Happy Christmas

This comes to you just minutes too late for Christmas day, but I hope you all had a very happy Christmas, and that you enjoy the rest of the festive season too.  I'm up in Edinburgh again, staying with Mum and J.  We've had a gentle day with lots of food, lots of presents, lots of telly, lots of turkey (my first turkey for 20 years!), a brief walk/trundle this evening, and a smidgen of alcohol.  Actually, the only alcohol I've had has been in the pudding that mum made, and which contained rather a lot of delicious Bailey's - mmmmmmm.  It's been a lovely day, and I feel very blessed to have had the Christmas I have.

I am aware that I need to do a proper update very soon, and that (yet again) it is far too long since I last posted, but rather a lot has been going on, and I've been exhausted.  One of the lovely things about coming up to stay with Mum and J is that I've been able to rest and get some much-needed sleep.  I'm away from all the stress and difficulties at home, and for a week or so I am free of hospital appointments.  Having said that, there's some question as to whether or not I may need to venture up to the Edinburgh Royal Infirmary at some point as I seem to have hurt my foot by running over it in my wheelchair.  I think I am possibly the only person who could mow themselves down in their own wheelchair whilst sitting in it, but I did.

I went to the local church last night for the Christmas Eve midnight service, at 11.30 ... Mum had been going to go with me, but in the end she was too tired so I went on my own.  It's a beautiful little church and I was made to feel very welcome.  The service was lovely, the address was short (which is what you want at a late night service, in my opinion), the carols were great, the organ/organist was stunningly fantastic.  I trundled back to the house in the freezing temperatures feeling warm on the inside.  I got to the front door with the ramp still resting in its place on the top step, but I thought that the door had perhaps knocked it forwards a little.  To make sure that it was going to be safe for me to go up, and to ensure there were no accidents (little did I know!), I thought it would be wise to push the ramp just a little further on to the step.  I took my feet off the footplates and put them on the ground behind so that I could more easily reach the bottom of the ramp and I bent forwards.  As I bent forwards my coat caught the joystick control of my wheelchair, thus sending it shooting forwards.  My feet, being on firm ground, stayed where they were, and the forward-moving chair propelled the rest of me straight ahead, and then straight down as my bum left the chair.  My coat eventually disentangled itself from the joystick control and the chair came to a halt, but by that time I was sprawled flat on my tummy, head-first up the ramp with the wheelchair on top of me.  I lay there for a moment thinking, 'Ow!' and then imagined myself spending the night outside in that position, knowing that Mum and J would have gone to bed.

Staying like that wasn't really ever an option, partly because it was so cold, and partly because bits of me were in rather odd and painful positions, not least my feet that were basically folded in half at the base of my toes, and weirdly angled in the middle.  I somehow got half way on to my knees, lifted my bum in the air, and twizzled my right arm behind me so that I could feel the joystick, which I then managed to knock backwards a little.  The wheelchair clunked as it fell off the backs of my legs, and I was able to get more fully on to my knees, although the bottom of my legs and feet were still underneath the chair, and kind of trapped by the footplates.  But once I got on to my knees I could twist round to see what I was doing with the joystick controls and was able to manoeuvre the chair backwards.  At last I got my feet out, sore as they were, and was able to scramble back in to the chair.  A good look around told me that, thanks to the long garden path and the fact that it was 12.30 am, nobody had witnessed my late night sprawl and clatter on the ramp, but a glance at the ramp also told me that it had indeed slipped a little way off the front door step.  I then did what I ought to have done in the first place: I turned off the power on the chair before leaning forward and pushing the ramp back in to position.  Only when I was safely sitting upright again did I turn the power on again, trundle up the ramp and go inside the house.

I'd only had one Bailey's and that had been several hours previously before dinner.  I can tell you don't believe me, but it's true!

So yes, I have a sore foot, which may need looking at, but I'm hoping it'll sort itself out in the next day or two.

Anyway, happy Christmas, everyone!

Not just the wrong pair of trousers

This happened the week before last, during this admission.  I've changed the doctors' names as I've written it for my book, but I thought I'd share it with you as it is all the same.  It may undergo some editing before it makes it into the book, but the facts will remain the same.  I hope you enjoy it.

Not Just The Wrong Pair of Trousers

Dr Samson arrived with his registrar, Peter, and the junior doctor, Yas. The trio arranged themselves around my bed and observed the wheezing form that lay before them.

‘Yas,’ began Dr Samson, ‘seeing as you’re the only one with a stethoscope, can I borrow it, please?’

Yas looked at her seniors and stuck her pen between her teeth while she juggled my bulging volume of notes into her left hand. With her right, she unravelled her stethoscope from where it hung draped around her neck, disentangling it from the plastic apron on which it kept getting snagged. Removing the pen from her mouth, and handing her stethoscope to Dr Samson, she tutted and said, ‘Really, a respiratory doctor coming to work without his stethoscope is like coming to work without your trousers!’

I spluttered a wheezy laugh and, closing my eyes, pinched the bridge of my nose with my thumb and forefinger. With a slow shake of my head I said, ‘You know, I really shouldn’t have that image in my head,’ which triggered giggles in Yas and feet-shuffling from Peter.

Dr Samson abandoned the beginnings of an excuse, instead saying, ‘I suppose that as I’m borrowing your stethoscope I can’t really tell you off,’ but any authority he may have had with this was lost by the increasing redness to his face.

Unable to shake from my mind the image of my asthma consultant arriving in my hospital room in his underwear, I could only try to stifle resurging giggles while he listened to my lungs through my back. But with Yas standing at the end of the bed, it was all too easy to catch her eye and for the ridiculousness of the image to become infectious.

The disastrous consultation eventually came to an end, but with me and Yas caught up in school-girl giggles, Peter not knowing what to do with himself, and Dr Samson slightly flustered and extremely red-faced.

Dr Samson and Yas returned on another ward round visit two days later, the joke having walked right back in the room with them on their arrival. No reference was made to it throughout the consultation until the end, when Dr Samson and Yas were removing their gloves and aprons. I couldn’t resist but acknowledge Dr Samson’s remembrance of his stethoscope that morning by passing the comment, ‘I see you came to work with your trousers this morning.’

The colour shot up Dr Samson’s face and Yas spat out the laughter that had been bubbling within. Dr Samson shuffled out into the corridor with as much dignity as he could muster, whilst Yas left the room bent double and with the two of us giving glances of collusion.

In passing

Do you ever overhear snippets of conversations and wonder how on earth they fit into the whole?  I was passing a couple of young men the other day as I trundled through the campus of Northumbria University on my way home, when I heard one of them say to other, 'I have a real hatred of shoe laces.'  Was this a comment out of the blue?  Was it part of a wider conversation about shoes?  What does this guy hate so much about shoe laces?  I was almost tempted to turn around and chase after them to ask.  I resisted in the end, thinking that they might think I was stalking them, or at the least very strange.  No comments from the back! ;oP

On a completely different note, I saw the most terrible thing from the bus window the other day.  We were going down the main shopping street on the edge of quite a deprived part of Newcastle and I saw a young man, who I presume was the father, put a cigarette into a child's mouth.  The child must only have been about 4 or 5 years old, and the 'father' was clearly instructing the child on how to light the cigarette.  It was an awful sight.  It's bad enough to see teenagers smoking, let alone very young children being plied with cigarettes.  It made me angry, and so angry that I felt sick.  I think I would go as far as saying I consider what I saw to be child abuse.  What about you?

