Tag Archives: hospital

Thursday 15th March 2018 – I DIDN’T ENJOY …

… that one little bit. Not at all.

And it all went wrong right from the beginning when I hardly had any sleep at all. I spent most of the night tossing and turning and that clearly didn’t get me off to the best possible start.

But nevertheless, I was up and about just as the first alarm was going off and after the usual medication and breakfast, I had a shower and washed my clothes. I need to look pretty for the hospital.

There were a few tasks that I needed to do before I went and then I wandered around the corner for the bus.

6 minutes late it was too, and we had something of a performance as there wasn’t enough money left on my card. So that involved some negotiations with another card.

At the hospital they checked me in and informed me of the change in tariffs (that doesn’t concern me of course) and then I went to the wrong room, so they had to come to look for me.

The needle went in the tube in my chest totally painlessly – yes, it was the former Belgian ladies’ darts champion who was nursing me today. And then she gave me the treatment.

As well as the saline drip I had four bottles of Multigam 5%. That’s a stimulant made from human plasma and it attacks the viruses that I seem to have and builds up my immunity. Five hours it’s supposed to take.

It was OK for the first couple of hour but then I started to feel the cold in my veins and it sent the shivers right through me. Not as bad as when I had the chemotherapy but horrible none the less. I had to wrap up in all my clothes.

The doctor – a young girl – came to see me and so did a skin specialist – likewise a young girl escorted by two even younger female students. It all ended up like the scene at Castle Anthrax.

And then I went to sleep.

The nurse awoke me to say that it was finished. And so was I. She unplugged me and told me that I could go but I was in no fit state to leave. I had to stay there on the bed for a good 20 minutes.

I made it to reception though. My next appointment is April 12th – likewise a Thursday.

And so I sat downstairs for a while and then came home. It was pouring down with rain outside but I walked back all the same. I bought some potatoes and tinned ratatouille for tea from Delhaize, and some vegan cheese and vegan sausages from The Loving Hut – I fancy some sausages and cauliflower cheese when I return home.

Soaked to the skin, I vegetated here for a while in the warm and then had my tea.

sports centre philipssite leuven belgium mars march 2018And later on in the evening I went out for a walk. The rain had eased off and I wanted to pass the 100%on the fitbit.

There’s the Philipssite complex just down the road from here and I’d never been to see what goes on there so I went for an amble around.

That building there is actually a Sports Centre of some kind and there were hordes of people disgorging themselves into the street as I went past. I was tempted to go in for a look around but I didn’t feel up to staying out.

philipssite leuven belgium mars march 2018There are offices there too because I knew someone once who worked there.

Quite a few, in fact, all nicely illuminated in the evening which probably costs someone a small fortune.

And I found the police station too. There’s quite a big one on the site, And and underground car park too – I didn’t know about that

So I’ll have an early night. Tomorrow I’ll be gathering my strength – what’s left of it.

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Thursday 15th February 2018 – THAT’S NOT SUCH GOOD NEWS

My blood count is now down to the critical level – almost.

It should be between 13.0 and 15.0 as you know, but recently it’s been hovering round about the 9.2 mark.

8.0 is the critical amount when the emergency services swing into action, and today it’s down to 8.2.

This should come as no surprise to anyone who has been following my adventures over the last few weeks. Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that I was quite ill over Christmas and New Year and I’m still not back up yet.

So that plan now is that I’m going to have to undergo a series of blood transfusions – one per month in fact, for the next 6 months “and then we’ll see”.

That’s going to disrupt all of my plans.

Last night the old plan worked a charm. I took the laptop with me to bed to watch a Bulldog Drummond film in bed. And I managed about 10 minutes of it before I was away with the fairies.

And off on my travels too. Quite literally. I’d moved house and was living in a completely different town. And a letter came from one of the other inhabitants of my old place telling me how she knew about my relationship with the postwoman. I took hours to craft a very non-committal reply and was on the point of sending it when I thought to myself that it was easily open to misinterpretation nevertheless, and the easiest way to deal with the matter, seeing as whatever had happened in the past was to totally ignore the letter. And so I did. And instead I went for a walk and much to my surprise at the end of the High Street, which I hadn’t explored before, the road took a steep drop down to a nice bay where there were crowds of people having fun in the water. I went off for a look around and ended up on a grassy bank. Somehow I wasn’t able to reach the water at all.

Just for a change I was up quite early, and with no medication (because I had forgotten it as you know) I had an early breakfast and then a shower. And while I was under there I washed my clothes too.

After doing a few things I hit the streets and the shops. But I found another part of the old city walls that I hadn’t discovered previously, and so I followed them around for a while.

First stop was Kruidvat for some gelatine-free sweets, and then to the cheap shops like Zeeman and Wibra for a new jumper, but there was nothing doing.

At Sports Direct though, there were some more of the trousers that I like, but also some good-quality jumpers at a reduced price of €14:00 each, or 2 for €24:00. So they disappeared into my backpack along with a couple of pairs of trousers.

On the way up to the hospital I stopped at the bar to see if the guy who runs it whom I know was there, but he wasn’t. So I went on my way up the hill – very slowly.

