Tag Archives: hospital

Tuesday 15th November 2022 – I WAS RIGHT …

… about them planning to heave me out in the near future.

The doctor came to see me this morning and gave me an examination and I went through my usual spiel about the hospital going round and round in circles and I was pretty sure that she understood.

However she came back a short while later with her professor who had a chat with me. She explained that there were at least two viruses in my body and there are still traces of pneumonia in my body.

However she did yell me that despite everything, they were still planning on letting me go. Apparently they were worried that I’d catch Covid if I remained in the hospital;

And so I asked whether she was worried about me catching Covid during the 1400km round trip to the hospital and back to the various appointments that (I hoped) was sure to follow.

Now that took her completely by surprise and totally deflated her. Apparently she was totally unaware that I lived in France. Making the most of her bewilderment I mentioned that when patients were temporarily discharged from the hospital a room was made available at St Pieter’s Hospital. However they have demolished that, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall.

There’s always Pellemberg, where I’ve stayed before, out in the wilds of the back of beyond, so I made sure that she was aware that I knew all about it.

However I have a feeling that I’m going to be out on my ear in a few days time regardless of anything else, a golden opportunity will be missed, and I’ll spend the rest of what’s left of my life travelling to and from Granville to Leuven and going round and round in circles when I get here

And isn’t that a depressing thought?

There was something quite important that happened on Monday that I forgot to mention last night

During the night of Sunday and Monday I must have had a dream at some point early on about a doctor wanting a urine sample for me the next time that I went from the bathroom. Consequently when I awoke at some point to go to the bathroom I rang for help

When the nurse came I babbled something incoherently about giving a sample, even though my body was desperately trying to process when it might have been that the doctor had come to see me.

Anyway, the story ended with the nurse helping me totally unnecessarily to the bathroom and no sample being taken.

It was really, really confusing.

Last night was much more quiet. No-one came to see me and apart from the odd trip or two to the bathroom nothing happened at all. Mind you there was some stuff on the dictaphone.

I was travelling on a train and it had an accident. I ended up falling across my youngest sister. When we picked ourselves up there were3 of us in the compartment, me, my brother and my youngest sister. I had some dresses that needed to be tried on by someone but seeing as she was there I had her try them on. They fitted her beautifully, these exotic party dresses that looked as if they might have been made for an adult but fitted a child. There were 1 or 2 gasps of astonishment from another woman who was there too. I gave her one, I gave her the second and I gave her the third. It all went really well. I asked my sister if she wanted some coffee. She’d never tried coffee before so I made her something weak. she drank it and thought that it was nice. The second dress, I gave her a second coffee and I’d made it the same. She thought that was nice too. But the third dress I made the coffee just how Nerina liked it. Of course she wasn’t there so I offered it to my sister. She tasted it and pulled a face. She asked about it so I said that it’s coffee that I’d made for Nerina. I could see that she was putting it on one side as if she was going to deliberately forget to drink it at some point or other.

I was moving house and I had a few people who were going to help me. They’d come round to see me to talk about the job, some young people and have a look through. The vehicle we were going to use was an elderly Ford Transit heavyweight van, a kind of van built on the long wheelbase rather than the panel van integral design method. An ancient, elderly thing but it would do the job. As we were talking a friend of mine rang up. He started to talk to me about the move. He asked me what my plans were. I felt terrible trying to discuss it with him without actually having discussed it with these people. That’s why they were here. The plan was that Day 1 we’d pack up the apartment into this van, Day 2 we’d drive to Shrewsbury, Day 3 we’d have a day off to recover and Day 4 we’d unload the van at the new house. My friend was astonished about this. He thought that it would cost the earth. I couldn’t talk about that because I wanted to talk to these people about it first. It was a very awkward, stilted telephone conversation. One or two things did actually come out which resulted in one of the people with me sending me an e-mail. I thought that this conversation with my friend was going to go completely out of hand if I wasn’t careful. How I wish that he hadn’t called up at that moment so as to give me some time to agree terms with these people who had just come round.

There was more to it than this but you don’t want to know about it, especially if you are eating a meal.

When the alarm went off at 06:30 I was already awake. There’s that much racket here in the early morning that after about 05:30 it’s almost impossible to sleep if you’re as light a sleeper as I am.

We had all of the usual routine but a physiotherapist came to see me and ran me through a few exercises. My legs are much weaker than you’d expect and it’s going to be ludicrous if they let me out into the wild blue yonder.

As well as the doctor and her professor I had a Welsh lesson too. Surprisingly that passed OK and in fact I was quite pleased about how it went.

And that makes a big change, doesn’t it?

The rest of the day has been spent dealing with nurses, falling asleep, all kinds of stuff like that. And eating my rather boring meals. They are good, well-prepared and filling but they are all the same and after nearly 3 weeks I would die for something different.

Anyway it’s early now and I’m told that a nurse will come by later on at some point but even so I’m going to settle down under the bedclothes and listen to the old-time radio.

Tomorrow there are no appointments so it should be a quiet day. There’s something happening on Thursday and then several appointments a week later. So if they throw me out after my Thursday appointment I’ll have to kick my heels around Leuven for a week.

This is all turning into something of a farce, except that it really is no laughing matter.

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Monday 14th November 2022 – I’VE HAD A …

… very busy day today. So much so that I’ve spent much of the day asleep.

Last night was quite busy too. Although I’d had a reasonably early night for a change, I stayed with the headphones on and listened to all 3.5 hours of a Paul Temple adventure, tucked up under the bedclothes with my headphones on. Consequently it was a very sleepy me at some time after 00:00 when I finally switched off everything.

During the night I awoke two or three times and there’s plenty of stuff on the dictaphone too. We were on board a cruise ship, working. The captain was a James Robertson Justice-type of figure. He rounded up some of us and asked if we’d taken a certain medication that he showed us. The idea was that it was a kind of pep pill or something like that. I replied “no” and pointed out the list of exceptions to people who could take the medication even though I’d taken a couple of shots of it and decided that it wasn’t a road down which I wanted to go. He said to the other people “I want to talk to you about something else” and ushered them into his cabin leaving the door open. at that moment Tuppence came up the stairs, a very old and mangy Tuppence. I picked her up and she began to yowl and complain about her tail. I picked her up and went into the room. He was showing them a selection of amplifiers. I can’t remember what the first one was called but the second was a deluxe edition called “The Black Sabbath” which was where the amplifier actually sensed everything, even the current to turn it on. He didn’t need any kind of controls on it at all – you just plugged in your guitar and plugged it into a speaker column and away you went.

