March chitchat

[Virginia]

Thank you Jingle and Agate. I am feeling somewhat blue today. Mainly due to my cousin's passing. We kept each other company for many years, on the phone. She couldn't drive in Raleigh and I stopped driving the 60 miles one way to see her a couple of years after my Aunt Virginia died. My cousin was 5 years younger than I am. It came as a shock. I have one cousin left. Her brother and he only kept up somewhat with her, but I doubt that he and his wife would know how to contact me. He is a Psychiatrist, but I would not want him to be mine.

I am concerned about my face. It has been so long. A friend took a look at it Monday and felt that it was infected so I went to the doctor Wednesday. So far there is no difference.

[agate]

Sometimes antibiotics take a couple of days to start making a noticeable difference. I hope that there won't turn out to be bit of gravel causing the problem, Virginia, but if that is what is happening, maybe the surgery won't be so bad.

I never knew either of my two cousins and don't know much about them. One died many years ago of alcoholic liver cirrhosis, only in his 40s. Drinking has affected a few people in my family adversely. I may be the only teetotaler in the lot.

It's nice when people can have cousins as friends. My grandson is lucky that way--he often gets together with his two cousins who are just a few years older than he is. They seem to get along and may remain friends for life.

[Prot]

One died many years ago of alcoholic liver cirrhosis, only in his 40s. Drinking has affected a few people in my family adversely. I may be the only teetotaler in the lot.

I could never tell whether my mother was a 'problem drinker' or an alcoholic . Her drinking got worse over time, especially after retiring. She tended to be verbally aggressive and paranoid when she'd had too much to drink. I have pictures of her with me as a baby. She looks very happy. At some point something went wrong because over the years she'd repeatedly tell me I was an awkward baby/toddler/child/teenager etc. Attempts to persuade not to drink were met with' I drink because- something done by me or my siblings ' .

I think the drinking got markedly worse and her marriage to my father significantly deteriorated over my going to prep(boarding school 8-13). She wanted him to switch to working at the home office. He wouldn't do so. 10 years at boarding school, the bullying - especially at public school ,destroyed any potential I'd had. I still struggle with the effects of that bullying.

[agate]

I often thought I'd have absolutely hated boarding school and was always so glad that I escaped that. It seemed to be a way for parents who could afford it to unload themselves of children they were finding to be too much of a problem even if the "problem" was that the parents didn't really want to be parents any more.

When I was in high school the family downstairs in the apartment building we lived in was a very sad case in point. They had two boys who were about my age who went to military school. The father was retired from the Navy, and he and his wife mostly just sat around all day and drank and argued at the top of their lungs.

Maybe those two boys were better off being away from that mess most of the time but I had a feeling they weren't that much better off. The whole scene was so very sad.

[Prot]

The Foreign office paid a large chunk of our boarding school fees. As 1st generation boarding school pupils my brother and I were regarded as lesser beings by the headmasters.

[Virginia]

I would also have hated boarding school. I was very close to my mother and would not have wanted to be away from home during those years. But she would not have let me go anyway. I did live with my grandmother for nearly a year when I was 14. My parents brought my two younger brothers and came most weekends. My grandmother was sick and needed someone with her. My older brother and I were very close to our grandmother because we lived in the same house until my brother was about 7 and I was 4 1/2. We both cried when my dad's job took us to a city that was about 90 miles away.

Agate, there were 3 girl cousins on my mother's side. Both are now deceased and that leaves only me. I didn't have any cousins on my father's side. He was an only child.

[Prot]

I have a half cousin. She is 18 years older than me. I've not seen her for over 40 years. I don't feel close to her.

[agate]

The Foreign office paid a large chunk of our boarding school fees. As 1st generation boarding school pupils my brother and I were regarded as lesser beings by the headmasters.

Tim, I'm not sure what you mean by 1st generation boarding school pupils--pupils whose parents didn't attend that boarding school, maybe? How sad if that was the way it worked--and that the headmasters would go to the trouble of figuring out who was in the "in" group and who wasn't.

Virginia, how nice that you were close to your grandmother and even lived with her for a year to help her. Not very many families are that close any more, or at least that's my impression.

[Prot]

1st generation = It can relate to being the first in a family to do something, such as attending university

[agate]

The boarding schools are really that exclusive? That must have been very hard to take--feeling like a second-class citizen all the time.

[Prot]

The boarding schools are really that exclusive? That must have been very hard to take--feeling like a second-class citizen all the time.

What is the average British prep and public school fee?



The average fees for British prep and public schools vary depending on whether the student is a day pupil or a boarder:

• Prep Schools: For day pupils, the average fee is approximately £4,980 per term, which totals around £14,940 per year. For boarders, the average is significantly higher at £11,763 per term, or about £35,289 per year.
• Public Schools: These are typically more expensive, with fees for day pupils averaging around £6,636 per term and boarding fees reaching £11,609 per term.

My parents didn't come from posh backgrounds. Both were very intelligent(mother 98.83 percentile,father 99.44 percentile) but chose for differing reasons not to go to college/uni. There were boys whose father's father's father's etc had gone to boarding school. My brother and I weren't among those who got special treatment. Neither of us were regarded as 'particularly intelligent' at prep school.My brother even less so than me.

[agate]

Those fees are staggering. I don't suppose there are scholarships available?

Virginia, you haven't checked in in a while, and I've heard about severe weather in your part of the world. I hope you're not in the midst of any of it.

[Prot]

Those fees are staggering. I don't suppose there are scholarships available?

There are scholarships available for very able boys and girls from less wealthy families to go to public school.
Academic achievement in those of school age correlates more with executive functioning than with intelligence level.
Poor executive functioning meant I seriously underperformed at school. If the Foreign office hadn't paid towards school fees there is no way that my parents could've
afforded to send me to private school.

[Prot]

As Adults Age With MS, Should They Shed Their Meds?



Only registered and activated users can see links., Click Here To Register...

[agate]

I hadn't heard of the Elliott Lewis Center for MS. It seems to be one of the MS centers that have sprung up all over the US--and is probably very handy for patients who receive regular infusions of an MS drug:

Only registered and activated users can see links., Click Here To Register...

That's an interesting and informative article, Tim--thank you for finding and posting it. The Dr. John Corboy who is quoted several times in the article is one of the most active people in MS research.

[Prot]

Negligence claim has been settled. Not as much as expected and would've been reasonable. On that my daughter and I fully agreed. The reasons? Deceitfulness by the ambulance crew/paramedics and a supposedly independent psychiatric consultant who jumped to the conclusion, on almost no information, that I had an adjustment disorder. His reckoning ? A bit of CBT and physio would fix me . I sent the solicitor an article that heavily criticised the approach taken by that consultant. See Only registered and activated users can see links., Click Here To Register... . She chose to ignore it.

Given the outcome, and the very dirty and dishonest tactics used to refute what happened, I wouldn't do the same again,or agree to my daughter doing so, if the same kind of situation occurred in the future. Although my daughter made the claim on my behalf - my autism and serious mental illness was used to weaken the negligence claim.