You know what happened at the hospital because I told you just now, and then a very depressed and fed-up me headed into town. Alison wasn’t ready so I went for a coffee until she appeared.

We went to la Cucaracha and had another Mexican like last time, which was just as delicious, and then round for a coffee.

Afterwards she drove me back here which was very kind of her, and that’s my day finished.

It’s all so disappointing, but so what? I just have to get on with it. No point in brooding on it. Just like the defendant who found out that the judge of his case was only four feet tall – “these little things are sent to try us”.

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Friday 29th December 2017 – AND SO …

… late last night, I crawled off into bed. Feeling like death but I thought that I’d be better in there seeing as there’s more room and it’s more comfortable than the sofa.

It took an age to go off to sleep, having had enough of that to pass the time in the hospital. But when I did, I was really away with the fairies.

We started off back in the family pile in Shavington and I had to leave my bed as a matter of urgence. But in the bathroom, the end of the bath had been smashed off, the toilet was broken and the sink was in pieces. There was water flooding everywhere. I was totally amazed as to all of this. My brother said “didn’t you see the end sheets?”. I didn’t have the first idea of what he meant for a while until it suddenly struck me that he was referring to the work sheets at the end of the day. “We’ll all have a whip-round and fix this” he suggested, but I wasn’t having any of this. I didn’t know what had happened except that it wasn’t anything to do with me.
From there I moved on to my house in Gainsborough Road where I was with my mother. I opened the curtains in the front window and noticed just how untidy everything was (we’re back on this tidiness thing yet again). My mother told me that it would be an idea to take some of the stuff outside so I gathered up a pile of rubbish, put it in some black plastic boxes and took it outside. There I bumped into the big ginger cat – a huge thing, mostly legs like one of the drawings of a Celtic horse in art form. I picked it up and took it inside and showed it to my little sister. She ran off saying that she hated it so I put it down – when immediately one of the other cats leapt on top of it to play with it.
A litle later I was driving along the Calveley Straight on the A51 (although this was actually the North Wales Coast Road) when I saw a low-flying passenger aeroplane fire off a distress rocket. My former friend from Stoke on Trent was driving but before I could draw his attention to it, the aeroplane did a “U-turn”, turned black, and then bright-red bits like lumps of molten metal were falling off it. And then it disappeared from view. By ow he had seen it so we turned off the road to go to where it might have crashed – but just then two cars coming extremely rapidly in opposite directions took off into the air over the brow of a hill and collided head-on in mid air. The crunch was sickening and flying debris knocked over a bride, complete with dress, standing on the street corner. She was covered in blood. The accident had also knocked over a couple of small motorbikes and their drivers were sprawled out in the road. We dashed for the steps (me hopelesssly in the rear) that took us up a hill to where we reckoned the plane had crashed but I was blocked by hordes of people coming down. “We know that you are trying to help” said a man, “but you’re just cluttering up the place”. And then I realised just how stupid this all was. I hate the sight of blood and operations as you know, so what good would i be at an air crash? I couldn’t even go to tend to this bride or the people crawling about all over the place after the road accident.

So having dealt with that marathon, I took my place in the vague direction of the Land of the Living. I was still feeling dreadful and as the Doctor wanted to see me, I phoned for an appointment. It’s not urgent so I took one tomorrow morning.

And as a treat, I managed a bowl of porridge. It took me an hour to eat it and it was disgusting but at least it stayed in. That, I suppose, is progress.

I had to go round to the hospital aterwards. To take the details of my Health Insurance. And surprisingly enough, I felt a little better being out in the cold windy air. But then again, it’s hard to feel worse.

At the hospital I was pushed from pilar to post but eventually found the correct people who, much to my surprise, were quite helpful. Certainly the best financiers tht I’ve met so far on my perambulations around the various French hospitals. I suppose that being a seaside resort they are more used to foreign visitors with strange Insurance details.

What was even more helpful was that they opened a file for me “for future use”. I imagine that I might need it.

On the way back, I called at the Casino for a few more bits and pieces and then came home. Despite it being warm in here, by 15:30 I was tucked up under the quilt asleep.

Later in the evening I was feeling a little better – to such an extent that I made some tomato soup from a packet. Despite spilling a good proportion of it on the hob, I managed a couple of mugs of it – which even stayed down. And I even finished off with a soya dessert.

So tomorrow is another day. I feel better with some food (such as it is) and I hope that I can keep up tomorrow. Meantime we’ll see what the doctor has to say.

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Thursday 28th December 2017 – JUST FOR A COUPLE …

… of hours this afternoon I was in hospital.

I’d had something of a reasonable night given the circumstances. I was in Brussels back on my theme of untidy places and there was a street that needed cleaning up as it was full of littler. But when I arrived, it had all been cleared and there was some Arab woman sitting in an old black bus looking very pleased with herself as if she had done it. So I moved on round the corner and there was another coach there advertising tour. I climbed aboard and someone already on board closed off half of the coach to stop me going farther down. I made a few enquiries and he eventually condescended to tell me about the trip. It wasn’t going to be doing anything that I didn’t know about so I declined and stepped out.
Shortly later I was back again with a coach, an old Ford R1114 that I had bought for a project which had never really seen much of the light of day and we were all camping in the compound around it. Someone asked me if I had any gravy browning so I went on board the coach to see and grubbing around, found Christmas lights still plugged in and illuminated, a couple of dolls. All of this got me thinking that I’d never tidy out all of this and my investment such as it was, was going completely to waste.

