About Me
- Satima Flavell
- Perth, Western Australia, Australia
- I am based in Perth, Western Australia. You might enjoy my books - The Dagger of Dresnia, the first book of the Talismans Trilogy, is available at all good online book shops as is Book two, The Cloak of Challiver. Book three, The Seer of Syland, is in preparation. I trained in piano and singing at the NSW Conservatorium of Music. I also trained in dance (Scully-Borovansky, WAAPA) and drama (NIDA). Since 1987 I have been writing reviews of performances in all genres for a variety of publications, including Music Maker, ArtsWest, Dance Australia, The Australian and others. Now semi-retired, I still write occasionally for the ArtsHub website.
My books
The first two books of my trilogy, The Talismans, (The Dagger of Dresnia, and book two, The Cloak of Challiver) are available in e-book format from Smashwords, Amazon and other online sellers. Book three of the trilogy, The Seer of Syland, is in preparation.I also have a short story, 'La Belle Dame', in print - see Mythic Resonance below - as well as well as a few poems in various places.
The best way to contact me is via Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/satimaflavell
Buy The Talismans
The first two books of The Talismans trilogy were published by Satalyte Publications, which, sadly, has gone out of business. However, The Dagger of Dresnia and The Cloak of Challiver are available as ebooks on the usual book-selling websites, and book three, The Seer of Syland, is in preparation.
The easiest way to contact me is via Facebook.
The Dagger of Dresnia