We were at Shearings having a meeting on a motorway service area north of Carlisle. There were 4 part-time drivers including me, 4 full-time drivers and several members of the officials. At a certain moment 4 brand-new Volvo cross-country estates pulled up painted white. The drivers got out to leave them. It seemed that Shearings had actually bought them for some purpose or other. Then 4 brand-new coaches appeared. The drivers pulled up and got out. On the coaches there needed some work doing, like some of the equipment was held up in brackets and the brackets need to be undone. It was necessary to find several long bolts that could be used as drifts to hit with a hammer in order to do this. I was lucky that I had some of the correct bolts so I distributed them around. Then it turned out that one of the pieces of equipment had been taken off and a washer was missing. I had a washer but it had to be taken back to Carlisle to the depot from where these coaches had come. Seeing as it was going to be on my way home I said that I’d take it. Then the 4 of us were told to go so I asked “does that mean that we have to take these Volvos?”. There was some silence. No-one could understand what I was meaning. The chairman of the company then piped up “do you want these part-time drivers to take the Volvos or the brand-new coaches? Which do you think is best?”. It was agreed that we’d take the Volvos back down to Wigan. I mentioned that I had to go to drop off this washer. The chairman didn’t think that this was very important but I remarked that this guy had an annual test on his vehicles on Tuesday. He’d be really sad if he had a failure or advisory on a washer that was something to do with us not having handed it back. In the end he agreed that on my way back down to Wigan I’d go via the centre of Carlisle and drop off this washer. There was all talk about these brand-new vehicles, the coaches and the Volvo estates about how much looting and pillaging there was of these brand-new vehicles. When they actually came to be put on the road to do a job there were that many complications because of all the stuff that had been removed unlawfully from them by all kinds of various people when the vehicles were in the garage.

And then there was something about a big group of hippies who had taken over an old abandoned town from the Victorian era. They were busy trying to rebuild some form of houses, doing it in all sorts of ways by sometimes demolishing some stuff, sometimes adding on new stuff depending on the circumstances of each individual family unit how well they were doing it. There was one situation where dragging a timber beam down a roof had caused the whole lot to collapse and buried several people alive in there. They were unable to dig them out. In the end they turned the site of this building that had fallen down into a memorial garden where these people would be recognised and honoured. I found a small room that didn’t need very much work doing to it that would be ideal for me. It seemed that it was a problem because it was marked down in a building for public performances. I contacted the insurance people whoever and asked them if played the guitar and let people come in to listen to me, whether that would count in the terms of the restrictive covenant. They replied “yes, it would be OK” so I decided to go ahead to continue to bring this room up to my standards.

Very regrettably I didn’t end up back in school or in Wrenbury as far as I remember and that’s depressing. That was a very peaceful and pleasant experience the other night.

No breakfast for me this morning. I’m having a special kind of CT scan and so I need to be à jeun this scan was timed to be at 09:15 so at 08:45 they came to fetch me.

Somewhat later than planned, they made a start on me.

Firstly they gave me a very, very slow injection of some kind of radioactive sugar solution. They couldn’t use my catheter port because it’s been in for several days so that had to inject into a vein. Good luck with that!

Once they had finally managed to place an external catheter into the bloodstream, I then had to drink three extremely large beakers of water, and that necessitated the odd trip or two to the bathroom.

It took a while for everything to work, and eventually they wheeled me off into where this scan was taking place. It’s just like any other one of these “Stargate” time-travelling machines except that today I was strapped in and the scan took about 15 minutes before it was completed.

There was a long wait before they came to take me back to my room. it was 11:25 when I returned and long past my breakfast time. I wrote that off as a lost cause.

The doctor turned up almost immediately. She told me that the results of the scan won’t be known for a couple of days. She gave me a good going-over and while she was at it I took the opportunity to bend her ear about the feeling that I have that they are going to turf me out once the virus has disappeared and miss out on a golden opportunity to deal with my other health issues.

Judging by her stammered response I could see that I’d caught her on a touchy spot and my suspicions may well be correct. And if that’s the case I shall go berserk. I’ve had it up to here with them passing the parcel over this breathing issue and the latest developments with my right leg that nearly saw me underneath a train on the Berri-UQAM metro station in Montreal the other week.

These things really need to be sorted out and the quicker the better. Nearly 3 weeks of inaction in a hospital bed is the perfect opportunity and they are going to miss it. And then we’ll waste more of what is left of my precious couple of years left going round and round and, presumably, disappearing up my own exhaust pipe like the famous Oozelum Bird.

Of course, my lunch wasn’t ready so they had to scramble around to find it and as a result that was quite late too. And I’d barely finished before someone else came along to whisk me off for another test.

This one was to check on the amount of water still in my lungs and around the heart. This pneumonia still hasn’t gone despite the antibiotics.

It took a while to complete the scan but at least they found that I had a heart. That’s good news, because it shows that I’m not a Conservative. What was not so good was that the technician had to call a doctor in to see the scans that he’d taken.

By the time that I returned here it was 15:35 and I’d not had a coffee for almost 22 hours. Luckily a little student nurse came in to give me some medication and so I prevailed upon her to hunt down a mug of coffee for me. These student nurses really are sweet and I want to take them all home with me.

The rest of the day has been spent half-asleep being shaken awake by a variety of nurses waking me up for this and that. But not “the other” though. That kind of thing is a distant memory.

So having done everything that I was supposed to do and having finished my notes somewhat early, I’m going to close everything down except the Old-Time Radio on the laptop and curl up under the covers for a quiet evening.

But I’m sure that something will come along and disturb the peace.

It usually does.

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Sunday 13th November 2022 – AS I EXPECTED …

… not an awful lot happened today.

One of the housemen came round this morning to see me and asked me how I was feeling. I told him about all of my woes.

Even more importantly, I explained that I was disappointed that it seemed that the hospital was missing a golden opportunity in not giving me all kinds of examinations about the breathing issues.

He replied that the hospital was concentrating on the virus before dealing with anything else but I told him that I wished that I could be so confident. I was rather sceptical on this point. I had a feeling that the hospital was going to discharge me once this virus has gone and they would miss a golden opportunity to settle the matter of my breathing once and for all.

One thing that I mentioned was that I wasn’t prepared to support any more of this “going round in circles”. With Waldenstrohm’s Disease there’s a timeline. No-one with this disease has survived more than 11 years and I’ve had it for at least 7 years. I made it perfectly clear that with only 4 years left at the most.

With the hospital having already wasted 18 months of what little time I have left and not resolved this issue I was not in the mood to have any more of my time wasted.

