-
Petworth House
A friend and I visited Petworth House today. She grew up near Chichester and spent most of her life in Sussex but had never been inside. Today I had the pleasure of accompanying her as we walked around. It is an impressive place. Some of the paintings are vast - my friend and I were chatting to the room volunteer who confirmed that the particularly large one we were looking at doesn’t get moved from its position, other paintings move around it.
The scale of the place is ridiculous. Just look at the height of this window!
There is an exhibition Expressions in Blue: Monumental Porcelain by Felicity Aylieff being shown there at the moment which adds something to the experience. Some of the pieces are plain blue and white, while others are covered in bright floral enamel taking their cue from Grinling Gibbons’ wood carvings in the Carved room. These coloured ones were our favourites. These over-sized ceramics were why I thought this might be a good time to bring my friend. She’s partially sighted and so the sheer scale of these were helpful for her to get an idea of.
The sheer scale of this piece in the stair well was incredible. I mean the staircase itself is incredible, my entire house could fit into that space.
Each of the rooms in Petworth has a set of red books. Each book is full of information about all the paintings and statues in the room. This allowed my friend to find a picture that she could get an idea of, and then I could describe it and read the information about it. I did keep being asked by other people to look things up for them so I’m not sure if people thought I was a volunteer, or that I just looked helpful!
After our recent trip to Parham House we were interested in finding portraits of people who had history with the house, and the Beauty Room was a particular highlight. The information panel explains how the paintings started off as full-length portraits of the ladies, but the 3rd Earl of Egremont decided he didn’t need to see their legs and so asked for them to be shortened. Fortunately, the workmen making the change decided to fold the lower portions behind the canvas rather than cut them away entirely. This allowed them to be restored to their former glory almost two centuries later.
My friend was particularly taken with the ancient statues deciding that she could find a space for one in her garden. We did chuckle about how the roman artefacts might need to earn their keep were we to get hold of one for her, perhaps holding a trowel and a kneeler in their hands!
-
Hand OA: one year on
This morning, I did my usual check of the “On this day” view in Diarium, and found that this day last year I was diagnosed with osteoarthritis in my finger.
The diagnosis was via email:
Thank you for having your tests. Just to let you know your blood test has come back normal, which is reassuring. The X-ray shows osteoarthritis in the joint. There is some more information via this link https://versusarthritis.org/about-arthritis/conditions/osteoarthritis-of-the-hand-and-wrist/. Any problems let us know
Oh! That was kind of unexpected. I’m not old enough for osteoarthritis, am I?
The first thing I did was make an appointment with the GP. Or I tried to. It took me a couple of days ringing at 8am to get one two weeks later. When I finally saw them it was useful to get an overview of what this meant for me. And they booked me a same day appointment with the physio. The physio was excellent. Reassuring. Helpful. Giving me links to exercises to start doing. And diagnosed my thumb with osteoarthritis as well, which made sense. I’d had an ache in that joint for a while but put it down to mouse and keyboard work. And actually it’s the thumb that has given me the most problems to manage over the year.
While waiting to see the GP I’d started doing what I always do when something new happens to me. I read. I found arthritis charities in the UK. I learned about the different types of arthritis. I found some books and read them too. Over the course of the year, these are the books I’ve read that I’ve valued the most:
- Treat Your Own Hand and Thumb Osteoarthritis by Jim Johnson - the most specific book I’ve read, with useful and realistic exercises and a helpful background into the bone structure of the hand
- The Pain-Free Mindset: 7 Steps to Taking Control and Overcoming Chronic Pain by Dr Deepak Ravindran - an excellent book about pain, and how to live with it. I started running experiments after reading this to reduce and work around any pain I have
- One Step Ahead of Osteoarthritis: Stay Flexible and Keep Moving by Frances Ive - the first book I read, and more general than just the hand. Gave me the first ideas about supplements, and gave me further reading
In November I started symptom tracking using Bearable. It’s a good looking app, which helps when I’m using it every day, multiple times a day. It’s also really configurable, letting me track all sorts of things, from pain, through supplements, to exercises tried, to suspicions I have (eating sugary snacks makes my hand hurt, which is sadly true). It has reports which are helpful, but I’ve never quite found the time to explore and configure them as well as I’d have liked.
Earlier in the summer I made use of my Claude subscription to analyse the data in full. I got a CSV export from Bearable, explained some changes I’d made in the tracking period, and let it go. It found some correlations that were actionable. Really helpful. Obviously what works for me won’t necessarily work for others, but tracking and analysing feels worthwhile. I’ve tried different experiments over the year, and Bearable with Claude have helped me work out if they’re helpful or not. It also let me put together a report to take to the physio at my appointment last month, setting out what I’d tried and found beneficial, and what I’d discarded. My main limitation is trying not to run too many experiments at once, so I can actually see what’s working rather than muddying the results with several changes at a time. My next review of the data will be at the start of September, when I’ll pick the next experiments to try.
There’s still plenty on my list to work through, and new research on OA management keeps emerging, so I don’t think I’ll run out of things to try any time soon.
I’d rather not have hand osteoarthritis, but my focus now is managing it, and keeping as much strength and mobility in my hand as I can. I’ll continue to run experiments, track and analyse the data, to keep working towards my long term goal of living independently into my 80s.
-
WalletWallet
WalletWallet was mentioned in Dense Discovery this week and since learning of it I’ve already added three different passes to my Apple wallet. Mostly for applications that can be a bit sluggish to start up and give the relevant QR code - PureGym I’m looking at you!
It’s exactly the kind of obvious-once-you-see-it idea that Dense Discovery is good at surfacing.