I waited until 09:00 and then phoned up the doctor’s. They offered me an appointment for 12:00 which gave me some time to clean up, have a shower and to collect a few things together.

It was a struggle to the doctor’s but I was seen bang-on midday. And by 13:00 I was in the hospital at Granville. And by 13:30 I was being attended to. Imagine that in the UK!

Eventually they decided against keeping me in. The doctor who saw me hopes that a change in the antibiotic will stop the nausea and make me feel more like eating, but that’s not really the point. I’d stopped eating before I had the nausea.

On the way back I went to LIDL for more water and things like like that. And I was lucky enough to find a pharmacy still open just around the corner.

So now I’m back here, still on the sofa, still not eating but at least I have some of this multivitamin drink – if only I can keep it down.

They gave me a letter to give to the doctor so I’ll have a go at delivering it tomorrow. See what he has to say about it all.

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Thursday 14th December 2017 – SO FAR TODAY …

… I’ve managed to go a whole 24 hours without a single disaster. That makes a nice change for recent times doesn’t it?

And I’ve also done 198% of my daily activity too, and that has to be a good thing.

We started off last night as we mean to go on, and that meant an early night. And to guarantee a decent sleep I switched on a “Bulldog Drummond” film. Always does the trick, that does.

A bad attack of cramp at 01:3à wasn’t quite so good, but that’s the kind of thing that happens. Soon back to sleep and right through to the alarm as well.

The morning was quite leisurely and included a shower, and then at 10:30 it was out to the shops.

I’d previously forgotten the Kruidvat – but not this time. They have pick-and-mix sweets and they are all labelled as to their allergy rating. I treated myself to a couple of hundred grams of gelatine-free gooey sweets. And they were delicious.

At Zeeman I bought a black jumper for €7:99. I don’t have enough jumpers back at Granville and another cheap one will do me just fine.

But of all of the shops that I went into (and there were dozens) I couldn’t find a cake tin. I don’t know what’s happening to the world.

Alison turned up and we went for a coffee and a wander around the shops looking for Christmas presents for her entourage. And we called into the Loving Hut for another pile of Vegan cheese and some spray-on vegan cream.

I then took my leave and headed off to the hospital.

A new place to visit. No longer do I go to the Day Centre but to the Haematology unit. And there, the girl fitted the vampire bat to my catheter port and extracted the blood in a matter of seconds.

But the thing there is amazing. They don’t call out your name – your photo appears on the TV screen thing next to the room which you have to visit. That’s new technology!

The good news is that – rather surprisingly – the blood count is UP – from 9.2 to 9.5. And also that the protein loss is DOWN – and that’s even more surprising. Professor Janssens is pleased with me – so back in another 2 months.

Back into town again in the rain where I again met Alison. And we went to la Cucaracha – the Cockroach – the new Mexican restaurant. My taco or tortilla or whatever it was stufffed with spicy mushrooms in tomato sauce with rice was absolutely delicious and I’ll make this at home sometime.

We put the world to rights until her bus came, and then I walked back here, stopping to photograph all of the lights. But the camera on this phone is unfortunately pretty useless.

I’m now going to try for yet another early night. It’s quite cold out and my room isn’t as hot as I would like it.

Curling up under the covers is what’s called for in a situation like this.

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Friday 13th October 2017 – IF EVER I GET …

… my hands on the person who decided that it would be amusing to play his music at full volume at 04:40 this morning, he’ll be drinking soup through a straw for the foreseeable future.

Having a little party in one’s room at 01:30 was rather disturbing, but this was something else completely.

Mind you, it’s taught me a lesson, which is to make sure that all of the windows in my room are closed in future. The noise wasn’t half as bad once I had done that.

And this was all a shame because my room was quite pleasant and I was very comfortable in my bed. I shall look further into this hotel once I return home.

So wide awake, I attacked some stuff on the internet that needed doing. And found some more stuff about my grandmother Ivy Cooper performing in Winnipeg in January 1923. Hard to believe that just 33 months later, she was back in the UK, remarried and giving birth to my mother.

With not having paid for breakfast, I had bought some raisin buns and orange juice from the supermarket while I was out last night, and they made a very agreeable breakfast.

And so all of that was followed by a nice shower and shave (and it really was a nice shower too) and change of clothes, and then I packed everything up to go.

The owner was on duty at the Hotel Midi-Zuid. He apologised for yesterday too and let me put my suitcase in the cupboard as my room wasn’t ready (so what REALLY happened yesterday?)

I wandered off down to the Gare du Midi to buy my ticket to Leuven. And here I made something of a mistake. It was well before 10:00 when I bought them so I had to pay full price.

