Our health carers 17 2 3 (9) 25 1 28
When I was invited to come to this country as a
Product Development Manager I at first declined on the basis that I already had
a good job which carried more prestige...At the time I was R and D Manager and
visiting the new company that was making the offer once a month in a subsidiary
role as Project Coordinator for Casing Paper developments. In addition I also
visited manufacturers in Belgium, France, Germany and the United States of
America which is to say all the world's manufacturers with the exception of the
much smaller Japanese competitor who relied on a Japanese source of paper too:
very small beer in comparison with the giants of the industry which started the
business, a Union Carbide Co in the US, originally, another US Co a onetime
Johnson and Johnson Co and a Hoechst Co in Germany, etc., etc., etc.
But with my subsequent monthly visits the offers
got bigger and when my starting salary was to be twice what I was earning in
the UK plus a Company car of my choice and 10% of starting salary as a
re-location package I decided to accept the offer as a Joint R and D Director
with a view to replacing the incumbent director who was shortly due to retire.
That said the MD then dropped his bombshell to warn me: "Of course taxes
are very high here because amongst other things we have a very expensive health
service!" By then however the die was cast and I had committed to depart
UK for Scandinavia where with my Scandinavian wife we had already lived 2 years
together and before that I had lived 2 more years as a bachelor. That is
despite never having a day off work during my 13 years as R and D Manager
except to have a broken nose repaired which necessitated a few days in hospital
to have its septum corrected so that I'd be able to breathe through both
nostrils again.
Well after living here 4 years our younger son’s
partner whom he met in our town here became pregnant with twin girls and the
complication of a condition known as foetal fatale was diagnosed which in
layman’s terms means that whilst they shared the same umbilical cord a blockage
in one branch meant one foetus was under-nourished and the other over
nourished, with usually dire consequences for one or other of the twined girls… It
was then that I reflected on my own mother losing her twin sister after a few
days of life as did her mother’s twin sister before her. Perhaps because I only
fathered sons and not daughters this maybe hereditary condition skipped my generation I figured? Whatever the event our granddaughters celebrated their 23rd
birthdays last October whilst before their births their mother was hooked up to
two heart monitors to help the hospital decide when to bring on their births, each
to a separate oxygen tent for premature children, one barely a third of the other in weight. Finland as a nation has been
a pioneer in bringing infant mortality levels down to amongst the lowest in the
world…
A few years later still I suffered a heart attack
which when I asked the doctor later that morning in the Intensive Care Department
upon waking at our local hospital “Was it a small one?” his answer was on the
contrary. Thereafter triple by-pass surgery corrected the matter plus ongoing
medication to give me at least another 14 years of good quality life, bringing
me thus far up to 77 y in age…
As I write this wee blog I have been visiting our
local health centre and hospitals twice already this new year: on the first
occasion for an upcoming operation entitled Dupuytren's contracture (straightening
a little finger) in connection with a yachting accident some years ago when I
tried to arrest the boat’s momentum as we came upon our mooring with the warp from the buoy passing through my right hand when it tore through the
tendons of my third and forth fingers; and just today in connection with a fall
two days ago on icy paths in our local park when I managed to break a couple of ribs,
numbers 8 and 9 to my right back rib cage…
Unbelievable how the two halves to one’s life can
be so very different and my good fortune that I chose Scandinavia 29 years ago
this last week…hahaha. Have a good day everyone as I hope you too get to do
some things right even if you are not aware of it at the time?
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