The writing has moved on!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

It looks as though I have lost/mislaid my current notebook.  This is a bad thing.

     It is a bad thing because the notebook represents, in however scrappy a form, my thoughts and ideas over a period of months.  It is also a bad thing because I am fairly free with my thoughts and ideas in it.  True, there are mundane comments about the weather and whether or not I had a lane to myself for my morning swim, but my thoughts can be more wide-ranging and much more personal than that!

     The only built-in security system, that virtually encrypts the notes themselves is the almost illegible scrawl in which they are written.  I have to admit that I sometimes, no quite often, find myself puzzling over certain extravagant calligraphic patterns and wondering if they have any relation whatsoever to English orthography.  This ‘difficulty’ does give a certain freshness to a perusal when undertaken long after the words were written.

     I have hunted around all the spots in the house where the small, pocket-sized, notebook could have been discarded or lodged.  I have checked pockets in a range of clothing.  I have checked down the side of the armchair that I use.  I have checked the car seats.  I have looked everywhere reasonable that could be a place where the notebook could be.  I have even looked in places where, where it to be there, I would spend the rest of my life wondering how it possibly got there.  But in places reasonable and unreasonable, the more I look, the more (as they say) it isn’t there.

     The only place left is the swimming pool.  At the end of my morning swim, as I have my expertly made cup of tea, I write.  I write something, anything, just to keep the process going.  Sometimes I am less than convinced by what I produce, but at other times the notes seem to write themselves and there is a sort of genuine excitement in the hastily scribbled lines.

     In some ways, I am hesitant to ask in the pool, because if they say that nothing has been handed in or found, then I am left with irreconcilable loss.

     Though, having said that, I have taken the cellophane off a notebook-in-waiting, and I jotted down my thoughts for the day.  Tomorrow will be the test, and if nothing is put aside waiting for the owner to turn up, then I will accept the fact that The White Notebook is no more, and I will get on with the new red one.

 

 

 

 

 

 

After a couple of days hiatus, my doctor phoned me in response to my asking for an appointment to see him with a view to Getting Something Done about my knees.

     I suppose that prior telephone conversation is the new normal for medical appointments nowadays, almost like a telephonic triage to see by electronic conversation whether further consultation of a more immediate and personal nature is necessary.

     As my knees have never been the same after a few tumbles form my bike, an x-ray was deemed necessary and I was given the time of a possible face-to-face appointment, as long as the x-rays had been taken before hand.

     I was phoned with the date and time of an appointment for an x-ray examination in short measure, and I was (or at least the knee part of me) was snapped from various angles and I was sent on my way.  This means that the x-rays are already in the possession of the doctor and my appointment on Monday of next week will be the next step in outlining the possible courses of action.

     It is at this point that I am reminded of an old tennis injury – well, not so much from the actual game itself, but rather from not quite jumping over the net to celebrate my victory, and landing on my elbow.  I split the bone and the bone has never been quite the same.  Some years after the initial injury, I had major problems with fluid collecting around the joint and then with persistent pain.

     The fluid was drained off, but the pain in my elbow and the arm did not give in so easily.

     After a failed process of sports massage (horrific!) and more conventional remedial massage failed to do the trick, I was sent back to the doctor, and I was given a (fairly gruesome) series of cortisone (I think) injections.  The term ‘series’ gives the impression of a number of injections stretching over an extended period of time.  It was not like that.  What I had was a single injection but administered in a sort-of internal jabbing sort of way.

     Whatever!  When I left the doctor’s surgery at the end of the jabbing, I had no pain.  It was positively magical.  And the problem has not (touch wood!) recurred.

     I am hoping that there is some sort of similar ‘magical’ injection that will do its stuff with my knees.  But my more fatalistic reality check suggests that the ‘answer’ will probably be an operation or two.