But it was a nice day anyway so I went early (falling asleep on the train) and sat on the Square outside the railway station, soaking in the sun and also supping a well-earned coffee.

Later on, despite still aching just about everywhere, I decided to walk right across the city to the hospital. It was market day down the main street so I fought my way through the crowds, stopping to admire the fruit and veg stall with its lovely collection of grapes, which were so irresistible.

The Loving Hut wasn’t open yet but nevertheless I blagged my way in to buy some more vegan cheese, seeing as I had forgotten to bring over any from Canada. And the manager gave me a couple of names of mail-order vegan suppliers who might help me out.

mini traveller leuven belgium september septembre 2017And here’s a thing. it’s been a while since we’ve featured an old car in these pages.

I didn’t really have the time or the inclination to do much around the USA. I need to catch up, and here by the merest chance happens to be an old Mini Traveller.

rare enough in the UK these days so I never expected to see one here in Leuven.

But then again, regular readers of this rubbish will recall that we saw a mini van here in Brussels a couple of years ago.

Calling at St Pieter’s Hospital for the usual morning reasons, I continued on my way only to bump into one of my former co_kottiers from the Hostel. He’s now managing the little bistro place that’s attached to the other hostel and he invited me in for a coffee and a chat.

Unfortunately I was obliged to decline, seeing asI had a prior appointment, but I made a note. And then pressed on to the hospital.

We had a new student nurse today, so it was a good job that I knew the routine. And when she told me to “move over to the far side of the bed”, I couldn’t help but reply “that’s the most exciting thing that I’ve had said to me for quite some considerable time”.

The news though isn’t so good. While the protein might be “stable”, whatever he means by that, the blood count not so. That’s dropped from 9.6 last time to 9.2 just now. And he reckons that there’s also a leaky valve in my heart.

None of this is anything that I particularly wanted to hear. Things aren’t sounding quite so good just now, so i’m glad that I took the opportunity to carry out all of the tasks on my “to-do” list when I was able to.

It took the doctor until 17:20 to come to tell me that I could go, and to give me my prescriptions. I have to come back on Thursday 14th December, but to go to a different department, and I don’t like the sound of that.

But now I’m horribly late. I was hoping to be gone from here hours ago. I have to run to the pharmacy to collect the prescriptions and, as usual, they are short of product.

And then run for the bus, which is in no hurry. No chance of going for that coffee now.

Luckily the trains to Brussels are quite regular and I don’t have to wait long. Mevertheless it’s 18:33 when we arrive. I have to run down to the hotel, register (why he wouldn’t let me do that this morning I really don’t know), leave my backpack, and run back to the station. And i’m on the platform southbound with just three minutes to spare.

Since I’vs topped going to see OH Leuven, they have been on an impressive run of form and are up there in 2nd place in the league. On the other hand, AFC Tubize are on a woeful run of form and are well adrift at the foot of the table.

There’s a football match played in each division on a Friday night, and by pure coincidence, tonight is AFC Tubize v OH Leuven. it’s just a handful of stops down the line from here, and I’m at a loose end.

Obviously a home banker then.

But we have a tragedy – i’ll tell you that. They’ve reorganised the times of the trains and the last one back is at 22:12. The 23:12 has been taken off. What that means in real money is that if I don’t want to walk back to Brussels, I’ll miss the last 20 minutes of the game.

But never mind. Grabbing a bag of chips from the fritkot across the road from the station, I set off to the ground.

afc tubize oh leuven belgium september septembre 2017It’s a modern stadium, but they ran out of money after doing just two sides.

And that’s hardly surprising because it’s another one of those places where they announce the crowd changes to the team.

I have a coffee, chat to a couple of people, and take my seat in the stand.

AFC Tubize aren’t all that bad. In fact they can match OH Leuven in most departments but you can immediately see the problem that they are having. Their centre-forward is ploughing a very lonely furrow up front, with no service and no support.

OH Leuven are on the attack from the kick-off and only a brilliant save from their keeper stops them going 1-0 down in the first 5 minutes.

But they are in front after half an hour with a brilliant glancing header from Casagolda from a free kick.

Tubize equalize in the second half and I start to have this rather uncomfortable feeling. But it can’t be helped – I need to be on my way.

Back at the hotel I find my room, and its quite comfortable too. One of the bigger ones. I learn that OH Leuven went on to win the match but it’s bed-time for me. It’s been a long day and it’s going to be another long one tomorrow.

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Monday 14th August 2017 – AT THE HOSPITAL …

… the news is not so good.

While the blood count is up slightly at 9.6 from 9.5, something else in the body (and I’ve forgotten what it was) has plummeted by over 25% – from 39 parts to 29 parts.

This has caused a few raised eyebrows and they wanted me to come in again to see if it might be just an errant result.

But no chance of that! My flight to Montreal is at 15:20 and I intend to be on it – and I won’t be back until 12th October. So my appointment is on 13th whether they like it or not.

And here’s a thing – I asked the hotel manager whether it’s cheaper to book a room over the counter or over the internet by a booking agency. To my astonishment he replied “over the internet”.

