Tag Archives: lumbar puncture

Tuesday 23rd April 2024 – OUCH! THAT HURT!

And if you read on, you’ll find out what and why. I’ve not had a very good day.

Anyway, last night after everything had finished I sat down and READ A BOOK about an American sailor and his family, including his 6 year old daughter, captured in the South Pacific in 1917 by a German sea-going raider and who spent 10 months as prisoner on board before being shipwrecked off the coast of Denmark.

After that I settled down, fully dressed because I was freezing, under the covers and that was that.

A few times during the night I was awoken by a few comings and goings but for some reason or other I was so tired that I was back asleep almost immediately and ended up not awakening until they came to take my blood sample at about 09:15.

Actually it was the little student nurse who came on her own so I told her that if I leave here alive she’ll have earned her diploma. Anyway, she managed to find some blood. I still have some left, apparently.

Once she’d gone I went for a wash and brush up as best as I could and then a driver came to collect me. It was the rock music fan who has taken me before so we had a good chat before he dropped me off at Neurology.

While I was waiting for my appointment I had a good chat with the receptionist and another patient and saw several photos of cats and dogs before being ushered into the room where the examination was due to take place.

It was the doctor who had seen me before on two occasions. He and his sidekick gave me the electric shock tests to my arms and legs and I was right – there is a further deterioration. So no surprise there. We had a good chat and now he’s gone away to think about a Plan B.

The same driver came to pick me up for my next appointment but that’s not until tomorrow so he brought me back here.

While I was eating lunch a doctor came to slap a freezing patch on my lower back and we all know what that means. She took an age to find the correct position so I asked her "can’t you see the scars from the previous attempts?"

When she told me that she could, I told her that they ought to paint an “X marks the spot” or even a target in the correct place.

A short while later, Batman and Robin, the young ward nurse and her little student who follows her around like a shadow, came to prepare me.

It was the little student who drew the short straw and had to hold me down and I bet she wished that she hadn’t when the doctor missed her aim with the lumbar puncture and found the central nerve.

Eventually, but not soon enough by any means, the torment was over and I could go to lie down. “You’ll just need to be flat out for an hour” but she was joking. After an hour or so a nurse came round to make sure that I was still alive and to take my blood pressure, with predictable results. But in fact it was several hours before I crawled out of bed, and then only for a particular reason too.

Once I’d settled down in my chair I transcribed the dictaphone notes. Yesterday’s are now on line and then I started on today’s. I was going to start at a new school but the morning that I was due to go I had a ‘phone call that began speaking in Welsh. It was a young girl saying that she was glad to go back to live in Easingwold. I couldn’t understand who it was but the conversation became more and more intimate until in the end, I had to go, I said plenty of encouraging words and finished with “I love you” but I had no idea who this person was at all. Absolutely none. I arrived at the new school but couldn’t find out how anything worked, the system of how lessons were organised etc. In the end I stumbled across a lesson from one of my class so I asked the teacher where all the other lessons for our year were being held. He gave some kind of nebulous speech abut how I should have looked at the newspaper. Of course I knew nothing about this. I found a copy of the newspaper but didn’t understand it. In the end I found some kind of paper print-out with the details on it. It was headed with the most extraordinary offensive message that had nothing whatever to do with the subject matter. I thought it totally astonishing that they’d pin this on the wall. I couldn’t find any paper then. Every piece of paper on which I tried to write, I was making no impression with a ball-point pen. The writing was just not sticking as if it had one of these shiny surfaces. I kept on coming across paper that had already been used, carbon copies of the ‘phone call that I’d had earlier in the day from that girl etc, but nothing that I could do would be able to reproduce anything on any kind of piece of paper. It was just so frustrating because I wanted to crack on and organise myself as this was just not working at all.

Then this conversation that I’d had in the morning had completely shaken me. I didn’t have a clue who on earth it was to whom I was speaking and I really wish that I knew because it had all the air of being something really interesting. The only Welsh-speaking girl I knew at school was only in passing and it certainly wasn’t her so who on earth was it?

Then we had a boisterous kind of office party where everything was going out of control. The sad part about it was that these were all middle-aged people. The boss there had picked on someone else’s wife and was making life really uncomfortable for them. They were trying to work out a moment in which to disappear such as when the boss went to the toilet but they’d brought the PA with them so putting that into the car in the space of a couple of minutes was going to be complicated. There were all kinds of things like this. Some woman was making some very plain and clear hints that she wanted to dance etc with me but of course I was having absolutely none of this and sat stoically at my seat in the dining room watching the events unfold, taking absolutely no notice of any of the extremely broad hints that she was dropping. All in all it was an extremely sad evening watching these people behaving like this

There have been more than a few parties like this where everyone makes a fool of themselves and I note that I even made a remark about it while I was asleep, which shows you just what I think about it all.

