… plot! And one place that would be first in line to be on the end of the Guy Fawkes treatment, if I were well enough to do so, would be the dialysis centre, because we have had yet another run-in there today and having to fight with the personnel almost every session is not doing me any good at all. In fact, it’s getting completely on my wick.
It might have been better had I had an early night, but once again, things dragged on so long here that I heard the immersion heater switch on at 01:00 as I was leaving the bathroom, ready for bed. That was when I checked the time, and as it was far too early to raise myself from my stinking pit, I went back to sleep again.
When the alarm went off this time, it was the real one, so I sat up straight on the edge of the bed. After the second alarm rang, I tried to summon up the enthusiasm and motivation to leave the side of my bed and stand up, but once I was ready, I found to my dismay that I didn’t have the force. I had to adopt all kinds of silly manoeuvres to enable me to leave the bed.
After I’d unlocked the front door, I went into the bathroom to organise myself for the day, and I remembered this time to have a shave in case Emilie the Cute Consultant is there this afternoon. When I’d finished in the bathroom, I came back in here to listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night.
As you can tell by the content of this dream, it’s no surprise at all that I fell asleep in the middle of it. It’s another one of these really confusing dreams where a literal transcription of the content means nothing at all. And as if I don’t have enough of those already.
As regular readers of this rubbish will recall, I’m quite at home driving around Eastern Europe, even when the Communist Party was on power, but I don’t know why it’s suddenly been transferred to this neck of the woods right now.
Isabelle the Nurse turned up, nicely on time. And before I let her loose on my legs and feet, I asked her if she would look at my right foot. It’s all gone a shiny shade of red, it’s hot, it’s swollen, and at the base of one of my toes, it’s weeping, and it’s agonising. She had a good look, cleaned it up with some disinfectant and wrapped it up.
She recommended that I let one of the doctors at Avranches have a good look at it. Naturally, I’ll do that, especially if it’s Emilie the Cute Consultant who is en garde – “on the alert” – this afternoon.
After she left, I made my breakfast and read some more of THE REPORT OF THE WOOLHOPE NATURALISTS CLUB 1867.
Today, we were discussing the trees of the area, and I, as well as the members of the club’s committee, were led off astray by an article about the chapel of the Knights Templars of Hereford. They were knights charged with the protection of the road from the Palestine coast to Jerusalem, and as a result, they became rich, even richer than the kings themselves. So as a result, the King of France and some of his fellow monarchs set out to eliminate the order at the start of the fourteenth century. Several Templars were burnt at the stake, but the treasure fleet of the French chapter of the Templars disappeared, giving rise to ONE OF THE MOST FANTASTIC STORIES that you will have heard for ages.
So instead of reading the report of the Woolhope naturalists, I was reading all about the Templars in Herefordshire and the surrounding counties, which was much more interesting.
Back in here, I had things to do, one of which was to chop thirty-four seconds out of the commentary for one of my rock concerts. Five seconds is easy, and ten is quite comfortable too, but thirty-four presented something of a challenge. However, by the time that I had to go to prepare for dialysis, I’d actually managed it. And you won’t be able to hear where the cuts have been made either.
When the alarm sounded for me to go off to prepare, I scooted into the kitchen for my disgusting drink and midday medication and then began to put my travelling laptop away in my bag. My faithful cleaner arrived to apply the anaesthetic to my arm, and we had a little discussion about wood.
She wants to upgrade the wardrobe doors in her apartment upstairs and fit something more modern that she can paint in different colours. I have to say that had I been fit and healthy, I’d be doing the same because they are “very 1980s” with the plastic white finish that is difficult to paint. I’d love my doors to be dark blue, like the curtains and my favourite bedding. It would go nicely with the light blue walls. And I’d swap the doors in the apartment for the glazed doors that I bought from B&Q in England years ago to use on the farm.
After my cleaner left, I adopted my favourite position of being slumped over the table. And it seemed like just a minute, but it was in fact twenty minutes and more that I was crashed out, and the driver of the taxi gave me a rude awakening.
It was one of my favourite taxi drivers who came today, so I knew that we would be in for a very quick journey. There was someone else to pick up too, and she was quite garrulous, so we had a very animated drive down to Avranches.
We arrived at the dialysis centre a good twenty minutes early, but, would you believe, I had to wait almost an hour to be plugged in?
It was at the dialysis centre that my problems began.
