… completely and absolutely fed up with this blasted dialysis.
The taxi came early for me for a change, and I was one of the very first to arrive at the dialysis centre. And yet, just to confound everything, it was another one of the latest returns back home that I have ever had.
It seems that everything has conspired against me and confounded my expectations, and I really must stop being so paranoid about it all because it’s doing me no good.
Yesterday, as usual, it was another evening that dragged on and on as I struggled to bring myself into a position where I could actually finish things off. Not that things were of much use because even though I might have finished my notes before 23:00, there was so much else to do and I couldn’t find the energy and motivation to do it.
Eventually, I managed to crawl into bed, much later than I had intended, and there I stayed, fast asleep, until 06:03 this morning.
“Just give me two minutes and I’ll hop out of bed” I said to myself, but the next thing that I remember was the alarm going off at 06:29. I must have gone back to sleep again, which is a surprise because I’m not able to do that when I would like, but can somehow almost always manage it when I don’t want to.
In the bathroom, I had a good wash, a scrub up, a shave and a change of clothing in case I meet Emilie the Cute Consultant today, and then I went for my medication.
Back in here afterwards, I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. There was something happening concerning the West Point Military Academy in the USA -about how if people stuck to the correct geometric … "he means ‘geographical’" – ed … co-ordinates, they would find themselves slap-bang in the middle of the camp quite properly, but if they were to deviate by even half a degree, they would find themselves in open country that surrounded the establishment. I’m not sure what else there is to say about that.
This presumably relates to something that I read about Benedict Arnold, who entered into an agreement with the British to hand over West Point to them during the American Revolutionary War.
My friends had built a log cabin for me. It was on the roof of a big hotel, and they had used some of the natural features of the rock at the back of the hotel to form part of the shape of it, and then built the rest out of small logs positioned width-ways around it and all cemented in. They had made a beautiful job of it. They showed me around afterwards and it looked really nice. It was fairly primitive with a beaten earth floor etc but it was exactly what I wanted. I hadn’t believed that my friends could have made something so nice as this. When they showed me around, there was a nurse there who gave me a massage on my back to make sure that everything was working fine for a while, and then they all left me there. I was really comfortable, looking out at all the scenery in the mountains with all the snow. The way into this cabin was to go into the hotel and ask for permission to use the lift to go right to the very top floor, and I could come out onto the roof and I’d be there. The first time that I tried this, there were some oranges on the hotel reception desk, so I took an orange too. But the nurse who was there, she came up to me afterwards and said “when I come again, there will be a little present in my room for me, won’t there?”. I realised that, of course, she’s going to need paying for coming to give me a massage and that kind of thing. But the bad news was that I overheard a conversation between several people, one of whom was a medical type, who told me that the illness is now creeping into my back and my arms, so I thought that I’m not going to be able to enjoy my little cabin for all that much longer
This could relate to my wonderful friends who helped me move house a month ago, although I’ve no idea where the hotel and the nurse fit in. It is generally reminiscent of my plot of land in Canada where I had indeed intended to erect a log cabin so that I could go there every summer. However, my health had other plans.
The nurse came around today, his usual (these days) cheerful self, full of joie de vivre and bonhomie. He didn’t stay long, so I could crack on with breakfast and read the rest of BATTLE MAPS AND CHARTS OF THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION.
That book is now finished and I’ve started the next one, BATTLES OF THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION. This is the full-length version of over 800 pages and goes into everything in a much greater depth.
So far today, we’ve been having Carrington’s eulogy and it looks as if it might continue in this vein for a couple of days yet. He takes and age to reach the point … "think of a well-known phrase involving pots and kettles" – ed …
After breakfast, there was some housekeeping that needed attention, and then I had to send off the radio programme for the coming weekend. That was something else that took an age with this new file transfer program that we are obliged to use now that the old one has died a death.
There were also a few ‘phone calls to make, and then I could concentrate on my Welsh homework that I should have done ages ago. It’s going to take an age because I can’t remember anything at all about the unit on which the homework is based.
My cleaner was late arriving, so I’d already begun to prepare my bag for dialysis. We had quite a long chat too, which was interrupted by the arrival of the taxi driver, abut 20 minutes early.
We had to pick up another passenger in Granville to take to Avranches, but even so, we were still about 20 minutes early.
My bed was all ready for me, but it still took them one hour and fifteen minutes to plug me in, by which time I was a most unhappy bunny.
The delays continued throughout the session – I even had to be reconnected because one of the pins had missed its aim and they had to start again.
What with all of this, I was in no mood to work. I just wanted to leave there. The doctor came to see me but he had nothing to say for himself and left quite quickly.
When the alarm went off for the end of the session, I had to wait 15 minutes to be unconnected. And then they decided to work on my feet for a while.
The taxi was 15 minutes late too so by the time that I returned home, it was long after 19:30, and that’s quite late (although not unheard-of) for a dialysis session.
With it being so late, I wasn’t in the mood to do much so I had pasta and falafel for tea – the falafel well-overcooked in the microwave.
But now I’m off to bed for an early night (I hope) the alarm is set for 06:00 tomorrow to give me a good start for chemotherapy. But it really is awful, all of this.
But seeing as we have been talking about Emilie the Cute Consultant … "well, one of us has" – ed … she was there this afternoon but all that I had was a grudging “hello”.
It’s a far cry from last summer when she would sit at the foot of my bed and chat to me about nothing in particular.
Regular readers of this rubbish will recall when she brought the first set of test results to me. "You have acute anaemia" she said.
"Thank you" I replied. "I’m so glad that you like it."