Then I was going through the videotapes looking for a blank one but came across a football match that took place years ago that I hadn’t seen. It involved one of these obscure South American republics playing in similar colours to Portugal and who had qualified unexpectedly for the World Cup after beating a selection of prize teams from other parts of the World to make it to the finals. I’d obviously taped their opening match but I couldn’t remember how it went or what the score was so instead of doing what I was supposed to be doing I put on this videotape and settled down to watch them. I got as far as watching them come out onto the pitch before I awoke. I’d no idea who their opponents were in this particular game.

And despite what I said the other night, Castor put in a very brief appearance last night. And wasn’t it nice to see her? We were on board THE GOOD SHIP VE … errr … OCEAN ENDEAVOUR rearranging the dining arrangements. I was passing the cutlery and crockery and glassware from one table to the next. There was the final piece that I picked up to take round to the other table and who should be sitting there but Castor? She was talking to someone else about their life, I suppose. She was saying that she was born into a policeman’s family. I’ll tell you that that didn’t ‘arf ring a few alarm bells with me finding out that she was the progeny of a policeman’s couple.

But even if it were true and I had known, nothing of what happened back then would have changed for a minute. As I said at the time, I would have accepted any consequence. And as Joni Mitchell sang, YOU KNOW I’D GO BACK THERE TOMORROW BUT FOR THE WORK THAT I’VE TAKEN ON

And fancy the dream stopping there! I suppose that it was the shock that awoke me.

While I was asleep in the afternoon I was going for a walk. I had all of the four cats coming with me, following in my footsteps, climbing and jumping over each other as they used to do etc. There were a few members of my family with me. I had to take some money out to pay for something or other, housekeeping or whatever. I needed €60:00. I walked as far as the cash machine but when I went to look through my wallet I couldn’t find the bank card that I usually used. In the end, looking through everything I found a selection of other bank cards but I wasn’t sure which ones would work and which ones wouldn’t. There was one from the bank in Belgium so I put that in the cash machine. It seemed to read the card because it asked for the PIN. I typed in the usual number and that seemed to accept it but that was as far as I reached in the dream.

Tea tonight was salmon lasagne with creamed spinach so some horse trading was undertaken but I’m not doing too well for food which is a shame, but not unexpected.

So right now I’m off to bed to try to recapture Castor and to hope that they try to check my blood pressure at calmer moments.

But while the little student was preparing me for my lumbar puncture I asked her why doctors always wear masks
"Is it to do with infection?" she asked.
"Not at all" I replied. "It’s in case the procedure goes all wrong. Then they can’t identify the guilty party"

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Thursday 7th March 2024 – HERE I ALL AM …

… not sitting in a rainbow but up on the ceiling of my hospital room in Paris. The doctor has just missed his aim with the lumbar puncture and found the central nerve

So if ever you want to find out what pain is all about, I advise you to try that and you won’t have to ask again.

Seriously, that was the most painful thing that has ever happened to me and I sincerely hope that they don’t do that again.

At least he found his target the second time around and extracted enough nervous fluid to last a good while.

So anyway it was another late night last night as I was finishing off the things that I needed to do, leaving half of them undone as usual. There never seems to be enough time to do anything these days, so I’m finding.

At least it was a peaceful night, without too much disturbance. In fact I can’t recall anything even dreaming

When the alarm went off I fell out of bed and went to check the blood pressure – 14.1/9.1, which is very close to what they want to see. Last night it was 17.1/11.7 so it really must have been a peaceful night.

Next stop was the kitchen to sort out my medication I made some bread, kneading it gently as if I was massaging Zero’s clavicles.

While the bread was rising , I began to make a flapjack from a recipe that I found last night on the internet before going to bed. I didn’t have half of the ingredients so it was a very inventive one too but it’ll probably still taste as nice.

In the bathroom I had a good wash and washed the shorts that I wear in bed, forgetting that I’d left my elastic musculation bands in the pockets. Ahh well …

By now the bread was cooked so I made my sandwiches while I was waiting for the flapjack to finish cooking but the taxi driver caught me by surprise by coming early so I had barely time to finish packing my sandwiches.

And the flapjack? That’ll have to finish cooking on its own and it’ll be nice when I come back.

And the stuff that I left all over the worktop?

