorry for those who suffer from it.

My twopennoth for what it's worth I used to suffer from migraine about once every couple of months in my late teens / early twenties. I had very little warning of them and often within a few minutes I was unable to see properly (somewhat worrying if you're on a motorbike miles from home). I'd read that certain foods could trigger them, especially chocolate so I eventually tried not eating any but it made no difference. I have never been a great meat eater and one day after my partner had made a roast chicken dinner, which I was not really enjoying and just poking at, she said words to the effect of "You eat so little meat, you might as well become vegetarian" but much more flowery. So I stopped eating meat products and about six months later we realised I had not had a migraine since giving up meat (and haven't to this day). I know that nowadays they encourage you to keep a food diary so if a particular type of food is a trigger it can be quickly discovered.

Poetscorner, thank you for the link. I read every word and have now 'seen the light' - so to speak. We get more satisfaction from the HCF than a visit to the Doc's. So long as you don't send me a bill.

Hi all, Sometimes, folk get frustrated with officialdom where they are known by number not name. I am so heartened by a private conversation ongoing behind the scenes on our forum regards a member who we haven't seen for a while. Our members do matter. I'm not initially involved with this particular conversation, I feel so uplifted that their absence is noticed. Also, someone on our forum is celebrating their wedding anniversary today. A lovely milestone of living, loving & care. Now tell me that our forum is not worth protecting. Nothing makes up for me missing Pam, but our forum is such a comfort. God bless.

Hi all, A food for thought chat. No matter what our faith persuasion is, my first duty as a forum member is to respect all, & please let me tell you that it's far more than a duty, I want to. Now & again notions appear in my mind that are certainly intriguing, even more so as I watched a Horizon programme on tele last evening. It was documenting the way Astro-Science has progressed over the last one hundred years or so regards the understanding (that's what science is, understanding) of time & space. It's so hard to grasp distances that are so vast, that the universe may still be expanding & depending where we are & how fast we are travelling, time itself is variable. Try telling that to a traffic warden that is writing you a ticket for over-staying your parking limit. It's now respected scientific belief that the key to all physics is gravity. That where gravity is strong enough, it stops time altogether. It's only a time factor that separates us from our parents, our loved relatives & friends that we have said goodbye to. What a concept. These thoughts were science fiction when I was a child, go back a hundred years & I would be locked up for suggesting such phenomena, yet it is now mainstream scientific thinking. No Jules Verne here! Many of our world's cultures have centuries old manuscripts that talk about variance in time & space. Were these past folk superhuman, I wonder? Our own Scripture talks about the day when the Earth stood still, but I'm not talking about that, my intrigue is the philosophy of time variance as a science in itself. I make no mistake, that I recognise that we have very clever & thought processing minds on our forum, that's not false patronage either. I've learnt so much from the minds of folk on our forum. Sometimes words or mathematical equations are just that. Words. So, why on earth have I printed this load of words. Leave alone trying to grasp that time is not fixed or that infinity goes on for ever & if it does end, what's behind the wall where it ends. I did enjoy watching an old episode of Heartbeat. Maybe I could stick with that. God bless, everyone.

"Time is an illusion. Lunchtime doubly so" ? Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy And the Guide says, "Space, is big. Really big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mindbogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist's, but that's just peanuts to space."