The Cloak of Challiver, Book two of The Talismans

Available as an e-book on Amazon and other online booksellers.
Mythic Resonance
Mythic Resonance is an excellent anthology that includes my short story 'La Belle Dame', together with great stories from Alan Baxter, Donna Maree Hanson, Sue Burstynski, Nike Sulway and nine more fantastic authors! Just $US3.99 from Amazon.
Got a Kindle? Check out Mythic Resonance.
Follow me on Twitter
Share a link on Twitter
For Readers, Writers & Editors
- A dilemma about characters
- Adelaide Writers Week, 2009
- Adjectives, commas and confusion
- An artist's conflict
- An editor's role
- Authorial voice, passive writing and the passive voice
- Common misuses: common expressions
- Common misuses: confusing words
- Common misuses: pronouns - subject and object
- Conversations with a character
- Critiquing Groups
- Does length matter?
- Dont sweat the small stuff: formatting
- Free help for writers
- How much magic is too much?
- Know your characters via astrology
- Like to be an editor?
- Modern Writing Techniques
- My best reads of 2007
- My best reads of 2008
- My favourite dead authors
- My favourite modern authors
- My influential authors
- Planning and Flimmering
- Planning vs Flimmering again
- Psychological Spec-Fic
- Readers' pet hates
- Reading, 2009
- Reality check: so you want to be a writer?
- Sensory detail is important!
- Speculative Fiction - what is it?
- Spelling reform?
- Substantive or linking verbs
- The creative cycle
- The promiscuous artist
- The revenge of omni rampant
- The value of "how-to" lists for writers
- Write a decent synopsis
- Write a review worth reading
- Writers block 1
- Writers block 2
- Writers block 3
- Writers need editors!
- Writers, Depression and Addiction
- Writing in dialect, accent or register
- Writing it Right: notes for apprentice authors
My Blog List
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Hockey, a Bookish Romance, & More - *The Duke Heist* *The Duke Heist by Erica Ridley is $1.99 and a Kindle Daily Deal! This is book one in a new series and was mentioned on a previous Hide ...2 hours ago
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Canine Enhancement of the Writing Life - Have you read Barbara O’Neal’s latest WU post? If not, I recommend going there first and reading it—even if you run out of time and can’t make it back to...7 hours ago
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What to do with too many books? - [image: Room full of white bookshelves full of books surrounding a doorway] What to do with too many books? A while ago, my wife and I had some work done o...1 day ago
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The Eve of Ages of Pages - I have had an enjoyable time in Auckland in the run up to Ages of Pages. The weather has been interesting. Wind, rain and some sun, but compared to nights ...3 days ago
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The Eve of Ages of Pages - I have had an enjoyable time in Auckland in the run up to Ages of Pages. The weather has been interesting. Wind, rain and some sun, but compared to nights ...3 days ago
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Latest newsletter – 22nd April 2025 - Hello fiends I hope this finds you well. Or at least surviving. It’s a wild time out there, and most of us are just swimming along, trying to keep our he...6 days ago
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The Revision Ripple Effect - *By Janice Hardy, @Janice_Hardy * *Tiny tweaks in a story can cause a tidal wave of changes. * Maybe I’m a writing freak, but I actually love revisions. A...1 week ago
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IFWG Publishing and IPI Comics at Supanova Gold Coast 2025 - Supanova was a blast, on the Gold Coast, last weekend! There was a new layout this year, as the con has grown so big it now takes up the main arena downsta...1 week ago
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"The Tic-Toc Boy of Constantinople" reprinted in the anthology The Apparatus Almanac Ed. Jessica Augustsson; bit on a Goodreads Dilemma, and other writers' on stories - * "The Tic-Toc Boy of Constantinople"in The Apparatus Almanac: Gizmology and Technomancy Ed. Jessica Augustsson * It's always a thrill when stories reeme...3 weeks ago
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The Great Discworld Retrospective No. 41: The Shepherd’s Crown - Sir Terry Pratchett passed away on March 12, 2015. An advocate of Assisted Dying, he nevertheless succumbed to the conditions of his Alzheimer’s Disease an...1 month ago
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Teaching Schedule in 2025 - Please click the Travel and Teaching Page for Bhante Rahul's teaching schedule in 20252 months ago
