It’s curious how one can suddenly come to some fundamental understandings about the past. Suddenly, how one felt years ago becomes clear, and it makes sense. I’ve just arrived at a clear perception of a difficult period of my life, precipitated by the loss of some friends.

I was shocked for a while, then felt depressed for several months. I gradually got better. I wasn’t really focussing on my work, didn’t feel that the world around me was quite right. Nothing made sense. I lost much of my motivation for doing anything, was happy to just be a passenger. At the time, I blamed this on the Larium. But today I read something that makes things clear for me:

Emotional adjustment: generalized grieving response

first phase: initial injury and rehabilitation (about 3 months)

denial and the initial grief reaction

second phase: adjustment to the home environment (3 to 9 months)

depression, anxiety, and lack of stable self-concept

third phase: recovery of a stable self-concept, hopefully with successful reintegration in the community (1 year)

stable social network, decreased depression and anxiety, more stable self-concept

final phase: complete readjustment (2 to 3 years)

increased energy and focus on life goals and life satisfaction, physical limitations integrated into lifestyle

That’s what I felt! But nobody had died? Why should I feel grief?

• Any Change Of Circumstance can cause us to go through this process.
• We don’t have to go through the stages in sequence. We can skip a stage or go through two or three simultaneously.
• We can go through them in different time phases. The dead battery could take maybe 5 to 10 minutes, the loss of a parking space 5 to 10 seconds. A traumatic event which involves the Criminal Justice System can take years.
• The intensity and duration of the reaction depends on how significant the change-produced loss is perceived.

I was grieving for the lost friends, and the lost love. I had no idea it could take so long to deal with.

Small poster up all over the Humanities building…

Here’s a good idea:

Bob Brotchie, a clinical team leader for the East Anglian Ambulance NHS Trust, hatched the plan last year after struggling to get contact details from shocked or injured patients.

By entering the acronym ICE – for In Case of Emergency – into the mobile’s phone book, users can log the name and number of someone who should be contacted in an emergency.

The idea follows research carried out by Vodafone that shows more than 75 per cent of people carry no details of who they would like telephoned following a serious accident.

Bob, 41, who has been a paramedic for 13 years, said: “I was reflecting on some of the calls I’ve attended at the roadside where I had to look through the mobile phone contacts struggling for information on a shocked or injured person.

“It’s difficult to know who to call. Someone might have “mum” in their phone book but that doesn’t mean they’d want them contacted in an emergency.

“Almost everyone carries a mobile phone now, and with ICE we’d know immediately who to contact and what number to ring. The person may even know of their medical history.”

(Original link)

Note the title on experiment 47…

So, Unitemps server has been comprehensively attacked. No comment as to when this happened, the likely loss of data, to where it may have gone. Only advice to register with the UK Credit Fraud protection service. Great.

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