Access

I can't get into my local pharmacy.  You'd think that of all the places that'd be wheelchair accessible it'd be a chemist shop, but no, my local one has a step about 6 inches high at the door and no ramp.  It doesn't even have a door bell.  Helpfully (or not), it has one of those large push-buttons with the wheelchair symbol on so that the door opens automatically and a wheelchair user doesn't then have to negotiate holding the door open as they try to go through, but that's not an awful lot of use when you can't actually get up the step to go through the door.  It's a bit rubbish really, especially as I'm there quite frequently to get the huge prescriptions of meds that keep me alive.  When I go there I use that push-button on the outside of the shop, keeping my elbow on it so that the door doesn't then close on my face after a few seconds, and knock the letterbox until someone at the till on the other side of the shop notices me.  Either that or I ask some passing person if they can tell a member of staff that I'm there.  I will eventually be seen to, but have to wait outside while my script is being prepared, and this can take some time.  It's not so bad if the weather's good, but it's no fun at all if it's freezing cold, pouring with rain, or blowing a gale, and it also makes me feel very much like a second-class citizen.

Two and a half years ago I asked them if they had any plans to get a ramp.  They didn't, but after my enquiry they applied for planning permission.  Excellent!  Not so excellent has been the council's response.  When there was a 'trend' for ram-raiders the pharmacy put up concrete bollards in front of the large, glass frontage, and these have since caused a problem with getting planning permission for a ramp.  Goodness knows why.  Anyway, I got a bit fed up with waiting so checked the progress of the ramp planning permission on the council's website, and came up with nothing.  I couldn't see any mention anywhere of an application having been made.  Hmmm.  I contacted my local councillor to see if he could help, after all he was so helpful with getting the snow cleared for me so I could get to the doctors at the height of that awful weather in December.  He made enquiries.  He contacted the regional manager of this national pharmacy chain.  They sent an email back to him saying that they had no plans to install a ramp at this store and hadn't set aside any money to do so.  My friendly councillor pointed out that they were in breech of the Disability Discrimination Act, and low and behold they agreed to have a meeting with Mr Friendly Councillor ... only then there was a change of regional manager and the new one had to get up to speed with her new role before she could meet with Mr Friendly Councillor.

I was at the pharmacy again yesterday, sitting outside in the 60-70mph winds, when the store manager came out.  I've been hassling her intermittently about getting a ramp in the hope that she'd hassle her boss and the hassle would continue up the chain, and something somewhere seems to have worked, because yesterday she told me that they've been granted planning permission for a temporary ramp.  This is fantastic, though I do wonder what a temporary ramp is, and how temporary is temporary, and does it mean that they're just going to have a ramp for a short while and then take it away again, or are they actually going to replace the temporary ramp with a permanent one.  Whatever, it's great that I'll be able to get into the shop at last, even if it is only for a short time.  Mind you, there's no saying how long it'll take to get this temporary ramp installed.

On the window of the same store is this sign (apologies for the reflections):

It tickles me.  I know the two pieces of information on the sign aren't supposed to be linked, but the fact that they appear on the same sign, and there's a complete lack of punctuation, does make it look as though they will charge for any help they give to the disabled, elderly, or those with children ... and it does kind of fit with the attitude the regional manager has appeared to have regarding ramp access to this store.  It really does tickle me, though :o)

Embrace the moment

Life is for living, wouldn't you agree? There are times when opportunities arise either to embrace moments of life or look all embarrassed and shirk away from them. Last night I was presented with one of these opportunities, and had one of the most surreal experiences of my life. I had come out of my PGC memoir writing class and was somewhat thoughtful after a couple of the exercises we'd done, but I was fairly cheery nonetheless, because I've been enjoying this module immensely and finding it very stimulating. I'd left the university grounds and was making my way down Northumberland Street - the main shopping street in Newcastle city centre - in my electric wheelchair, when I was challenged to a race. That would be an odd occurence in itself, but what made this particularly surreal was that my challenger was a man dressed as a nun driving a small, white grand piano, adorned with spiralled, blue rope lights, making it look quite magnificent as it came up the street in the dark, blasting out its variations of pop music (of sorts). It has to be said that I was a little bemused by the sight, but also thought it was wonderful with a particular kind of craziness. So having been challenged to a race by this 'nun' I had quickly to decide whether or not to embrace the silliness and possible embarrassment. I was on my own, but the street was still vibrant because the shops were still open, and it being 7.15 on a Thursday night in Newcastle there were more than a few who were already starting their weekend celebrations. They, and many others had heard the nun ask me if I'd like a race and there were guffaws all round, which then developed into whoops of incredulous pleasure when I decided to embrace the moment and accept the challenge. I had to do a little negotiation though as I'd been whizzing down the street and the nun had been driving his piano up the street. At first he was reluctant to go in the direction I wanted to go (I'm not sure why), but when I said that I needed to be heading vaguely towards my bus stop then he relented, and he did the race going backwards. I have to say that I've never before raced a man dressed as a nun who's driving a small grand piano blasting out pop music, but it was great fun. It was, I'm sorry to say, a very short race, but I won all the same :oD And the spectators cheered and laughed and enjoyed the sight of a nun driving a piano racing a woman in an electric wheelchair. And I've been smiling about it a great deal ever since, so I'm particularly pleased that I embraced the moment of silliness and lived that little moment of life, when it would've been so easy to give into the fear of embarrassment.

I've done a Google search on 'my nun' and I've found that he's called Sister Ruth, has her own website, and travels the country doing all sorts of gigs and parties. Great fun! Live life and embrace the moment!

Master Chef meets Krypton Factor

You may know that I have a lot of allergies, most of which are anaphylactic, and many of which are to foods. The main things I'm allergic to are preservatives and colourings, and you'd be surprised at what you'd find these in, even in so-called healthy foods. One of the consequences of these allergies is that I can't eat any ready meals so I have to have all my food cooked from scratched. Yes, real cooking! I quite enjoy cooking, but I'm very limited these days in how much I can do because of my tendency to pass out when standing due to the POTS and vasovagal syncope. It's not very safe to faint whilst standing over a lit gas hob so these days I have carers come to cook for me three evenings a week. It can be a bit tying sometimes if I have things to do, or I want to be out, or if they turn up early, and I've never been the best at planning meals ahead so sometimes I get a little frustrated at having to be organised with this kind of thing. It's made a little trickier by the fact that they come at 4.30pm, which is far too early to have dinner so I need to think of things that I can either re-heat quickly later on or that take a long time to cook. Last year W bought me a slow cooker and that's been a god-send with these carers as they can do all the cooking bits then set the slow cooker away to do its stuff so that a few hours later I can have tea at a much more sensible time. Marvellous. All I need do is provide the recipe and ingredients...

It would, however, seem that cooking is an alien concept to many of the carers who come to me and the tasks I lay before them are akin to those on the Krypton Factor. Now it's not like I ask for anything particularly complicated - in fact that's another challenge for me as I have to try to find simple recipes - except that the mere thought of cooking anything other than a ready meal or heating up a takeaway appears to be very complicated. I have several different carers come to cook for me and I only really have confidence in one of them. They're all lovely people, yes, but you wouldn't find them on Master Chef. I had one who, on her first visit here, told me that her father is a chef so I optimistically thought that he may have passed on some of his culinary skills to her. Nope. She had to ask me how to cut the leek I'd put out with the ingredients for my dinner. On one of the days the following week a very sweet young carer (maybe in her late teens or very early twenties) came. She pointed at the pile of ingredients on the bench, made her face Dali-esque and squawked, 'What's that?!' It was a sweet potato. The day she came and I had a raw beetroot I'd been given on the bench I thought she was going to run away in fear so I had to reassure her very quickly that it wasn't part of that night's dinner; it was just on the bench as a place to put it. I then had to explain that it was a fresh beetroot, and no, not all beetroot comes pickled in jars. Bless her ... and God help me!

