\nBut once I had gone back to sleep during the morning, I found myself with my brother (and I do wish that my family would stop becoming involved in my adventures). He had a BMC 1300, the same metallic green colour of my Vanden Plas<\/a> and it had broken down somewhere in a small French town. He’d pushed it into the town square and left it outside some friendly person’s house and that was where it stayed. I was then roped into have a look at it. The first time that we went down there to see it, I had a good poke around and couldn’t find any reason why it wouldn’t go – it all seemed fine to me – and the friendly neighbour made us both a cup of coffee. The second time we went, I could still find nothing wrong with it and this time someone (a friend of ours but I don’t know who it was) brought us a couple of huge plates of macaroni. There was so much that I hardly made a dent in mine and in the end we left out plates on the dinner table of this neighbour. On making enquiries of my brother, it turned out that what had happened to the car was that one of the driveshafts – the left-hand one – had tightened up. I immediately suspected the CV joint but that wasn’t something that we were going to fix then and there, so I needed to go and fetch my trailer and hope that wecould winch it aboard. I reached in through the window of this house for our plates, passing my brother’s plate to him, but I upset mine and half of the macaroni went all over the floor.I apologised to the neighbour about that but he was quite OK about it, which was quite nice of him. And then I asked my brother about what he intended to do about thanking the neighbour who had kept an eye on his car for him, made us both coffee and so on. My brother didn’t think that he needed to do anything about it, which I thought was rather mean of him. I reckoned that a bottle of whisky was a good idea, but then again, it wasn’t really a concern of mine.<\/p>\n
At breakfast this morning, we were a strange crowd. There was only one person whom I recognised, and all oth the others seemed to be quite young couples. We seem to have had a dramatic change of inhabitants overnight. And whoever made the coffee this morning – it was nothing like as good as usual.<\/p>\n
I was on the bus at 09:45, sitting next to the girl with the viola whom I had seen on the bus last time that I’d come here. And by 10:10 I was at the reception. It didn’t take them long to see me either and I’ve had a drain fitted in my arm. They also weighed me, and it seems that I’ve gained 3 kg since last time. That doesn’t sound right to me.<\/p>\n
They gave me a blood test and while waiting for the results, Sophie the trainee doctor who had seen me last week called me in to see her. After giving me a good going-over (including another feel of my groin) she told me that I need to come back next Thursday 28th April. They’ll give me a series of X-rays and fit a chemo port in my chest, then on Friday I’ll start my next session of chemotherapy. I’ll be here, apparently, until the following Monday and believe me, I’m not looking forward to all of that – not in the least. 5 days – and 4 nights – in hospital. I hope I have a room-mate who doesn’t snore!<\/p>\n
Another task that needed to be done was to give me a scan of my legs. This swelling isn’t improving and they are worried that I might have another nomadic blood clot. But it seems to be a problem about water retention. Perhaps I should ask Terry to give me a tap on the ankles.<\/p>\n
But although it doesn’t seem much like it, there is good news. Firstly, my blood count is at 9.1 and so I didn’t need a transfusion. That cheered me up a little. As did the news that the mouth-wash and the anti-biotics can be stopped as soon as the supplies run out, which will be in about 2 days, I reckon.<\/p>\n
I wasn’t in the mood for jam butties for lunch so I settled on a visit to the shop in the foyer. They have a selection, would you believe, of vegan food and although the chick pea salad looked vaguely interesting, I settled on a vegan spiced loaf. I ate half of it and the rest I can add to the supplies up here.<\/p>\n
On the way back here (I walked back, by the way) I found a wallet on the car park. I was tempted to take it to the police but I’m trying to keep a very low profile while I’m here because, as regular readers of this rubbish will remember, I’ve had more than my fair share of run-ins with Belgium’s finest in the past so I don’t want to go looking for interaction, so I brought it into the hospital downstairs and handed it in at the desk, giving a little white lie that I had found it outside. The net result will be the same, in that seeing as the owner’s identity card is in there, it will find its way home eventually. But just without my involvement.<\/p>\n
Leuven was packed tonight, I don’t know why, and I had to wait 25 minutes for my pizza to be cooked, such was the pressure in the kitchen. And it wasn’t as good as usual either, but I suppose that they were rather rushed. <\/p>\n
So once again, it’s an early night for me and then a relaxing day with nothing planned for tomorrow. So I’ll have a nice quiet day totally free of interruptions. Just you watch someone come along now and spoil it.<\/p>\n
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