The driver was the woman who had taken me once before and true to form, she complained and vented her frustrations on the other drivers for every metre of the 344-kilometre route. A proper olde-worlde taxi driver as I said last time

We had time to stop for a coffee but wished we hadn’t when we reached Paris. The Prif was blocked solid so we ended up coming off and finding our way through the back streets of Paris with the result that instead of being 10 minutes early we were 10 minutes late.

This time I’m in The Land of Blue and White. My room is quite nice and so was the receptionist who showed me the way. She made a friendly remark about my eyes, which cheered me up.

So the plan is a lumbar puncture almost immediately and a brain scan tomorrow. If the results show no further spreading of the cancer into the nervous system I can go home tomorrow afternoon

However, if there’s a spreading of the cancer, then “we’ll see”.

He thinks that I ought to continue at the Centre de Re-education and will give me a prescription, and he’ll also give me a prescription for the nurse who comes to my house to deal with the leaking ankle.

Before leaving, he slapped this freezing patch on my back.

The young nurse came back to wire me up and take a blood sample. And poor thing – she had several goes before she could find a vein. My arm ended up full of holes and it reminded me of the old joke about the difference between a hedgehog and a police car and which is far too coarse to repeat in these pages.

By now the doctor came back with two nurse, one to help him and the other to hold me all curled up and to stroke my arm in reassurance.

And then they began.

And it was just as well that they had a nurse holding me down. I was suspicious before when I saw this second nurse come in, and now I know why. I had a feeling that he must have had a go before and with the same result

When he hit my central nerve I think that the whole hospital knew about it and the best that could be said for it was that the second attempt was much less painless. He managed to draw off plenty of fluid anyway.

In between all of the comings and goings I managed to transcribe the dictaphone notes from the night, such as they were. It was a very poor crop last night. We were all in someone ‘s house having a party. Someone had prepared a huge meat pie or huge pie of some description. There was someone who was going away so he said “I’ll have a slice of this pie”. He decided that it was the nicest pie that he had ever tasted and arranged to take it with him. He asked about any more on any other days. The woman said “Tuesday” which was the previous day she’d had a day off so nothing had been made. He was extremely disappointed with that because he was hoping that he could lay his hands on another pie like the first one but not with any luck

Abd that reminds me that I ought to be thinking about baking another vegan pie sometime. They are really nice with potatoes, veg and gravy and its been a while since I’ve had one.

But as I’ve said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … I need to make more room in my freezer. It’s full to the brim yet again and I still have the sausage rolls that I made the other week resting in the ice box of the fridge.

It’s no use either saying that I should have bought a bigger freezer either. I’d have just filled it up just as quickly with all kinds of other stuff and there still wouldn’t have been room in there. I always found that the amount of possessions that you have always expands quite quickly to fill the space available, regardless of how much that is, and you always never have enough room.

While all of this was going on I was having a perfusion. It finished quite quickly and blood was being drawn back into the pipe. When the nurse uncoupled me she swung the pipe round and this place looked like a slaughterhouse as the blood from the pipe went everywhere.

What an unholy mess that was. She cleaned up most of it but missed some and the place doesn’t look much better.

Tea was an assortment of whatever they could find for me and it ended up, to my surprise, being quite substantial, which makes a change. I’ve eve been able to lay in a store of supplies for the leaner times that lie ahead.

So now that they’ve finished with my feet I’m off to bed, and I’ll try to sleep if I can manage it.

There’s so much noise in a place like this, and that’s the problem. I’m a very light sleeper, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, and the slightest noise disturbs me. I can’t ever sleep in here.

The noise in fact reminds me of when I was out one night with Percy Penguin and we drove past her local village hall. There was all kinds of shouting and yelling coming from within.
"What’s going on there?" I asked.
"Not much" she replied. "They are holding a Young Farmers Ball"
"And what’s all the noise then?" I asked. "Can’t he get them to let go?"

0

Wednesday 20th December 2023 – TODAY I HAVE HAD …

… a lumbar puncture (the fourth that I’ve had if my counting is correct) and a thoracic puncture – one after the other without a pause.

And if you think that a lumbar puncture is bad, you want to try a thoracic puncture. I promise you – a lumbar puncture is a walk in the park in comparison.

Furthermore, even as we speak, I’m having a blood transfusion. You might not believe this, although I’m sure that regular readers of this rubbish will recall this kind of thing happening on several occasions in the past, but despite having had two pochettes of blood during the other night, my blood count has GONE DOWN and I’m still below the critical level.

And so I’m having another one right now.

That’s not the best of it either. They’ve had my blood whizzing around in something that looks as if it’s come from CERN and they have discovered that I have a genetic disorder.

