It was great to see all my UK friends with FND in our Zoom meeting yesterday morning. I have a mad crush on Charmaine, who’s as beautiful inside and out, as women are made. I adore her. Much of the rest of the day was spent on clinic business.
Carol is not keen on being the chair. She has ill parents and a full-time job. And Don seems uninterested as well. He is away often (he’s currently in Florence), he is busy with the Arthritis Research Foundation, and he rarely attends meetings, so it doesn’t seem apt for him to chair us. I am functioning as committee head by default. I was not keen for this role at all!
In the afternoon, I talked with the clinic’s nurse practitioner about my quarterly blood tests. I seem to have dropped off the patient list of the HIV Clinic at St. Paul’s. They have always insisted on quarterly blood tests, but now they seem to have turned my care over to my GP and they have no idea who to copy and what tests to ask for. One way or another, I will sort this out, but it’s nasty work because it is all on the phone and my speech is at its worst on a phone.
AT 3:00 yesterday afternoon, the wind started. I got all my extension cords ready for a power failure and sat down to debut as the new voice of communications in current board discussions that have been playing out in email. Our current plans will see the Foundation have its first operational deficit and one of the discretionary expenses is our website revision.
I sent out a proposal that fundraising be discussed at the next board meeting, a target goal set (30 grand?) and a need (staffing after 10 years of operations without any?). Then I sent out a plan for the development of the website that allows me to believe we could create a website at half the cost of what is being currently discussed. And I proposed a website developer/designer.
I think I did myself well with my missives. They make me creditable in my roll as committee acting chair. They make me think I could be the chair. I have not wanted to take the position.
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I hear good things about a movie called Blind Ambition. It was neither on Netflix nor Prime, so Googled where I could see it and one answer was Roko TV. The name rang a bell. In 2017, I bought a TV to have in my studio, but FND killed my capacity to concentrate, and I’ve barely used it. So, last night I searched everywhere for the control of the TV, found new batteries, and read online about how to activate Roku (for free) on the TV. I’d never used it.
But I got it going and found the movie, so last night I watched a wonderful exhilarating movie. I was crying all the way through it, usually because I was so moved by our capacity to be kind and to encourage one another, sometimes with joy, and sometimes at the horrors of life in some countries due to abuse from the people in power in their country. It’s called, Blind Ambition, and it’s about the first black team to participate in the annual World Wine Tasting Championship in Burgundy—Team Zimbabwe. See it if you can!
My experience of watching that film had me wondering about my condition (FND). I wonder if shame is killing me. I am ashamed of human beings. I’m ashamed by what we’ve done to our planet, and worse that we’re still doing it. I despair at our treatment of indigenous people and refugees. I see greed as the worst of evils. I have no faith in our future. I thought about all this because of things I saw in the film. But the film is a heartwarming, wonderful, happy, happy story.
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Carol is the manager of our clinic. I have come to know her from my work on the campaign to recruit new doctors. She is a joy to work with.
I relate to the clinic by email and always have. It’s too hard to use the phone, and I have taken notes to the doctors when I have requested an appointment, to explain my reason for coming. Over the years, it may have been Carol who replied to my emails, I don’t know. But I did notice that it was Carol who replied to my request for help from a doctor to get a requisition for blood tests. She quickly arranged for me to see our new Nurse Practitioner who’s come to stay and work on the island from the US.
Jennifer is out NP. She called me at 3:00 and I got my requisition. At the end of the call, she told me that she has added my name to her patient panel, so I now have a NP instead of a doctor, but that is good enough for me. I feel very lucky and happy to have her as my primary care person, and I can’t help but wonder if this development may be due to Carol asking her to look after me because of my work for the clinic.
Corruption is great when it benefits me.
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| Winery; Portugal. |
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