Saturday 8th June 2019 – I’VE BEEN SHOPPING …

.. today.

But the shopping expedition started before I went out, actually.

Liz turned up as planned, but she had stopped off at the chemist on the way here and bought some arnika tablets and some calendula oil.

The arnika is for easing the pain and bruising, and the calendula oil is a natural anti-inflammatory preparation for rubbing on the knee. and seeing as nothing else seems to be working right now, it’s worth a chance.

Last night was, for a change, an excellent sleep. I remember nothing whatever until the alarm went off, and even though it’s not a Sunday, I lay in bed until about 08:25.

After a coffee Liz and I went to the shops, fighting our way through the grockles.

Nowhere came up with anything special, although we had a nice lunch in LeClerc. I also helped Liz check her tyres – there was a lack of pressure in the rear left-hand tyre.

Back here, I crashed out not once but twice, and then hung out the washing that I had done while we were at the shops and changed all of the bedding.

For a change I didn’t feel much like tea but there were a few baked beans left so I had them with a couple of small potatoes.

An early night now, I reckon. And Sunday is a lie-in. So I’ll bathe my leg in calendula oil and hope that it produces some good results.

Liz is impressed by how much easier I am moving compared to last week, and for that I thank the salt baths. Let’s hope that the calendula can add to that.

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Friday 7th June 2019 – THE GOOD NEWS …

… is that my knee doesn’t seem to be septic or infected. Whatever is weeping out of it doesn’t correspond with anything that one would expect to see under those conditions.

It seems to be what you might expect to see in the case of an inflammation. And the bad news is that there’s nothing that I can take that it anti-inflammatory that would not react with the other products that I take.

Consequently I need to go off to somewhere around here for an ecograph and then on 17th June to see a specialist in Coutances.

And isn’t that cutting it rather too fine?

But for now, the salt baths do seem to be working. I was in the bath for an hour this afternoon and it eased the leg off considerably. In fact I was walking around a darn sight better than I have done for the last 10 days or so.

What I shall have to do is to keep on with that every day or so and take whatever relief it might give me.

But the one thing about going to Coutances is that I’ll finally get to have a ride on the new railway. There are good connections to and from Granville for my appointment, and it’ll give me a chance to try out the leg prior to my trip to Leuven the following weekend.

Last night was another decent night for sleeping and I was even out of bed, up and about before the final alarm went off.

And having had breakfast I made a start on the searchable text database for the photos for April 2018. And this is going to take a while because there are plenty of them. I had a good weekend in Germany, a few days in Oostende and a week in Tunisia.

After a little tidying-up and lunch I had my salt bath and a good clean-up and tidy-up, and then Brigitte came to take me to the doctor’s.

Back here, I invited her in for a coffee and a chat and then made my tea. a curry made out of leftovers, and I found that I had forgotten to add the leftover peppers. Nevertheless it was delicious.

Tomorrow I’m shopping so I’m going to have another early night. I hope that it’s as good as last night, because it occurs to me that I haven’t crashed out yet.

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Thursday 6th June 2019 – HAVING DONE SOMETHING …

… yesterday that I haven’t done in more than 25 years, I went out this afternoon and did it again.

Having managed almost a completely normal day yesterday apart from an hour or so in the late afternoon, I was asleep at a reasonable time. And Although there was a lengthy period round about 01:35 when I was wide awake, I slept right through to the alarm – and then some too.

Considering my lack of mobility, I’ve had a rather busy day. All of the photos going back to when I broke my hand are now edited, cropped, enhanced and saved, and entered in the database.

And there were more of them than I was expecting too.

When I can sit comfortably, whenever that might be, I’ll bring up-to-date the blog entries. But at the moment, sitting with one leg up in the air is not the easiest way to deal with things like a large batch of typing.

Having had lunch I then went back into the bath for another hour or so. and while it didn’t have the same dramatic effect as yesterday (and most of that wore off as the evening drew on) it still made things much easier for moving about.

The bedroom has been tidied up somewhat too, with some of the stuff that was lying around now arranged on shelves. But it’s only scratching the surface and I need to push on when I can.

Round about 17:30 I had a crash-out on the bed for about 45 minutes, and I’ve also done another month’s indexing of photos (1805) and I’ve made a start on 1804 – that is to say April 2018.

Tea was a small stuffed pepper with spicy rice and I’m glad that I am back to eating a little. I seem to have lost 5kgs and that’s good news.

Tomorrow, more of the same including the bath, because Brigitte is taking me to the doctor’s, which is very nice of her.

I don’t have many friends, as everyone knows, but those I have are the best in the world and quantity is never a substitute for quality.

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Wednesday 5th June 2019 – IT’S BEEN PROBABLY 25 YEARS …

… or maybe even more since I last had a bath.

But this afternoon I took the plunge, as it were, and it was delicious.

Yet another difficult night and I was awake by 01:35. At 04:30 I was up and about and having my medication and by the time that the alarms went off I was ready for breakfast.