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This feed has moved and will be deleted soon. Please update your subscription now. - The publisher is using a new address for their RSS feed. Please update your feed reader to use this new URL: *https://problogger.com/feed/*3 months ago
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A Little Piece of Alternative History - Elizabeth, Duchess of Norfolk, is a good height for a woman, but not tall – only her headdress make her seem so. As a recent widow, she is clad entir...3 months ago
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Breaking the Silence - Over the past many months, I have watched the stories circulating the internet about me with horror and dismay. I’ve stayed quiet until now, both out of ...3 months ago
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Photo Parade 2024 - I’ve decided to participate in the annual Photo Parade (Fotoparade) on Michael’s blog Erkunde die Welt (Discover the World) again. My post from last year’s...3 months ago
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Happy Public Domain Day 2025, the end of copyright for 1929 works - This is my annual reminder that January 1st is Public Domain Day, and this year copyright has ended for books, movies, and music first published in the U.S...3 months ago
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Titles - This is a bit of a technical post, provoked by reading a certain novel. In England, pre-Tudors, there was only ever one Prince. The Prince of Wales, when...4 months ago
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About Holly - There is no way to soften the blow of this and Mom never liked euphemisms, so I’m just going to speak plainly. Mom died due to complications from cancer on...5 months ago
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PhD Milestone 3 at Curtin University - Yesterday I had the pleasure of doing my Milestone 3 presentation for my PhD at Curtin, which is in its final stages before it goes off to be examined. App...7 months ago
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A personal thought on the passing of publishing legend Tom McCormack - The passing of publishing giant Tom McCormack makes me recall the interaction he had with my father, Leonard Shatzkin, from the very beginning of Tom’s p...10 months ago
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Henry of Lancaster and His Children - The close bonds which Edward II's cousin Henry of Lancaster, earl of Lancaster and Leicester, forged with his children have fascinated me for a long time...1 year ago
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Questions from year 9 students - Recently – actually, not very recently but I somehow forgot to write this sooner – I did what has become an annual online Q&A with the Year 9 girls at Bedf...1 year ago
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Flogometer 1180 for Christian—will you be moved to turn the page? - Submissions sought. Get fresh eyes on your opening page. Submission directions below. The Flogometer challenge: can you craft a first page that compels me ...1 year ago
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Storny Weather - I've just been out fixing up the damage from last night's storm. This is pretty much the first time I've been able to spend much time outside and do any...1 year ago
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another review for the Christmas Maze - *The Christmas Maze by Danny Fahey – a Review by David Collis* Why do we seek to be good, to make the world a better place? Why do we seek to be ethi...2 years ago
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Tara Sharp is back and in audio book - SHARP IS BACK! Marianne Delacourt and Twelfth Planet Press are delighted to announce the fifth Tara Sharp story, a novella entitled RAZOR SHARP, will be ...3 years ago
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Non-Binary Authors To Read: July 2021 - Non-Binary Authors To Read is a regular column from A.C. Wise highlighting non-binary authors of speculative fiction and recommending a starting place fo...3 years ago
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ATTENTION: YOU CAN’T LOG IN HERE - Hey YOU! This isn’t the forum. You’re trying to login to the Web site. THE FORUMS ARE HERE: CLICK THIS The post ATTENTION: YOU CAN’T LOG IN HERE a...3 years ago
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Grants for Writers Masterclass Online - Grants For Writers Masterclass Online Winner of 6 grants, author Karen Tyrrell shares her secrets to Grant Writing for Australian writers and authors. ...5 years ago
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UPDATE ON WORK IN PROGRESS... - *THE FUGITIVE QUEEN * *(title may change!)* The initial draft of this novel has been finished at slightly under 150,000 words, so not quite as long as the...5 years ago
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Productivity - If you're looking for a post on how to be more productive in your writing, this is not it. However, if you're looking for a discussion of how we conceptual...5 years ago