I guess I don't mind so much if the person who comes is honest about their cooking ability. I can allow for inexperience. I can prepare myself for perhaps not the tastiest meal I've ever had. So long as they make sure all the veg etc is suitably washed so that they don't accidentally kill me then I can pretty much let them off. It's when they're 'misleading' about their culinary skills that it gets me. I had one woman come - another friendly character - who, when I explained about my allergies and therefore the need to do 'from scratch' cooking, assured me that she was a good cook. She told me that she'd been married to a Morrocan man for seven years so had cooked all his meals from the raw ingredients and was quite experienced. After tasting the soup she made me I wonder if she's still married to the Moroccan man or if in fact he's dead. I set her the challenge of making me butternut squash and carrot soup with a little ginger and chilli. As always I'd set out the ingredients on the bench. As always I presumed she'd follow the recipe in terms of quantities, and I even provided scales for weighing out any ingredients she needed to weigh. I went off to have my bath (the heat of a bath or shower makes passing out more likely so I have a bath while the carer's around in case there are any problems) and left her to make the soup. When I returned to the kitchen I discovered that she hadn't actually fried the onions, garlic, ginger, chili, or any of the veg before adding the stock (homemade stock as I can't have the bought stuff); she'd simply chopped it all up, put it in the enormous pan, and filled said pan with all of the stock I had. And it was only after she'd left that I realised she had no discernment at all regarding quantities. She had used a whole green chili, a whole root of ginger, and a whole bulb of garlic! I let the thing, the concoction, the pot of poison bubble away in the hope that maybe it wouldn't be so bad really, but after I'd blitzed it in the liquidiser and tasted the tiniest of tiny amounts there was no fooling myself into thinking that this was edible. It had somehow transformed itself from appetising and tasty fresh vegetables to some kind of anti-food. I think I had boiled egg that night instead. The next time she turned up I lied that I was going to my dad's for dinner that night, but I still needed her there while I had a bath. I don't remember what I ended up doing for tea in the end, but I couldn't face sampling her cooking again, that was for sure. On the bright side, as she wasn't cooking for me that evening she offered to do other stuff so she did my ironing. The carer who comes on a Wednesday morning is supposed to do my ironing as well as the cleaning, but the one I've had most since my regular Wednesday carer left the agency is rubbish at ironing, doesn't like doing it, complains all the time she is doing it, and doesn't do very much of it. Needless to say, there was rather a lot of ironing to do. It all got done and I also didn't have to suffer her cooking. Bonus!

I had yet another carer come tonight. I have to say that she was ever such a lovely person, and she did in the end manage to follow the recipe and produce a very nice dinner in the slow cooker for me. However, I also have to say that it is quite miraculous that she managed to follow the recipe and produce a very nice dinner in the slow cooker for me. When I told her that she'd be cooking from scratch she looked terrified, aghast, distraught. She came clean that she doesn't cook. I told her not to worry as I'd put all the ingredients out along with the recipe, and assured her that a slow cooker is really easy to use. She'd never seen a slow cooker before. She doesn't even use a conventional cooker. She lives off sandwiches. This was going to be a challenge ... for us both. Right then, time for some education. I introduced her to the concepts of fresh vegetables, cartons of butter beans, and uncooked wholegrain rice. I gave her her first sighting of saffron, and explained that she should use only a very tiny amount as it's so blooming expensive. That scared her. I got her a pan and showed her how to light the hob. I showed her the recipe book. I thought she was going to collapse with repressed hysteria. 'Oh,' she squeaked through tightened vocal chords, 'I've never used a recipe before. I'm not sure that I can. I mean, I'll try, but I'm scared. I've never done it before. It looks so complicated.' We read through the recipe together, and I explained that yes, she would have to use the hob a little bit to brown the leeks ... and I explained what 'browning the leeks' meant, and I reassured her that she'd be fine, and I went off to hide in the bath. After a while I could hear a lot of clattering and I could smell burning, but I figured that being in the bath surrounded by water was perhaps the safest place to be if the carer was going to accidentally set fire to the flat, so I stayed put and hoped I'd still have a kitchen by the time I plucked up the courage to get out of the bath and back to the carer. Thankfully I do still have a kitchen, and despite the burning smell I see no evidence of there having been any flames. When I reappeared though she did say that she hadn't washed the butter beans, and asked how she was meant to do that so I said to use either the sieve or the colander. She looked at me blankly. I showed her what a sieve looks like.

Extreme wheelchairing

My dad has Lewy Body Dementia, but when I'm at the getting-lots-better stage of hospital admissions he often takes me out in my wheelchair for a breath of fresh air and general escape from the ward. However, this is quite an experience and something I've termed Extreme Wheelchairing.

On Thursday Dad took me to Paddy Freemans - the park directly opposite the hospital. I very nearly ended up in the pond. Dad was watching the ducks as he was pushing me along and he forgot not to steer me in the direction he was looking so I was rapidly heading towards the 'steps' that circle the pond. I was holding onto the oxygen cylinder so grabbing the breaks wasn't an easy task, and a certain amount of breath was used in raising my voice in a desperate kind of way until Dad realised where he was pushing me. I survived that only to have him nearly push me off the edge of the cliff into Jesmond Dene below. He was showing me the view, which was lovely (although I've seen it many times before I never tire of it), but I didn't want to become a part of that view. Again, there was a degree of desperation in my exclamation as my front wheels teetered over the edge of the cliff.

I went extreme wheelchairing again yesterday, but only within the hospital. We managed to take out a lady in the lift, which was rather mean as she had a chest drain in so can't have been feeling all that grand to start with. Dad then took me to the little coffee shop in the hospital W H Smith, which is the most wheelchair-unfriendly shop in the world with narrow aisles that the staff insist on making more impossibly narrow with boxes of things that ought to go on the shelves but they never get around to unpacking. It's horrendous. So we crashed into the crips aisle, ran over a woman in the random slippers and dog food (!!!) aisle, couldn't get down the magazine aisle, though that didn't stop Dad from trying, and smashed our way through to the till and coffee shop area, managing to swipe a hairbrush off the shelf with my wheel and not realising until I felt it as I tried to grab the breaks (almost dropping the oxygen cylinder in the process) as we crushed a bloke sitting at one of the coffee tables. Upon leaving, Dad tried to push me through a table and a chair until I suggested that he leave them in the shop and not push them all the way down the corridor in front of us - he just hadn't seen that they were there and attached to me. We came back to the ward relatively uneventfully, except for the close acquantance I made with the wall beside the huge double doors that were open but Dad still couldn't easily negotiate his way through, and a small crash into a porter with a wheelchair.

It really is quite an experience having someone with moderate dementia take you out in a wheelchair.

Toilet humour

I pressed the bell to call the nurse to bring me the commode. Commode brought. Marvellous. I sat down and did a wee (I'm sure you wanted to know that ;oP ). Marvellous relief. I realised then that the toilet roll was on the other side of the room. Bugger. I had to negotiate my way around the table, the chair, the bed, the oxygen tubing, the drip stand, the computer wire, the bin, my shoes, and the wheelchair, all with my pyjama trousers around my ankles, in order to get to the damned toilet roll. And then, of course, I had to do the whole thing again in reverse whilst keeping hold of the toilet roll. And of course this was the time that my blood pressure decided to drop again and I very nearly ended up head-first in the commode pan with wires and leads and trousers wrapped around my ankles. Luckily I managed to avoid giving myself a wee facial, but this wasn't my finest hour, it has to be said.

Question 1

Sometimes things puzzle me. Here's one of those things:

Why did God make moths nocturnal when they're attracted to light?

