… the Sleep of the Dead!

By about 21:30 I was totally out of it, what with all of my exertions over the weekend and my late night on Saturday. And with a hectic 10 days to come, there’s no point in pushing out the boundaries so I hit the sack. I vaguely remember at about 23:30 waking up to switch off the laptop, and that was absolutely that until the alarm went off at 07:00.

Totally painless, and I felt so much better for it.

I had company a breakfast – one of these Obsessive Compulsive Disorder people who spent 10 minutes washing a mug, and then 10 minutes washing a glass – that type of person. And then, inexplicably, he left his dirty knife in the sink – and told me not to wash it as he would do it later. Not that I was intending to of course – each to his own around here – but it was such a strange thing to do given how much time he had spent washing the rest of his stuff.

Hospital came next – and I had to get a move on because Bane of Britain had taken his hospital folder down to Caliburn last night and he needed it up there. It’s all keeping me fit anyway. And up there, the nurse who fitted my catheter into my catheter port did so with such skill and dexterity that I didn’t even realise that she had done it and taken the blood sample.

This led to the following fantastic exchange –
Our Hero – “you know, I’m so impressed. You did that so gently that I didn’t even realise it”
Nurse – “I was Belgian Ladies’ national darts champion in 1984 and 1986”

I had to wait ages to see the doctor, but in the meantime I saw Kaatje, my Social Welfare worker and Ingrid, the trick cyclist. Ingrid managed to wangle me a visit to see the Professor who is handling my case, and Kaatje conformed that absolutely everything is up-to-date as far as payments go, and she’ll find all of the required information that I need for my insurance by next week (I shall be passing by).

As far as my health goes, the news isn’t quite so good. Blood count is down, to 10.3 and I’m not very happy about that. The protein loss is stable, but it’s still way too high as we all know.

But the professor didn’t give me much encouragement. I have renal failure – well, we’ve all guessed that with the protein loss didn’t we, so no surprise there. But I have a rare disease as you all know and according to the Professor, “it’s not responding like it should”.

She thinks that moving house is a good idea, because hauling wood and water is not such a good idea, but as to whether I need to go into a care home, rent a property or buy something else, she recommends renting. Apparently I’m
well enough right now that I don’t need a care home, but if I rent somewhere rather than buying it, I can escape from that commitment much easier than a purchased accommodation. She can’t say whether I’m good for &5 years, or good for 10 years, and when you add up all of that, it doesn’t sound too healthy, does it?

On the way back, I went to buy some bread for lunch, and had a goodbye kiss from the girl in the supermarket on the corner. That cheered me up no end, I’ll say!

After lunch, I carried on packing and moving stuff down to Caliburn. But I had a brief moment of distraction ringing up my bank. There’s an “issue” with a payment on my account, for no reason whatsoever, and it’s the monthly payment that i need to make to my Storage company in Montreal – the ones with whom I’ve had all of these issues just now.

“Unusual spending patterns” is the issue so I phoned them up – with a French mobile from Belgium to the UK, explained this to the girl on the phone, who promptly put me on hold for 8 minutes. By the time that I was reconnected I was steaming. The discussion that we had was … errr … rather heated, and in the end they put the phone down on me before I had quite finished telling them exactly what I thought of them and their bank.

But at least the payment has been made and I hope that this will be the last of it. But I’ml getting rather sick of it all.

For tea I had sausage, mash and frozen veg for tea, followed by vegan ice-cream and peach halves. That’s most of my food from here finished, and whatever is left is left.

Another four loads of stuff down to Caliburn, and I even found time to go for a coffee with Sean, the guy who used to live here. I quite enjoy his company, until he starts on about the EU. He really has a bee in his bonnet about it and he isn’t ever going to change my opinion, so I don’t know why he wants to start a discussion about it – unless it’s something to do with the two or three beers I suppose.

And I had a weird experience on the way back. Some French van with three men in it, were stopping at each girl that they saw in the Kapucijnenvoer and asking them a question. It didn’t seem quite right to me, especially when they almost stopped at the same girl twice, realised that it was she and drove off rapidly. I’ve taken the vehicle the registration number of the van just in case, because I can smell a rat from here, never mind from there.

Ad so now I’m totally exhausted, so I’m just about to go off to bed. My last ever night here in this hostel (I hope) and I’m exhausted. I’ve had a really busy day and I need to relax.

Let’s hope that the weather improves.

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