This has been bugging me for a couple of months now so I am going to write about it.
I believe that everyone has the right to die with dignity. I also believe that while ever a person is in their right mind they have the right to make a choice about the sort of medication that they want and whether or not they want to take that medication. So I want to know where does a doctor get off lying to her patient about the effects of going off their medication because she is concerned about the quality of death the person may experience?

Given that the person is dying, he has two wishes, one that he can take a deep breath and if not that he die as fast as possible. He had emphysema and for the last few months before his death even with oxygen on 24 hours a day felt like he was drowning. All he wanted to do was go off his medication and die faster. Yet his doctor told him that by going off his medication he would “drown in a pool of his own body fluids”. Although I think she meant he would suffocate from fluid build up in his lungs, he thought this would mean he would literally die in a pool of excrement. He wanted dignity so he decided not to go off his medication.

By making that decision instead of dying over a week with his pain and discomfort alleviated by morphine he struggled to breath, to move and to even turn over in bed for about 10 weeks. He wasted away unable to eat because he couldn't breath and unable to get out of bed or move because breathing was too difficult. Occasionally he would fall out of bed where he was too weak to even call anyone to help him to get back into bed, so he would lie there until someone found him. Although his doctor didn't want him to “drown in a pool of his own body fluid” that is what he did has his lungs deteriorated more and more.

I want to know what gives a doctor the right to be more concerned with the quality of a persons death than with the quality of their life. He was not trying to take his life he just wanted to choose the way it passed.

My first memories of my grandmother are of the chicken coop she had out the back of the house in Byron Bay. My sister had a particular talent for getting into the coup and letting out all the chickens. So one Christmas Grandma gave her a necklace with a tiny bell on it. She said it would mean that she could hear Mandy going to the chicken coop so she would be able to stop her from letting out the chickens. I think this is the essence of how I remember my grandmother, always resourceful with a bit of a playful side and as my brother says, she could occasionally be a partner in crime.

Grandma was borne in Billimare, near Cowra. Her father was a share farmer and carter so large parts of her early life were spent moving around rural NSW as her father worked in different areas. Grandma's early schooling took place at Eugowra, then later as the family settled down and became more stable she went to High School at Orange. Grandma used to describe the drive to school in a trap, travelling on dirty roads and getting very dusty. The trip would vary in length depending on where her parents were living at the time.

After she left school Grandma worked at a bakery in Orange. She always described herself as a bit of a rebel and it was at this time that she decided that she would like to move to Sydney. Unfortunately the war intervened and she ended up staying in Orange longer, however she was unable to continue working in the bakery and so she got another job working as a nurse in the local hospital. She saw this as her contribution to the war effort.

During the war Grandma met her first husband, Jeffrey Carter. They wrote to each other for a while when he was away and after the war they were married only months after he got back. This suited Grandma well as she had wanted to get out of Orange and Jeffrey was a local boy who had moved to Sydney.

While with Jeffrey, Grandma had three daughters, Sharon, Lyn and Narelle. Unfortunately Grandma and Jeff's marriage did not work out and Grandma was left with three young daughters to look after on her own, in Granville, with no family support. It was during this time that she met Bill.

Bill and Grandma lived together for many years and were able to share the care of Grandma's three young girls, the two new babies Rodney and Graeme and Bill's other children on the occasions that they lived with the rest of the family. Because of the flexibility of Bill's shift work Grandma was able to take on some cleaning work. This worked well for them as it meant that they could usually share the care of the children. As the children got older and needed less care Grandma got work at Walton's, a big department type warehouse. Grandma would do the sorting and ship clothes out to the stores.

On going on a holiday to Byron Bay Grandma fell in love with the area, and she and Bill decided to move. They packed up and moved up to Byron Bay where they bought a trucking business that was run from home. By this stage the older children had left home and the last remaining girl, Narelle, was to move out shortly after the family arrived in Byron Bay.

The trucking business was a success for the family and they ran it until Bill started having health problems and became semi retired. At this stage they decided to move to Coraki. The house they bought in Coraki was an old Queenslander type and was the embodiment of a dream for Grandma. She loved the house, especially the veranda and the feeling of familiarity that it gave her as it reminded her of her own grandmothers house that she had visited so frequently as a child.