That was the last thing that I was expecting because I know how much commission these booking agencies charge. But if that’s what he wants me to do, then that’s what I will do.

Despite being awake at about 06:00 or something, there was no chance of me moving. It took the alarm at 07:00 to shift me from my stinking pit. And after breakfast I came back here and attacked yesterday’s magnum opus.

sncb bruselles gare du midi leuven belgium aout august 2017That took me up to shower time, and then a slow meander down the road to the railway station.

And my luck was in too. Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that the trains to Leuven run at peculiar times – there are three all at once and then nothing for 40 minutes.

And so no-one was more delighted than me when an Inter-City pulled in just as I arrived at the station.

sncb bruselles gare du midi leuven belgium aout august 2017It was a double-decker too. Very nice, comfortable and modern, so I went off to sit upstairs.

Of course, Brain of Britain had forgotten his book and so he had to sit there and admire the scenery for the whole route.

Not of course that he was complaining about that too much.

At Leuven we had a nightmare of queueing for a new travel ticket – mine is on the verge of running out. But once it was organised it was off on the bus to the hospital and my appointment with Destiny.

I walked back through the town, picking up some stuff for lunch tomorrow as well as a nice sorbet as a treat. I reckoned that I had earned it.

sncb leuven bruxelles gare du midi belgium aout august 2017You know about the irregular running of the trains between Leuven and Brussels. But here again I was in luck.

The train to Knokke was running late so just as I arrived on the platform, so did the train. otherwise I would have had an uncomfortable wait for the train from Welkenraedt.

These trains are old, dirty and rattly but they are here and that’s the important bit. I was soon back here.

We had another disaster for tea tonight. I’d been saving my plate of lentils for tonight but after they had taken my order and having waited for 20 minutes, they told me that “lentils were finished” even though I’d seen a plate in the cooler.

I ended up with a bag of chips instead.

It seems that I’m fated to have bad luck with my meals this time round. And so I’m glad that I’ve bought some emergency supplies for the plane tomorrow, to go with the crisps that Alison gave me on Sunday and which I forgot to mention.

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Saturday 24th June 2017 – I WAS UP …

… a good 10 minutes before the alarm this morning. And had I been bothered to leave my stinking pit, I could have been up a good hour before it too.

I’d been on my travels too, not sure where, but I ended up dating one of the nurses (I wish that I could remember which one) who had treated me while I had been in hospital. She was considerably younger than me (well, let’s face it – almost everyone in the world is these days!) and this excited a great deal of comment from all sorts of people.

Which of course just goes to show – I can still chase after the women, even if I can’t remember why.

We had the usual trip for the baguette and the lunchtime sitting-on-the-wall-overlooking-the-harbour too. The weather wasn’t quite as warm as it has been, but still too hot to be out there for long. And the tide is now almost fully-out which means that we aren’t going to be having any ships passing by for a while.

Even the Marité is conspicuous by her absence. She seems to have departed into the ether – Ships That Pass In The Night and all of that.

Tea was another attack on the European Tinned Food Mountain and with the addition of a few herbs and spices it was quite tasty. Just goes to show the difference that a few simple things can make.

So what have I been doing today then?

Some tidying up. Not much, but if I do a little every day (or nearly every day) it will slowly all go together nicely. And some cleaning too. I need to make an effort.

I had a phone call too from the maintenance people about the fridge. So I told them that it was now back working again so they hung up. And now it’s stopped again, hasn’t it?

I’ve also had a very unwelcome letter from the Treasury of that hospital in Verdun. It seems that once again my insurers are dragging their heels about paying (which they usually do) and I’ve been lumbered yet again. I’ll need to sort them out properly in early course.

Ingrid was on the phone too and we had a lengthy chat. Her health issues are finally moving, although in which direction it’s hard to tell. She’ll know more in early course. But it’s a good job that she rang, because I was … errr … resting at the time.

But most of the day has been organising the blog. I’ve finished November, done a few of December, skipped the rest because there’s a lot in there that needs editing, and now I’m well into January 2012. Only 289 entries to go before this cycle of amendments is completed. And then I’ll need to go back over it again to bring the earlier entries up to the current standard as well as tackling some of the more complicated entries.

In that vein, we are going pretty well too. I’ve done some more ad-hoc editing, removing unwanted tags, editing a couple of others, merging one or two as well and it’s not been taking me as long as I thought, especially as I’ve found a quick way of doing it.

So now I’m having a relax before bed-time. And I reckon that I deserve it too. It’s hard work, this sitting around doing not very much.

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Monday 12th June 2017 – BACK …

… in 8 weeks.

It seems that my blood count has gone down from 9.8 to 9.5. It’s not down enough to bother them that much and they don’t intend to do anything about it, so having arrived at 10:30 I was out of the door and down the road by 12:30.

Down the road as far as the café anyway, where I watched the woman sitting opposite me drop half the contents of her butty down her more-than-ample cleavage. And gentleman that I am, I would ordinarily have offered to help her remove it, and indeed so would I, had she been 19 instead of 90. At that age, people would have worked out how to do it for themselves.

