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Clare Stevens's avatar

My goodness, Jayne, this is a tough, tough read but so full of insight. Thank you as ever for your generosity in being so honest about such horrendous past experiences.

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Jayne Manfredi's avatar

Thank you Clare. I should have put a content warning on it! I forget I’m not as squeamish as most. That’ll be another consequence of that kind of childhood 😂

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Clare Stevens's avatar

Oh it’s fine on my account, I was just empathising with you and so much physical pain. But yes, we had that kind of upbringing too. It has its drawbacks – my late sister found it impossible to reveal just how distressed she was when she went to her GP with depression after losing an important job for complicated reasons; as a result she was just told to go for long walks, whereas her husband was put on medication to help him with the streess of his wife being unemployed! And I didn’t cry at the hospital when I was mugged and pushed to the ground … so I was sent away without an X-ray and it was only a week later that my GP (a better one than my sisters!) guessed correctly that I had broken my pelvis, just from the way I was limping across the reception area to his surgery. He sent me back to the hospital - in the meantime kind friends from church had been doing things like taking me for walks around our local rose garden to cheer me up after a distressing encounter, while I politely gritted my teeth through excruciating pain!

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Jayne Manfredi's avatar

Ouch! Broken pelvis sounds horrendous.

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Clare Stevens's avatar

It was, worse than childbirth which is saying something, but it did dramatically improve in almost exactly ten weeks, which was what the sensible GP predicted.

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Dave Illing's avatar

The book of Job tells a similar tale (kind of) - but at *much* greater length! 😁

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Jayne Manfredi's avatar

Yeah, I love those passages about his dental implant. (😂)

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Graham Gardiner's avatar

🤣🤣🤣🤣

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