End of Days Scenario

I remember having an “End of Days” conversation with my brother.  I studied physics and he Biology.  Naturally, I reckoned that it would be due to nuclear detonation leading to catastrophic loss of life as we know it.  

He was of the opinion that some pandemic, biological in nature, was by far the more deadly and more likely culprit for wiping out huge sections of the population.  

You may be dismissive but Chernobyl had just happened and I felt pretty secure in my argument.  In addition, The New Scientist of 6^th July 2013 provided worrisome evidence that the earth itself has made its own nuclear reactors 2 billion years ago.  While mining in the Oklo area of Gabon (West Africa) for uranium the French alternative Energies and Atomic Energy Commission discovered evidence of 16 natural fossil reactors between 1.5 and 10 metres across. These, it is thought, ran on and off for a few hundred thousand years until they exhausted their supply of uranium. Strangely disturbing that the earth could create its own nuclear reactors isn't it?

Meanwhile, my brother could counter with the 1918 flu pandemic (January 1918 – December 1920), which was an unusually deadly influenza pandemic, involving the H1N1 influenza virus.  Sounds worryingly familiar today doesn't it?  It infected 500 million people across the world and killed 50 to 100 million of them—3 to 5 percent of the world's population at the time. 

Because it involved the immune system response, this pandemic targeted not those with weak immune systems, like the very young and very old, but instead the fittest and most vital of the world’s population.  In my Grandmother’s home they lost two young men of the twelve in that family within a week of each other.  I can remember my father saying that he was told they had to carry the coffin of one son through the bedroom of the dying second son.  These horrors do lodge in the mind, they happened once already and who is to say they may not happen again? 

My third brother who is a professor of  psychology was silent during our “End of Days” debate.  It is rather perturbing then to discover that  about one million people die annually from suicide according to the World Health Organisation.  In fact rates of suicide have increased by 60% in the last 45 years.   It would be terrible indeed if the “End of Days” was neither due to biology or physics but took the form of a growing cull taking place silently in our midst each year.  Now, that is scary!

Nappies in Malta

Was on a bus in Malta heading from the University to Sliema and happened to sit beside a rather talkative Maltese lady.  When you are new to a place even such mundane conversations become frissons of excitement as they become a window to this totally new culture you find yourself in. 

She was middle-aged and was coming from visiting her mother-in-law who was in an institution for the elderly on the island.  As her mother in law is in her nineties and very confused much has to be done for her.  The Maltese government has a scheme to help those looking after elderly parents, but it has, she told me, many restrictions.  For example, they only pay for some of the incontinence pads, or nappies and the family have to supplement for the rest.  She said as a nurse herself she was horrified to find that the home where her mother-in-law is kept puts three nappies on at once.  This is very uncomfortable for the patient she said and is laziness on the part of the staff.  They also don’t use the lifting device provided but merely haul out her mother–in-law from her chair when changing her.  This drags her heels on the ground and causes ulcers.  With daily visits and nursing she told me she had managed to almost cure the ulcers but was incensed to discover that yesterday they had again not used the lifting device and pulled her out of the chair with the result the skin was now broken and raw.  She sighed her disappointment, “They just won’t listen, they must do it their way!”  I sympathised, it seems the world is having to cope with an aging population everywhere and is woefully prepared for the task. 

We both agreed that in the future those looking after the vulnerable in our society should be the very best of us.  Those with high moral principles and integrity alone should be in such places of responsibility.  Then we both sighed as we pondered the impossibility of finding such paragons.   She then whispered that in her ward the other nurses always called her if someone was dying.  She prayed with them and kept them company in their last minutes as others were often either too busy or too distressed for this task.  She sighed again and then got out at the next stop.  A rather drab, women with bags of shopping under each arm and wearing slippers well worn at the heel.   She joked with the bus driver as she swung out of the bus and I hugged myself at glee that she exists, that I met her and dare to hope more like her are out there everywhere.