Sleeping here wasn’t too bad, and I was awake fairly early. After my tea last night I didn’t feel much like breakfast and even held out over a coffee until the hospital. It’s a brief walk from here to the bus stop and the buses are every 12 minutes so I didn’t have to wait long.

Leaving the hospital, I had to try several different chemists until I could assemble all of the pills that I needed, and then went off for some vegan cheese and a couple of pairs of the trousers that I like to wear. Still on special offer too!

And that coconut sorbet that I tried? Delicious!

Back here I crashed out for an hour or so and then headed off to meet Alison. The vegan restaurant had a special offer meal available so I treated her to it ad then we went for a coffee and to put the world to rights.

So it’s early to bed as I need to be on my best form for tomorrow. It’s a long way back home again.

leuven belgium june juillet 2017But before I drop off into the arms of Morpheus, I’ll leave you with a little photo.

As you know, we’ve been running a little feature entitled ‘Only in Belgium”. And here’s the latest photo for our collection – I’ve forgotten what number it might be.

But I’m sure that you don’t need a translation to be able to work it out. It is pretty self-explanatory. And to be fair, I have seen similar in other parts of the world too.

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Saturday 15th April 2017 – AFTER YESTERDAY’S EXCITEMENT …

… I had a very quiet day today.

And that’s hardly surprising either, seeing that I have my train tomorrow morning and I have a lot of travelling to do.

09:29 I need to catch it at the station here at Leuven, and so that means that I shall have to forego the delights of a Sunday morning lie-in and rely on the alarms to awaken me. After all, there’s a bit of cleaning and tidying to do around here.

I had another topsy-turvy morning with an awakening at some silly time but I did manage to go back to sleep to be awoken by the alarm. And after breakfast, I just loitered around for ages.

Lunch was toasted cheese sandwiches with tomato and lettuce, and there are still plenty left to make butties for my trip tomorrow, which is always good news.

I almost didn’t go out whatsoever but I remembered that I still had a prescription from the hospital to fill. And so I leapt into action and dashed outside, only to find that the chemists had all long-since closed. I hope that there will be one open on the station tomorrow. It probably would have been a good idea to have gone out earlier but

    • I forgot
      I was … errr … somewhat indisposed

    • Tea was what was left over from my kidney bean whatsit the other night and like all good sauces it tasted even better the second time around.

    And now I really am going to have an early night. What with my early start tomorrow and my excesses of yesterday, I have to be careful.

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    Wednesday 12th April 2017 – WELL, THAT’S THAT …

    … for another EIGHT (yes, EIGHT) weeks!

    Blood count is at 9.8, which is nowhere near as high as I would like and the protein count is at 1.77, which is still way above the norm, but they seem to think that I might be ready to try for 8 weeks.

    And now I’m regretting that I didn’t come here in Caliburn, because he has his own little safe hidey-hole here, and given my accommodation issues just now, I could (and should) be on the next plane to Montreal – and I could go and have my accommodation issues over there.

    What’s the difference?

    Last night I had a good sleep even though the fridge rattles and the fan in the heater squeaks and groans. I was certainly well away, and for most of the night too. Awake at 05:45 and I’ve no idea why, but never mind.

    Breakfast was the stuff that I had bought last night at the Colruyt, and I wasn’t really all that hungry, I suppose. And after a shower, I headed off to walk (about 100 miles) to the bus stop to catch the bus to the hospital.

    But not before I had made a rather dismal discovery. I travel light, as you know, and don’t bring many clothes at all with me – I wash them in the shower as I go and leave them hanging to dry. But it seems that Bane of Britain here has bought two spare pairs of trousers and no spare tee-shirt. I was obliged to send Alison a message to tell her to make sure that she stands up-wind of me on Friday.

    After the hospital I had a steady walk into town to buy food at Delhaize for tea, and then I went to pick up some Vegan cheese and ginger beer from the vegan place.

    university library leuven belgium march mars 2017There was a glorious five minutes of bright sunshine and so I found a bench near to the big library where I could sit and drink my drink and admire the view in the gorgeous afternoon.

    And, it has to be said, narrowly avoid being buttonholed by a Jehovah’s Witness handing out leaflets and wanting to chat to people. I waited until his back was turned and then nipped off, smartish-like.

    But you do have to think about the Library here. Burnt to the ground by the Germans (along with the rest of Leuven) in 1914. And then again in 1940. So why is it that Belgium – and the whole of the rest of Europe – has more faith and confidence in Germany than it does in the UK?

    Clearly the UK is doing something very wrong, and you wouldn’t expect a silly Brexiter to come up with the answer.

    Back here, I made myself some cheese on toast and had a little relax. And then made up my mind to nip into the city to one of the cheap shops for a clean tee-shirt so that I could wash the one that I was wearing. Wibra had nothing cheap but Zeeman had a tee-shirt at €3:99 that would do the job.

    On my return, I had a little … errr … relax for half an hour and then attacked the shower. Twice in one day, you might be thinking, but I needed to wake myself up and to wash my tee-shirt. And then I hit the town again.