During these later years Grandma watched her family grow as each of them first got married and then had children. She was very excited as even her grandchildren had children and she got to see her first great grand children. This extended family meant a lot to her and she loved to see all of us.

Grandma was extremely proud of all her children. She was proud of her daughters for their independence and although she felt that they were a great distance away from her she was very proud that they had felt able to build successful lives where they were. She also felt proud of her boys, as both had families and made their own lives both near and far from her.

Over the last couple of years Grandma had some times when she was very sick. To help her manage she had moved to a nursing home and this is where she had spent the last year or so of her life. Although I, and others from a distance tried to keep up with her during this time it was difficult. We called and she was out or people were over or she was off doing something. She seemed to be living life to the fullest and loving it. I am sad that I will not get a chance to talk to her again, but I feel it is a wonderful thing that right up the last she was enjoying her life.

Grandma's family was extensive and extremely important to her. Right up until the last minute she kept up with her family as was shown by the letter that her older sister Joan received on the Monday after she had died, wishing her happy birthday. She will be missed.

Not having to run off to the nursing home for grandpa every couple of days has meant that at long last I have a little bit of time to do some of the things that have been bugging me for a while. This of course resulted in the whole go see about the mole and have it cut out of my back fun filled day. I have added to this by going and getting my eye's checked I needed a new perscription and another pair of glasses, not too dramatic. But then there is my foot. This has been an on going issue for about a year. In a word my foot is sore. There doesn't seem to be any reason for this, as far as I know I have not damaged it in anyway. It is sore enough to be irritating, but hey it has taken me a whole year to do anything about it so it can't be too bad. But I have now finally seen a podiatrist. She has strapped my foot, told me to come back every week and get another strapping on it, probably for the next month and to have an ultra sound.
So now I still have strapping on my back, at least it doesn't hurt so much now, and I have strapping on my foot which is likely to be there for at least the next month. I give up, just wrap me in cotton wool and put me on a chair for the rest of the year. Apparently if I move I am likely to break.

We we woke up to an orange light surrounding our house this morning. The glow was quite beautiful and I sort of lay there wondering where the fire was for a few minutes before I thought that if it was a fire we were a bit to close to it. So I made Stig get up and check it out. Once he did that and we discovered it was just a dust storm I got the camera out and went and took a few photos of the park. The photos don't show the beauty of the glow as that had subsided a bit as the sun rose more, but still, it does show the overall orangness of everything.

Catching up on all the things I have been meaning to do but have put of for months I went and got my skin checked out yesterday. Pale freckly skin means lots of small moles and I do try to get them checked regularly. One of them on my back had been looking a bit odd to me so I thought I would ask the doctor about it. Here I was thinking that he would tell me it was nothing to worry about and make sure I get it checked again next year. Well before I knew it he had me lying down, “it's best if we just take this one out. If I just biopsy it because it is small if there is a problem I may miss it, and I will have taken half the mole anyway so I will just take the whole thing out.”

So down I lay and he takes a 1cm square and 1cm deep chunk of flesh out. I was so surprised I think I was in shock. I was totally convinced that it was my imagination and that I was just being careful. Now that mole had been looked at before and no one else had taken it out. I think the doctor was also being careful but as far as he was concerned it had changed enough to warrant being taken out.

Not thinking about it at the time I hadn't really thought that it may be painful, after all it was just a small mole. But going 1cm deep, on my scapula meant he also took out a chunk of muscle. So a bit of pain last night but surprisingly the thing that is most difficult is that I had problems changing gears and driving the car.

I think I am still in shock.

I have always found the links between occupations and names fascinating. My own Bean with Naturopath, I have relatives Mildwater and Freshwater who used to work in the water industry. A friend of mine who is also a Naturopath Greenacre and many others. I am sure you have all come across them. Today I booked in for a podiatrist appointment- it is time I attended to that foot that has been sore for since last year. Anyway my appointment is next week with Sole.