A different perspective

It was last Thursday that I first started to notice the oedema (fluid retention) in my legs and it was starting to get uncomfortable. I mentioned it to the nurse and she decided to do something with the bed to raise my legs. I think there's some kind of platformy thing under the matress that can be lifted up in addition to the knee brace, and it was this that she was trying to do something with, but she'd never done it before so didn't know what she was doing. She fiddled and fumbled, and yanked and pulled at stuff under the matress, but couldn't get it to do what she was hoping for. Instead she ended up folding me in half. This wasn't particularly comfortable, it has to be said. Nor was it very condusive to breathing. She gave up trying to do the leg-raising thing and unfolded me.

As the day progressed so did the oedema so that by night time it was very uncomfortable, to the point of hurting, and my legs were so swollen that I could barely bend my knees. The swelling was spreading to my whole body too and I getting miserable. I lay in the dark feeling sorry for myself when I remembered that the bed controls at the end of the bed (the ones meant for staff use, as opposed to the patient ones on the side of the bed) had a tilt button. Perhaps I could tilt the bed so that the whole thing was slightly head-down/feet-up and this might help the swelling in my legs. Now you need to remember that I still had the drip in my right arm, and that this arm was still fairly incapacitated by the shoulder dislocation the other week (it's getting better now, thanks to the enforced rest). Right then, I was setting out on a mission.

I shuffled as far as I could up the bed, hampered not only by my fairly useless right arm, but also by the limitations of relatively short oxygen tubing. So I was as far up the bed as I could get, with my head pretty much turned in the opposite direction as the oxgen mask was pulling on my face and it'd be a bad idea to lose it all together. And it wasn't going to make a whole lot of difference to be facing the right way anyway as it was dark so I couldn't see very much. With my good, left arm I flailed about trying first to locate the bed controls that I knew were hanging on the end, and then trying to get hold of the controls. This was not an easy task, and was made more difficult by the coiled wire they're on having got caught on something. I eventually got hold of them. I found the buttons. Well, I found some buttons. First of all I found the button for the back rest, which wasn't much use to me, so I fingered my way down the control panel and found what I thought was probably the tilt control. It wasn't. It was the horizontal up and down control. So I spent a while going up and down, up and down, trying to get down, stay down and find the next set of buttons whilst keeping hold of the controls and still facing the wrong way. Success. I found the tilt buttons. I tilted the bed...first of all the wrong way, which threatened to have me slide down the bed in the wrong direction, pulling the oxygen mask from my face and the drip in my arm that was now quite painful in the shoulder area from the awkward position. I tilted the bed back again in the other direction, and kept tilting it so that the leg end was raised...only I tilted it too far. I slid down the bed, lost hold of the controls, the oxygen mask pinged onto my face where it had been pulling, all tension went from the tubing and from the drip and I was getting on for being upside down. I tried to scrabble my way back up the bed, but mountaineering wasn't my thing, and my useless right arm wouldn't let me pull on the bar at the side of the bed to help. What to do? I lay back and contemplated my situation ... an almost upside down situation. Right then, there was nothing for it. I was going to have to call the nurse with the bell and come clean about my antics in the dark. Great. I reached up to where the nurse call bell was and discovered that I couldn't reach it. I did some more one-armed windmilling in an attempt to get hold of the bell, but to no avail. I lay back, and I discovered that being upside wasn't actually very helping with the whole breathing thing. At least I could reach my own bed controls from where I was so I raised the back rest a little, which was kind of okay, except that now I was upside down and folded in half. Not too comfortable. It then occurred to me that I was not only stuck, but very stuck and not able to get unstuck, so I resigned myself to my situation, developed a new appreciation for bats, and comforted myself with the fact that I'd be checked on at some point and my (upside down) position would be noticed and rectified. I'm certain that I was checked on through the night, because everyone is, several times, but they must only have peeked through the window of my little room, seen that I was still there and failed to notice my predicament. I spent the night upside down and folded in half.

The nurse came in the morning to give me my meds. 'Oh my, what's going on here?'
'Hmm. Yeah. Morning ... Ya see, I'm a bit stuck...'
Lucy gave me that quizzical sideways look that says, 'I want to know how this happened, but I so don't want to know how this happened.'
Without a word, but still with that look, Lucy untilted me, unfolded me, and the blood rushed away from head where it had been pooling all night. What a relief.
'Go on,' she said, 'I have to know.'
I tried to explain.
Lucy fell about in hysterics and became incapacitated by the mirth.
I was somewhat embarrassed, but relieved no longer to be patient origami.




By the way, the whole thing failed to do anything for the oedema. Typical!

The ups and downs and ins and outs

Phew, it's been a bit of time of medical things and hospital appointments lately. Last week I went back to the falls and syncope clinic at RVI for another tilt table test, but this time 'in a hoover back', as it was described to me at my previous appointment. It turned out not to be a hoover bag as such, but more of a vacuum chamber that covered my lower body and came up to somewhere around the bottom of my ribs. The test started with me lying flat for five minutes or so, with my bp and heart rate being constantly monitored, and then the bed was tilted to about 70 - 80 degrees. The vacuum was kept off for the first ten minutes, so I was just standing there (the bed has a footplate), although I felt incredibly nauseous and kept retching. The almost-upright bed was at such a height that I was towering above the nurses and the consultant and I imagined that I was going to throw up all over the tops of their heads. Thankfully I didn't, and I'm sure they're even more thankful! Although the nausea had started only a few minutes into the test, I lasted for a total of seventeen minutes, with the vacuum having been turned on after ten minutes. The last thing I remember saying was, 'I think I'm going to go.' I was right. I passed out and came around with the bed flat, the vacuum chamber removed, my legs up on a beanbag and the consultant wiggling my feet. It's bad enough fainting when I'm on my own or even when there are other people around who are just getting on with life, but it's another thing having people stand around, watching, and waiting for you to pass out. It's also not so great when those who have just seen you pass out are really pleased that you have done. The consultant was just a bit too happy about it for my liking ;oP Anyway, he said that my blood pressure 'went ridiculously low, but it was conclusive.' I asked about my BP, and was told that it had gone from 128/70 - text book normal - to 20/0 - barely a BP at all! So the conclusion is that as well as POTS, I have vasovagal syncope. Now the medication I was on for the POTS - ditiazem - has the potential to lower BP so it obviously wasn't a good idea that I stay on it, and it's been changed to ivabradine, another med really designed for angina. I've started on a very low dose, but it's planned that this will be increased in another couple of weeks time, so hopefully I'll see a bit more improvement in my heart rate then, because at the moment it's going faster than it was when I was on the diltiazem, though still slower than it was (most of the time) before any medication. So that's where I'm up to ... or down to ... with the falls and syncope clinic, and I'm due back in 11 or 12 weeks.

On Wednesday I managed to dislocate my right shoulder. I don't recommend it. It hurts. I managed to get it back in myself by holding my right wrist with my left hand and swinging my arms at a weird kind of angle. I just did what it felt like needed to be done, and thankfully it worked, though the pain of it going back in caused me to pass out, but I was expecting this as I did the same thing about 15 years ago, so I was standing next to the bed while I did this so that I had a soft landing. It was still very sore and movement was restricted, but I thought I'd see how things went. In the end though I went to A&E to get it checked out and x-rayed. I'm pleased to say that it was fully back in place and in the right place, and that there was no fracture. The nurse was about to put a sling on me, but I wondered if my shoulder was likely to better more quickly if I keep using it. The nurse that to an extent that's true, but to keep the sling because I'd probably find that I need it to rest my arm for several days at least, and it'll take about six weeks for my shoulder to heal properly :o( I did take the sling, and I'm glad that I did because my shoulder's been very painful and resting it has helped a little, although it's very inconvenient, especially as I'm right handed. Anyway, I'm using it a lot and my asthma consultant yesterday said that he'd recommend using the sling all the time for a week or so, but then start mobilising it a bit more so that it doesn't seize up. That's what I'm doing.