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HOW TO UPGRADE YOUR LIFE - Stories end. New stories begin. It's fascinating -- the great and small adventures of every day. Honor the place where you're rooted. What stories are f...5 years ago
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Geoffrey Chaucer - [image: Geoffrey Chaucer] Geoffrey Chaucer *Geoffrey Chaucer* turned into born in 1343, the son of John and Agnes (de Copton) Chaucer. Chaucer was descen...5 years ago
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#332 - Question: I wrote LOST IN LA as a retelling of Pretty Woman with “modern” social issues, but I don’t know whether to focus on the characters, the fake rel...5 years ago
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Travelin' Man: a new Song & Music-Video from me - There's also a bit of my tongue-in-cheek, philosophy for living in the lyrics - *life should be about the journey, never about arriving. * It's also on Y...5 years ago
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Day 1: Harlequin Presentation - Sue Brockton – Publishing director Jo Mackay – head of local fiction, HQ, Mira, Escape Kita Kemp – Publisher Mills and Boon (ANZ) Nicola Caws – Editor...5 years ago
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#Mayflower400: They that in Ships unto the Sea down go - *Music for the Mayflower* *A guest post by Tamsin Lewis * I direct the early music group Passamezzo [www.passamezzo.co.uk], an established ensemble kno...5 years ago
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Book review: The Heat, by Sean O’Leary - Jake works nights as a security guard / receptionist at a budget Darwin motel. The job suits him: he has an aptitude for smelling out potential trouble, an...5 years ago
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Portrait of a first generation freed African American family - Sanford Huggins (c.1844–1889) and Mary Ellen Pryor (c.1851–1889), his wife, passed the early years of their lives in Woodford County, Kentucky, and later...5 years ago
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Review of Bell's Much Ado about Nothing - Bell Shakespeare's *Much Ado About Nothing* 2019-07-07 reviewed by Frances, our president. A group from the Shakespeare Club went last week to see the B...5 years ago
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The Girl from the Sea launches: 31 July 2019 - Some of you will already know that my new novella, The Girl from the Sea, is launching on July 31. This book is the prequel to Children of the Shaman an...5 years ago
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Six Things Writers Need To Stop Worrying About - Some things don't change. When I got my start in this biz, way back in 2002, writers had to get a lit agent to get a publisher, then they did what their pu...5 years ago
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Story Goal, Story Question, and the Protagonist’s Inner Need (Story Structure Part 1) - This is the first article in a series exploring the elements of story structure. Part 1 looks beyond the topics of three-act and mythic structure to a revi...5 years ago
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Assassin’s Apprentice Read Along - This month, in preparation for the October release of the Illustrated 25th Anniversary edition of Assassin’s Apprentice, with interior art by Magali Villan...5 years ago
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Want Booksellers to Stock Your Books? - Booksellers in your community will help you sell your books if you approach them with good sense and a professional approach.5 years ago
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The Scarred King by Rose Foreman - "From the moment he could walk, Bowmark has trained for a fight to the death. The Disc awaits him: a giant bronze platform suspended over a river of l...6 years ago
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Gratitude, therefore God? - I recently saw a video where a prominent TV personality was interviewing another TV personality who is a self-proclaimed atheist. The interviewer explained...6 years ago
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It's the End of the (Fringe) World As We Know It... - I didn't get to the Fringe World Awards because I was volunteering at another venue at the time, which is also the reason I saw almost none of the shows th...6 years ago
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A Movie That No Writer Should See Alone - Really. REALLY. Trust me on this. particularly since this film, ‘Can you ever forgive me?’, is based on a ‘True story’ – and too many writers will see too...6 years ago
