Tag Archives: Blood

A Much Better Day

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Got up. Breakfast. Wrote a bit. Two cups of tea and a bit of exercise. Drove down to surgery.

The nurse, after much prodding and considering her options, hit blood on the second attempt and filled the necessary three tubes. I gave her a urine sample, which she had texted me about yesterday afternoon (my texts to and from the nursing profession, if that mythical future PhD student ever finds them, will appear slightly strange).

Did I ever tell you about the photo of my leg which I sent to the doctor. During the phone consultation surrounding my cellulitis (which I had a month before my first Covid) I was asked to provide a picture of my leg, which I did. It was not pleasant. A few minutes later I got a call.

“Mr Wilson,” she said, ” It’s X here from the surgery. Can you tell me why you sent this picture of your leg?” (She wasn’t really called X, I just forgot her name).

“The doctor asked me to send it.”

“Oh, that’s alright then.”

“Did you think I’d just sent you a picture of my festering leg.”

“You’s be surprised,” she said, with the air of one who has suffered, “if you saw some of the pictures people sent me.”

Got a parking space at work. Had a call from the man who sent Julia’s birthday present. It seems Parcelforce tried to deliver it three times – all at 9 o’clock and all to a shop that has it’s opening hours displayed as starting at 10am. Three times, no success. Why? And why no cards through the door? Normally would be there at 9.00 but because Julia has been off it’s been more like 9.15, or I would have seen them.

To try the exact same time twice is hopeful, to do it three times is jsut plain stupidity.

The rest of the day was quite good and my sister, having been round town with Julia all day, saw me for tea and chocolate biscuits before her return home.

Fish and chips for tea.

The pictures are some Julia took when they had a tour of some of the Mediaeval caves under the centre of town. This set used to be a tannery. The stench must have been dreadful.

All in all, a good day.

 

Bad Start to the Week

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Sorry, I fell asleep in the chair last night so did’t post. Then tonight I decided to shake up my routine by not using the computer until late. I got that wrong – got carried away watching TV and suddenly it’s late and I still have a blog to write and sandwiches to make..

So here I am.

Not much to report.

I injured my foot this morning in a rather foolish pedicure accident. As  a result of the Warfarin it took just over an hour to stop the bleeding. I would normally gloss over this sort of stupidity, but if this is to b a warts and all diary I need to tell the truth. I am irredeemably stupid, don’t have the sense I was born with and can’t be trusted to put my socks on without incident. That;s not me being self-deprecating, that’s a direct quote from the Court of Enquiry hosted by Julia when I had to call for help. She wasn’t amused, and that First Aid Course she did last week appears to have skimped on information about pedicure incidents.

I’ve been watertight for the last 17 hours, so the repair seems to have held. With all the excitement I couldn’t take Julia in to work and had to take my breakfast to the shop. Not the best start to the day for either of us. I should have fitted in a blood test this morning too, but had to miss it. Ironic, as I could have provided plenty, and all without needing a needle.

We have  a severe weather warning with thunder and lightning tomorrow, which is OK for people like me who work indoors. Not quite so good for Julia, who will be out in the gardens with her group. She says she will take a coat. I think they’d be better cancelling the session. You can do without that sort of stuff when you are out in the garden and all the shelter you have is either a steel portacabin or a polytunnel with steel hoops. I keep thinking of lightning conductors . . .

 

A Politics Free Post. Well Freeish…

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It has always been my intention never to swear on this blog, and never to engage in politics. I’ve also always thought it impolite to comment on heads of state and various laws that strike me as ill-advised. After all, if a nation votes for someone, and their legislature passes laws, who am I to disagree?

Despite the temptation, I am not going to let myself deviate from my personal code.

Elect who you like, and have as many guns as you like, though I would be grateful if you’d keep them at home.

However, I would like to point out that I do not carry a knife when I leave the house. Nor have I ever seen a hospital floor covered in blood or noticed myself living in a war zone.

In the UK we have fewer murders per year than the city of Chicago. We also have fewer snowploughs, though I’m not sure there’s any link between the two statistics.

We haven’t had a school shooting since 1996 when we took decisive action to stop them.  In fact I think we’ve only ever had one school shooting. We have 80 massacres recorded in the UK according to Wikipedia, including two civil wars, a thirty year bombing campaign and the Romans, who make the first entry on the list in 61 AD when they slaughtered the Druids on Anglesey.

