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.<\/p>\n
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<\/p>\n
However, if there’s a spreading of the cancer, then “we’ll see”.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
Before leaving, he slapped this freezing patch on my back.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
And then they began.<\/p>\n
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<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
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<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
But as I’ve said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed<\/em> … 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.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n While all of this was going on I was having a perfusion<\/em>. 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.<\/p>\n What an unholy mess that was. She cleaned up most of it but missed some and the place doesn’t look much better. <\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n 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.
\n"What’s going on there?"<\/strong><\/em> I asked.
\n"Not much"<\/strong><\/em> she replied. "They are holding a Young Farmers Ball"<\/strong><\/em>
\n"And what’s all the noise then?"<\/strong><\/em> I asked. "Can’t he get them to let go?"<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n