As I've just mentioned, yesterday I had an appointment with Dr H, and of course the main thing on my mind for this appointment was the result of any conversations he'd had with Dr G about the possibility of portacath, as I talked about here. Dr H said he'd spoken to both Dr G and Dr K - an ITU consultant who knows me very well, and that initially both were taken aback by the idea, but when they went on to discuss it further they could see the positives and all have decided that it can happen. They do all have their concerns, most importantly my MRSA positive status as the portacath obviously goes straight into the bloodstream so any infection is potentially extremely serious. There is one proviso, and that is that the port is never used in A&E, because they're not trained in using them. It can of course be used on ward 29 and also on emergency admissions at RVI as one of the nurses from the respiratory ward there (wd 52) can come, and they're as experienced as the staff on 29 because they deal with a lot of CF patients. Dr H had been going to suggest that the op be done very soon, but we're having to wait now until my shoulder is better :o( Apparently ports are usually put in the left side, but sometimes they have to go in the right if the docs can't get into the left well enough, and Dr H didn't want to get me all geared up for it only to have to postpone it because we couldn't move my arm into a suitable position. He said he'd email Dr G and let him know what the plan is, and that it'll likely happen in July/August. I'm disappointed that it's being delayed by my shoulder (though I understand and agree with the argument), but I'm 'pleased' that the portacath is going ahead ... pleased in an odd kind of way, because it's not something that one really wants to have to be pleased about.

I told you in my Head-spin post that the ophthalmologists have agreed to remove my cataracts, but that by the time my appointment had finished all the 'dates people' had gone home, because the clinic was running three hours late! I was told that I'd get a letter in the post with an appointment, but I still haven't heard anything so I phoned them up today. They still can't give me a date as I'm down to have the op done by the consultant. I don't really understand why this means they can't yet give me a date, but they did say that it's likely to be mid-June that I have the op. Although this is a couple of months wait it actually fits in quite well with other things that are going on, like my OU course that's due to finish on 27th May, and a few days away with W in the first week of June. There might even be a little bit of recovery time between the first cataract op, the portacath op, and then the second cataract op.

Off on a tangent of ins and outs... I can't drive for a few days because of my shoulder so I had to get a taxi to my appointment with Dr H yesterday. I ordered the taxi at 8:40 thinking this would give me plenty of time to get to my 9am appointment. I went to wait for it outside, sitting on the garden wall, and I waited, and I waited, and I waited some more. I was getting a little frustrated when it hadn't turned up by 8:55am and was about to phone the taxi firm to ask where the cab was when the car pulled in and flashed its lights. I got into the car, and said where I wanted to go. The driver looked at me. She looked rather scared. Then I realised that I wasn't sitting in a taxi, but in a random woman's car! 'You're not a taxi, are you?' I said. She shook her head. 'Um, okay ... I'll be getting out, then...' I mumbled in a very embarrassed hurry as I clambered out and attempted to appear unruffled. I ambled back to the wall, sat down again, and realised that the poor, now traumatised lady, had pulled in and flashed her lights to allow another car to pass. Oops.

Saving my bacon

I was supposed to have my swine 'flu vaccination at the GP surgery on Tuesday. I went along to the appointment, the nurse went through the usual precautionary questions, and then we went through the ingredients of the vaccine and it turned out there was something in it I'm allergic to - a sulphate. She went through to speak to one of the doctors who said that in light of this, they couldn't give me the jab without my first speaking to my asthma consultant, especially as it transpires that a lot of people with multiple allergies are having adverse reactions to the injection. I came home, rang my consultant and left a message with his secretary, who phoned me back on Thursday saying that Dr H (my consultant) had weighed up the risks and decided that I should have the swine 'flu vaccine, but that they should give it to me in hospital, so I went up to the ward on Friday morning. It was a very strange experience waiting to be injected with something I knew I was allergic to - planned anaphylaxis ... very odd. I wondered if it was something similar to being on death row, although for very different reasons - ultimately to have my life saved, rather than certainly ended.

.

Dr. H came to see me before the ward round, went through the risks (i.e. anaphylaxis and death!), got me to sign the consent form, and then had the F1 put a cannula in so that I could have IV chlorphenamine (Piriton) before being given the vaccine. This would hopefully stave off an allergic reaction, although it would also make me sleepy.

.

J, the Charge Nurse, came with the IV and the jab, asked if I was ready, pumped me full of chlorphenamine, waited 5 minutes for it to whoosh around my body, then stabbed me in the arm with the potential killer jab. All we could do then was wait and see what happened, but at least I hadn't blown up into a Becky balloon and dropped dead immediately. After a while my lungs started to get tight and my sats dropped to 91%, but they were sorted with a couple of oxygen-driven nebulisers, and everything else was okay, thanks to the prophylactic chlorphenamine. I stayed on the ward until just gone 7pm to make sure all stayed okay (there can be a delay in the occurance of a reaction, and if there has been a reaction (which the lung-grumpiness was almost certainly due to) there can be a second wave reaction later), and then I was free to go home. It was a weird experience walking onto the ward in the morning as I'm usually gasping and struggling to breathe at all when I arrive on Ward 29, and it was even weirder to walk off the ward the same day ... a good experience though :o) And hopefully, I'll now be safe from getting swine 'flu :o) My bacon has been saved!

.

The same cannot be said regarding the whole passing out thing, which is still going on. When I was discharged from hospital the week before last with this the doctor had said that I should get an appointment for the falls and syncope clinic for two weeks time, which would mean I ought to be seen next week. This being the case I was expecting an appointment letter sometime during last week, but nothing came so I phoned the clinic on Thursday to ask what was happening. When I explained what I'd been told about getting an appointment for two weeks time the receptionist laughed and said that there was at least a nine week waiting list. She then went on to tell me that the consultant hasn't even put the referral in yet! The swine! Not only has he not done what he said he would, but I was told porkies about the time-scale, so now goodness knows how long I'll have to wait. I'm going to call the consultant's secretary on Monday to ask when I can expect the referral to be sent, and perhaps say that I'm not impressed that it hasn't been sent all ready as it's really not good to be passing out practically everyday, and not safe either - I fainted while I was cooking the other day, and it could've been really bad if I'd fallen onto the hob ... although it may have speeded up the referral, I guess ...

.

On a positive note, I have got an appointment for the 24-hour ECG, which may throw some light on what's going on, but only if it's something to do with my heart. Anyway, I go for that next Thursday morning, and then obviously have to go back on Friday morning, but I don't know when I'll get any results from it, or even who the results will be sent to as the referral to the falls and syncope clinic hasn't yet happened and I'd thought it was going to them. I might ask if it can be sent to my GP so that I can at least know it's going somewhere, and somewhere I can access them.

.

Now then, keeping on the theme of pigs - having my bacon saved from swine 'flu, swines of doctors who don't do what they say they're going to, and flying pigs for getting appointments - I was sent an email the other day that made me laugh a lot. I thought I'd share it with you so read on for a giggle. Oh, and apparently it really was sent to David Milliband.

.

.

Nigel Johnson-Hill

Park Farm

Milland

Liphook

GU30 7JT

.

Rt Hon David Milliband MP
Secretary of State.
Department for Environment, Farming and Rural Affairs (DEFRA)
Nobel House
17 Smith Square
London
SW1P 3JR

.

16th July 2009

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Dear Secretary of State,

.