He told me that he’d made a note but I remain unconvinced.

A second incident worth noting was that I had another relapse today. I’ve moved my room around a little and spent most of the day sitting in my chair by the radiator. In the late afternoon I came over all cold and had to wrap up with my fleece jacket and also a blanket across my knees.

The nurse took my temperature but there was no fever. But nevertheless I really was cold and I couldn’t wait to tuck myself up in bed.

But this morning was worth noting too. I was wide-awake at about 05:30 and couldn’t go back to sleep. In fact I was wide awake.

I had some fibreglass repairs to do for something so I was doing it outside this building. People came past to look, to see and to talk. One woman came past and engaged me in conversation. She said “don’t ask me to do this”. I suddenly remembered that she’d worked for the company in Crewe that built fire engines … "Mountain Range" – ed … as a fibreglasser. I said “if I need your help I’ll call for you” to which she made some kind of dismissive gesture. I carried on and sure enough half an hour later I had to make a box out of fibreglass so I used a plastic container as a mould. I couldn’t make this box correctly – there wasn’t enough resin. It was letting in water and wasn’t watertight. It was starting to go darker so I thought that I’d give it up as a bad job and try again tomorrow. There was an old guy, obviously rather feeble in the head, came past and asked me where I’d had the best medical attention and the best driving school. I said “Congleton” as I’d actively been followed by the medical centre in Congleton for something or other. He made some kind of dismissive remark about that. He called over some other people whom we knew who had come to fetch him. He said “did you hear what he said just then about this health centre and driving school?”. They obviously did because they said “if that’s what he thinks, then he’s entitled to think it”. This little old feeble guy continued to make a mockery of whatever it was that I’d said about going to Congleton.

Back at school a girl had been placed in detention. She was about 3 years younger than me. Because I was busy doing an exam they put her in the same room as me. My exam was to write about potatoes. I hadn’t done any revision but I reckoned that I could bluff my way through this exam quite comfortably. I set to work and found that I finished quite easily with plenty of time left. I was very happy with what I’d written. I began to talk to the girl. She’d been placed in detention for something strange and had a lot of work to do as a result, one of which was to write a letter of apology to the headmaster so with nothing better to do I wrote it for her and printed it out. The ink was feeble on our printer. We spent most of our time while she was in detention talking about school, about her classes and people in them. I found to my surprise that not only did I reckon that she an attractive young girl, she had a lot to say for herself that was extremely interesting. I found myself thinking that this is a girl who would be the kind of girl that I would like to have as a companion. We talked endlessly about all kinds of problems and difficulties. She asked me if I would take the note that I had typed out to the headmaster and tell him that she’d print it when she could find a decent printer. Anything to keep her happy, I took it to the headmaster’s room. He was in the middle of a meeting. I recognised all the teachers of course. One of the things that he was saying was that there wasn’t a single pupil in this school now who had anything for which to be reproached. He wasn’t expecting a report from anyone. and there I was, standing at the door with the report from this girl. I was highly tempted at that moment to walk in and hand it to him. But a couple of teachers noticed me hovering around at the door outside and switched the conversation to Welsh. Of course I could speak Welsh so I could hear all of these intimate details going on. It was quite obvious to anyone that I was listening and making notes. I was half-expecting to be called in at any moment to find out what I was doing and why I was there but the conversation carried on and on.

But going back to this girl, she was as I said about 3 years younger than me, long, straight auburn hair and lived in one of the villages around Wrenbury, somewhere like that. She was talking to me about how the school was basically divided into 2, the rich people and the poor people. I asked which one she was and I could see that she immediately went on the defensive so I gathered that she was one of the poor people. That suited me fine because I was from a council estate. I really felt that I had a lot in common with her and how I would really really strike up some kind of rapport with her and maybe develop a relationship with her but I was certainly learning a lot about the lower echelons of the school that I never knew before that was really interesting.

She would have been the kind of girl with whom I would have been more than happy to be associated. It was another one of those dreams that gave me a pleasant, warm feeling just like that WORLESTON DREAM of several years ago and how I wished that it would never end until I’d finally managed to get my hands on this very nice and pleasant young girl.

I can see her now. She had long, straight auburn hair and dressed in a school uniform, white blouse, school tie, navy blue cardigan, blue pleated skirt that was fairly short, white knee-length socks and typical Mary-Jane type shoes, exactly the kind of thing that you’d expect from a girl who was maybe in the Remove or Lower Fifth, which would seem to fit in with my 6th-form exam that I’d just been taking.

This dream was so realistic and so comfortable that I couldn’t go back to sleep afterwards. It was one of those rare dreams that was preying on my mind because it felt so right. It’s really hard to explain anything about this. It reminds me very much of that dream that I had about that girl from Worleston all those years ago, it really was such a nice comfortable, proper, warm kind of dream. It’s a shame that it had to end.

So right now I’m going to go back to sleep and try to have part two of this interesting dream in which I finally manage to get the girl.

But I doubt it very much. If only things work out how we would like them to be but the subconscious isn’t like that, is it?

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Saturday 12th November 2022 – WITH IT BEING …

… Saturday today it’s been very quiet.

No examinations or specialists or technicians around in the hospital over the weekend so I’ve spent most of my time in my bed here in my room.

One person who did put in an appearance was the young female doctor who has been following my case to a certain degree. She’d seen the letter that I had written the other day.

She asked what had happened so I explained and she was full of profuse apologies. I reassured her that she had no reason to apologise as what had happened was nothing whatever to do with her and she had played no role in the events that took place on that shameful afternoon.

But anyway, last night I had another deep comfortable sleep right through until the alarm went off at 06:30.

There’s some stuff on the dictaphone too from the night. There was a woman in Stoke on Trent, a young woman who worked on the buses and was known for being something of a flighty piece. She was a single mother and had a new partner which weemed to be a weekly thing. One morning she just didn’t turn up for work at all. There was all kinds of speculation about whether she’d had a row with this new lover and had thrown him out or, more to the point, had he done away with her. There was talk about sending someone round to her address to see whether her house was riddled with flies or similar as an indication of a dead body being present. Why they hadn’t sent anyone before this I really don’t know.

Someone in a railway carriage on a train who basically had a rerun of the Foxcote railway accident about which I’d been reading in the evening prior to going to sleep

After breakfast much of the morning was spent falling asleep and being shaken awake by various nurses, the odd doctor and so on. But there was no washing supplies, towels and clean clothes delivered. Trust it to be at the moment that I’m wearing a bedgown that’s falling apart and that I’ll have to try to wear for yet another day.