That might explain a lot about a lot of things, but it might also create even more problems because I’ve signed an agreement for them to take my DNA so that they can start work on trying to find the problem.

They’ve told me to contact my family in order that they might undergo a test to identify anything that might arise, but who the hell is my family?
"What about your parents?" asked the doctor.
"My mother’s been dead for years"
"WHat about your father?"
"I never knew who my father was"
"Didn’t your mother ever tell you?"
"To be honest, I don’t think that she ever knew who he was either"

Our family was screwed up right from the very beginning. We were never a family, just a group of people living under the same roof scrambling and fighting for position

And I’m wondering what happens to my DNA sample afterwards. I can see a few issues arising here and there and none of them medical either, at least, from my point of view. However, quite frankly I’m too old, too ill and too tired to care.

Tired is certainly the word because not only was it a really bad day, it was a really bad night too.

Not that there was much of a night to be bad about because I was wide awake at 03:10 and up working, transcribing the dictaphone note, such as they were, at 04:00. There was a battleship that was ostensibly American but was actually owned by a private person and leased to the US Navy. One day he announced that the ship had disappeared. No-one knew where it had gone. A couple of weeks later it turned up in an American port being painted white. When the authorities caught up with it he announced that all the crew had deserted and was having to recruit another crew. The matter then went to Court and it turned out that the crew on board the ship, mainly Japanese, had all been dismissed and the owner was trying to recruit cheaper personnel. The Courts however ruled that the ship’s crew had unalienable right to be on board the ship. If the owner didn’t want them on board the ship, which was quite clear, then the ownership of the ship would pass to the crew, which was exactly what happened. In order to fill in the gaps in their ranks they began to recruit in West Germany. Consequently the ship was to become part of the West German Navy. This was going to lead to all kinds of complications.

And then I was with a girl from school last night, someone who has previously featured at some point or other in my dreams in the past on one or maybe two occasions. Her older brother had a Velocette Venom that he traded in for a Honda K1 750. We (the girl, not the brother) were actually a couple. I was living at home and so was she. She was quite young, small for her age as I remembered her. We’d go on a Saturday night to a little pub that we knew where they weren’t all that particular about the ages of people who went in… "The Rifleman in Volunteer Fields in Nantwich" – ed …. We’d sit in a very quiet corner towards the end of the evening, our arms around each other, and we’d just sleep. We’d wake up and I’d take her home in time so that her parents didn’t suspect anything. After we’d been there for several weeks doing that – we’d go out and do things like go for a walk, go to the cinema or something and end up back at the pub where we’d sleep together for an hour on a bench with our arms around each other. But after we’d been there for several weeks I’d noticed that the pub was becoming more and more crowded. I was thinking that we can’t really go on like this. One night while we were there, she noticed too and made the comment that this place seems to be becoming more and more crowded. I said “well, we don’t really have very much alternative, do we? You still live at home and I still live at home. I might be able one day to have an apartment but at the moment it’s not possible. There isn’t really anywhere else where we can go”. We really ended up just like that again on that particular Saturday night, arms round each other, asleep on a bench, heads against the wall in this particular pub.

It was just like Mark Knopfler and DOWN TO THE WATERLINE – a song all about an adolescent romance with a girlfriend, a Saturday night and simply nowhere to go.

But it was this dream that awoke me. It was one of those that I have every so often, a nice, warm, comfortable dream of the type that I wish would go on for ever where I feel totally at ease and relaxed with a girl really comfortable in my arms.

Being at ease and relaxed are of course things that seems to be happening less and less often these days.

It’s the kind of thing that rarely happens in real life. In fact, it’s only ever happened with two girls.

At one point in my life I was just so stressed out that I could no longer function correctly and everything – absolutely everything – was falling apart. So I’d make a huge effort, go on a trip and p-p-pick up a Penguin – a Percy Penguin in fact.

We’d find a place with running water, because water is very important in my life and the sound of it is relaxing, and we’d just lie there. She had loads of issues (and so did I too, and still have) and she’d wrap herself around me really tightly so that I’d protect her from whatever demons were threatening her. Sometimes she’d even cry on my shoulder as she poured out her problems.

And I’d hold her tight to protect her, her long brown hair all over me, and I’d lie there listening to her breathing as she calmed down and began to sleep. She breathed like a cat, exactly the same frequency and that, and the running water, would calm me down as well. Then I’d be ready for the second round of whatever battle I was fighting at the time

Sometimes I wonder whatever became of her. She would (and did, sometimes) follow me into Hell itself without a pause, a question or a second thought. But she didn’t understand the dangers or the risks and it was really unfair of me to encourage her under those circumstances.