    I had a very pleasant evening with Sean and finally met his wife and daughter who are both lovely. Little Charlotte is 6 but she’s quite a character.

    Now I’m set for bed, and I hope that I have as good a night’s sleep as I did last night.

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    Tuesday 14th March 2017 – YOU MIGHT …

    … or, more likely, might not … be wondering where I’ve been for the last few days. Well, almost a week in fact.

    The truth is that I have had a very (un)pleasant stay amid the local facilities of the town of Verdun.

    No, not the Nick, Rhys, the local hospital.

    I was rushed in there on Wednesday night/Thursday morning after the landlady of the Hotel du Tigre found me flaked out in my bed having had the most serious relapse to date. She promptly called for an ambulance.

    There was no internet in the hospital and somehow my telephone had become damaged so I was out of touch.

    Anyway, they threw me out this morning and a taxi took me back to the hotel.

    I’m still not 100% fit – far from it, in fact – so I had a slow, steady drive southwards and ended up at Bar-le-Duc where I bought a baguette and made myself a butty.

    On my way through the town I’d seen an “Orange” boutique and so when it opened after lunch I trotted off round there to see what they could do about my phone. I’d managed to clean it up and dry it out but the keyboard wasn’t working, so I hoped that they could do something about it.

    Nothing that they could do on the spot so repair would involve sending it away, and the hourly charge was something rather ludicrous. However, my contract has only one month to go before renewal and on renewal I would be entitled to a new telephone at a discount price. One or two deft keystrokes and I suddenly found myself the owner of a brand-new Samsung Smartphone, for all of €44:00. About half the price of the postage and minimum repair charge.

    Later on, I was back on the road and had a gentle drive across the northern Burgundy mountains as far as Auxerre. This is where the new telephone came in handy because a quick search on the internet told me where the Première Class Hotel was situated – it’s quite a way out of the city.

    Hopefully I’ll have a good sleep and a decent breakfast and make myself ready for the next stage of my journey.

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    Monday 6th March 2017 – I PAID …

    … for all of this effort over the last few days.

    Despite the bad night and waking up at 06:00, I was down for breakfast at 07:00 feeling fairly okay. But coming back I was overwhelmed, as if the exercise was too much, and I had to go and lie down, aching all over and feeling really bad.

    Nevertheless I made it down to pick up Hannah but I clearly wasn’t on form. We took the main-line train to the European Parliament where she went off for her guided tour. Being young, Canadian and still a student, she needs to make her CV as impressive and completely different from anyone else’s if she wants to have a good job, and so I pulled a few strings the other week and managed to organise a guided tour around the Parliament.

    I wasn’t up to it and so I rode herd on the luggage and read a book.

    When she returned, she noticed my distress and decided that we may as well go to the airport then rather than a couple of hours later. And so we walked up to Schuman, I picked up my bank cards, and then leapt on board the Express bus (with a certain amount of confusion about the pricing structure).

    Once Hannah had disappeared into the bowels of the airport I headed back for the bus to Leuven. There are two per hour, at … errr … 33 minutes past and … errr … 35 minutes past. How about that for planning? And none of them goes via the hospital.

    I ended up at the station and I nipped off to find the Ibis Budget, seeing as how I really was feeling bad. But for some reason or other it was … errr … €74 tonight. Why is that?

    Instead, I took a bus up to the hospital, liberated my discharge papers, sorted out my medicines, and then headed for Caliburn. And we hit the road.

    I’ve ended up in a B&B near Arlon on the Luxembourg border. It’s cheap but good. There’s no food in the vicinity so I had to drive about 100 miles to find a fritkot.

    Now I’m off to bed. I deserve it. I hope that I feel better tomorrow.

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    Monday 27th February 2017 – NOW THAT’S WHAT I CALL …

    … the Sleep of the Dead!

    By about 21:30 I was totally out of it, what with all of my exertions over the weekend and my late night on Saturday. And with a hectic 10 days to come, there’s no point in pushing out the boundaries so I hit the sack. I vaguely remember at about 23:30 waking up to switch off the laptop, and that was absolutely that until the alarm went off at 07:00.

    Totally painless, and I felt so much better for it.

    I had company a breakfast – one of these Obsessive Compulsive Disorder people who spent 10 minutes washing a mug, and then 10 minutes washing a glass – that type of person. And then, inexplicably, he left his dirty knife in the sink – and told me not to wash it as he would do it later. Not that I was intending to of course – each to his own around here – but it was such a strange thing to do given how much time he had spent washing the rest of his stuff.

    Hospital came next – and I had to get a move on because Bane of Britain had taken his hospital folder down to Caliburn last night and he needed it up there. It’s all keeping me fit anyway. And up there, the nurse who fitted my catheter into my catheter port did so with such skill and dexterity that I didn’t even realise that she had done it and taken the blood sample.

    This led to the following fantastic exchange –
    Our Hero – “you know, I’m so impressed. You did that so gently that I didn’t even realise it”
    Nurse – “I was Belgian Ladies’ national darts champion in 1984 and 1986”

    I had to wait ages to see the doctor, but in the meantime I saw Kaatje, my Social Welfare worker and Ingrid, the trick cyclist. Ingrid managed to wangle me a visit to see the Professor who is handling my case, and Kaatje conformed that absolutely everything is up-to-date as far as payments go, and she’ll find all of the required information that I need for my insurance by next week (I shall be passing by).