After lunch, there was football on the inernet. Despite the news blackout imposed by the Rugby-supporting and sponsoring Welsh media on the domestic football scene, it’s Welsh Cup day today.

The live match was Connah’s Quay Nomads, second in the Welsh Premier League, against Colwyn Bay, currently leading a pack of clubs at the head of the second tier.

The scoreline of 4-0 to the Nomads suggests a very one-sided game but that’s far from the case. Colwyn Bay played some nice, attractive football but couldn’t break through a skilled and experienced Nomads defence. On the other hand the Nomads attacking pair of Mike Hayes and Michael Wilde were just too much of a handful for the Colwyn Bay defence.

Nothing much else has happened today. On the afternoon shift today is a first-year student nurse but despite her inexperience, she has exactly the right kind of touch. She put in all of the eye drops perfectly and the injection that she gave me was painless.

The nurse who was mentoring her asked me how I was feeling after her apprentice had given me the injection so I told them both that I think that I’ll survive. That made them both laugh.

Now it’s bedtime. Tomorrow will be a quiet day again, I hope. I won’t be doing much and I don’t think that they will either.

But of course, anything unexpected can happen. And wouldn’t that be nice?

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Friday 11th November 2022 – I’VE HAD ANOTHER …

… bad, miserable day today. Not quite a relapse but it was the nearest thing to it.

Last night I went to sleep fairly early and slept right the way through until the alarm went off at 06:30. There’s a very vague feeling of being awake at some point but I really couldn’t remember.

After my early morning orange I had a look at the dictaphone. Sure enough, there was a couple of files on there from some point during the night. I awoke in a hospital ward dreaming about having some sprouts fried in butter with mashed potato and a quorn fillet. This dream was so realistic that when I awoke at about I dunno 01:40 I was quite ready to sit up and eat it. The cooking was brilliant and the smell was gorgeous. It was really nice and I was really looking forward to it.

I was up arguing yet again with a group of people, boys and girls, about all kinds of different things. We’d started off somewhere or other and had to walk an enormous distance. It originally began with me being at home, the phone ringing and whoever answered it taking what sounded like a taxi job. She asked me “how long would it take me to get to Rome?”. I thought “at least 3.5 hours” so she told the person and they seemed to accept the time so we had to get the car ready, find a map etc. It was an area of Rome called Dommodossola which is actually a town on the Italian border between Switzerland or Austria or somewhere like that. I had to go to the Rome Railway Station East at Dommodossola in Rome and pick up these people who had been mistakenly told that there was a train north but there wasn’t. This was the only way that they could return home. We took the job and I prepared things and had to set out to walk there. It was a complicated route – we were in these villages and moors and on the fells. One village seemed very much like another, one road seemed like another. We took short cuts through people’s houses. Some kind of argument broke out about something to do with history. I found myself on my own in this village high on the hills on my way to Rome.

On a more depressing and urgent note the battery indicator on my dictaphone has started to flicker, an indication that the batteries are going flat. And the spare batteries and battery charger are still at the Hotel de France in Brussels where I left everything when I was admitted to hospital.

But never mind. I sent an urgent SOS to Alison which she acknowledged.

Yesterday I mentioned that I’d written a letter about the wicked events of yesterday afternoon. This morning the houseman, or housewoman in fact, came by to check up on me. Of course with it being a Bank Holiday in Belgium today there are no specialists or Professors about but I gave my visitor the letter and she promised me that she’d leave it on the desk of her Professor.

As for what happens next we’ll have to see, but if she really did pass it on I’m prepared for a fight. I’m not being treated like that.

That was all of the excitement as far as the medical staff goes. No specialists and no Professors means no examinations so nothing is going to happen until Monday at the earliest. It’ll be a nice relaxing weekend, I hope.

Later in the day Alison turned up. She’d remembered my batteries which was really nice of her. We had a good chat which was also very nice but it’s the last one that we’ll have for a while as she’s off to the UK tomorrow on family business tomorrow for most of next week.

During the course of the day I’ve found myself slipping into the abyss. I’m not sure whether it’s my illness having a little relapse or whether it’s the Black Dog that’s awoken. It might be the former of course but if it’s the latter it’s hardly a surprise with everything that has gone one just recently.

But there was something that brought a smile to my face this evening. When they brought round the evening meal, the lid of the coffee pot – we have little 500 ml thermal coffee pots each -was screwed on so tightly that it took me 5 minutes and quite a wrestle in order to loosen it.

Actually it was one of the young nurses who had screwed it up so tightly and she didn’t look as if she had the strength.

“Woe is me” I thought to myself “that I didn’t have the strength to undo it”.

It reminded me of the story of the man who went to the doctor. “Do you remember the pills that you gave me to give me strength?”
“Ohh yes” replied the doctor. “Did they work?”
“I don’t know” replied the patient. “I can’t get the top off the bottle”.

I’ll get my coat.

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Thursday 10th November 2022 – I’VE WRITTEN A …

… letter to the hospital staff that I will hand to a doctor at the next available opportunity.

Basically, it says that I withdraw any and all permissions for tubes, pipes, cameras and the like to be inserted into my body.

As regular readers of this rubbish will recall, I have a total horror of pipes and tubes going into my body and always have done and I’ve mentioned this to everyone with whom I’ve come into contact at the hospital. They know that they can render me unconscious by whatever means they like and when they have done that they can do what they like.

But only if I’m unconscious.

10 or so days ago they took me down to the bowels of the hospital to shove a camera down my throat. First though they gave me a pill and I was unconscious for three hours.

Today I had to go back down there so a handy porter took me and my bed on our travels.

The doctor down there remembered me, remembered my pill but just to remind her, I gave her my little speech.

So she put me on the bed in there, sprayed something in my throat, slammed something between my teeth and then simply pushed the camera down my throat with no anaesthetic at all

It goes without saying that we had the usual panic attack and everything that went with it. And hence my letter.

Last night I was in bed quite early and slept the sleep of the dead until the alarm went off at 06:30 There was one occasion when I awoke to find someone poking and prodding me round about 04:00.

Nothing on the dictaphone from last night so it must have been a deep sleep.

Much of the morning was spent either sleeping or being shaken awake but nurses and doctors. One doctor was particularly interested in my legs and that’s always a good sign.

What I didn’t like was being told round about 09:30 that I could no longer eat anything until my camera examination. I wouldn’t normally have minded except that they didn’t come for me until 14:30.

That wasn’t quite so bad but then they kept me waiting for an age before they saw me. And this is where the problem lies, I reckon, They were running late and didn’t have the time or the space to keep me on one side for a few hours while I recovered..