She was someone to whom life had dealt an absolutely wretched hand of cards but I admired her for the way that she fought on regardless.

As for the other girl who drifted into my life, calmed me down and gave me the same kind of comfortable feeling, I’ll let you guess who it was. If you like, you can tell me and I’ll tell you if you’re right or wrong.

Having had Alquin on the playlist just as I was going to bed last night, today I’ve had their three albums going round in a continuous loop all day and that, together with all of my medical issues, has depressed me to a point that I could do with p-p-picking up a Penguin right now.

In fact, I actually crashed out for 5 minutes and it was she who came to check on me. That was rather ironic.

But retournons à nos moutons as they say around here.

The first time that I encountered Alquin was, despite the fact that they are from the Netherlands, Delft in fact, in a dingy damp cellar under a decaying hotel in Crewe in the Spring of 1975 where there was a rock club frequented for a while by the misspent youth of the town.

They are (because they are still going) a bass-driven multi-instrumental band, although they have lost a lot of their power after bassist Hein Mars left them.

In fact I had a bit of a desultory correspondence with them at one time. The bass lines are some of the best that I’ve heard on a consistent basis and all of the songs are pitched in a key and a narrow vocal range that I can actually sing well enough.

After all, you never know. When a young boy called Alan Davey was learning to play bass he played along to Hawkwind records and one day sent off a tape of his efforts to Dave Brock. 10 years later, when Brock was looking for a new bassist after Harvey Bainbridge moved to keyboards, he remembered Davey, and Davey played bass with Hawkwind for 20-odd years in a couple of spells

But meanwhile, back at the ran … errr … cellar, any group that can produce a song LIKE THIS on THEIR DEBUT ALBUM, MARKS has to be worth checking out so I’d been keeping an eye on them.

Their second album, THE MOUNTAIN QUEEN is even better. If you haven’t heard the bass solo near the end of the TITLE TRACK Grahame, give it a listen.

What interests me most about that track, and the bass solo in particular, is the rapport between Hein Mars on bass and Paul Weststrate on drums.

As far as I’m aware, I’ve only ever heard an interaction like that between two musicians on one other occasion. Listen to Simon House on violin and Adrian Shaw on bass during the violin solo in the middle of DAMNATION ALLEY and you’ll see what I mean. Put your headphones on and turn the bass full up.

Now THERE was an underrated rock musician, Simon House and his violin. If I had engineered and produced ASTOUNDING SOUNDS, AMAZING MUSIC, while Robert Calvert reads his poem in the middle of STEPPENWOLF I’d have had long, long pauses after every line while Simon House winds up the magic and builds up the suspense and tension.

But anyway, more Alquin is going round. So, in the words of the Mountain Queen
"take your time and join me
I’ll tell you an endless story
Rest your head beside me
In that fading light."

And right now I’d settle for almost anyone’s head beside me, not just Percy Penguin’s or the other person whose name I didn’t mention. I don’t want to drag her into all of this rubbish any more than she’s been dragged into it already.

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Tuesday 24th October 2023 – THEY STILL HAVEN’T …

… fitted this needle into me. I think that they really have abandoned all hope of giving me this infusion.

Instead, this morning they gave me another lumbar puncture and that has been that.

Last night I had one of the best night’s sleeps that I’ve had for a considerable length of time. I was in bed at 20:00 because it was that cold and, underneath the blankets I listened to the old-time radio

It was about midnight when I awoke to find the radio still going so I switched it off and went back to sleep. And that was that until about 07:50 when a nurse awoke me to take my temperature and blood pressure

When breakfast came I was still in bed and I really can’t remember the last time that I had breakfast in bed. It made a lovely change from the usual.

While I was washing a nurse came in and stuck a couple of freezing patches on my back. That of course can only mean on thing – a lumbar puncture. They are totally horrible things and so I wasn’t looking forward to that.

First task while I was waiting for things to happen was to listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. I was in the UK at some point. It was round about the time of the death of my aunt. We were making a lot of preparation for various things. We met the family of her late husband Michael. We spoke to them about various things. They were involved in some kind of career where to have a psychiatrist or an analyst was compulsory. We had a really good chat about that. They happened to mention that they had a son who lived near Warrington. Of course, that’s my neck of the woods so before I come back to Europe I decided that I’d go to see this guy. I set out but stopped to listen to the 09:00 news. I noticed that the clock in the car was wrong. After the news I set out to drive but couldn’t think for a moment of how to go to Warrington. I had to scratch my head to think of which back roads and country lanes would be the best and I ended up going round the back of Haslington. I couldn’t help thinking that I wasn’t dressed for the occasion. I was in some kind of grey fleecy trousers, sports trousers or something. We eventually met. He was a guy in his 40s, a very big, strong type of person with a wife and a few kids. We began to talk. He was really mocking his relative about the idea of having a psychoanalyst. He thought that it was a stupid arrangement, perpetuated by North American trend-setters and totally unnecessary these days.