Yesterday was my grandfathers funeral so I am putting his eulogy up here for those who were unable to make it.

My relationship with my grandfather really developed over the last six years. Our family had gradually lost contact, and while researching my family tree I came across some details suggesting that my grandfather was still alive. Through other family contacts I tracked him down and he was reunited with the majority of us. In the process I found out a lot about my grandfather and what his life had been like up until the day that we saw him again.

Grandpa was born in Manildra in 1924. His family had lived in Manildra for a long time and all his childhood memories are centred around growing up there. One of his most precious memories was of his father bringing home his first truck. Grandpa's father was so proud of his new green 1928 Chevy truck and always kept it clean and shiny. Grandpa was about four at the time and thought he would help his father keep the new truck clean, so on the day it arrived as the rest of the family were celebrating, grandpa went out to clean it. It had been raining the day before so he used the water from the puddles near by to wash the truck. He cleaned as high as he could reach, all the way around including the chrome and the emu on the front of the truck. Then he went inside as the truck dried. It was a few hours later as the family was saying goodbye to those that came to visit that they went outside to see the truck covered in muddy smears as high as a five year old boy could reach.

Being from a relatively poor family grandpa did not go onto high school. He moved to Sydney where his mother had moved before him and got work. At first he worked in a biscuit factory in Ashfield but during the war lots of workers that were considered to be doing non-essential work were moved onto other jobs. Grandpa was one of these and he was moved onto a condenser factory. As he was quite a pernickety man this didn't really appeal to grandpa, in his own words “it was to oily”. However even here he saw the opportunity for a bit of a lark.

One of the workers who went by the name of Mick was known for going into the toilets for a nap each day. So one day they ran a copper wire to the toilet seat and attached it to a couple of condensers. Its not known how many volts hit Mick that day but apparently it was the last time he sat down at a toilet before checking around the bowl.

Not long after this grandpa went to war. Aside from a large amount of training he saw fighting in New Britain. It was here that he was injured by a daisy cutter, so called because they flew low and when they exploded they would trim the grass around them with the shrapnel with which they were loaded. The advice from older and wiser soldiers was not to drop when these came near as it was better for them to damage your legs than your face and head. Grandpa adhered to this advice and had reason to be glad. His leg was damaged badly but he lived to tell the tale.

On leaving the war it was not long before grandpa married a girl that had written to him for some of the war. He always claimed that the three best things he ever did was as a result of that marriage, his daughters Sharon, who could not be here with us today, Lyn and Narelle.

Unfortunately Jeffrey and Shirley's marriage didn't work out and so they separated. Grandpa later married the woman who was probably the love of his life, Mary. Together they travelled and spent many years together. During this time grandpa's career took him into the corrective services, first as a prison officer and later as a senior facilities manager. Grandpa loved this work as it gave him many opportunities to go to courses to educate himself and to better his own situation. Grandpa thought that education was incredibly important and even if he could not have the formal education that he wanted he didn't see this as a reason to stop learning. This was a characteristic that he showed throughout his life and his daughter Sharon attributes her love of classical music and history to evenings spent with him, as a young girl when her mother and sisters had gone to bed.

In later years as we got to know him, my grandfather would talk about his memories of his children and what they had been like when they were little. Of my mother he remembered a train trip when they played a game called mouse trap. The idea was to hit the others hand. My mother was very exuberant about the way she played this game and ended up giving my grandfather a blood nose. Auntie Lyn he remembered as gregarious and chatty never sitting still and always ready to go off and see the neighbours. I think that much of this is still characteristic of Auntie Lyn and like my grandfather I rely on her to keep me up to date with all the goings on in her side of the family. Auntie Narelle was much younger when my grandfather left, but he still had memories of her that he liked to share. One of his most fond memories was of taking her into a shop and looking around as he heard laughter to see her parading around in one of the wigs.

My grandfathers memories of his life are very special to me and I am really glad that we were able share them and others. He was able to see his family grow to include not just his three daughters and seven grandchildren but also five great grandchildren. He loved to go out with me and my family and tell everyone that I was his grand daughter and to introduce them to his great grand children. I am sorry that he didn't live long enough to hear that his family is growing even more and that another great grandchild is due, through Auntie Narelle's son Jarrod. He would have been very excited by this news.

