cloudsoup

Sitting on my desk just now I have two pieces of mail from the Tax Office; they know who I work for, the have my name slightly wrong, and the National Insurance number they cite is completely off the wall.

That hasn’t stopped them telling me to ‘send the letter back’ to them as if there were only one letter from them, being utterly unhelpful when I call them because, of course, I get through to a call centre where the people have no power to interrogate or amend real tax records.

So I’m left knowing quite a lot about the person to whom they think they’re sending letters. National Insurance number, full name, date of birth, family circumstances.

Would you trust these people with a National Identity card?

So, Friday the GP told me I did have rheumatoid arthritis after all … after a practice nurse told me over the phone my blood test had been negative for the rheumatoid factor (RhF) antibody. In fact I have a high RhF measure. My appointment with a consultant rheumatologist should be dropping through the letterbox within the next two weeks then it’ll be a long decline into severe pain, disability, joint deformity and early death.

If I’m unlucky.

If I’m lucky, my RA will be manageable, though not curable, and I will have, as they say, many years of active life ahead of me; which is an improvement, of course, on my previous expectations. Of course, if I was even luckier i wouldn’t have RA at all. 1% of the population, with a 3:1 female to male ratio and I manage to get it?

I just noticed a paper on PubMed suggesting a link between Toxoplasma Gondii and RA so maybe I can blame the cats.

Rheumatoid Arthritis: let’s blame the cat

I’m setting up a new blog to indulge my self-pity, at Rheumatoidia.

Prime Minister Gordon Brown has said he understands people’s fears over the economy and insisted that keeping it on track was his “sole focus”

Brown says economy is sole focus

Sole focus, eh? Well perhaps he should resume his job as Chancellor of the Exchequer

A while back I visited the Lorraine motel, Memphis, where Martin Luther King was assassinated.

The Lorraine Motel, Memphis

The motel was bought in 1982 by the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Foundation to house the excellent National Civil Rights Museum. Inside the motel/museum, most of the rooms have been knocked through for exhibition space but up on the first floor, the bedroom King used has been reconstructed and on the balcony outside is a wreath next to the spot where he was shot.

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