Pain in the neck

For the last few days I've been nursing a pain in the neck.  No, not my husband or son but my neck, with a pain in it.  Has anyone heard of a torticollis?  I thought not. Whilst it like sounds like it should be a Spanish egg, potato and cauliflower combo it's actually a Latin word for wry (or stiff) neck.  It comes from the Latin tortus for twisted and collum meaning neck and that's probably the very last time you'll get a Latin lesson here. Now, I'm a pretty good amateur doctor and believe I can diagnose most minor ailments but this was a new one on me.

Torticollis occurs as the result of an injury or simply by sleeping in an awkward position. The sufferer may find that upon waking, it is extremely difficult to lift one's head and/or incredibly painful to move it.  

So it was that last Friday, I could barely lift my head from my pillow.  To the best of my knowledge, I hadn't injured myself so no doubt I'd contorted during the night to bring this on. Any movement merely served to heighten the excruciating pain  in the left side of my neck which was radiating upwards into my head via the inner workings of my left ear.  I had an important meeting arranged up the M1 and despite my husband's pleas for me to cancel it, I took some heavy duty painkillers and stupidly drove the thirty miles there and thirty back again in huge discomfort. I resolved to stick to the main roads to avoid sleeping policeman and it was lucky that I didn't have to make any sudden movements or turn my head too much during the drive.  It wasn't until that particular journey that I realised quite how far one's head is thrown backward during any sort of acceleration - however gentle.  Try it, it'll surprise you too.

I'd managed to get an appointment with a physiotherapist that same day.  He diagnosed the problem immediately and, it seemed to me, ignoring my moans and rather loud groans, proceeded to enthusiastically pummel and pull me around.  This, I have since discovered, was a good thing because I now know that physical therapy manipulations of the neck have been shown to help aid recovery and reduce healing time in torticollis cases.  But you do clearly need someone who knows what they're doing.

Since then I've had four sessions of physio and can now rotate my head from side to side although shaking it or putting my left ear down to my shoulder (why would I want to do that anyway?) is still out of the question.  Sleeping through the night hasn't yet been possible although I'm optimistic about my chances any night now.  I'm told it should be completely back to normal within the next few days but I'm not sure I believe them.

I've posted this up here because should you ever wake up with similar symptoms, do make sure to get straight to the doctor for pain-killers, anti-inflammatories and a referral to a good physiotherapist.  If you've got a partner who will cook, wash up and do the housework too, take maximum advantage.

Mugging. It's an everyday thing.

It seems shocking to me but our children accept 'muggings' as an everyday thing.  Ask any group of fourteen year old boys and they'll tell you they expect it. Nothing to get excited about or lose sleep over.

So it was that one balmy summer's Saturday evening my phone rang at around 9.15pm.  A fellow mother said: "Ben's OK but he's here and you need to come and collect him".  She explained that a group of seven of our fifteen year old children had been attacked whilst walking across a London park.  

I raced around there and charged in to find all seven in her living room with mine (only mine) covered in blood from his dripping and very swollen nose.  He seemed quite cheerful and stable but then, he's always been a laid back kid.  One of the other parents, a doctor, after checking him over advised us to take him to hospital.  She thought his nose may be broken.

So what had happened and why had my son come off so badly?  Our children had been walking to a friend's house where a party was due to have been happening but then wasn't, due to the fluidity and scattyness of teenage arrangements.  They decided to walk back to one of their houses.  It was summer, it was light and they were in a large group.  Turning a corner, they were set upon by a gang of four or five "seven foot tall nineteen year olds" who promptly singled mine out from the edge of the group, knocking him to ground.  Making the mistake of struggling back to his feet, he was knocked down again but this time, for good measure, they kicked him hard about the head and face.  By now, the girls were screaming and the other boys were unable to do much as they were outnumbered, out-muscled and frankly, scared out of their wits.

Fortunately, after a while, our children were able to run away and take refuge in a local Chinese take-away.  During the fifteen minutes it took for the Police to arrive, their tormentors loitered threateningly outside in a further effort to intimidate and terrify. Unsurprisingly, they scarpered when the plod arrived.  Although the Police took the incident seriously, taking statements and later calling us in to look through mug shots, no-one was ever apprehended. And what of these young criminals?  Do they have parents? One policeman confided to me that many parents he meets aren't averse to giving their kids a good old thrashing; not actually for committing the crime but for being stupid enough to get caught.

Meanwhile, I had an adverse reaction.  I couldn't sleep for weeks, I lost my appetite (believe me, a real sign of stress) and I was spontaneously bursting into tears all over the place.  I felt profoundly disturbed by the wanton violence meted out for no reason.  They weren't even after money or mobiles, they just wanted to kick someone's head in for the hell of it.

They had indeed succeeded in breaking Ben's nose which meant surgery followed by weeks of a Hannibal Lecter style plaster case attached to his face by long strips of plaster.  Travelling to and from school on the tube became the bane of his life.

Waiting anxiously for a delayed reaction from him, I decided to call Victim Support who suggested that I get Ben to call them to talk things through.  He looked at me as though I was mildly insane.  "Look Mum" he said, "I was attacked, I've had my nose broken and there's nothing I can do to change that.  I'm just not going to let it ruin my life!"  And that was that, he didn't want to delve any deeper.  Surely he should have been traumatised whereas I should have done the soothing it'll- be-all-right-let-me-kiss-it-better mummy thing?  What could be the explanation for our polarised approaches?