As I have only put uni stuff up on my LJ for the last few weeks I thought it about time that I actually write a bit about other things. So I am writing about Jelly fish. On the weekend the kids and I went for a walk down to the river. Parramatta river has a little tributary off it that flows just past our house, it now looks like a large storm water drain but still follows the course of the original creek. The creek was and is known and Charity Creek.

So last weekend we went to feed the ducks walking along charity creek as we went. You can imagine my amazement when we saw hundreds of Jelly Fish. After watching them for a while and feeding the ducks we went home and I did a bit of googling so see if I could find out what sort of Jelly Fish they were. They turned out to be Moon Jelly fish, probably named so because of the moon shaped or horse she shaped reproductive organs in the centre that can glow anything from pink to blue. Apparently they are also harmless, or that is what I thought from the reading I did.

We took the camera out to see if we could get some good photos of the jelly fish. Unfortunately they don't show up very well and it was hard to get anything in clumps but I did get a few. We also found that as the tide was going out there were a lot of them stranded up closer to our house so we were able to get a better photo of them.

While we were taking photos we bumped into a couple of kids and their coach trying to get a soccer ball out of the creek. With my new found knowledge I told them that the jelly fish were called moon jelly fish and are supposed to be harmless. I don't know if they jumped in the water and retrieved their soccer ball but I did find another article on moon jelly fish later. Apparently they are harmless but they sting like buggery. Oops!

Our first meeting in second life happened on Monday the 10^th of August. It was good to meet other people with an interest in second life as a learning tool. It was also very useful to have someone go through some of the tools that can be used in SL. It does appear that SL could be a great place to conduct team meetings etc. I have since looked into more on having voice enabled meetings. SL seems to be more promising then many of the other VoIP (voice over internet protocol) as voices can be moved into different groups and then back again depending on the needs of the meeting. So in any one meeting it would be possible to break off into numerous small meetings if needed. This I think has great advantages.

However, more on our meeting. We all joined up in the main entry hall.

Here we met Jass and one of her previous students. For all those who know how short I am in real life I found out I am really tall in SL. I had no idea and it quite strange! It must be the shoes. :)

As you can see SL still has some weird things happening in it with people standing in the middle of the coffee table.

From the main entrance hall after a bit of a chat about Education Online and what we would be learning we moved to the meeting room and all sat down.

From here we all went down to the recreation room downstairs. The sun was setting which was quite nice. It took us all a little bit of time to try out the different sort of communication techniques and to figure out how to fly. I have to say I am pretty bad at it and keep bumping into people. But as everyone else kept bumping into me as well I guess this is not unexpected.

From here we all figured out how to accept transport srl's (links within second life that one person places into chat so that others can follow them to where they are). We used this to go shopping for new clothes etc. I am still pretty happy with the clothes I found the other day so I just got some new hair. I am now a fiery redhead which nicely shows off the ear rings I found the other day as well.

During the meeting someone accidentally managed to get to Paris. This sounded like such a good idea to me, plus the fact that I wanted to put up a photo of Rae with her new hair, so I went to 19^th century Paris and had a look around. I have to say this is one of the best places I have been in SL. I will chat about it another time. So here is a photo of Rae with her red hair driving a cab in 19^th century Paris, just outside Notre Dame Cathedral.
I wish Rae's skirt wouldn't keep sinking through everything though! :)

As a virtual world Second Life (SL) can provide unique opportunities to explore educational resources that would otherwise be unavailable to students. For example in my recent prac I had to teach Year 11 Biology. I was covering Life on Earth. This part of the curriculum asks for an overview of the beginning of earth and theories of how life may have begun. Unfortunately this is all theory and very boring both to teach and be taught.

There is one experiment that Stanley Miller and Harold Urey developed in the 1950's. This experiment takes what was known at the time about what the earth was like around the time life started and created these conditions in a lab. Unfortunately the experiment itself is not particularly amazing as all you end up with is a brown sludge with some genetic material and amino acids being produced.