And then I was out with a former friend of mine, somewhere and were coming down the motorway. Something happened to the car. I think that it wanted some fuel. It was a strange kind of car so we called in and had to find the fuel filler. It was in the engine behind the right-hand headlight. We had to pull the headlight forward to reach the fuel filler. It was an extremely complicated affair. My friend fuelled up while I went for a wander around. I ended up at the hire car depots. In a waste bin there was a pile of stuff that obviously people had bought and thrown away, one of which was a 25-litre fuel carrier. I went over to my friend to ask if it was of any use to him. He replied “yes” so I went to fetch it but there was a hole in it so I put it back. In the meantime some guy from the service area came over to me to ask if I was a mechanic. I replied “yes” so he went over to my friend. They ended up having an argument because apparently only licensed mechanics are allowed to work on cars on this site. Of course my friend was having none of this and told the guy exactly what he thought. In the end the guy slunk off with a flea in his ear.

There was also something about a house that Nerina and I went to see. It was a bungalow that had some kind of front garden, a drive all the way down the side of the house and then a back garden. There was a sign up at the parking space at the side of the house that said “scrap cars here”. I noticed that there were a couple of old car axles lying around so I thought that this would be a great place to buy because if he’d been scrapping cars here there would be some kind of inherited rights. I could quite happily mess around in the drive, put up a car port and a fence between me and the neighbour, and Nerina would have a nice tidy garden at the back anyway. We went to look at it. IN the back in the garden he had a whole pile of axles. There was a load of asbestos brake dust. Somehow he’d rigged up two kinds of hubs as pulleys and he explained how he removed brake shoes with them. This was beginning to interest me more and more. I was hoping that Nerina would be interested in the bungalow itself and impressed enough to want to buy it.

I ended up going back into that dream about Michael’s family. It was a Sunday morning, we were all there and having a lie-in in bed. Round about 10:00 a film came up on the screen, one of these films line “American Grafitti” or similar. I watched it but must have fallen asleep again because I awoke with a start a short while later. In the meantime Nerina came into my room panicking. “Have you seen the time?”. I thought that with the film starting at 10:00 it was probably about 10:10 or 10:15 but in fact it was 12:35 and we’d slept all the way through the morning. There was so much work to do and we were supposed to be visiting somewhere else but Nerina and I didn’t have time and we’d have to leave but there was all this panic going on about getting things ready, going here and going there and having left the bed so late so late this morning

And when the nurse awoke me this morning Nerina and I were doing something with kittens but it all went completely out of my head as soon as I sat up.

Actually, there’s quite a story about kittens. When Tuppence was getting old we decided that we’d have another cat to keep her company, but it was definitely “no kittens”.

Anyway, the cat of someone whom I knew had just given birth and out of politeness I went to see the offspring. This tiny all-grey kitten crawled up my leg and curled up on my lap while I was drinking a cup of tea, and of course, that was that. You don’t choose a cat – the cat chooses you.

So having explained things to Nerina, I finally persuaded her to go to look at it to see what she thought of it. When she came back she told me “there was this tiny all-ginger kitten that climbed up my leg and sat on my lap …”

And that was how Sooty and Sweep came to live with us.

But I’ll tell you something for nothing, and that is that the world is far too small for my liking. The doctor who came to perform my lumbar puncture told me that she came from Belgium. She was born in Mons but came to live in Brussels as a child.

She told me the school that she attended, and it was the one just down the road from where I used to live in Jette She actually knew the complex of buildings where I lived.

So while I was lying down recovering from the lumbar puncture my neighbour who is still in Paris came to see me and it was quite awkward talking while I was lying down.

After lunch and a coffee (that I had to ask for three times before I received it) I was visited by the chief doctor and a whole pile of interns. She asked me loads of questions about all kinds of things.

The doctor from Belgium was with them and she understood Flemish so she was able to read all of the reports that I’d had from Leuven. Luckily the hospital has computerised all of its records for its patients, and you are able to access all of yours by inserting a special code. So I gave her my phone and told her to get on with it.