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Catching up on books I've read - Recently I've been looking at some of the books I've enjoyed over the past year or so – and in the process, it's made me realise just how many I've read! M...6 years ago
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The November Tour Press Release - *Peter Grant is coming to a bookshop near you. * Meet Ben Aaronovitch on his epic tour of Great Britain to celebrate the publication of his upcoming, new ...6 years ago
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Review: Red Harvest - [image: Red Harvest] Red Harvest by Dashiell Hammett My rating: 5 of 5 stars An absolute classic featuring the most literate and technically clever of the...6 years ago
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New story at Giganotosaurus - “The Wanderers” – the furry fantasy I wrote for my kids about a couple of fox people who go off in search of the end of the earth (and then have to find th...7 years ago
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First comes painting, Then comes sketching - While enjoying my new acrylics hobby, I started a painting and decided I wanted to include a dragon statue in one of them. There was, though, a hurdle I ha...7 years ago
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More Cabinet of Oddities News - Back in 2015, I was lucky enough to be part of an amazing collaborative event put together by the talented Dr. Laura E. Goodin. The Cabinet of Oddities, a ...7 years ago
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The One and the Many – every Sunday - My first serious girlfriend came from good Roman Catholic stock. Having tried (and failed) to be raised as a Christian child and finding nothing but lifele...7 years ago
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A Shameless Plug Ian Likes: Bibliorati.com - A little-known fact is that I once had a gig reviewing books for five years. It was for a now-defunct website known as The Specusphere. It was awesome fun:...8 years ago
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10 New Youtube Videos for Medieval Lovers - Volume 2 - We found 10 more new videos on Youtube about the Middle Ages. *Rediscovered: Medieval Books at Birkbeck * This video introduces University of London - Birk...8 years ago
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2016 Wildflower Calendar – Long List - This is the ‘long list’ for a potential 2017 Wildflower Calendar. They are pictures from suburban Perth, in conservation areas, parks and verge gardens. ...8 years ago
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And Father Dragon said "let there be a planet...." - *Lo and behold, Dragon made a planet!!* Oh, I'm so very proud of myself so forgive me if I brag a little bit - way too much. I'm in the process of learn...8 years ago
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The Stars Askew - release imminent - Pre-order at Booktopia Just a short post to let you know that I am still alive and writing poetry over at the poetry blog. I also wanted to mention that...8 years ago
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The Tame Animals of Saturn - It's done. It's in the world! Often, the journey to publication is itself worthy of a book - though it'd be a tiresome book indeed. Still, I'm happy. I co...9 years ago
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Children learning English as a second language with dyslexia. Lese-rechtschreibeschwache Schüler/innen und Englisch in der Schule. - *"Legasthenie/LRS und Englisch als Fremdsprache* Lese-rechtschreibschwache Schülerinnen und Schüler bekommen in der Regel auch Schwierigkeiten in Englis...9 years ago
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Prompts, Anyone? - I'm a great fan of writing to triggers or prompts so when I was delighted came across something useful on poet Katy Evans-Bush's blog, *Baroque in Hackney....11 years ago
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Cherries In The Snow - This recipe is delicious and can also be made as a diet dessert by using fat and/or sugar free ingredients. It’s delicious and guests will think it took ...12 years ago
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Al Milgrom’s connection to “Iron Man” - Via the Ann Arbor online newspaper - I felt it was worth repeating as a great example of Marvel doing the right thing by a former employee and without the ...14 years ago
Favourite Sites
- Alan Baxter
- Andrew McKiernan
- Bren McDibble
- Celestine Lyons
- Guy Gavriel Kay
- Hal Spacejock (Simon Haynes)
- Inventing Reality
- Jacqueline Carey
- Jennifer Fallon
- Jessica Rydill
- Jessica Vivien
- Joel Fagin
- Juliet Marillier
- KA Bedford
- Karen Miller
- KSP Writers Centre
- Lynn Flewelling
- Marianne de Pierres
- Phill Berrie
- Ryan Flavell
- Satima's Professional Editing Services
- SF Novelists' Blog
- SF Signal
- Shane Jiraiya Cummings
- Society of Editors, WA
- Stephen Thompson
- Yellow wallpaper
Places I've lived: Manchester, UK