My friend, who is in farming at the moment, recently received a cheque for £3,000 from the Rural Payments Agency for not rearing pigs. I would now like to join the "not rearing pigs" business.

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In your opinion, what is the best kind of farm not to rear pigs on, and which is the best breed of pigs not to rear? I want to be sure I approach this endeavour in keeping with all government policies, as dictated by the EU under the Common Agricultural Policy.

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I would prefer not to rear bacon pigs, but if this is not the type you want not rearing, I will just as gladly not rear porkers. Are there any advantages in not rearing rare breeds such as Sadlebacks or Gloucester Old Spots, or are there too many people already not rearing these?

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As I see it, the hardest part of this programme will be keeping an accurate record of how many pigs I haven't reared. Are there any Government or Local Authority courses on this?

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My friend is very satisfied with this business. He has been rearing pigs for forty years or so, and the best he ever made on them was £1,422 in 1968. That is - until this year, when he received a cheque for not rearing any.

.

If I get £3,000 for not rearing 50 pigs, will I get £6,000 for not rearing 100? I plan to operate on a small scale at first, holding myself down to about 4,000 pigs not raised, which will mean about £240,000 for the first year. As I become more expert in not rearing pigs, I plan to be more ambitious, perhaps increasing to, say, 40,000 pigs not reared in my second year, for which I should expect about £2.4 million from your department. Incidentally, I wonder if I would be eligible to receive tradeable carbon credits for all these pigs not producing harmful and polluting methane gases?

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Another point: these pigs that I plan not to rear will not eat 2,000 tonnes of cereals. I understand that you also pay farmers for not growing crops. Will I qualify for payments for not growing cereals to not feed the pigs I don't rear?

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I am also considering the "not milking cows" business, so please send any information you have on that too. Please could you also include the current DEFRA advice on set aside fields? Can this be done on an e-commerce basis with virtual fields (of which I seem to have several thousand hectares)?

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In view of the above you will realise that I will be totally unemployed, and will therefore qualify for unemployment benefits. I shall of course be voting for your party at the next general election.

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Yours faithfully,

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.

Nigel Johnson-Hill

Case concluded

I'm most disappointed. I'm not going to have my day in court after all :o( I received a letter on Friday from the Criminal Justice System Prosecution Team telling me that the police caught up with the man who attempted to thieve my holey watering can, and at his second hearing he pleaded guilty. I guess it's about time that something sensible happened in this most ridiculous affair, but it's disappointing all the same that I'm not going to be able to watch the magistrate try to keep a straight face during a full trial. Now that the defendant has been found guilty (on account of finally pleading guilty) I suppose it's alright for me to name him here ... So, for the 'following charges:

1. Theft
2. Failing to surrender to custody at appointed time

The John Francis Joseph O'Donnell [I bet he's Irish Catholic!] was sentenced as follows:

1. Ordered to pay the court a fine of £90
2. Ordered to pay the court a fine of £30'

I expect that £120 is probably quite a lot of money for this bloke, seeing as he's a scrap metal merchant ... who's so desperate for cash that he tried to nick my aluminium watering can with holes in the bottom. It must have a scrap value of about 10p!

I must just share with you the last paragraph of this letter I have from the CJS:
'I would like to thank you for your assistance as a witness in this case. Your evidence was very important in bringing this case to justice and your contribution is greatly appreciated.'

This makes me laugh so much. I didn't see anything! I didn't hear anything! I was asleep at the time! I only knew about the attempted theft because of a phone call from my neighbour who *did* actually see it happen! The crucial bit must have been that I looked out of the window after being informed of the crime and sure enough, there was a distinct lack of holey watering can in the spot that it should've been. This must have been vital information and deeply significant in the successful outcome of the prosecution. What it is to be a helpful member of society in police investigations ;oP

Oh yes, the letter also informs me that I can apply to the Criminal Injusries Compensation Scheme for the psychological injury this crime has caused me, and that if I wish I can also take 'the person responsible' to the civil courts. You know what, I think I might just not bother with that. It's not stoicism. It's not the Great British stiff upper lip. It's not that I'm too traumatised to be able to deal with such things. No, it's because it's so bloody ridiculous! ;o)

I'm still disappointed not to have to go to court though.

Onward

Phew, I've avoided being arrested ... so far. No sign of any police handcuffing me to either themselves or my bed, and no mention of being whipped off to a prison cell. My non-attendance at court as a non-witness to the practically non-crime (as it was *attempted* theft and therefore unsuccessful) appears to have been accepted as unavoidable due to my present incarceration at Freeman Hospital. I have just had a phone call from witness services though, that may explain their easy acceptance of my situation - the defendant didn't turn up to court. I'm told that a warrant has now been issued for his immediate arrest! It just gets sillier, doesn't it? The good thing about this is that it means I will still get my big day in court, and therefore will be able to give you a satisfactory outcome to this whole ridiculous affair, because the case is to be rescheduled. Hurrah! I was so intrigued by it all, and really wanted to see the magistrate try to keep a straight face throughout, that I was actually very disappointed not to be able to attend court yesterday. Given that the defendent - JFJO'D - didn't turn up it's probably a good thing that I didn't have to struggle to get there as I was actually very tired yesterday.

In other 'onward' news, I've been seen by the doctor this morning and he says that they'll review things on Monday, but most likely I'll get home early next week :o) This one's been a long haul, but then it was a very bad attack so it's no wonder it's taking time to recover. But I'm getting there, I'm making progress, and as the post titles says: Onward!

Speaking of judgements ...

... tomorrow was supposed to be my big day in court as (non)witness to the crime of the millennium. I'd been hoping to be home from hospital by now, but obviously I'm not, so my next hope was that I'd be able to have a trip out - just what everyone in hospital needs: a morning trip to the court room ;o) However, the doctors have today decided that I'm not well enough to go to court in the morning, and you know, I'm oddly disappointed. I was intrigued. I wanted to see the magistrate try to keep a straight face while they heard the evidence against the holey watering can thief, and heard me say that although I'd been called as victim and witness of the crime, I actually heard nothing or saw nothing, and knew nothing about it until I'd been alerted of the event by my neighbour. It has been pointed out to me that as 'victim' of the crime my statement/testimony may well be necessary for to proceed in court, if only to say that it was my watering can and that I didn't give anyone to enter my property or take the watering can. There is hope yet that my curiosity will be satisfied.

I was supposed to be arriving at court no later than 9:30 am, which means that I/the doctors are going to have to contact the courts as soon as they open to explain that I won't be able to be there. I'm guessing this will annoy the holey watering can thief - and possibly my neighbour A (key witness to the events) - as they're unlikely to be told of any postponement until after they've arrived. I'm sorry if I upset A, but not so sorry about annoying the holey watering can thief ... except that he obviously knows where I live ... ;o)

I hope that the courts are understanding in my inability to attend and the very short notice I/the doctors will be giving them. The original documents I received came with a form that I had to sign to say whether or not I'd be attending, but also said that if I didn't attend then I could be arrested! This whole thing is so ridiculous that somehow I wouldn't be surprised if I were to find myself being cuffed to a police officer by my hospital bed tomorrow afternoon. Unlikely it may be, but I fear it's not beyond the realms of possibility.

So the big questions are:
1. Will I be arrested for non-attendance at court as (non)witness to a crime I knew nothing about until after the event?
2. Providing I'm not arrested, will the case go ahead without me tomorrow?
3. Will the case be postponed so that I can give my non-evidence, satisfy my intrigue, and bring you a satisfactory conclusion to the whole affair?
4. Will the holey watering can thief be so annoyed at having his case postponed that he hunts me down, beats Wilfred to a pulp and makes another attempt at holey watering can theft?