If anyone wants to do the research for America I doubt you’ll need to go back that far.

However, that’s getting a little close to criticism, so I’ll leave it there. I just wanted to emphasise that we aren’t all knife-wielding thugs wading through pools of blood as our society slides into a murderous abyss.

We’re actually quite peaceful though if we do take offence at a head of state we have been known to chop their heads off. Sic semper tyrannis, as they say.

The forthcoming State Visit is going to be interesting.

It’s happened already!

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Do you remember me saying I’ve used a fingerprint as part of the set-up for my phone? And that I’d probably lose the finger now?

Well, I still have all my fingers, but…

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Sorry it’s a bit blurred but I had to frame it to miss out the clutter on my desk and take it with one hand, so focus proved to be a step too far.

It was the result of a blood test rather than accident, and I really ought to have thought about it before letting them use that finger. It bled quite a lot, because they’ve pumped me full of Warfarin and the injections that I can’t remember the name of. (That’s a little inelegant, but “the name of which I cannot remember” seems worse). I had also bled overnight from the site of the injection I gave myself last night.

Annoyingly, despite the bleeding, the numbers indicate that I’ve failed to reach the necessary threshold. They have upped the dose again and booked me in for a test on Wednesday, because I clearly have nothing better to do than go to hospital for tests. No doubt they will want me back on Friday  too.

Having switched the phone off as requested when I entered hospital I had to restart it to call a taxi. This involved jugging stick, phone and bag as I tried to remove the plaster with my teeth.

The result of all that was that I managed to get blood on the sensor which, unsurprisingly, could not be persuaded to open the phone. Application of a handkerchief to both finger and sensor finally enabled me to ring a taxi.

I’m having a rethink on this fingerprint technology.

 

The Narrow Cells

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Beneath those rugged elms, that yew-tree’s shade,
         Where heaves the turf in many a mould’ring heap,
Each in his narrow cell for ever laid,
         The rude forefathers of the hamlet sleep.
Elegy in a Country Churchyard – Thomas Gray

I was at Crowland Abbey earlier last week (as you may have noticed) and took a few shots of gravestones with interesting names. We didn’t have a lot of time so I didn’t do a lot of searching, just took a few pictures of stones with names I thought I could look up in the census results.

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The first one was a stone that was laid flat at the end of the south aisle (the one with no roof) to form a pavement. It seems a poor way to treat a memorial but I suppose if you believe that only the skull and thighbones are needed for resurrection the grave marker is irrelevant.

It looks like it’s the stone of Sarah, wife of William Hewson. William is listed in the 1861 Census for Crowland, a widowed 71 year old farmer and cattle dealer. If only the moss had grown more. Unfortunately I can’t narrow it down more than that, or find any mention of Sarah.

A few yards further on, just outside the walls, is a stone to  William Blood and his wife Mary Ann. William was a farmer, who ended up with 143 acres. and eventually left property valued at “under £100” in 1877. Mary went to live with her daughter and Robert, the eldest son, became a general dealer, married two women called Mary (one after the other) and died in 1914.

Conspiracy theorists might deplore the state collecting all this information, but it does make family history easier (unless people marry identically named wives).

A few yards away is a stone to Drusilla, wife of Augustus Blood, who died in 1876. She had a difficult, and short, life. In the 1841 census she is months old and the daughter of an Ironmonger but in 1851 she is living with her grandmother and mother (both widows). By 1861 she is living with an an aunt and uncle and listed as a dressmaker. Finally, in the 1871 census she has a daughter and is married to Augustus Blood, an unemployed butcher.

By 1881 Augustu was working as a butcher in Oundle, Northamptonshire. He had 4 daughters between the ages of 5 and 10 (no wonder poor Drusilla died young). His brother Henry was working with him (though he also has a housekeeper). In 1891 he is living in Whittlesey, Cambs, with a new wife Ann, and three young children between 4 and 8, all born in Oundle. Ann died in 1901 and left effects worth £42 8s 9d to Eleanor Frost, spinster.

By 1911 (the last census to be released) Augustus was living near  Salford, Lancashire and working as a Chapel Keeper. At the age of 68 he was living with his 44 year old wife (having remarried in 1904), two stepchildren and his brother Henry, who was a self-employed confectionary hawker. He died in 1915 and left £32  4s 9d.

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It’s amazing what stories you can find in a churchyard.