This morning, trying my best to find some concentration, I finished off transcribing the notes for Canada 2017 at long last, followed by making the photo templates for the rest of the summer.

That took me until lunchtime.

After lunch, I ran a deep hot bath, lowered myself in and then slowly added a half-cup of salt. And then I lay in it for well over an hour.

All of my wounds have cleared up, the swelling has subsided and the bright red colour has now changed to a more medium red. and for an hour or two I could move around quite happily.

Even now, it’s much freer than it was before.

But I can see a deep hole in the knee where it is weeping. It looks as if a large piece of gravel was embedded in it, and that is what has caused all of the problems.

I’ve no idea if it’s still there, but I’ll go for another hour or so in a slat-water bath tomorrow and see if that helps.

For Friday I’ve arranged an appointment with the doctor, and as Liz can’t take me, I’ve asked Brigitte if she would.

For a change I’ve done a little tidying up today, and I’ve also made some tea for the first time for a while. A baked potato and beans, so nothing exciting. But it’s a start.

and I managed to keep out of bed until about 17:30 before succumbing to sleep.

So I’m ready for a good night’s sleep. I’m intrigued now to see how I’ll be feeling in the morning.

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Tuesday 4th June 2019 – THERE HAS BEEN …

… a slight change in the situation today, in that the knee has now turned itself into a bright red lump, a little smaller than the area that was medium-red before.

It’s now taken the form of a blister with a load of pus in it, and sometimes when I move my leg it weeps from behind the skin. What comes out has the consistency and colour of red grapefruit juice.

However it’s now giving me absolute agony because it’s not settling into one particular place like it used to before. Whereas up until a couple of days ago once it had settled into a particular place I could walk around without too much distress I can’t do any of that right now.

I was awake again at 04:00 this morning but lounged around until about 05:15 when I got up and had my tablets. Breakfast was at 06:00, but by 08:00 I was back in bed.

That’s how I’ve spent most of the day.

At some point during the day I managed a shower but that was total agony, but I need to keep on doing that.

Shame as it is to say it, I’ve accomplished nothing at all today because the only time that I seem to be able to have some relief is when I’m lying down in bed. So this is where I’m spending most of my day.

No tea again – just a handful of nuts and a couple of squares of chocolate. But that’s not something that will be worrying me as I have a few kilos that I need to lose.

So there’s something good that might come out of it, but I just don’t know what I’m going to do about this.

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Monday 3rd June 2019 – I MIGHT POSSIBLY …

… be mistaken but by the end of the evening today I might have noticed a slight (and I DO mean “slight”) change in the way that my left leg is performing, and it might (and I DO mean “might”) be a change for the better.

But we shall have to see

The alarm went off of course as usual at 06:00 but when I finally surfaced it was more like 08:35. If I get up and move around too much too early I end up in agony.

We had breakfast of course and then much of the morning was spent copying the blog notes over to the web page for Canada 2017 – when I was feeling up to it. It’s not easy with the pain.

There has been some bad news too. Many years ago I bought a cheap cassette player from ALDI – they kind of machine that plugs into a USB port so that you can digitalise your audio cassettes.

I have hundreds around here and that was to be my next project. I went to make a start but for some reason the thing doesn’t want to work. I tried various combinations of batteries but it doesn’t want to fire up at all.

So it looks as if this project has gone back on ice for a while – either until I have a sudden revelation about what it is that I have forgotten to do or until I buy another machine.

Most of the afternoon has been spent in bed – for at least that way it eases things off a little and it doesn’t hurt so much. I can cope with the leg when I’m lying down like this and it’s not too painful.

It’s being upright that’s causing me most of the problems, and the transition between being lying down and being upright that it causing all of the rest – and they are the worst.

But as I said, this evening I noticed that things seem to be slightly different in the way that the leg is performing.

Once again, I didn’t feel like any tea. A couple of squares of chocolate and a handful of nuts. I’m still not in the mood for eating and seeing as I have a number of kilos that I wish to lose it’s no skin off my nose if I don’t eat. I’ll eat away at these excess kilos instead

So now I’m off to bed, nice and early. As in 21:05. But I don’t care. I need to make the most of this immobilisation and catch up on my beauty sleep so that I can feel so much better when the time comes for me to start to work again, which I hope will be soon.

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Sunday 2nd June 2019 – WITH IT BEING …

… Sunday today, the plan was to have a nice long lie-in.

But what happened instead was that I had another nuit blanche and didn’t recall going to sleep at all.

By about 04:30 I’d given up all idea of sleeping so I got up and had my medication followed by an early breakfast.

By about 08:30 I was back in bed and that was where I spent most of the day – making the most of the Sunday. And by the end of the day I had noticed a very slight improvement. But only very slight.

During my more lucid moments I’ve done some tidying and packing, transferred another pile of dictaphone notes over to the web page that I’m preparing, and had good chats with Rosemary and Liz.