So many questions, and all night to ponder them ... in the dark ... all on my own ...

;oP

The next installment

I got post this morning, and in the post was a letter from the Criminal Justice System. I have been summoned to court to appear as a witness in the case of the attempted theft of the holey watering can! I can't really see how my evidence is going to help the case along, other than to say that I am the owner of the holey watering can, and that after being made aware of its attempted theft I looked out of the window and sure enough there was a space where the watering can had been. How on earth am I going to keep a straight face?! I'm sure I'll break down into fits of giggles at the absurdity of the situation.

As I reported in the update on the saga, the guy who tried to steal the watering can had gone missing for a while, but had then handed himself into the police. Now, I'd have thought this would be an admission of guilt ... as did the police when they contacted me after this event ... especially as he did then 'come clean' about his involvement in the situation and his use of the minor in the crime. However, it turns out that in his hearing on 20th May he pleaded 'Not Guilty', which seems quite odd to me, but I guess he thought he'd try his luck so we'll see what happens.

I guess I'm unlikely to hear anything more now until after the court case on 29th July, but I'll let you know. In the meantime, Wilfred is doing a fine job guarding the watering can, and as far as I'm aware no other attempted thefts have occurred.

Protection

You may remember the incident of the holey watering can. There have been developments. A week or so before I went into hospital I had a letter from Victim Support offering me counselling for the trauma caused by the attempted theft of said holey watering can! Can you imagine my turning up to see a counsellor in distress at the event of which I knew nothing until it had been brought to my attention later in the day of its happening? I think I'd either be laughed at or carted away on the grounds of being far too sensitive for my own good. Now I know that Victim Support do a marvellous job, and I'm not belittling the work they do, but really, how can it be imagined that I'd be traumatised by the attempted theft of a watering can with holes in the bottom, and an attempt that I didn't know had even taken place until a while afterwards? It beggars belief. Needless to say, I'm not taking up their offer of counselling.

Last month it was my birthday, and aware of the attempted theft of the watering can, and aware of the uselessness of the worms in the wormery beside said watering can, my friend K got me a protector for the can. Meet Wilfred:

Don't you think he's rather fine? I have to say that I never, ever thought I'd be in possession of a garden gnome (or a guarding gnome ;oP ), but look, Wilfred even has his own little watering can! He clearly cares about the destiny of such things and would hate to see one come to a bad end, so here he is guarding the holey watering can that has caused such a stir:

Marvellous!

Now it's good to know that the police are protecting us from the villains of the world, but it has seemed rather surreal that a significant amount of police time has been spent on the search for the watering can thief. I know that the real issue isn't the can, but the fact that the 'leader of the operation' coerced a minor into the illegal activities of trespass and theft/attempted theft ... and that is why police time has been taken up on this matter, but still, if you look at the smaller picture - that of the watering can - it seems very trivial. So anyway, when I came out of hospital I had a message on my answer machine from PC May, the enthusiastic trainee police officer who had been investigating my traumatic experience. He didn't say much in the message, but sounded quite excited. A day or so after I picked up the message I had another phone call from him asking if I'd heard of developments in the case, which of course I hadn't as I'd been otherwise engaged in relearning the art of breathing. Oh, he was excited! PC May went on to inform me that the man they had initially tracked down as responsible for the crime had given false details and gone missing, and it turned out that he'd been living not at the address that he'd given the police, but in various hostels. After a couple of weeks of having disappeared though, the man had walked into a police station and handed himself in - a villain with a conscience! Only not enough conscience to admit to the coersion of a minor as he then proceeded to insist that he had nothing to do with the child, had no responsibility for him, and certainly hadn't led him into a life of crime. Only then he crumbled and admitted he was guilty. And the consequence of this? The case of the attempted theft of the holey watering can is going to court!!!!! Oh my! I am going to feel so incredibly foolish if I have to stand up in court as a witness (which I'm assured by the police, without having asked, will be under the witness protection programme and I can give evidence via video-link if I want!). 'Yes, Your Honour, I am victim to the crime of the attempted theft of a holey watering can that I once grew rosemary in, hence the holes. No, Your Honour, I didn't see anything ... or hear anything, because I was tucked up in bed and fast asleep at the time, having taken a sleeping tablet the night before. I do have a box of worms, which my father gave me for Christmas, next to where said holey watering can was taken from, but they have not been forthcoming with information regarding events of the morning, nor with giving a description of the villain. Your Honour, there is no need to look distressed at the uselessness of the worms' observation skills as I now have a fine protector in Wilfred,' at which point I could hold up a photo of Wilfred. I could, of course take the real thing, but that would mean leaving the watering can unprotected so it's probably best that I just take a photo.

PC May was so excited at the prospect of this going to court. Aren't you glad that your taxes are being spent on the protection of my watering can? I can hear your cheers of support from here. How about giving Wilfred a cheer too? I'm sure he'd appreciate acknowledgement for the fine job he's now doing. After all, so far as I know, no crook has tried to steal the holey watering can since Wilfred took over its protection.

Tunnel-digging

Spoons are at the ready and I've started digging my tunnel out of here ... which may come as a bit of a shock to those below me as I'm on the 4th floor. Never mind, the adrenaline from the shock it'll give them when I crash through the ceiling might give them just the boost they need to get better ;oP

The consultant, Dr H, came round this morning, waking me from my post-breakfast slumber by joking that, 'just because [I'm] doing an OU degree doesn't mean [I] can behave like a student.' ;oP After feeling completely exhausted yesterday, I'd had a bit of a better night's sleep last night and I felt more alive after my morning rest today, so it was agreed that we'd try to get the aminophylline down today. It's always a bit of an anxious time, because there have been many times when this hasn't been a smooth process and I've ended up back at square one. I was a little more relaxed about it this time though as 'square one' hadn't been anywhere near as critical as it usually is. However, it's still been a bit stressful wondering how things have going to be, but so far so good and the infusion came down at about 3.30pm so I reckon we're in safe territory now :o) This is a major step forward in my recovery and signals that discharge is approaching. In fact, if I can manage to get off the oxygen tomorrow then I may get home on Sunday, which would be fantastic. I know that as usual I'm going to be worn out when I get home, especially as the run up to this admission was such a long, drawn-out struggle, but at least we seem to have beaten the pneumonia bugs and the inflamation that they set up is more under control than it was. My peak flows are still low, with my highest pre-neb PEF today being 130 and my highest post-neb PEF so far today being 210, and they're still rather erratic, but they're going in the right direction. As for spirometry ... well, I don't think they've dared to do them again after the dismal result the other day. Maybe they think I'm better off keeping what breath I have for breathing, rather than wasting it by blowing it down a tube that draws a graph ;oP I don't mind - I'm not a fan of spirometry, because it makes you feel as though your head is going to take off and splat somewhere on the other side of the room while your chest implodes.

