{"id":7201,"date":"2016-11-17T11:37:55","date_gmt":"2016-11-17T11:37:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lesguis.com\/wp\/?p=7201"},"modified":"2016-11-17T11:37:55","modified_gmt":"2016-11-17T11:37:55","slug":"wednesday-16th-november-2016-how-stupid","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lesguis.com\/wp\/?p=7201","title":{"rendered":"Wednesday 16th November 2016 &#8211; HOW STUPID &#8230;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>&#8230; can you be?<\/p>\n<p>I need to leave Belgium for a while for various reasons, and so I checked all around the area of Sedan, which is not too far away from here but across the border, and I found a place that looked absolutely perfect from my point of view. Isolated in the countryside miles from anywhere  up a mountain and probably swathed in fog. And bed-and-breakfast at the same price as my hostel.<\/p>\n<p>And here I am gazing across a river and over the river is in France, and here I am, stuck on the Belgian side of it all in the Hostellerie La Sapiniere at Vresse sur Semois.<\/p>\n<p>Unbelievable, isn&#8217;t it?<\/p>\n<p>So why aren&#8217;t I heading back to my house then? The answer is that while my blood count has gone up slightly to 10:0, the protein loss in my body is accelerating slightly and that&#8217;s causing them some concern. As a result, they&#8217;ve changed my medication and they want me back IN A WEEK to see how I&#8217;m doing.<\/p>\n<p>And not only that, they have some more appointments for me in the haematology department in two weeks time, and so I&#8217;m stuck here yet again. But I don&#8217;t want to be stuck in Leuven &#8211; I need a change of scenery;<\/p>\n<p>But returning to our <em>moutons<\/em> as the French say, the trouble with going to bed early is that everyone else comes in later. And so even if you do drop off to sleep by 22:30, then at 23:30 you are wide awake as people come back into the building. and that&#8217;s rather annoying, so say the least.<\/p>\n<p>So having had a disturbed night &#40;for many reasons&#41; I was awake quite early as the alarm went off. <\/p>\n<p>And I&#8217;d been on my travels too. I had to visit a town that was &#8220;just across the border&#8221; in some kind of Spanish-speaking area. I&#8217;d found a bus that would take me there and so I climbed on board. It wasn&#8217;t a journey of 10 minutes either as I was expecting, but one of hours and interminable hours. A woman on board the bus, small and dark-haired, tried to help me out &#8211; every ten minutes or so coming to reassure me (although I couldn&#8217;t understand what she was saying) and then as we reached the border I suddenly realised that I didn&#8217;t know where I was supposed to be going or at what stop I needed to alight, and I had no way of asking either.<\/p>\n<p>There were the usual hordes at breakfast this morning, and we had a major problem with the kitchen area being flooded again. The skylight had been left open and we were in the middle of a torrential downpour. <\/p>\n<p>Still, I&#8217;d breakfasted and even showered and back in my room again long before 07:55. THat&#8217;s something of a record, isn&#8217;t it? And once I&#8217;d tidied up and packed my rucksack I set off to the hospital, braving the driving rain.<\/p>\n<p>I wasn&#8217;t feeling so good this morning either. All of the joints in my legs were aching and I didn&#8217;t have the puff to climb the hill. I had to stop on four or five occasions to get back my breath. This is the worst trip to the hospital that I have ever had.<\/p>\n<p>I was there and registered by 08:30 and sitting in the waiting room. I was seen a little later than my 08:50 appointment , and given all of the tests and the like. My weight was stable which was bad news &#8211; I want to lose it all and I can&#8217;t do this as it&#8217;s all to do with the water retention issues that I&#8217;m having and that&#8217;s one of the issues that I need to resolve &#8211; hence the new medication.<\/p>\n<p>By 11:30 they released me from the hospital and that was that. I went down to Caliburn and we all, Caliburn, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.facebook.com\/pages\/The-one-and-only-Strawberry-Moose\/146696445365437?ref=ts\" target=\"_blank\">Strawberry Moose<\/a> and I set off for the wilderness.<\/p>\n<p>The weather was pretty miserable &#8211; with rainstorms and the like all the way down to the Ardennes. And once I started to climb up into the mountains I was encased in hanging clouds just like home. In fact it made me feel quite at home.<\/p>\n<p>The Lady Who Lives In The SatNav couldn&#8217;t find the hotel, which was hardly a surprise seeing as I was looking in the wrong country. I had a beautiful drive through the Ardennes and ended up in Sedan in the driving rain. I took the opportunity to do a huge pile of shopping at the Leclerc &#8211; what with food prices in France being much less than in Belgium &#8211; and then tracked down the hotel where I&#8217;m staying.<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s a very impressive hotel from the outside but it&#8217;s all very 1960s from the inside. And there&#8217;s no internet in the bedroom which is very depressing to say the least. I&#8217;ll have to sort this out somehow but I&#8217;m quite tired after my drive. I made a butty (because I wasn&#8217;t able to check on what the surroundings had to offer) and had an early night instead.<\/p>\n<div class='watch-action'><div class='watch-position align-left'><div class='action-like'><a class='lbg-style1 like-7201 jlk' href='javascript:void(0)' data-task='like' data-post_id='7201' data-nonce='b03a502c30' rel='nofollow'><img class='wti-pixel' src='https:\/\/lesguis.com\/wp\/wp-content\/plugins\/wti-like-post\/images\/pixel.gif' title='Like' \/><span class='lc-7201 lc'>0<\/span><\/a><\/div><div class='action-unlike'><a class='unlbg-style1 unlike-7201 jlk' href='javascript:void(0)' data-task='unlike' data-post_id='7201' data-nonce='b03a502c30' rel='nofollow'><img class='wti-pixel' src='https:\/\/lesguis.com\/wp\/wp-content\/plugins\/wti-like-post\/images\/pixel.gif' title='Unlike' \/><span class='unlc-7201 unlc'>0<\/span><\/a><\/div> <\/div> <div class='status-7201 status align-left'><\/div><\/div><div class='wti-clear'><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&#8230; can you be? I need to leave Belgium for a while for various reasons, and so I checked all around the area of Sedan, which is not too far away from here but across the border, and I found a place that looked absolutely perfect from my point of view. Isolated in the countryside [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[162,325,44,4507,1616,3173,8006,275,3371,8007,21,8005],"tags":[2393,1673,5222,5181,5381,212,2560,5565,716,5911,8010,5368,5918,7977,286,4204,8008,5274,8009],"class_list":["post-7201","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-belgium","category-caliburn","category-dream","category-eric-hall-2","category-france","category-hospital","category-hostellerie-la-sapiniere","category-leclerc","category-leuven","category-sedan","category-strawberry-moose","category-vresse-sur-semois","tag-ardennes","tag-belgium-2","tag-blood-count","tag-blood-test","tag-caliburn","tag-dream","tag-eric-hall","tag-france","tag-hanging-cloud","tag-hospital","tag-hostellerie-la-sapiniere","tag-leclerc","tag-leuven","tag-protein-loss","tag-rainstorm","tag-satnav","tag-sedan","tag-strawberry-moose","tag-vresse-sur-semois"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lesguis.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7201","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lesguis.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lesguis.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lesguis.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lesguis.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7201"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lesguis.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7201\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7202,"href":"https:\/\/lesguis.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7201\/revisions\/7202"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lesguis.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7201"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lesguis.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7201"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lesguis.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7201"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}