That was all of the official visits that I had today. There was the usual stream of nurses and the like coming and going but when I wasn’t asleep I managed to choose the music for the next couple of radio programmes, and I’ll be using the rest of the time here selecting more and more.

There were also several phone calls to deal with. The first was from the Mayor of Virlet. There’s some tidying up that needs to be done at my property and was I in any fit state to do it?

Of course I’m not and that was what he thought. So would I be willing to pay someone for half a day’s work to do it on my behalf?

Actually it’s far cheaper for me to do that than spend money travelling down there when I can’t even drive right now, so of course it was the obvious answer. I told him that next time there’s anything to do down there, not to hesitate to engage someone to do it again.

And then there was the Centre de Re-Education in Granville. That’s where handicapped people go in order to learn how to cope with everyday life taking into account their disabilities. Would I like 20 consecutive half-day afternoons starting on Tuesday next week?

Do bears go to the toilet in the woods?

Tea was the usual kind of industrial institutionalised factory food but I have to eat it because there’s nothing else. Luckily my neighbour brought me some bananas which was very nice of her.

So I’m going to go to bed now. It’s quite early but there’s nothing else to do and I can be quite comfortable under the blankets listening to the old-time radio.

And I wonder what they have in store for me tomorrow.

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Tuesday 2th September 2023 – THE MEDICAL STAFF …

… has certainly been earning its money today here at Ice Station Zebra. There has been an endless stream of visitors here today to see me.

There was a couple of people who came to see me quite early on but as you can imagine, I didn’t take much notice of them.

However I was wide awake at 07:42 and up and about a few minutes later.

The first job was to transcribe the dictaphone notes from the night. It was a really comfortable bed, which is a surprise for an Institution like this, so I had made the most of it. I was with Nerina. We’d gone to meet someone to find out anout French income tax. The guy with whom we spoke said that he knew someone who was an expert and he’d have us meet him. That turned out to be someone else whom we knew. We all arranged that we’d meet at a table in a café some time and have a big discussion. A shot while later Nerina and I went to a café for a coffee. There was very little room. There was a communal table with a couple of spaces at it and plenty of 2 and 4-person places but they were all filled so we decided that we’d grab these 2 spaces at this communal table As we reached there we saw that of the 2 chairs a girl had pulled one towards her and had her feet on it. Nerina had no choice but to sit on it. I saw the scowl that the girl gave on her face so I picked up the chair with Nerina on it and moved it right up against the table. I sad “you don’t want to sit so far away from the table. You’ll fall through the gap” which made everyone laugh. The girl who had her feet forcibly removed from the chair, they had now fallen to the floor was extremely upset and angry by it. But I didn’t care.

There was also a stroy about some cars for sale. I’d been and had a look at one – a C-registered Sierra but I thought that it was too expensive. A little later on I was driving down a country lane – it might have been Back Lane in Weston or something, and they were assembling a grader to scrape the road surface. I talked to the little girl who was in my car and explained to her what was going to happen; We saw 3 or 4 cars – they were driving away from the place where they’d been for sale. There was a red Chrysler PT Cruiser that someone was just getting into, tearing the price ticket from the window, and then the Sierra which was actually moving. We noticed that the Sierra was misfiring somewhat as it drove away so I was glad that I didn’t buy it. Then someone whom I knew – a girl, bought a car from here. She said that a cottage had been included in the price so she wanted to go to look at it. She wasn’t expecting much for her money, she said. We set out and had to climb into the hills. There was plenty of snow about on the hills. When she left the car she kept on slipping but we eventually found the cottage. It was really difficult and there was no parking or anything. It was in a line of terraced houses and was in a terrible condition. it was being used as a hay store. She said “that’s going to be something to keep Terry busy while he’s here”. We had a good look at it and began to make plan about it.

I was auditing some accounts for some kind of villagers’ association at some point during the night. While I was doing it someone handed me a letter demanding to know the latest minutes of the Parish council meeting and their annual accounts. First thing I did was to fix up some kind of street light in the village square, which everyone liked, a USB (… "he means “LED”" – ed …. light and one or to people could even read by it if they were close enough to it. That met with their approval. I asked them who was the local councillor. Someone eventually found me a list of names and telephone numbers in a local magazine so I began to ring round while everyone went out of the room for something to eat. Eventually I came across a German guy called Ede. I phoned him and we arranged to meet. When we met, he wouldn’t answer any of my questions at first. He wanted to know who I was, what I was doing, why I was here and what my interest was with him. Eventually I persuaded him to give me his name. He was in fact Mr Ede so we went to his house to chat about the letter that I’d received. On the way there I’d had a phone call from a lorry driver who was asking me some kind of question about something. I said that I’d have to answer him in a couple of minutes. Thee I was, trying to have this conversation with this German guy, trying to speak to someone on the phone and walking towards this guy’s house at the same time. It was all extremely confusing