Well, back in the golden olden days of the 1960's and 1970's when we were growing up, as long as you steered clear of skin-heads, muggings (or to give them their proper label - serious assaults with or without GBH) were abnormal.  We feared them, we worried about them.  They were unusual, terrible and they often made local or national news.  Now that they're two a penny, they have insidiously filtered into the fabric of our kids' everyday lives. Episodes that were so awful, so dreadful in our day have, empirically, become simply another routine hazard in theirs.

Our normal, law abiding, young boy teenagers are a soft target for thugs and there's clearly not too much safety in numbers.  What a horrifying indictment of liberalisation that our kids all expect to experience assault at some stage - particularly the boys.  Instinctively shrugging it off, they put it down to experience whilst our own childhood conditioning makes their laissez-faire acceptance of this current phenomenon hard to grasp.  Even more alarming, let's project forward twenty or thirty years when our grandchildren are out on a Saturday night.  What will the natural order be by then?  Full body armour and a bouncer on hand?  Today we are witnessing a terrifying rise in London's gun and knife crime which bucks the trend of other decreasing crime statistics but we seem powerless to thwart it.

This was my son's third mugging experience.  During the previous two less violent episodes, he only lost his mobile telephone.  Well, thank heaven for small mercies.

The 10 Point Divorce Guide

There may be some people sailing painlessly through divorce but if there are, I haven't met them. Whether you're the 'leaveor' or the 'leavee', the experience is exquisitely painful in a way that only the personally experienced know they could do without.  So, for those of you about to take or just having taken the plunge, here's my ten point survival plan.

1.  Reconsider.  If you can avoid it, don't do it.  It's best avoided.  If there's a shred of respect an/or hope left in your marriage, work on it, especially if you have children.

2.  Once the decision's made and whilst you can still be civil, agree not use your children as weapons.  It's not big, it's not clever and it will end in tears.  How much better to handle the children as a sensitive, separate issue?  Always try to act in their best interests so don't bad- mouth each other and, if your children are old enough, consult them about how they want to play it. This assumes that both divorcing parties are at least partially sane which, I concede, is highly improbable.  If I am proud about anything to do with my divorce it is that our son has emerged relatively unscathed due, in part, to our joint efforts not to use him as our football.  

3. Choose a first-rate, specialist divorce lawyer and preferably one who believes in mediation.  This is critical as it's at times like these where 'cheap' can prove very, very expensive.  Don't be tempted to co-opt your friend who specialises in property law or do a DIY job because you think you're grown up enough to negotiate your own agreement.  Trust me (I'm a divorcee) you can only lose.

4.  If you find that after all that trouble, you hate your carefully selected, first-rate divorce lawyer or feel that this is not a person with whom you can do business, move on.  This is relatively easy to do at an early stage but far more difficult (and expensive) to do further down the line.

5.  Don't use your divorce lawyer as a therapist.  Therapists in London cost £50 - £150 per hour, Lawyers here cost upwards of £300 (plus VAT) and they charge in units of six and a half minutes.  They don't always provide Kleenex and their coffee usually stinks.  I rest my case. Make sure that you have a good support network in place before you leave the marriage; you're going to need it.

6.  Watch your support network collapse and expect fall-out in the most astonishing areas. Prepare to be crushed by people you had thought of as friends.  One of my friends of 35 years standing, who had all but loathed my husband during our fifteen-year marriage, capriciously appointed herself as his champion, taking umbrage at my 'unfair' treatment of him.  We no longer speak.  Another one took exception to my new boyfriend and then took to the hills. When I moved into my new house in the same street as a third friend, feeling vulnerable, rootless and fearful for the future, she decided I was too close for comfort and promptly cancelled our formerly warm friendship whilst simultaneously creating an unpleasantly hostile living environment.  My good friends who did stay the course are truly exceptional people to whom I shall evermore be indebted.  They know who they are.

7.  Steer well clear of any one-to-one contact, however innocent, with the husbands of any friends even if they are this century's answer to Quasimodo and you 'wouldn't go there' if he was the last man standing.  He will see you as easy pickings, the friend will think you're after him.

8.  If you're the lower earning spouse, go for broke. I didn't hoping that the 'ex' and I would wind up on cordial terms.  Well, silly billy me.  Had I been more aggressive, I would have had lots more dosh and an ex-husband who hates me rather than making do with enough for my needs -and an ex-husband who hates me!  Still, I take comfort in being able to sleep at night, safe in the knowledge that, foolish though I may have been, I did what felt right at the time.

9.  Caveat emptor in the housing market.  You may be moving when you're at your lowest ebb and your judgement is skewed.  I bought the wrong house in the wrong place at the wrong time from a rogue developer.  When I moved in, there were key things missing like the carpets, the radiators and crucially, any sign of a gas meter.  He had left me some extras though, the blocked drains flooded the entire ground floor the first time I used the washing machine.

10.  Finally, take care of yourself.  Eat healthily, try to moderate your use of drugs and alcohol and do regular exercise.  Your children need you and those who still care need to know that you'll pull though and live to fight another day.  And you will.  Give it time, you'll get there.