     My house is almost comically unfit for a person to recuperate who does not have full use of his limbs: the living room is on the first floor and the loo is on the second and my computer and printer is on the third.  There are lots of stairs and there is no lift.  Toni’s suggestion that there would be no problem as I could live in the bedroom, with an invalid table and a laptop, is not to be considered without hysteria.

     Monday may well turn out to be a defining moment in my time in Catalonia.

     Or, given the backlog in routine operations, any medical intervention may be years in the future.  And that too, is rather a depressing thought.

     But I am running ahead of myself.  Sufficient unto the day is the imagining thereof!   

     Let’s wait for something a little more concrete than frantic supposition!

YOUR life in YOUR hands

 

New Normal or lockdown or whatever, Second Week, Sunday

 

 

 

 

As far as I am aware the restrictions about moving from one location to another during the weekend is still in force, though it was difficult to believe that as I threaded my wobbly way past the masses of people who were thronging the paseo this morning.

     In many ways, it is difficult to blame people wanting what seems like a fairly innocent and safe pastime: wandering in time honoured fashion along the side of the sea.  On the other hand, I also regard every stranger as a possible enemy, and a deadly one at that.

     It is the fatal nature of the disease for many and the lingering serious complaints that are now being registered after surviving the virus for some, that make me question the absurd optimism of so many who live and act as though they do not really need a vaccine because they are so obviously immune.  And they are not.

     On my daily bike ride, I can judge just how seriously people take the fact that we are in the middle of the second wave of infection, and that we may yet see the totals for the first wave overtaken.  Most runners on the paseo do not wear masks.  A minority of cycle riders wear masks.  Some recreational walkers and dog walkers do not wear masks.  Some ‘regulars’ I pass every day have never worn masks, and some of those regulars are obvious OAPs and therefore in one of the most vulnerable categories.

     I have to say that a greater proportion overall of the people I pass now do wear masks, probably (but not unequivocally) a bare majority.  I have no idea what news broadcasts or newspapers these people glean their information from, but they are obviously very different from the ones that I see and read!

     Virtually everything that I hear about the virus frightens me.  Obviously you can’t live a life in perpetual terror, it’s too bloody wearing, but concern (to put it mildly) is never far from the surface: “hands, face and distance” is a sort of mental mantra by which I live my life!

     It looks as though one of the vaccines is likely to be rolled out within the next week or so.  This will be reserved for front line staff and those in immediate contact with virus infected people, but the rest of the vaccines should be available for the rest of us within weeks, though it will obviously take months for the population to be vaccinated.

     As soon as any of the vaccines start being used in the country, I think that will signal one of the most dangerous times in the pandemic, as people take from the application of a vaccine very different messages.

     From what I understand the vaccine will be delivered in two shots some time apart and, when an individual has been vaccinated they will be expected to continue the mask wearing, hand washing and physical distancing that they should have been observing up to the point of their vaccination.  This is going to be a hard ask when people are looking forward to the “freedom” that a vaccination is supposed to give.

     Even after the second shot, defences should not be lowered.  I wish the publicity campaigns that will be flooding our media outlets the best of luck, because they are going to need it.

     Why are we making an exception for the Christian festival of Christmas when we signally did not for festivals of other religions?  The relaxation of the rules for the Christmas period is a political decision and one that will cost lives.  That, together with the woeful approach of Johnson and his no-talent cabinet to tackling the pandemic lends further weight to my insistence that Johnson and co are charged with corporate manslaughter.  The blustering incompetent cannot put off the inquiry for ever, and when it starts taking evidence and delivers its report, then is the time for criminal prosecution to take place.

     In my adolescence, it took “thirteen years of Tory misrule” to show the corrupt, unfeeling incompetence of Conservative contempt for the ruled: it has taken Johnson far less than eighteen months to produce a ‘government’ mired in cronyism, corruption, arrogance, incompetence, dogmatic blindness, viciousness, petty mindedness and mendacity.  I am ashamed that my country is led by such a witless pack – and they should not be allowed to get away with it.  For once in his worthless life, Johnson must face up to his responsibilities, and if he is ‘disinclined’ to do so he must be forced to.

