… stay for four hours today at dialysis. Apparently the weight to be extracted was such that it over-ran the three-and-a-half hour limit <\/p>\n
But H\u00e9loise was very nice to me. She kept the machine wound up so that I would leave there ahead of my target weight so in principle we shall see how that unfolds on Saturday.<\/p>\n
My evening last night unfolded just the same as any other just recently. It was late when I finished what I had to do, and later still by the time that I plucked up the courage to go to bed. And another disturbed night saw me tossing and turning in my bed without being fully asleep.<\/p>\n
There were a couple of times when I was wide-awake and I remember thinking that I may as well rise up in a couple of minutes, but when the alarm went off I was actually fast asleep.<\/p>\n
It took a minute or two to find the energy to leave the bed and then I staggered off into the bathroom where I had a good wash, scrub up and even a shave in case I meet Emilie the Cute Consultant this afternoon.<\/p>\n
After the medication I came back in here to see if there was anything on the dictaphone, and to my great surprise, there was. In the middle of the night I was miles away but the moment that I went to reach for the dictaphone the whole lot evaporated – every single moment, every single memory, every single thought of it. I couldn’t remember a single thing about it.<\/p>\n
As long as neither Castor nor Zero nor TOTGA nor Moonchild were appearing in it, it’s not really all that important, although it is rather sad that my favourite young ladies have been conspicuous by the absence of late.<\/p>\n
This next time it was connected with health issues. I’d been diagnosed all kinds of various treatments, much of which I thought was superfluous so I hadn’t been very attentive to the prescription. I’d been taking medicines when I felt like it, even abandoning some. Every time I went to see the doctor they went on increasingly wildly about it. On one occasion I went into a laboratory to do something and there was actually one of my doctors there. She gave me a really long lecture and a dressing-down about everything, how it had all been done for my own good etc. All that succeeded in doing was to annoy me. I spoke to a friend about it afterwards and told him what I thought, that I was still unconvinced by these medication arguments. However the dream drifted on like that with me being stubborn and the medical service being more and more insistent. It went o for hours but I can’t remember the rest of it. However, there was quite a lot of treatment that they were giving me that didn’t seem to make any sense at all. I just didn’t see the point in going ahead and taking it. <\/p>\n
And that’s a contentious issue around here, right enough. The medical people have different aims than me, and that’s the root of it all. Their aim is to keep a patient alive for as long as possible, and the longer they stay alive, the more of a success it is. For me, it’s the quality of life that counts. I have no intention whatever of clinging on to life by the edge of my fingertips with no dignity just to please the medical staff.<\/p>\n
Kingsley Amis once said "No pleasure is worth giving up for the sake of two more years in a geriatric home in Weston-super-Mare"<\/em><\/strong>. Percy Penguin once told me a delightful story of an old woman who had received a large box of chocolates and was stuffing them down one after the other. And me? Stubborn? Perish the thought!<\/p>\n The nurse came around but he didn’t stay long. He was soon out of the door and I could crack on and make breakfast.<\/p>\n
\n"You’ll be ill eating them like that"<\/em><\/strong> said Percy Penguin
\n"I’m ninety-eight"<\/em><\/strong> the old woman told her. "What do I care?"<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n