So I missed my lunch but I was back just in time for tea. And if that really was hummus that I had, it was the strangest hummus that I have ever eaten.

Anyway, that was basically that today. The desperate disappointment of this bronchoscopy has ruined everything here and things won’t ever be the same again.

It was an appalling thing to do to me because they all know how I feel about things like this. They’ve all had fair warning over the past few years and it’s extremely regrettable that the doctor, who took so much care to deal with me the first time, totally ignored my wishes the second time.

And I’ll tell you something for nothing. It won’t ever happen again.

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Wednesday 9th November 2022 – WE HAVE HAD …

… all kinds of people wandering around the hospital today.

As well as the usual run of nurses, doctors and all kinds of ancillary staff, we had one of the professors putting his sooty foot inside my little room.

“There will be some student doctors on the wards later this morning” he said. “Is it OK if they come and check up on you?”

Here I am in a teaching hospital with all kinds of nice young students, whether nurses or doctors, so why would I not want to be examined by them?

Consequently I agreed and so much of the morning was spent with me being poked and prodded around. In fact it was all very reminiscent of something out of DOCTOR IN THE HOUSE, especially when two of them had to come back because they had forgotten to ask me for some basic information..

Last night I was in bed quite early the way things have been going just recently, and I slept right the way through to the alarm. No-one seems to be disturbing me during the night these days.

Although I was awake, I wasn’t that much awake and here and there, now and then, a nurse had to shake me awake.

Plenty of stuff on the dictaphone too from during the night and the odd sleepy moment later. I was doing something that involved supervising a couple of companies (as in groups of people) moving across the desert towards a new life somewhere in a new fort or whatever. One party was particularly difficult because we kept running out of everything, including the ginger beer that we were supposed to drink, and that was difficult. We had a really savage guard dog that patrolled the limits of the camp. Each time one of our members of staff appeared or one of the people who was travelling, we had to go to rein in this guard dog so that the people could come through. It was all quite savage in a way. One of the guys had actually baked some fairy cakes so one breakfast we had fairy cakes. There was the usual ribbing about either he hadn’t baked them himself or whatever. In the end we decided that the only way to prove that he’d baked them himself was next Saturday to have an open house baking session where he’d bake in front of anyone who cared to watch.

There was something about being in a group last night, a group of us. I can’t recall what we were doing but there was a lot of drawing etc in it. Right at the end I asked my brother what were the objects that he was picking. He replied that it was some fruit or vegetable of some description so we wanted to know what was the fur on the face of it, whether it was some kind of rottenness or whether it was actually supposed to be there. He said that he’s on his way to the car now so he’ll pick a few and have a closer look. But I couldn’t see where he was going to fit them because he had his arms full and he couldn’t be carrying anything more than he already had

One of the nurses changed the needle in my catheter port on the grounds that it’s been in there nearly two weeks. I made sure that my little student nurse watched closely because I told her that she’s going to change the next one.

Later on this afternoon they took me down deep into the bowels of the hospital where I’ve never been before. There were two people sticking pins in my leg and sending electric shocks up and down it. They haven’t told me any results but coupled with the tests that they have been carrying out, they are of the conclusion that there’s a definite problem with the right leg and information so far suggests that it’s a lower back problem although I fail to see the connection.

After tea Alison put in an appearance. She brought me some of that banana-flavoured soya drink that I like and some vegan crisps.

We had a good chat for well over an hour while the nurses were trying to pump some plasma substance into me.

So now that I’m on my own, everyone has gone home and the place is in darkness, I’m going to put myself in darkness too. But I’m relieved that they are at last taking some of my complaints seriously. It’s been a long time since I’ve been waiting for them to do something – since March 2021 in fact – and as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, I’ve been quite fed up with the lack of action.

So here’s hoping that they’ll be able to do something about my problems. It won’t be before time either.

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Tuesday 8th November 2022 – I REALLY DON’T …

… know what happened to me today.

When the alarm went off at 06:30 today I was sound asleep. One of the deepest sleeps that I’ve had for a while. And when it went off at 06:35 it awoke me again

When breakfast came round at 08:00 the nurse awoke me to eat it, and a relentless chain of nurses, doctors, specialists and the like continually awoke me throughout the day.

On the way in my bed down to an ECG scan I fell asleep twice as well.

In fact I’ve been in a deep sleep for most of the day today. Right now I just want to go to sleep again and I really don’t know why.

But at least after the panic last night when I had a relapse they are taking things seriously. They have examined my chest thoroughly, carried out a few examinations on my right leg and checked over a few other things

There was the dictaphone to check over too I was in hospital last night being seen to because of this problem that I have with the chest. They were busy arranging me and I was trying to make myself comfortable. There were some temporary blankets that somehow ended up on fire and some of the blankets fell off. I realised that I wasn’t as cold as I had been so I must be improving. I went out past the office where people like my friend from Munich would sit but it was empty. I was gradually being brought downstairs, I thought, presumably for another examination but I didn’t really know

We all also went to Vire last night, to the cathedral, but it was nothing at all like the real Vire. We drove there, drove through the town to see the sights. We had to follow the road round. We thought that this would be where all the signs were for various things and sure enough there was a sign for the cathedral. We went that way and parked, got out and then walked al the way down these steps to where the cathedral was and began to have a good look round

There have been so many people in here today interrupting me that it’s only now that I’m on my own.

My Welsh class today was a fiasco. There were far too many interruptions for me to concentrate on what was happening in the lesson.

Apart from that it’s been a busy day and I’m hopeful that they will eventually find out what’s going on with my body.

However I’m not to hopeful. It seems to me that with my underlying illness, my body is slowly breaking down and it may shortly be beyond repair. That’s really disappointing but it’s inevitable that this would happen.

With Waldenstrohn’s Disease, no-one has survived more than 11 years. I was diagnosed 7 years ago and I probably had it a year or 18 months before that.

My only regret is, as you know, the fact that they have taken so long to deal with this breathing issue – 18 months, in fact, but even that has been overtaken by events with my mobility issues.

There’s really no end to it.

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MONDAY 7th November 2022 – I’VE HAS A …

… relapse today.

And I was doing so well too.

This afternoon I started to shiver and it seemed as if someone was standing on my chest and I can hardly breathe. It’s no use trying to cough either because I can’t without hurting myself.