Tea was a vegan pizza, rather over-peppered.

For some reason or other I’m absolutely overtired right now. it’s almost as if I’ve been working hard. But I’ll crash out in a minute and have a really long recuperative sleep.

Of course.

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Saturday 1st June 2019 – WHAT A HORRIBLE …

… night that was last night.

There have certainly been nights when I’ve felt as though I’ve lain awake all night, but last night with the bedroom door open I could see the clock all the way through the night.

In fact I’d been to bed very early and dropped off for an hour or so, but that was that. I spent the rest of the evening lying there watching the clock.

By 04:45 I was up and about having my medication and by the time the alarm went off I was already eating my breakfast.

However there was no chance of my keeping going. By about 08:15 I was back in bed asleep for an hour or so.

And that’s how my day has been – up and about for a couple of hours and then crashing out in bed for an hour or so.

The leg is still giving me sheer agony, but it’s quite comfortable when I’m lying in bed – so it’s not too much of a disappointment. I need to take it easy and to rest the leg.

During my more lucid moments I’ve been reading the manual for the new camera, ordered 500 business cards and done some packing. And that vacuum bag that I bought a few weeks ago, as regular readers will recall, works in spades because I have enough clothes for several weeks now packed into a tiny space. I just hope that I can find a vacuum cleaner at the other end of my trip when I need to repack it.

There was also some time to add another day or two’s blog entry texts to the Canada 2017 page.

Lunch was rather late – about 16:00 in fact – due to various reasons, and so I’ve not had tea tonight. It’s been a few nights this week that I’ve not had tea and I’ve lost 3kgs. That’s always good news.

But now I’m off to bed. I’m not all that tired but I can listen to the radio for a while.

Sunday tomorrow so there might be a lie-in. And I’ll try for a pizza for tea again.

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Friday 31st May 2019 – I WENT …

… to the doctor’s today as I mentioned, thanks to Liz.

During the night I didn’t have any sleep at all, so I wasn’t in the mood for it really. But the doctor has prescribed me some antibiotics and some painkillers that are powerful enough to paralyse a bear.

Liz took me shopping afterwards – to,Super U, LIDL and LeClerc. As well as doing my shopping at LeClerc I treated Liz to lunch seeing as how she had been so kind to me.

At the chemists I bought all of the prescription items, plus a couple of these ice-pack gel things, and also a crutch.

After Liz left, I made my bed with a nice big box in it to raise my leg, and went to bed. Much more comfortable there.

And here I’m staying until tomorrow.

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Thursday 30th May 2019 – THE PAIN …

… is just getting worse and worse. A shower didn’t ease it off very much but I had to abandon the ice pack because it was just sending cold all the way through my body.

In the end I retreated underneath the covers at about 16:00 and that was my lot. It took ages to warm up but I wasn’t intending on moving anywhere.

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29th May 2019 – I’VE SPENT …

… most of the day with my left leg up on a box, with an ice-pack strapped thereto.

And to my surprise, there was a very small improvement.

Another day like this and we might even feel better.

The day was broken by a good chat with Rosemary who has had good news. And that’s always good.

now I’m going to retreat to the sofa where I intend to spend another night.

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Tuesday 28th May 2019 – THE GOOD NEWS …

… is that my hand has healed quickly. It’s not 100% but I can take the plaster off. It still aches so I won’t be doing too much with it right now.

Another piece of good news is that I haven’t broken anything in my knee. It’s a very bad bruising that has gone tender and swollen up. So that I now have to spend the next few days with my leg up and an ice pack strapped thereto.

But I died of agony walking to and travelling on the bus. Had someone offered me amputation I would have taken it.

So nothing now will happen until Friday when hopefully the swelling will have gone down and I go to the doctors for some anti-inflammatory stuff.

Just to stop the leg catching fire, I suppose.

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Sunday 26th May 2019 – OUCH!

That hurt!

I’m not sure what I’ve done but I awoke with a staggering pain in my left knee – reminiscent of the time(s) that I broke my kneecap in my late teens.

So today I’ve not gone out and not done anything at all, apart from speaking to Rosemary.

The pain has worsened as the day has drawn on and I ended up with my leg up on a chair, or even lying on the bed.

I’ll see how it goes tomorrow. But I’m off to the hospital Tuesday so they will sort it out there.

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Saturday 25th May 2019 – IT’S …

… 02:30 in the morning and I don’t feel in the least like any sleep. That will teach me to have three coffees during the day, won’t it?

And seeing as I had a really bad night last night, i’m surprised that I haven’t crashed out yet.

An early start, a shower, a washing machine cycle and vacuuming the floor.

Coffee with Liz and Terry and then the LeClerc – I have to eat, don’t I?

Terry rescued Caliburn and in exchange I invited them for a meal at this new rice restaurant, followed by coffee at the bar just down the road.

Tons of work today, tea, a walk around the headland in the madding crowds and now I’m waiting for sleep.

Good job that it’s Sunday.

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