The first person who came to see me was the dietician. She tells me that everyone in the dialysis centre is worried about the amount of fluid they are expected to extract. After a lengthy discussion, during which she totally failed to understand that if you have a water jug with a filter which is full at the start of the day, and you draw from the water jug all of your needs and then fill it up at the end of the day, and it takes one litre of water before it’s full, then you’ve used one litre of water, she wanted me to cut down my daily water intake by two hundred and fifty millilitres to seven hundred and fifty.
She also wanted me to increase my uptake of disgusting drinks from one or two per day to four per day, and I had to remind her that four disgusting drinks is eight hundred millilitres.
What kind of state is the dietary department in?
While she was here, I took the opportunity to complain about the missing snacks. They’ve changed the items available on the snack trolley recently, and my orange juice has been withdrawn. They’ve replaced it with an apple purée, which is the only thing on the trolley that fits my diet. However, even though the new snacks have only been in operation for less than a month, on four occasions they haven’t had them on the trolley.
Eventually, the nurse came to plug me in. It was one of the two je m’en foutistes – the nurses who do the barest minimum of work, so I knew that we were in for fireworks.
And so it proved. The excess liquid was more than it has ever been, and even a stay of four hours wouldn’t clear it. The difference wasn’t much, so I told the nurse to wind up the machine from nine hundred and fifty to a thousand, and that would do. After all, they ran it at over eleven hundred the other week, with no side effects reported, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall.
"Oh no!" she replied. "There’s a doctor’s instruction not to run the machine past nine hundred and fifty."
"There’s also a doctor’s instruction saying that I have to stay until I’m at my dry weight, so set it at four hours twenty then."
"Oh no" she replied. "I’m not staying here all night. I want to go home! Anyway, a couple of hundred grammes isn’t much."
"In that case, neither is fifty grammes."
Come the revolution, boys, I know someone who is in line for a good kicking.
And so, in a very bad mood, I watched the end of the game in the second division between Y Drenewydd and Bwcle. Y Drenewydd were winning 1-0 when I left the match on Saturday, and they were good value for their lead. In the final ten minutes, Bwcle threw everything, including the kitchen sink, at the Drenewydd defence with no success, and as you might expect, with just seconds to go, a Drenewydd player won the ball in his own penalty area and roared off upfield, which led to another goal for Y Drenewydd with almost the last kick of the game.
The next match was Airbus UK Broughton v Caernarfon, and as I haven’t finished that as yet, despite being there for four hours, I’ll report on it later.
What had interrupted me was the arrival of the doctor. Not Emilie the Cute Consultant, unfortunately, but the new female doctor who is still finding her feet in the service.
She might be still finding her feet, but she certainly found mine quickly enough. She whipped off my compression sock and examined my toe. She asked me a variety of questions, such as “have you ever dropped anything onto your foot?”.
The response to every question was a “no”, so she reckons that it’s an infection of some kind, so she booked me in for a scan on Monday at the hospital over the road. As well as that, she prescribed a series of antibiotics for me, and I hope that they will work better than the last lot that she prescribed for me.
After that, I wasn’t in the mood to watch the football. Instead, I worked on my shopping list for next Friday. However, I did go back to the game at some point, but the end of the session came round before it had finished, so I’ll tell you more about it when I’ve finished watching it.
My nurse came over at the end of the session and cleaned the machine again before she started to unplug me. Once she’d finished with me, I could scuttle off to the driver, weighing myself on the scales as I went past. And it was as I suspected – I’m five hundred grammes over my dry weight.
GRRRRR!
Tonight, I was on my own with the driver, so we had a fairly quick drive home. However, it was 19:45 when I returned home, and I don’t think that I’ve ever been this late before. My faithful cleaner was there waiting to help me into the apartment when I arrived, and she slipped a disgusting drink into my hand once I’d settled down in a chair in the dining area.
There was no question whatsoever of me making tea at that time, so I contented myself with some of those little toasted squares with spreading cheese, followed by a plum and an orange.
When I’d finished, I began to write the notes for today, but I was in real danger of falling asleep, so after one particular outburst, I decided to go to bed. The rest of the notes can wait until tomorrow.
But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about starting a new job … "well, one of us has" – ed … two men were sitting in a bar discussing their prospects for the future.
One of them asks the other "I hear you have a new job"
"Yes," replies the first one, "I’m working backstage in a strip club, helping the girls dress and undress"
"Blimey!" said his friend. "that’s a good job. What’s the money like?"
"It’s fifty quid a week."
"That’s not a lot."
"No, but it’s all that I could afford."