I'm really hoping that tonight goes okay without the aminophylline, and it should now that I've been off it a while and have started back on the oral theophylline, but night times are traditionally more difficult for asthmatics than day times. This is in part because of the body's natural cycle of cortisol - the steroid that the adrenal glands produce. The levels of cortisol fluctuate throughout the day, usually troughing between 2 am to 5 am, which is when many asthmatics experience more difficulty. The oral steroids (prednisolone) that I and many other 'unstable' asthmatics take raise the level of the naturally occurring cortisol (a healthy individual produces around 7mg per day) in an attempt to settle the asthma. In theory the dose of prednisolone can be split so that half is taken in the morning - the usual time to take pred - and half in the evening, so as to avoid the night time dip. However, the night time dip plays a role in sleep, and if you muck around with the cortisol/pred timing then you can end up getting very little sleep, which ultimately won't help. High doses of prednisolone can already affect sleep, whether or not the dose is split, and seeing as I'm on a whopping 75mg/day at the moment (!) it wouldn't be a good idea to further compromise the likelihood of good quality sleep that's going to rest my body and help me to get better. So yes, in theory the dose can be split and the night time dip can sometimes be averted, but in practise it is hardly ever done. End of pharmacology lesson ;o)

And now I've forgotten what I was saying before I rudely interrupted myself chuntering on about prednisolone and cortisol ... *scrolls back to look at the beginning of the last paragraph.* Ah yes, it was something to do with getting through the night and hoping it'd be okay now that the infusion is down. I'm sure it'll be fine. I hope it'll be fine. It will be fine. *crosses fingers* [pauses while blood pressure is checked ... it's all fine :o) ] Who knows, now that I'm line free, even if I'm not cannula free, I might even sleep a bit better as I won't be tying myself up in knots and pulling the line when I roll over. Oh, and the machine won't be having hissy-fits and beeping for no apparent reason in the middle of the night. Ahhhh, freedom :o)

Now then, where did I put that spoon? I need it to get back to my tunnel-digging *wanders away wearing a hard hat and looking for excavation implements*

Oddities

Sometimes there are just a few too many odd occurrences for one person to keep to themselves. The first was more unusual than truly odd, but noteworthy all the same. I live not too far away from the main train line between Newcastle and Edinburgh, and although I don't hear the trains everyday, I do sometimes hear them hoot their horn. On Monday I had the back door open, and was standing at the kitchen sink doing the washing up when I heard a train hoot its horn as it passed nearby ... except that it wasn't a horn being hooted; it was a whistle being whooted - a steam train.

Later that day I went for a trundle in Taz to make the most of the sunshine. While I was out I saw a couple of people walking two very small dogs, that turned out not to be dogs at all. Nope, what I was seeing was a couple of people taking two ferrets for a walk. Of course I've heard of this before, but it's not something I've ever seen and it was a little surprising, although smilesome :o)

You may have missed this news story yesterday, but it is truly odd. It is the story of a Russian man who went to see the doctor because he had a bad cough, was coughing up blood and had chest pain. An x-ray showed a shadow on his lung and he underwent immediate surgery to remove the tumour. However, the tumour turned out not to be what anyone was expecting, but rather a 5cm fir tree growing in the man's lung! It's thought that maybe he'd breathed in a seed while walking in the woods, and had somehow found conditions good enough for germination. Ya know, this is one thing that my asthma consultant hasn't considered as the possible cause of all my problems, so maybe next time I'm at clinic I should ask to have my lungs checked for rogue fir trees.

Several years ago I had a friend, C, who I came to realise was actually detrimental to my mental health. I won't go into details, other than to say that at the time I was very depressed, C had her own mental health problems, and she was the kind of person who needed to be needy and needed to be needed. It took a lot for me to end this 'friendship', but I knew that it was what I needed to do, and after doing so I felt huge relief. For some strange reason, on Monday I found myself thinking about C about that time of my life. Even weirder was that on Tuesday I had a phone call from C. She said she was phoning to ask about a chair she'd bought off me after my business had closed, and she then went into some long and protracted explanation of how this chair had now broken and how she was 'in consultation' with Ikea, where the chair had originally come from. It was all rather boring, to be honest, and yet (and as ever) she tried to make it sound like it was the most disastrous thing to happen in all the world, and what terrible repercussions the event had ... which as far as I could tell were that she had a broken chair and a sore bum. It was a very odd phone call, but really I think it was an excuse for C to get back in touch with me. It's not going to happen. Thinking about C fills me with a depressed frustration and I know that she's still no good for me. We were both ill when we met, and the one thing that she couldn't cope with was me getting better from depression - she wanted me to be ill. During the strange call from her on Tuesday it became evident that she's still ill; apparently hasn't made any progress; and she sounded hugely disappointed when I said that although my lungs are rubbish my mental health is great. I don't need that. I don't want that. She was odd then. She's still odd. The phone call was odd. The fact that I'd found myself thinking about C the day before the call was odd.

Some odd things are good, others are just ... odd.

Exhibit A

Exhibit A is ...

... A watering can with holes punched in the bottom from when I used to grow rosemary in it.

This item was the cause of an extremely surreal day on Saturday.

After taking a sleeping tablet on Friday night I was woken at 10am on Saturday by one of my neighbours, who lives opposite the back of my house, leaving a message on my answer phone. In my sleepy state I wasn't all together sure that I'd heard her correctly at first so went through into the living room to listen to the message again. She said that earlier that morning she'd seen some scrap metal people send a young child (about 7 years old) into my back yard through the gap where there's a slat missing from the fence. The child's mission was to steal my metal watering can - Exhibit A. My neighbour had dashed out of the back of her flat, confronted the scrap merchants, retrieved the watering can, taken down the truck registration number and informed the police of what had happened. She now had Exhibit A in her possession. I went back through to the bedroom, looked out of the window, and sure enough there was a space where the watering can had been next to the wormery.

The rest of Saturday continued in a normal Saturday kind of way ... for a couple of hours ... and then the police phoned me. Could they come round and take a statement from me? Er, yes, I suppose so, but I didn't see anything or hear anything. They came - a young WPC and a student PC - and were here for at least an hour. They were ever so interested in the fact that in the past I've seen some scrap metal collectors (most likely the same ones) standing on the flatbed of their truck, looking over people's walls as they drove up the lane, and then climbing over when they saw something of interest. Unfortunately I'd never taken the truck registration number down, but the police officers said that if I see it again then I should do so and immediately phone 999.

So when the police came to my flat we spent a bit of time going through what my neighbour had said had happened, and that the police had quickly found and stopped the truck, but as yet were unable to take things further. I wondered what 'taking things further' might mean in the context of the potential theft of a holey watering can, but didn't ask at that time. After that the student went out to the car to get the statement papers and the WPC explained that she would pretty much dictate the statement to the student, as there are certain things they need to include in it, but that I should interject if anything was incorrect. Well what could I say? I didn't see anything. I didn't hear anything. I was out for the count when the crime was committed. That was pretty much all I could say, although I did also have to say that I hadn't given the scrap people or the child permission to come into my yard, and that nobody has the right to go into my back yard or take anything from the yard without either my permission or that of my upstairs neighbours who share the yard. Apparently it's not classed as burglary, because that has to entail breaking into a building, but it's some other crime I can't remember the name of ... not trespassing, but something along those lines. The other issue is the use of a child under the age of responsibility to 'commit the crime'. However, despite all that it seemed a bit over the top when the WPC told me that it could go to court and I'd be called as a witness!

Can you imagine? I might have to stand up in court and say, 'Well, your honour, I saw nothing; I heard nothing; and I knew nothing about the attempted theft of my holey watering can until I was informed of it by my neighbour.' How foolish am I going to feel! I know it's the principle of the thing, the immoral use of a child (which the police are going to inform social services about), and the fact that this is probably the tip of something much bigger (in fact the police weren't even sure that the scrap metal collectors were registered merchants, so they might also be breaking the law with that too), but really, going to court over a non-functional watering can??? I was reassured that because of my disabilities then I'd be treated as 'a vulnerable witness' and if necessary could give my evidence from a seperate room by video-link. For a watering can?!

I'll keep you posted on any developments, and let you know if I'm going to have to don my best court clothes ... not that I have any clothes specifically for court seeing as I've never had to appear in court before ...

... All very surreal.

By the way, just in case you're wondering, I've got the watering can back now. I met my neighbour in the back lane yesterday afternoon for a clandestine reacquainting with Exhibit A, which is now being guarded once again by the worms ... not that they did a very good job of it last time.