The nurse checked my temperature and blood pressure and she decided that I have a fever with a temperature of over 38°C, a far cry from a few hours ago when it was 36.2°C

Last night I slept all the way through from about 00:20 until the alarm went off at 06:30.. And there’s stuff on the dictaphone from last night too. I can’t remember much about it except that there was something about being in hospital and a kitten, and I can’t remember whether I had to get better first before I could stroke the kitten or whether I had to stroke the kitten before I could get better. I know that when the alarm went off at 06:30 this morning I was looking for a kitten rather than the telephone to switch it off so I dunno

After I’d washed and changed I sat in the chair where I fell asleep several times, usually to be awoken by a doctor who wanted to examine me. And they seem to have taken seriously the problem of my knee. No fewer than two doctors plan to give it a full examination.

There were other doctors too who examined other bits and pieces of me too. It looks as if things are moving rapidly, but this was before the relapse.

Alison came in the middle of everything and was unlucky to catch me in a right state. She’s bought me some vegan chocolate which was really nice,

After she went they took a blood sample and later on in the evening another cute female houseman came to see me and examined me.

So now I’m off to bed, unless the houseman comes back again. And I’ll see how I feel tomorrow. I can’t feel much worse than I do right now.

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Sunday 6th November 2022 – MEANWHILE, IN CASTLE ANTHRAX …

…Cute Student Nurse – “Have you washed yourself this morning?”
Our Hero – “yes I have”
CSN – “have you changed your nightgown?”
OH – “yes I have”
CSN – “then I’ll change your bedding and you’ll smell like roses”
OH – “it’ll take more than whatever the hospital has to make me smell like roses”.”

Once more I went to sleep without a sleeping pill. I was off with the fairies round about midnight. And if anyone came to check up on me during the small hours I really didn’t notice..

Round about 03:30 I awoke for a while and even had my early morning orange but I was soon back asleep.

Even though it was a Sunday there was an alarm set, and at 06:30 too, and it was that which awoke me this morning.

Plenty of stuff on the dictaphone from during the night. Once again I was having a dream and was away on my travels. I seem to have awoken and completely forgotten everything to do about it. It was to do with Shavington and I was meeting someone on the train, a girl. It was the terminus of the railway station, something like Kew Gardens. She came into the station on a train and I was waiting there to carry her packages for her which she thought was extremely sweet and told me so. We went to a café for something to eat. She ordered something but I didn’t. When her meal came she said something like “go on, Eric, you’ll have to eat something”. I decided that I’d order a couple of rounds of toast. The waitress said that she didn’t have a pen to write it down so I reached in my pocket to find a pen. She then came up with another excuse. I looked closely at her, and she was a girl whom I knew from my childhood in Shavington when we all lived together on the same council estate. In the end it was quite clear that she wasn’t going to order anything at all for me and wandered away. A few minutes later the manageress came past so we buttonholed her and I explained the story of the strange behaviour of the waitress. She asked for a reason for it. I said that we both grew up as kids in the same kind of environment but some of us managed to drag ourselves out of the hole but others like her were unable to do so. It’s probably some kind of jealousy.

There was also something like going camping or similar last night. I should have been in bed and should have been up early next morning but when the alarm went off I still hadn’t gone to bed because there was still some kind of intense discussion going on. We hadn’t been able to go to bed because of it. Later on I was back at work again in this recurring dream where I had to give some of my work to someone else. I had work piled up everywhere that I hadn’t done. When I went back into this office where my work had been, there was a girl there lying in bed with an adding machine going through piles of paperwork. There was an awful amount of additional papers on her bed and she exclaimed “ohh look! Here’s one that you’ve added up correctly”. I replied “give me some of the ones that are wrong and I’ll go through and redo them” but she didn’t seem to pay much attention to that. Instead she went and rummaged through the paperwork and was asking someone else in connection with one of these slips some advice about if someone had a new bathroom installed would there really be a large amount for a new bathroom window or is this incorrect?

After breakfast we had the interchange as mentioned above and she also bought me a small bucket with a lid. Apparently I have an appointment with the nephrologist on Monday so he needs a … errr … 24-hour sample.

The doctor has been round again to check up on me. I talked mainly about my knee because that’s my priority right now but he didn’t seem to be all that interested. In fact I have the impression that the doctors here at weekend are just here basically to make sure that the patients are still alive – and that they stay alive until Monday.

The rest of the day I’ve been left to my own devices, apart from the odd visit from a nurse with food and medication, and for a couple of chats here and there on the internet. As a result I’ve been catching up on a few bits and pieces that I’ve let go for a while.

But as I seem to be feeling better in certain respects I’m going to make a start tomorrow on catching up on more important things that I’ve let go just recently.

But how much time will I have?

It looks as if I’m going to be busy for the next couple of days.

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Saturday 5th November 2022 – IT’S BEEN A …

… really strange kind of day today.

In fact it was the morning that was the strangest part of it because for some reason or other that I can’t explain, I seem to have slept through most of it and for the rest of the morning I certainly wasn’t anywhere on this planet.

When a nurse came by at one point to take my temperature, not only was I deep in the arms of Morpheus, I was off on a really exciting nocturnal voyage but, regrettably, as soon as she finally managed to awaken me, then “strong>PFAFF” – it just disappeared like a balloon that had been popped and I remember not a thing at all about it.

It’s not as if I’d had a bad night either. Even though I didn’t have my sleeping pill yet again last night, I was still away with the fairies at some point before midnight and if there wee any of the usual nocturnal stampedes around the rooms by the nursing staff taking temperatures and blood pressure and so on, I don’t recall anything at all about them coming in here.

By about 03:30 I was awake again and stayed awake for a while, long enough even to eat my early-morning orange, but I ended up going back to sleep again until about 06:00.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that this amount of sleep doesn’t sound like a lot compared to how things usually are back at home but it’s not as if I’m actually rushed around off my feet here. I seem to spend almost all of my day either in bed or propped up in a chair.

The duty doctor came to see me this morning too. He wasn’t particularly expansive and didn’t say very much at all. It was difficult to extract any information from him so I gave up after a while. I’m none-the-wiser and I’m certainly not better-informed either.

Apart from everything else, I’ve had a good wash and shave, a nice lengthy chat with Liz and eaten some nice food. I do have to say that for industrial food, this stuff is pretty good.

While I was talking to Liz my “hospital app” on my ‘phone pinged with a message. Apparently I have been given an appointment with the Neurology department here on Thursday late afternoon. So I’m still going to be in Leuven, if not in the hospital itself, until then at least.

And while we’re on the subject, there’s a story going round that among the latest stages of development of the hospital site is a hotel-style accommodation for people who need to stay in the vicinity of the hospital without actually being hospitalised.

It goes without saying that I shall make further enquiries in this respect for the future.

