Irregular Programming

After chatting about shiftwork last week, I planned to spend this week talking about why we’re working longer and later hours. But then some stuff cropped up, and there’s going to have to be a change to our scheduled programming.

First, here’s LongSufferingReaderOfTheBlogPaul’s favourite track of 2018 [sic], regardless.

Rule of thumb: That guy would never swimmie-swim knows what he’s talking about

[Sleep patterns messed up? The Apoplexy Tiny Letter can help with that.]

Now the embargo has been lifted, I can reveal that the person I had been talking to about my stroke experience before last week’s post was the Communications and Engagement Manager of the British Heart Foundation.

The BHF was gearing up to push a campaign focusing on co-morbidities relating to heart conditions, and the need for continuing research into heart conditions. It’s all interesting stuff, and worth knowing about whether you have a heart condition or not.

Bearing in mind it’s not always that obvious

Yeah, it’s really not. I’m reminded of talking with folks in my Aneurysm Awareness group back in Brooklyn and hearing about people who had golf-ball-sized (and larger) brain aneurysms, and had had no idea until those aneurysms were imaged.

So I thought that it might be worth sharing some of the things I learned from the BHF campaign.

Wait! This apoplectic.me info is interesting and useful!

The headline finding of recent analysis commissioned by the BHF is that

[n]ine in ten people with coronary heart disease in Scotland are living with at least one other

long-term condition, such as stroke, dementia and high blood pressure.

Nearly six in ten people living with coronary heart disease have at least three other long term conditions.

Congratulations, Stroke Bloke!

Yeah. Thanks, everyone.

Not only that, but the number of people living with heart and circulatory diseases living with five or more additional illnesses increased fourfold from 2000 to 2014. Long-suffering readers might not be entirely surprised by these figures, knowing that people are living longer and longer and that the heart has a finite life.

“Just get an extra set of regenerations, it’s cool.”

But as usual, things are a bit more complicated than that. The BHF campaign points out that the reasons for this are poorly understood and not fully accounted for by an ageing population.

[M]ore research is urgently needed to improve our understanding of how conditions like stroke and vascular dementia are connected, and to develop new treatments for people living with multiple conditions.

Well, given all that, the BHF needed a human face to illustrate the numbers behind the campaign in Scotland. A simple face.

Are you sitting comfortably?