I thought that this may be a good focus for my second assignment, creating an environment so that students could see what earth was like at this time. This I felt would be more entertaining than doing the sort of chalk and talk and work sheets that I was restricted to during my prac.

In the process of doing some research on the educational uses of Second Life I found http://slurl.com/secondlife/livingintheuniverse/ this is a SL link so you will be unable to go to it unless you have SL installed.

This place in SL is a timeline all set up with examples of how earth was formed, what it was like when earth first began and what sort of things happened along the way. It covers all of the details I was interested in and would be perfect for using as a Year 11 Biology teaching tool for this subject. So I went for a walk down the time line gathering photographs of some of the events I needed to teach as I went.

I hope you enjoy the journey I went on. By the way I figured out how to take normal photographs of myself, how to change my hair, how to sit down and how to take the wings off my head. So I appear very different here to in my last posting.

This is Rae Quinnell looking at the Urey Miller experiment. As you can see I can walk right around it and have a look at it. There is also a poster of the experiment on the wall. I would have liked to have seen the experiment actually showing the whole process rather than as static, but still it gives a lot of information.

Next you can see behind Rae and in the tunnel, Rae is in an example of what the earth may have looked like as it was cooling. I didn't manage to get any with meteorites falling on Rae but this did happen as she walked through the tunnel. Just one more example of trying to make this an interactive experience. The noise is fun to!

From here you can see the process of the earth cooling. As you can see when Rae was walking through the tunnel was right at the beginning of the whole process. The next step along the pathway is life on earth, the Urey-Miller expreiment but I have already put the photo up as it was the origins for the desire to go looking for this sort of space in SL. So instead I will show you some of the interactive displays that were showen just after the experiment. These show the formation of DNA and ultimately life.

You can also see by the spiral poster to the left where Rae is on the time line and how much further she has to walk to reach the present.

The learning objects in SL are completely user generated. This particular learning object, the time line, was developed by students at the University of Arizona. The display took over two semesters and is continuing this year. As you can see Rae only walked a fraction of the time line spiral. Other parts of the spiral apparently include listening to dinosaurs eat and the moon landing. Rae still has a long way to walk and this is only one of the education resources that she and I are interested in.
http://sleducation.wikispaces.com/educationaluses_page3#science

 

Well there are so many things that I should have been doing today but didn't. So instead of doing all those things I re-read and re-watched Elizabeth Gaskell's 'North and South' and the BBC version. It is a beautiful book. There are lots of comparisons to Pride and Prejudice to be made but I like John Thornton better than Fitzwilliam Darcy. Mr. Thornton has more depth and is more human. He has a temper, more so in the series than in the book, but present in both. He has a lot more uncertainty than Mr. Darcy right up until the end of the book/ movie.
In North and South there is the added aspect of the dichotomy of the attitudes and the life experienced in the South of England and that of the North of England. These are beautifully bought out in both the book and the series. Jane Austen just does not show the same sense of social justice that Elizabeth Gaskell relates.
Having said all that what inspired me to re-read these books was a present from Stig "Pride and Prejudice and Zombies" by Jane Austen and Seth Grahame-Smith. In the words of the publishers JANE AUSTEN is the author of Sense and Sensibility, Persuasion, Mansfield Park, and other masterpieces of English Literature. SETH GRAHAME-SMITH once took a class in English Literature. He lives in Los Angeles.
As this book is essentially Pride and Prejudice with added zombie scenes it is a pretty good read if you are prepared to have a beloved book altered with zombie scenes. As a light read it was amusing although a bit of a shock the first time when this becomes really evident, at the first ball. We have just met Bingley, his sisters and Mr. Darcy, Mr. Darcy has just insulted Elizabeth and she is out for blood. I should mention here that Elizabeth is really quite blood thirsty in this book. so she takes out her dagger to go after Mr. Darcy, only to hear "a chorus of screams... immediately joined by the shattering of window panes. Unmentionables poured in, their movements clumsy yet swift; their burial clothing in a range of untidiness."
"As guests fled in every direction, Mr. Bennett's voice cut through the commotion. "Girls! Pentagram of Death!""
"From the Corner of the room, Mr. Darcy watched Elizabeth and her sisters work their way outward, beheading zombie after zombie as they went. "
There are non-zombie scenes that have occasionally been added as well that are a bit crass but the whole thing works quite well. Stig was appalled that I could actually tell where some of the scenes had been changed slightly to move faster,in-line with the BBC series rather than the original book. These are few and far between but there is the occasional difference. As far as Stig was concerned he was not sure which one was more worrying, the fact that I had read the book enough that I noticed or the fact that I had watched the BBC series enough that I noticed, or the combination of both.
I am not sure how much more holiday reading I will get done but it was lots of fun to go through both of these. I think however that it may be time for a change. Maybe some Oscar Wilde or maybe even something modern. Not sure yet.
I hate when I come to the end of a good book and don't know where to go next.