Later on this evening, I saw some football on a very spluttering and cache-y slow internet connection. TNS swept aside a poor Cardiff Metro side 4-0 and Cardiff Metro can count themselves lucky to get “nil”. TNS must have had at least 80% of the play and I can’t recall the Met having a single shot on goal, on target or not.

So tonight I’m going to have another go at going to sleep without a sleeping pill and see how I get on. Tomorrow there will be the usual routine of temperature and blood pressure and eye drops and all of that, and a visit from the housemen, but no tests or examinations until Monday as the lab and scientific staff aren’t at work on the weekend.

But I won’t have my Sunday lie-in though. And I’ll certainly miss that.

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Friday 4th November 2022 – RUMOUR HAS IT …

… that there’s a new sound engineer twiddling the knobs in our new recording studio at the Centre Pierre et Marie Curie in Granville.

No description has been published so far other than the fact that he has a pair of rather large antlers

Another rumour that is circulating right now is that it’s raining in Caliburn through the gap in the windscreen thanks to that mess of an installation last year that I had to patch up on my way home from Germany.

A third rumour that is circulating is that they are about to throw me out into the big, wild world.

That’s rather worrying because while it’s certainly true that this virus has improved considerably (but not by any means 100%) nothing has happened about my right knee, the pain in which is getting worse and worse.

As well as that, I now have pain in the right side of my groin whenever I move my right leg.

And as I have told the medical staff here on numerous occasions, I would trade absolutely everything to have my right knee fixed.

This morning I mentioned it yet again to the doctor who came to see me and do you know what he told me?
“Mr Hall” he said, “you are lucky to be alive. When you came in here on Thursday last week we didn’t think that you would survive.”.

That’s as maybe but what I really need to be done is this knee issue that has brought my activities to a dead stop.

And then there’s the breathing issue, more of which anon.

Last night, once again, I fell asleep without any artificial aids whatsoever. And whether anyone came and checked me for anything during the night as usual, I really don’t know. I felt nothing whatsoever.

At about 04:00 I awoke but despite taking advantage of a stray orange that was loitering about I was nothing like as lively as I was yesterday. It took until the arrival of breakfast before I was in possession of all my faculties.

During the day I fell asleep a couple of times and on one occasion I had some notes to add to the dictaphone notes that were already there from the night.

There was something about me travelling to somewhere in Canada last night to meet a girl who was the daughter of someone. Someone else had gone before me. I was on a specific train. The arrangement was that somehow I’d sit in a special waiting room for these strange people and somehow she’d be able to identify me. I can’t remember very much about this at all except that once she had done, virtually the same thing happened again but this time I was leaving rather than arriving and the trains were on a very tight schedule. I was afraid that if I missed this one due to me running late it would throw my entire plans right out of the window

I fell asleep in mid-afternoon and found myself playing bass with the Gibson in a group with a young Peter Telford there playing a guitar with the machine heads in the body and several other older guys. They’d made all kinds of notes in pencil of the chords on pieces of music for me to make a start to follow. They were talking about some old guy who had been their mentor and had mentored some of the group and was possibly responsible for bringing everyone including me together for this first-night practice.

In fact many years ago I did play bass in a group with Peter Telford, but that’s another story.

On another occasion I was shaken awake by a hospital porter who wanted to take me for an examination.

This one was a cardiac examination where they gave me the same set of tests that they gave me last time, with, rather predictably, the same results.

This interview took place in Flemish, which was good. But when I asked him what he examination showed, he replied “there’s nothing wrong. Everything is normal”.

So her I am, back to where I was 6 months ago, and 18 months ago with no identification of my illness in sight. I’m beginning to think that this breathing issue is imaginary and I’m going to ask for counselling about my imaginary illness.

It’s Ingrid’s birthday today and although it took me a while I finally made contact with her and we had a good chat for 45 minutes.

My e-mail account was busy too. As well as helping one of my colleagues with a project, the Post Office had contacted me again with rather more urgency so as another of my colleagues works in a building nearby, I arranged with him to go and rescue the perishing.

In between everything I’ve also had plenty to read.

At first I stumbled upon a report by a Board of Trade examiner about A TRAIN FIRE AT BEATTOCK in 1950 that has many interesting facts about the outbreak and spread of fire.

As well as that, I’ve finally managed to track down a downloadable copy of THE OLD STRAIGHT TRACK for later perusal. This book is really the meanderings of the mind of a rather eccentric elderly gentleman in the 1920s and which were picked up by the “New Age” movement and popularised as “Ley Lines”. That’s my reading for my return journey, if ever there is such a thing.

On that point I’m packing up and going to try to sleep, without a sleeping pill if I can. And see what tomorrow will bring. There won’t be any examinations this weekend as all of the specialists have the weekend off. I’ll have to gather my strength for the onslaught on Monday.

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Thursday 3rd November 2022 – I CAN’T REMEMBER ..

… how many times I’ve been out of my room today for an examination of one sort or another nut I’m sure that the wheelchair folded up in the corner of he room knows its own way across the campus to the clinical part of the hospital.

And in a wheelchair too, not fenced into the bed and being pushed lock, stock and barrel. Things must be looking up.

All of this is in fact very reminiscent of the old days when I had my taxi company in the 80s.

There’s a dispatching office and a crew of about 50 porters here, each porter with a tablet-type of computer.
A specialist will ring up the ward to say “patient X needs to come to such-and-such an examination at such a time”
The ward sister will ring up Dispatching to say “Patient X needs to go to such and such an examination at such and such a time”
Dispatching then sends a message to the nearest porter to pick up patient X and take him to such-and-such an examination
Porter then goes to the ward to pick up Patient X and take him to is examination.
Porter then tells the Dispatcher that he’s free
Dispatcher sends porter off on his next pick-up.

It’s all very reminiscent of having a very busy fleet of taxis.

Last night was rather busy too.

To my own great surprise, and probably to yours too, I fell asleep without actually taking a sleeping pill. Every now and again I awoke to find myself being poked and prodded by various members of the medical staff but I went back to sleep quite quickly.

By the time 03:30 came around I couldn’t go back to sleep and when the alarm went off at 06:30 I was already up and working, having had a really nice orange to start the day.

Breakfast was late today because at 08:00 I was dragged off for the first of the many examinations that I had.

On one of the examinations that I had, round about lunchtime, they wanted to put a camera up my nose and down my throat. “Over my dead body” I said but the doctor was very persuasive and insistent and you have absolutely no idea of how much I suffered, physically and also mentally

This particular examination took place in a very out-of-the-way part of the hospital and it took an absolute positive age for someone to come and pick me up to take me back to my room.

