… just how much this dialysis is taking out of me.
It’s true to say that today, I haven’t crashed out. Nor have I felt anywhere near like it. But that’s a statement of fact, not a celebration, because I’ll need much more than one day like that before I ever celebrate.
However, leaving that aside, I’ve still felt far too exhausted to concentrate on actually doing anything productive. It’s obviously going to be a long-hard road, that is, if I ever arrive there.
What’s even more surprising is that when the alarm went off at 07:00 I was in the bathroom doing some washing. The puttees had been soaking for several days so it’s high time that I rinsed them out and hung them up to dry.
But then again, the early start might also be accounted for by the fact that I was in bed by 22:45. And I didn’t go very far into my night-time mantra before I crashed out. That was much more like how it’s supposed to be
It’s quite strange really – I don’t understand what has suddenly become easier. Or maybe I do. It’s no coincidence that since I set the clock on the microwave in the kitchen I seem to be pushing on a little more. Plus the fact that I no longer have puttees to roll up. That helps.
So having carried out the final tasks for the day I toddled off to bed and there I stayed until about 04.50.
As seems to be the case, after dialysis there’s a lot of sweating and that was what awoke me. It wasn’t as bad as the other night but nevertheless …
After a while I gave up the idea of going back to sleep and set off towards the bathroom
Having had a good washing session (of me and the puttees too) I came back in here to find that there was nothing at all on the dictaphone.
That’s a disappointment because, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, that’s the only excitement that I have these days (apart from fights between taxi drivers and bus drivers) and you never know who I’m going to meet. I can do without meeting my family of course, but it’s all worthwhile when Castor, TOYGA and Zero come to see me.
When there’s a night without any dream going on, I feel really disappointed
So with nothing to transcribe, I went through the videos again tagging them with identifying comments. And regrettably, the metadata on the dashcam that was in Strider and on which I recorded all of my North American travels and the early stiff in the UK is locked and can’t be edited.
It seems that the company that made the dashcam is claiming all the copyright for itself. We’ll have to see about that. There has to be a workaround somewhere, even if it’s simply relying on VLC’s re-recording facility.
Some of the videos have been recorded the wrong way round and my first efforts at rotating them 90° into the correct perspective cropped out a lot of the important information. Life is just one big cycle of learning, isn’t it? “Back to the drawing board, Cecil”.
The nurse was late this morning. Isabelle is back on duty and when she finally arrived she apologised and said "there was a lot of blood tests to do this morning" .
Of course, I almost choked when I heard this. Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … that she has the “touch” and her colleague doesn’t.
So I imagine that everyone else is aware of that too and if they had a blood test to be done last week, they postponed it until she came on duty. I know that I have done in the past.
It was my turn to moan too. I had a moan about her colleague and a few of the issues that we had. As far as the medication goes, she suggests that I speak to the nurses at the Dialysis Centre, explain discreetly the issue, and see if they can find another doctor to talk to me.
After she left I made breakfast and carried on reading my book. Today we are in the abandoned Roman city of Magnae. Our author tells us once more of how walls, flooring and paving was discovered when they stripped away several centuries-worth of brambles. And how it was all ripped up, just like at Ariconium down the road .
A whole host of stuff that was discovered was given to one of the Bishops of Hereford who made himself a little collection, and when he died, the whole lot was auctioned off item by item and dispersed, and presumably lost.
All of that was in living memory of some of the elderly locals.
Back here I revised for my Welsh lesson and then, armed with a pot of strong coffee, I signed myself in.
There’s a new pupil started this year. She’s the curator of Denbighshire’s external museums and buildings. I can see that I will be cultivating her friendship if I can. She sounds like a very interesting person.
The lesson didn’t pass too badly. It could have been much worse, I suppose. But at least I recognise it from somewhere and it’s stuff that I’m sure that I’ve done before.
After lunch I attacked the choice of music for the next radio programme.
By now though, I was flagging. I pushed myself along until I’d chosen 10 tracks. It meant that my hot chocolate and coconut cake was rather late, but I’d finished that part of the exercise. I was too exhausted to pair it off later though. I was wasted.
Tea tonight was a taco roll with rice and veg. The stuffing in the roll was sprinled with garlic powder to make up for the absence of the fresh stuff. It was better than nothing and tasted quite delicious.
It was followed by dead fly pie – I mean, my spotted dick. I’ve tasked much better than this, but I’ve also tasted much worse. With the coconut … "are you allowed to use that word?" – ed … soya cream it was quite palatable and I’ll make some more of that in due course.
So now I’ll finish off and go to bed. But this talk about the author wandering around Roman remains reminded me of Nerina telling me that she wished that she had married an archaeologist.
When I asked her why, she told me "the older I became, the more interested he would be in me"
Presumably that was in reference to my telling her that when she reached 32 I was going to swap her for two 16 year olds
However I told her "his career will all be in ruins by then. So if he does take an interest in you, you ought to be worried."