Places I've lived: Gippsland, Australia

Places I've lived: Geelong, Australia

Places I've lived: Tamworth, NSW

Places I've Lived - Sydney

Sydney Conservatorium - my old school
Places I've lived: Auckland, NZ

Places I've Lived: Mount Gambier

Blue Lake
Places I've lived: Adelaide, SA

Places I've Lived: Perth by Day

From Kings Park
Places I've lived: High View, WV

Places I've lived: Lynton, Devon, UK

Places I've lived: Braemar, Scotland

Places I've lived: Barre, MA, USA

Places I've Lived: Perth by Night

From Kings Park
Search This Blog
Sunday, 17 May 2009
Wrong in the head


Well, friends, tomorrow I go to have my head read.
Actually, it's to have a CT scan of my poor brain, which according to certain of my friends, has probably always had something wrong with it. My mother always assured me I was not right in the head, so maybe this goes back a lo-oong way. However it only caught up with me properly a few weeks ago, when I realised that I could not remember what I'd done five minutes earlier, kept losing words (which is most unusual for me: if there's one thing I'm never at a loss for it's words) and kept making silly mistakes in daily tasks. In short, I have become quite muddle-headed.
This would happen just when I'm deperately busy (see my penultimate post) and trying to do extra stuff including facilitating a reading of The Merchant of Venice for fellow members of the Perth Shakespeare Club. The whole thing skirted disaster. The day before the reading someone noticed I had not cast a couple of parts. How can one not cast a couple of parts, given a list of dramatis personae and a list of willing readers? I could, and did. Fortunately I was able to cast them both at very short notice, as well as two parts that the readers had to reneg on due to illness. The reading of acts one and two went really well, after all, so I'am grateful for small mercies. We'll tackle acts three, four and five at the June meeting, and maybe I'll have my head back together by then.
At first, the doc thought it was thyroid trouble causing the brain fog. I did indeed have a dearth of Thyroid Stimulating Hormone, but I think it must have been a lack of iodine because a few good feeds of fish pulled the levels back to normal. The foggy-headedness, however, has persisted. So tomorrow I have to take two buses and a short walk to a place where they will take nice coloured piccies of the old grey matter to see if anything else is wrong. The doctor assures me that it's not Alzheimer's, and I agree. I fully expect to get some kind of dementia, but not yet. Most of my family succumbs to dementia in their late seventies, but I should have ten more years of normal brain function before it's my turn.
I have a gut feeling that it's actually caused by a medication I've been taking for some time for a hiatus hernia. The literature tells me that it can cause confusion, depression, anxiety, memory loss and many other complaints, and I suppose I've been lucky not to have had these side effects before. I've been on the stuff for three years, and I'm one of those people who falls asleep for twelve hours after taking a pill for travel sickness. If a med can cause strange side effects, it will cause them in me.
But even if we're erring on the side of caution, the doc and I both think brain pix will be a nice thing to have. Maybe I could have them made into a collage with the pretty ones they took of my heart three years ago.
Old age? I'd just as soon give it a miss, were the alternative not so very final:-)
Actually, it's to have a CT scan of my poor brain, which according to certain of my friends, has probably always had something wrong with it. My mother always assured me I was not right in the head, so maybe this goes back a lo-oong way. However it only caught up with me properly a few weeks ago, when I realised that I could not remember what I'd done five minutes earlier, kept losing words (which is most unusual for me: if there's one thing I'm never at a loss for it's words) and kept making silly mistakes in daily tasks. In short, I have become quite muddle-headed.
This would happen just when I'm deperately busy (see my penultimate post) and trying to do extra stuff including facilitating a reading of The Merchant of Venice for fellow members of the Perth Shakespeare Club. The whole thing skirted disaster. The day before the reading someone noticed I had not cast a couple of parts. How can one not cast a couple of parts, given a list of dramatis personae and a list of willing readers? I could, and did. Fortunately I was able to cast them both at very short notice, as well as two parts that the readers had to reneg on due to illness. The reading of acts one and two went really well, after all, so I'am grateful for small mercies. We'll tackle acts three, four and five at the June meeting, and maybe I'll have my head back together by then.
At first, the doc thought it was thyroid trouble causing the brain fog. I did indeed have a dearth of Thyroid Stimulating Hormone, but I think it must have been a lack of iodine because a few good feeds of fish pulled the levels back to normal. The foggy-headedness, however, has persisted. So tomorrow I have to take two buses and a short walk to a place where they will take nice coloured piccies of the old grey matter to see if anything else is wrong. The doctor assures me that it's not Alzheimer's, and I agree. I fully expect to get some kind of dementia, but not yet. Most of my family succumbs to dementia in their late seventies, but I should have ten more years of normal brain function before it's my turn.
I have a gut feeling that it's actually caused by a medication I've been taking for some time for a hiatus hernia. The literature tells me that it can cause confusion, depression, anxiety, memory loss and many other complaints, and I suppose I've been lucky not to have had these side effects before. I've been on the stuff for three years, and I'm one of those people who falls asleep for twelve hours after taking a pill for travel sickness. If a med can cause strange side effects, it will cause them in me.
But even if we're erring on the side of caution, the doc and I both think brain pix will be a nice thing to have. Maybe I could have them made into a collage with the pretty ones they took of my heart three years ago.
Old age? I'd just as soon give it a miss, were the alternative not so very final:-)
Sunday, 10 May 2009
A new best friend