     And when you consider that in little over a month, this bunch of feckless liars are going to take us into the unicorn-filled lands of plenty of Brexit, the only realistic reaction is to weep!

 

 

 

 

 

Meanwhile, my research about the war service of my grandfather progresses slowly.  I have discovered that he was a member of the Royal Field Artillery, in C Battery in the 173^rd Brigade.  What is more difficult is finding out exactly where he would have fought.  My grandfather did not have an easy war and was in some of the most bloody of the conflicts in France and Flanders.  I will persevere and find locations to add to the records that I have at the moment.

     As well as the horrors of being a combatant in The First World War, my grandfather also had to cope with the pandemic too, the Spanish Flu outbreak, which he survived.  We may have a rough year in 2020, but he had a succession of horrors for year after year!  We should be grateful!

 

Having now thoroughly depressed myself, I will turn to Netflix for some mindless amelioration! 

Reason to be grateful!

I went out to lunch a week last and didn’t come back home for eight days!

It wasn’t the food, you understand – my lunch was excellent (and slimming) with special excellence reserved for the Tast home made tiramisu, oh, and the excellent sangria.  But basically within the limits of my regimen.  Sort of.  The real problems with the day started, or perhaps continued, when we walked from the meal to the post office to get the latest instalment in the series of archaeological books from National Geographic that was waiting for me there.

I took a few paces and had to ask for Toni to stop while I got my breath back.  This was not normal and we headed for our local medical centre.  There, because of the suggestion that my condition might be connected to the heart we were seen in super quick time and were talked to by a very personable doctor who went through the usual tests.  At the end of the series, we waited for a new prescription to be offered, but instead we were told in a matter-of-fact sort of way that I should go to hospital and that an ambulance had been called and I was placed in a waiting wheelchair.  Protocol.

There is nothing that concentrates the mind more than an immanent ride in an ambulance.  Looking out at the passing motorway and the cars and lorries on it through the semi-frosted panes of glass in the ambulance windows I had the semi-detached feeling of someone who has been suddenly placed in an oddly disorientating position of a person whose very physical stability had been called into question.

I was processed efficiently and I was soon wearing one of those terminally unflattering white cotton smocks, lying on an unnecessarily uncomfortable wheeled bed with a chest full of stuck-on electrodes.

Although I spent an uneasy night, it was as nothing compared to Toni’s night of absolute torture on a stock issue metal hospital chair!

For anyone who has been in hospital the contents of the next days will be familiar: blood tests, blood pressure readings, temperature readings, radiological tests, and on and on, day after day.  At least I progressed to a more comfortable bed!

Rather than give a daily account of my time there, I will choose a few instances of what happened and leave it at that.

“Your chest is too hairy!” remarked one radiologist who was ripping off electrodes as she spoke, and removing clumps of said hair at the same time.  Indeed, in hindsight, I would shave my chest were I to go into hospital again.  Not only is removal of the electrodes somewhat painful, but also if you have to sleep with electrodes attached (and if you are a restless sleeper as I am) then each toss and turn will dislodge a lead and fumbling to replace them is a hit and miss matter and lord alone knows what my erratic reconstruction actually did to the readings!

If your diet stipulates that it is very low fat and salt free, then most commercial eateries are going to struggle to give you something appetizing.  The soups that I was offered were generally insipid and one or two were impossible to define in terms of what they might have been made of!

The first meal that I was (eventually) given was of a series of small yellow sausages that looked, frankly odd.  I cut one of them open and I was unable to identify what the interior of those cylinders might be composed of.  I ate them.  All.  I was hungry.  But I was no nearer to identifying what I might have eaten.  They remain imprinted on my memory, though not on my taste buds.

My next evening meal was of some unidentifiable and completely tasteless white fish fillet garnished with a slice of lemon.  The lemon tasted like the smell of cheap toilet cleaner, but again, I ate it all.