    As far as my health goes, the news isn’t quite so good. Blood count is down, to 10.3 and I’m not very happy about that. The protein loss is stable, but it’s still way too high as we all know.

    But the professor didn’t give me much encouragement. I have renal failure – well, we’ve all guessed that with the protein loss didn’t we, so no surprise there. But I have a rare disease as you all know and according to the Professor, “it’s not responding like it should”.

    She thinks that moving house is a good idea, because hauling wood and water is not such a good idea, but as to whether I need to go into a care home, rent a property or buy something else, she recommends renting. Apparently I’m
    well enough right now that I don’t need a care home, but if I rent somewhere rather than buying it, I can escape from that commitment much easier than a purchased accommodation. She can’t say whether I’m good for &5 years, or good for 10 years, and when you add up all of that, it doesn’t sound too healthy, does it?

    On the way back, I went to buy some bread for lunch, and had a goodbye kiss from the girl in the supermarket on the corner. That cheered me up no end, I’ll say!

    After lunch, I carried on packing and moving stuff down to Caliburn. But I had a brief moment of distraction ringing up my bank. There’s an “issue” with a payment on my account, for no reason whatsoever, and it’s the monthly payment that i need to make to my Storage company in Montreal – the ones with whom I’ve had all of these issues just now.

    “Unusual spending patterns” is the issue so I phoned them up – with a French mobile from Belgium to the UK, explained this to the girl on the phone, who promptly put me on hold for 8 minutes. By the time that I was reconnected I was steaming. The discussion that we had was … errr … rather heated, and in the end they put the phone down on me before I had quite finished telling them exactly what I thought of them and their bank.

    But at least the payment has been made and I hope that this will be the last of it. But I’ml getting rather sick of it all.

    For tea I had sausage, mash and frozen veg for tea, followed by vegan ice-cream and peach halves. That’s most of my food from here finished, and whatever is left is left.

    Another four loads of stuff down to Caliburn, and I even found time to go for a coffee with Sean, the guy who used to live here. I quite enjoy his company, until he starts on about the EU. He really has a bee in his bonnet about it and he isn’t ever going to change my opinion, so I don’t know why he wants to start a discussion about it – unless it’s something to do with the two or three beers I suppose.

    And I had a weird experience on the way back. Some French van with three men in it, were stopping at each girl that they saw in the Kapucijnenvoer and asking them a question. It didn’t seem quite right to me, especially when they almost stopped at the same girl twice, realised that it was she and drove off rapidly. I’ve taken the vehicle the registration number of the van just in case, because I can smell a rat from here, never mind from there.

    Ad so now I’m totally exhausted, so I’m just about to go off to bed. My last ever night here in this hostel (I hope) and I’m exhausted. I’ve had a really busy day and I need to relax.

    Let’s hope that the weather improves.

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    Monday 20th February 2017 – I’M BACK …

    … in the bad sleep rhythm again unfortunately. Last night was one of those like I was havong a few nights ago, tossing, turning, waking up, unable to go back to sleep.

    MInd you, I was asleep enought to go on my travels. To Tibet, I told myself, but it was actually Nepal where I was – with no Chinese soldiers about. I was crossing the country and in the centre was some guy who was restoring these three-wheeled motorcycle things that had a motorcycle front and a flatbed at the back for the carriage of goods. They had all kinds of weird vehicles there and I was really keen to buy something unusual to take home, so I had quite a chat with this guy. But I was in a hurry to be on my way so I continued on my trip. Later that evening I was looking for a hotel but I realised that I had left the country and that was a shame – I hadn’t thought about it at the time but it would have been a good idea and a feather in my cap to have stayed for a night in Nepal/Tibet and add it to the list of countries where I had stayed.

    My Dutch/Russian friend was at breakfast and so was the other guy, so they talked amongst themselves and left me to it. But the other guy is leaving today so the Dutch guy and I tomorrow are going to empty all of the fridges, clean them, and throw away everything that doesn’t belong to us.

    Later that morning I went up to the hospital to see the Welfare girl. I need a prognostic of my condition because it’s possible that if they acknowledge that my health will deteriorate, I might be able to claim an extra allowance for home help, and that will be nice. But she wasn’t so hopeful that this kind of thing will be possible.

    After lunch I got on the phone to the people in Evaux les Bains. Caliburn still has his bump in the rear and the insurance company says that this garage can fix it for me. You remember that I visited there in December for an inspection of Caliburn. He’s booked in for Monday 13th March and they will let me have a rental vehicle while Caliburn is being fixed. They’ll also be dealing with the rust issues on the nearside sill.

    As usual, I had a crash out and then I went up to make tea. Oven chips, beans and veggie burgers, followed by the last of the pineapples and vegan ice cream.

    I’ll be having an early night now and getting ready for yet another day out tomorrow.

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