Sunday, 3 May 2009
Busy, busy, busier yet


My blogging has become, to say the least, spasmodic lately. That's because my life has become somewhat chaotic since I arrived back in Perth in early March, having gone from pleasantly industrious to red alert.
The pleasantly industrious part lasted a few weeks while I was house-sitting at the home of furry friends Gretel, Sara and Sonia. The first two ladies are of the canine variety, and both are of an age at which they need to watch their health, so there was a good deal of medication to be dealt with as well as the usual walks, bathing and grooming. Sonia the cat is as dignified and self-sufficient as ever. She's no longer young, but still enjoys excellent health apart from the odd fur ball, the bane of all long-haired cats everywhere.
It was a worrying fortnight, as I'd come back to Perth to find that two of my friends had breast cancer. However, they both had surgery and their prognoses look excellent, although one is in for a long round of chemotherapy and radiotherapy. Not much fun, I shouldn't think, but far better than the alternative. I lost two friends to breast cancer within a few months of each other back in 1995, so I am always relieved when I hear of someone who has taken early, appropriate action. Go have that mammogram, friend. It could save your life.
Of course, at sixty-six years of age I'm in the same boat as my furry friends: the body is packing up and so are those of my contemporaries. My personal current grizzle has to do with an underactive thyroid. It lowers my energy, sometimes to a level that's hardly worth measuring; makes me excessively, constantly tired; raises the heartrate and the anxiety levels, makes me feel cold even on a hot day and makes my skin so dry I could use #3 sandpaper to exfoliate. I am eating extra fish in the hope of giving the poor thyroid some reserves of iodine, but although that's helped a bit it looks as if something stronger might be needed. So perhaps soon there will be still another medication joining the hoard - or maybe that should be horde, for I have enough meds on that bench to make an army of pills and potions.
The current state of panic, I believe, is April's fault. April brought me not only the usual stress of getting the new Specusphere reviews ready to roll, but also an editing job that I really, really, wanted to do, quite apart from the financial angle. It's a biography of Jimmy Melrose, a young Australian aviator back in the 1930s who was something of a national hero. His death at the age of only 22 created a national outpouring of grief. Yet today we seldom hear his name, and the author of the biography is keen to redress that. She has written an excellent manuscript that's a pleasure to work on, but as so often happens, I received it so close to the projected publication date that it has tipped me into a state of chaos. Even so, I thought I was almost on top of things until I received a record number of reviews to edit and upload for The Specusphere. Twenty-eight of them! It's great that I have a fine team of reviewers and the trust of a dozen or more publishing houses, but to go with those things I really need two more sets of hands and eyes. It's been truly stressful this last ten days and it didn't help that for reasons beyond my ken the webzine went live on Friday instead of Sunday - sans most of the reviews. Last night was a late one, seeing me up until midnight to get them online, and meantime, authors and fans were desperately hitting the titles in the Table of Contents, only to find no substance behind the facade. As the hits mounted, so my desperation grew and I felt little but out-and-out exhaustion when I finally put the last review to bed.
But now, as usual, I am thrilled to see my babies online and already getting lots of hits. Go and see The Specusphere's nice new front page, and dip into the reviews while you're there!
So now I've only got a couple of days to do the last pass of the Melrose book (wish me, and the poor long-suffering author, luck!) and then I move on to a new housesit. The one I'm in now is lovely - in fact, I'm not a house-sitter, really, but an honoured guest in a flat owned by my friend Pam - but I haven't had time to explore this delightful area (Woodlands, in Perth, if you'd like to check Google Earth) because of the crazy workload. I'm hoping that as from this Wednesday, when I move to Shenton Park for two months, my life will slow from a gallop to a nice easy trot.
The pleasantly industrious part lasted a few weeks while I was house-sitting at the home of furry friends Gretel, Sara and Sonia. The first two ladies are of the canine variety, and both are of an age at which they need to watch their health, so there was a good deal of medication to be dealt with as well as the usual walks, bathing and grooming. Sonia the cat is as dignified and self-sufficient as ever. She's no longer young, but still enjoys excellent health apart from the odd fur ball, the bane of all long-haired cats everywhere.
It was a worrying fortnight, as I'd come back to Perth to find that two of my friends had breast cancer. However, they both had surgery and their prognoses look excellent, although one is in for a long round of chemotherapy and radiotherapy. Not much fun, I shouldn't think, but far better than the alternative. I lost two friends to breast cancer within a few months of each other back in 1995, so I am always relieved when I hear of someone who has taken early, appropriate action. Go have that mammogram, friend. It could save your life.
Of course, at sixty-six years of age I'm in the same boat as my furry friends: the body is packing up and so are those of my contemporaries. My personal current grizzle has to do with an underactive thyroid. It lowers my energy, sometimes to a level that's hardly worth measuring; makes me excessively, constantly tired; raises the heartrate and the anxiety levels, makes me feel cold even on a hot day and makes my skin so dry I could use #3 sandpaper to exfoliate. I am eating extra fish in the hope of giving the poor thyroid some reserves of iodine, but although that's helped a bit it looks as if something stronger might be needed. So perhaps soon there will be still another medication joining the hoard - or maybe that should be horde, for I have enough meds on that bench to make an army of pills and potions.
The current state of panic, I believe, is April's fault. April brought me not only the usual stress of getting the new Specusphere reviews ready to roll, but also an editing job that I really, really, wanted to do, quite apart from the financial angle. It's a biography of Jimmy Melrose, a young Australian aviator back in the 1930s who was something of a national hero. His death at the age of only 22 created a national outpouring of grief. Yet today we seldom hear his name, and the author of the biography is keen to redress that. She has written an excellent manuscript that's a pleasure to work on, but as so often happens, I received it so close to the projected publication date that it has tipped me into a state of chaos. Even so, I thought I was almost on top of things until I received a record number of reviews to edit and upload for The Specusphere. Twenty-eight of them! It's great that I have a fine team of reviewers and the trust of a dozen or more publishing houses, but to go with those things I really need two more sets of hands and eyes. It's been truly stressful this last ten days and it didn't help that for reasons beyond my ken the webzine went live on Friday instead of Sunday - sans most of the reviews. Last night was a late one, seeing me up until midnight to get them online, and meantime, authors and fans were desperately hitting the titles in the Table of Contents, only to find no substance behind the facade. As the hits mounted, so my desperation grew and I felt little but out-and-out exhaustion when I finally put the last review to bed.
But now, as usual, I am thrilled to see my babies online and already getting lots of hits. Go and see The Specusphere's nice new front page, and dip into the reviews while you're there!
So now I've only got a couple of days to do the last pass of the Melrose book (wish me, and the poor long-suffering author, luck!) and then I move on to a new housesit. The one I'm in now is lovely - in fact, I'm not a house-sitter, really, but an honoured guest in a flat owned by my friend Pam - but I haven't had time to explore this delightful area (Woodlands, in Perth, if you'd like to check Google Earth) because of the crazy workload. I'm hoping that as from this Wednesday, when I move to Shenton Park for two months, my life will slow from a gallop to a nice easy trot.
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