… since I first told them at dialysis that I’d cut down dramatically on the food that I ate?
It all started after a couple of sessions of chemotherapy when all of the food began to taste of nothing but salt, so let’s say “August 2025”.
Anyway, as usual, no-one took any notice of anything that I had to say, and so little by little, the quantity of liquid to be extracted from my body has diminished and diminished. Today, for example, it was just 200 grammes – a far cry from twelve months ago when they were extracting well over 2,000 grammes at each session.
But today, we have finally had a reaction. When the figure of just 200 grammes came up, they fetched the electricity resistance meter to measure the water in my body, and they came up with a staggering 3,800 grammes. In other words, since they last used the meter on me, and I really can’t remember when it was, I’ve lost 3,600 grammes in weight.
What they have been doing is calculating the liquids to be removed based on the previous “dry weight”.
If you had asked maybe a year ago, losing 3,800 grammes of water in a dialysis session would have been OK, but not having had that much to remove for quite a while, my body wouldn’t withstand the shock all at once. And so they are going to remove an extra 1,000 grammes per session until I catch up with where I ought to be.
But what a performance! No wonder I’ve been feeling so tired just recently.
Anyway, I digress … "again" – ed …
Last night, I managed to be in bed before 23:30. But only just, as it was 23:15 when I finally crawled under the covers. Not as early as I would have liked, because I’m trying to be in bed before 22:30 to give me eight hours’ sleep, but most of the time, that proves to be an unrealistic target.
So once in bed, it didn’t take long to go off to sleep, and while I remember waking up a couple of times, I was soon back to sleep again. And there I stayed until the alarm went off at 06:29.
Eventually, I managed to stagger off to the bathroom where I had a good scrub-up and a shave – I’m not sure why because Emilie the Cute Consultant doesn’t love me any more – and then I went off for my hot drink and medication.
Back in here, I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night.
This is another dream that seems to have come out of nowhere at all. There’s nothing in this dream that seems to relate to anything that I’ve been doing or thinking just recently.
Having said that, though, I did spend about ten minutes last night trying to remember some of the Russian that I used to know and practising a few of the words that I used to know.
Isabelle the nurse was very late arriving today, so I had made a start on the next radio programme while I was waiting. And when she finally did turn up, she was in such a rush that she couldn’t hang around and was soon gone.
That enabled me to make my breakfast and read some more of ESSAYS ON THE LATIN ORIENT by William A Miller.
The Frankish Crusaders have now arrived in Greece and are busily dividing up the country between the leaders of the Crusade, creating small duchies that alienated the local population and led the locals to make some rather strange alliances in order to try to drive the Franks out – something that created a period of disorder for a couple of centuries.
Back in here, I carried on choosing the music for the next radio programme. Some of it took some finding too, but it’s now all collected, remixed, reformatted, re-edited, paired and segued, and the notes started. Where has all this energy come from?
My cleaner turned up as usual to apply the anaesthetic to my arm, and then the taxi turned up, early again. Mind you, there were two other people to pick up on the way, so we weren’t any earlier arriving.
And I was really impressed by the number of flowers that have appeared by the roadside these last few days. It’s all looking impressively beautiful out there now.
At the dialysis session, we had the pantomime, as I mentioned earlier, and then I was left pretty much alone to complete my shopping list.
There was, as usual, a delay in unplugging me from the machine, and by the time that the nurse had finished compressing my arm, the taxi driver was here. He wasn’t particularly chatty, so we had something of a silent voyage home.
And isn’t it nice to be back home in the daylight?
My cleaner was waiting for me and she helped me into the apartment.
Tea tonight was going to be a vegetable korma out of the freezer, but while I was rummaging around in the freezer, I came across an aubergine and kidney-bean whatsit dated, would you believe, November 2023. I decided to eat that before it walked out of the freezer on its own
So right now, I’m off to bed, ready for a good radioing morning tomorrow. I have my shopping list to send off and a pile of washing to do. I hope that I remember to do them all.
But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about the stuff in my freezer … "well, one of us has" – ed … one of my friends once said that she had problems taking something out of her freezer.
"Why was that?" I asked
"Because every time I opened the freezer door, something in there reached out and closed it again"