I don’t want to be unfair to the hospital, these were two stand-out awful meals, the others that I had during my week’s stay (given the restrictions of my diet) were more than acceptable and they certainly made the most of the limitations that they had to work with to ensure that we had something half-way tasty to eat.  Though, I have to say, it was never more than halfway!

Meals were one way of ordering the day.  Whatever else was going on, the times of our meals was the one certainty in our ward lives.  Once one meal was finished we could start thinking about the next.  Given the tests, scans, blood taking, pressure measuring, injecting, pill popping, temperature taking and consultations, it is hardly surprising that any form of stability is more than welcome when intrusive but essential things are being done to you!

I didn’t manage to sleep for any real length of time for the first five days in hospital.  The bed that I was first put on was extraordinarily uncomfortable.  I sleep on my side and that was not a possibility on that bed of pain.  It is also very difficult to get any rest when you are linked via stick-on electrodes to a machine that bleeps, buzzes, flashes various colours and periodically inflates a blood pressure cuff.  To say nothing, of course, of the abnormally normal sounds of an emergency unit at work 24 hours a day and therefore through the night.

When I was eventually taken from the emergency unit to a four bed ward, it was quieter outside the ward but there were different noises to cope with inside.  

All of the members of our ward needed oxygen and all the ways of delivering it to individuals come with their own sound signatures.  The quietest one is the nasal feed where a tube is looped over the ears and under the nose where two small tubes jut out and into the nasal orifices.  This type just adds a low level hiss to the sound landscape.  The nose and mouth mask is louder and makes a variety of noises depending on the intensity of the oxygen flow and whether a medicinal filter had been added.  The worst form of delivery was a small portable machine with a larger diameter tube which, when turned on sounded like a jackhammer!

Then there were the noises of the men.  I know that I snore, but I didn’t have an opportunity to add my orchestral part to the nocturnal symphony of groans, shouts, wheezes and coughs that was a normal night.

The day started at some time after 6 in the morning as each patient was attended to.  One man had to be changed; another had to have his blood sugar level checked.  The lights would come on and go off again and again as the day got under way.

After a breakfast (for me) of a couple of small French toast rounds with some sort of fruit slime, together with something I have not had for over 25 years: a cup of milky instant coffee!

The most interesting test that I had was in radiography where, lying on my side with the operator’s over me so that my side was firmly lodged under her arm, I heard the actual sounds of my pumping heart and the different sounds that different parts of it made.  

And that is one of the things about being in a hospital and undergoing the probes that the doctors have to make: all that it inside is brought to the outside.  You can see the beats of your heart, you can hear the sounds it makes, you can see the force of your breath, and you can count the oxygen level of your blood.  Your internal organs become photographic images.  No part of your inside or outside is away from prying eyes!

The end of the investigation was that I had a thrombosis in my right leg, that thrombosis had probably been the cause of pulmonic embolisms that effected both my lungs and had some slight effect on my heart.  I had had, in effect, the equivalent of a heart attack but in my lungs.  I was told that it was serious and that I was lucky that it had been discovered before it was too late.

For the next six months or so I will have to alter my way of life and take things easy.  For the next two weeks I am confined to the house and I have been told to do the minimum of moving about and if I have to, to do it slowly.  

After two weeks I might be able to go for a very short walk and gradually build up my distance bit by bit.  My swimming (1,500m every day) has been terminated.  Perhaps in a couple of months I might be able to do four slow lengths of breaststroke.  I cannot use my bike.  I cannot drive the car for a couple of months.  And so it goes on.

And I don’t really feel ill!  If I take a deep breath I can tell that there is still some sort of tension, but, basically, I feel fine.  But I’m not, and I have to keep remembering that simple fact if I want to get better.  And believe me, I do!

I am very grateful for the care and attention that I received in Viladecans Hospital from doctors, nurses, orderlies, cleaners and caterers: it was exemplary and there is no doubt that their ministrations have saved my life.  

I will never forget that.