Finally I was out driving and I ended up at some kind of outdoor exhibition. All my family and friends were there. I bumped into someone whom I knew. He was telling me about a place that we’d visited a few times, how there was plenty of stuff going on in there now. I said “ohh well, we’ll have to go to look. I couldn’t remember which night my free night was. I kept on proposing nights to him to go to see it, and suddenly realised that I had something else on. In the end he just smiled and said “go home, sort yourself out and telephone me, then we’ll arrange it like that. It really was confusing too. Later on I was having to go to the local market and needed someone to take me. In the end some foreign refugee guy said that he’d take me so we both went. I left the car on my crutches and put my head in this ten where the market was taking place. You could see the look of bewilderment on his face. As we went in there was a pile of second-hand clothes to sort through to see if you wanted to buy anything. I was much more interested in the second-hand record stall. You could see him sigh as I began to thumb through the albums but there were no albums there that interested me which was a shame because I always used to pick up something really nice from there.

Once I was finished I was going to do some more of the dictaphone notes from my previous hospital stay but to my surprise they aren’t on this computer. I can’t understand why because this is the laptop that I had back in those days and I’m absolutely certain that I had this SSD in here then.

In the middle of all of that there was an interruption as a nurse came by to take a blood sample. She took about 15 tubes from me quite quickly but there wasn’t enough blood to fill the other 5 that she had. She’ll come back tomorrow and take some more.

She also asked me for a urine sample, which I provided. But I thought that that was really taking the p****.

Once she’d gone, an orderly brought me my breakfast, which I ate while I was preparing for my Welsh lesson today.

But I needn’t have bothered. I was only there for 5 minutes before the dietician came to see me, and we spent a good half-hour talking about my diet and so on.

Obviously, the talk that we had worked wonders because the meal tonight included, as you might expect, white fish and a pot of cream cheese.

Once the dietician had left, I tried to reconnect with my Welsh lesson but instead, the pretty nurse came to see me.

"Lie down on the bed" she instructed "I’ll be back very soon"

It’s not every day that someone makes a proposition like that to me so I duly obliged Sure enough, she came back 5 minutes later – but with a technician and an electrocardiogram machine.

That took an age and after they left I tried to reconnect with what was left of my Welsh lesson. Instead, an orderly came in with my lunch so I gave up on the Welsh today.

Once everything had happened and everyone had gone I settled down on my comfy chair and had a little … err … relax. But not for long because the doctor came in and put a patch on my back. She didn’t say anything but having been through this before, I know what will be coming in an hour or so.

And I was correct too. She came back later with a nurse, told me to sit on the edge of the bed and curl up into a little ball. And then I suffered one of the most painful experiences that it was possible to have in a hospital – a lumbar puncture, where they take samples of the interior of your spine to check what they extract to see if there’s an infection.

While I was having the blood test the nurse stroked my arm, which I thought was sweet, and the one here with the doctor comforted me too. That was really nice too, but I don’t want to have to go through a lumbar puncture again, that’s for sure. Mind you, she did bring me a nice strong coffee afterwards. There’s not anything like enough coffee in this place.

After they had cleared off I thought that I could settle down. I’d been told to lie flat on the bed and not move for a couple of hours, so while I was drifting in ant out (mainly in) of sleep, a nurse came round with coffee. And then someone gave me a new water jug.

The final straw was when the doctor came back. She told me that the blood test had thrown up several anomalies and wanted to know if I had any medical reports from Castle Anthrax that she could use to compare.

Strange as it might seem, I’m trying to keep my Leuven details out of all of these tests. The reason is that if they discover them serendipitously, they might suggest another course of treatment or try something different. However, I couldn’t refuse. Leuven is all automated and their reports are available on line. Se we accessed a few and she took away the details.

A little earlier I talked about tea. I made do with pasta, beans, an apple purée and a green salad with vinaigrette. Not the best but I have to do what I can.

So that was today. I’ll be in bed early tonight again and hope for another good sleep. At least no-one disturbs me at 02:00 like they did in Leuven every night. I’m on my own here and that suits me just fine.

They are going to finish off the blood test tomorrow and there will probably be a few other things too. I have the impression that I won’t be here for long , at the speed at which they are working. They can take all of the tests they like and I won’t stop them at all. It’s not the results that interest me, it’s what they intend to propose to make things better for me.

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