This is very amusing!
http://www.newsday.com/news/opinion/ny-walt-babyboomers-blurb,0,1036393.blurb

Finally weeded the garden today. This is a chore that has needed to be done since about December. First I put it off because it was too hot, then I put it off because it was too wet, then I just got into the habit of putting the whole thing off and so did nothing. But we have things coming up and it needed to be done, so today was the big day.
It was quite and adventure really. For a start we had put in a whole lot of vegetables in spring, and had eaten virtually none of them, so who knew what I was going to find. What I did find was that the leeks had mostly been scorched to death, so I pulled up the remaining two and they will be had for dinner tonight- yum! We have about 6 pumpkins on the vine, one of which has been pulled off but the others have yet to turn yellow. They should be very nice and I think will need to be roasted. I love butternut pumpkin!
I found  a bucket full of eggplants. I had thought the eggplants had died, or at the very least were not really producing much, but what had actually happened was that the grass had grown up so long that I had been unable to see the fruit. Then finally the plants themselves had fallen over from the sheer weight of the fruit. This didn't seem to stop them from growing more fruit. I have now cleared the grass, staked the eggplants and cut off all the fruit. I am not sure we can eat this amount of eggplant but I will see what we can do.
Finally we found a couple of very small capsicum's, some very large carrots and some strawberries. S promptly trod on the strawberries, but it didn't stop her from eating them. I am not sure if the carrots are actually edible. They have grown to a huge size and some of them have gone to seed so they may be a bit woody. Actually the ones that have gone to seed will certainly be too woody, the others, well who knows.
Stig helped in the garden as well, mostly he was mowing the grass and finding the Agave cactus- anything that makes alcohol is a priority for him. Umm we must find the hops too. However Stig did find the beetroot and the potatoes. I wonder if we have enough fully grown potatoes to make leek and potato soup. We also found some spinach, but not enough to do much with. I think it may be time to plant some more.
We have a new batch of tomatoes coming through to. We grow them every year, but we haven't actually planted any for years. They just seem to come up when they want to. Most of the year we have a pretty constant supply but we have had to buy some just recently as we are in between batches. This feels a bit weird as tomatoes are just something we never have to buy. It will be good to get a new batch through.
All in all, the herbs are growing well, we have found the garden again and I am looking forward to a lovely dinner if I can get up enough enthusiasm to cook it. But I am also feeling a little sore. These things really should be done in small batches not four beds at a time.
Nice day for it!

I was supposed to march for Anzac Day today. It would have been the first time that my grandfather had marched with one of his family members and he was really looking forward to it. Unfortunately he was too sick to go, even with the wheel chair that we had organised for him. Instead we took him lunch and spent some time with him at his place.
Anzac Day is one of those weird sorts of occasions when I feel my loyalties are a bit tied. I really dislike the rampant militarism of the day and find it hard to deal with something that from an ideological standpoint I really disagree with. But, I respect my grandfathers contribution to the Second World War ( and for that matter my Great Grandfathers contribution to the same war, his only war wound was caused by a slip in the shower where he cracked his head open) and can understand why it is important for us to march with him. I don't know if we will get another chance. I really don't know if I want to march, but if I do get another chance to march with him I will take it!