Another visit was to have my throat investigated by one of these Stargate time-travelling things. Not one made by General Electric, my former employer. All of those have been replaced, so I was told. That company has really gone downhill since I stopped working there.

As for the other examinations, there were probably more. I really can’t remember.

Examinations aside, I had several visits from various doctors and specialists

And also a dietician who told me that I’m eating too much fruit and salad and that’s something else that will surprise you just as much as it surprises me.

Good news is that I’ve had a telephone call from the Post Office. Apparently they tried to deliver a “parcel” but there was no reply. So we chatted about it and they said that if it’s not claimed within 14 days it will be returned “to Roissy” which, for those of you who don’t know, is where Paris Charles de Gaulle Airport is situated.

And so it looks as if STRAWBERRY MOOSE has finished his wanderings and wants to come home. But if my friend Thierry doesn’t get a move on and reply to me, His Nibs might be off on yet more wanderings.

But the only wanderings that I’m going to do right now is to wander off to bed. It’s almost 23:00 and I’m going to try once more to go to sleep without a sleeping pill.

There’ll be a nice little stock of those in my drawer here by the time that I’m finished if I’m not careful.

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Wednesday 2nd November 2022 – THERE’S A NOTICE …

… on the end of my bed that says Valrisico.

Just in case your Flemish is deficient, that means “risk of falling” and so it’s nice to know that they are at last taking notice of the other ailments that I have.

In fact, this afternoon I was taken down to the ground floor where they performed a scan on my right knee.

Mind you, I wasn’t impressed with them down there. The technician called the Professor for a closer look so the very helpful Yours Truly asked the Professor if he would like to hear the history of my right knee because, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, my right knee DOES have quite a history.

His response was “I would but I don’t have the time” and he strode off with an air of arrogance that I didn’t quite understand or appreciate.

And I was only trying to help him with his diagnosis.

They took so long that I was pressed with an urgent need which is embarrassing. My trolley-pusher had to make a detour so that we can pick up a bottle.

And it was just as well.

While we’re on this subject I have been making regular trips to ride the porcelain horse. And of the 5kg that I put on with all of these perfusions, I’ve lost half of that already.

Last night round about 22:00 I fell asleep of my own free will. Not too much use unfortunately because through the night they kept on coming into my room to measure my temperature, take my blood pressure and a few other things.

At about 01:30 I gave up trying to go back to sleep and lay there suffering. Once everything finally quietened down, I took my sleeping pill and that was that until about 05:00.

When I awoke I had a really dry throat to I ate one of the oranges in the stock of fruit that I’m creating and it was the most delicious thing that I’ve eaten.

During the night I was in North America, in my niece’s house, sitting in the living room. I was the only one in the house because I was ill. Suddenly I heard footsteps outside, the door opened, someone came in and went upstairs. There was a lot of moving around up there, then they came back downstairs again. My niece who had appeared from nowhere said something to whoever it was and whoever snapped back in a most disrespectful way to her.

Today I had a good wash and shave and then a doctor came to see me about my leg. While he was at it he mentioned these viruses and infections and I gather that I’m likely to be here for a while yet.

He didn’t say much about my knee but he obviously saw enough to arrange for a scan for me. But we’ll have to see what unfolds.

The food was good again and the staff are quite friendly as I have said before.

But right now even if it’s only 21:00 I’m off to settle down in bed. There’s a sleeping pill here but I’ll try to go to sleep naturally. It’s a shame to waste the sleeping pill in the midnight stampede.

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Tuesday 1st November 2022 – AND IT REALLY IS

… a bad news day today.

A doctor has been to visit me to say that I’m seriously ill

This is the problem with this lack of immunity. People have been catching this and feeling much better three days later. I’ve been seriously ill for 13 days and in intensive care for 6 days and any improvement is “slight”

Basically they are astonished that I travelled so far and in such strange conditions with this illness that is engulfing me, and frankly, so am I.

For a change, last night was much better They gave me a different sleeping pill that I took at 20:00 and the next thig that I remember was that i was 00:30. That was definitely one of Bill Oddie’s “powders that would paralyse a bear” and I’ll take a few more of those.

Later on I was back to sleep for a few hours and there’s even something on the dictaphone too. I was with Maria and Nicole last night. We were on our way somewhere and met a group of young boys. Eventually we arrived at her place of work. It was a job involving slicing carrots. They were working quite hard but every hour or so someone would bring them an ice-cream. I thought that this was a really good place to work by the looks of things because we were new in Canada and any job would be good so we decided that we’d ask. In the meantime Nicole was lying down on a bench and the supervisor went over to her to find out why. She said that she hadn’t been given any carrots for a few minutes. The supervisor didn’t say anything. We went over to see the guy. I told him of my qualifications. He said that with an HGV you need to be certified in Canada. In the meantime as a part-time thing I’d be driving the coach for them taking people home after their shift. I’d done it a few times but he obviously didn’t know. He came back once in the coach, and old Plaxton Elite. They were all hanging around out of the back of the building where I wanted to put the bus so we began to talk about some rally that was taking place – “did I know so-and-so from Evans Radio who was coming in a steam roller?”. That rang a bell with me because I knew someone else who was going to come in a steam roller so we chatted about that for a while

Later on I was with TOTGA. She was dating someone else whom I knew. The three of us were walking somewhere. She was smoking a lot that annoyed me a little. We wandered off on this walk and came to this fertiliser, salt and other chemical distribution place with piles and piles of sacks. I’d visited this place in the past. She went first and the lights came on so she ran back. I told her “come on, there’s no problem” and we walked through here down towards the canal where she stopped to have a cigarette. I’d walked this path dozens of times all the way down to the next bridge and back. On occasion I’d continued over the hills to the end and round over there for ages on some of the hills I’d roamed upon in the past during a dream

There was far more to it than this but you don’t really want to know about it.

When the alarm went off at 06:30 I was already working and I kept that going for a few hours. Not for long though and by 14:00 I was back in bed.

A couple of doctors have seen me (it’s Bank Holiday here)and they have finally taken out the perfusions and the ports that they put in. And with all of the intravenous stuff I’ve been having, I’ve gained 5kg in 5 days and that’s really depressing

There’s a downside to having finished my perfusions. They were placed on a portable stand which was good for clinging on to. Now it’s gone along with the perfusions so it’s a desperate stagger across the room and I’m sure that it will end in tears.

But anyway it might only be 19:30 but seeing that I’m in bed already, I’m going to try to sleep.

Tomorrow is another day

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