Tag Archives: hands

33 Days To Go

I’ve just been counting. I have 33 more days in which I will hve to go to work. Eight of them will be half days. I have always hated those half days, as it never feels worth going into work for half a day. It isn’t a bonus half day off, as the shop owner seems to think, it’s a day wasted by the intrusion of a half day at work. The worst thing about working in the shop has always been the rotas (he loves sitting in his office working out complicated things) and the fact that even a “full day” is only six hours long. I go to work to earn money. My ideal week would be four ten hour days and three days off. Or five ten hour days.

Instead, the best I manged was, was five six-hour days. I actually looked at fitting in a second job around that in the days I was more active but couldn’t find one that fitted.

It’s nearly seven in the evening now and the day seems to have passed with nothing much happening. The kids have both been in touch for Mother’s Day, as we now call Mothering Sunday. I always thought it ws the day when servants were given a day off to visit their mothers, all the stuff about “mother churches” is new to me. It’s good to learn new things, but it’s a shock to find that something you thought you knew isn’t true.

We are treating ourselves to beef today. It’s a joint that we bought for Christmas as a back up in case the turkey supply let us down. It didn’t. However, as we need freezer space we decided it was time to break out the beef. I expect that after a couple of meals and several days of sandwiches we will start to think of fish and vegetables again. We’ve drifted off our vegetarian influenced diet a bit. It’s not that we want meat, or that we don’t want vegetables, it’s just that I find it hard to cook, and to chop vegetables, whilst my hands are bad. Even the sweeping motion of buttering bread for sandwiches is hard work, though it is getting easier.

50p coins

Bad Hand Day

Sorry about my absence from posting yesterday. I had a bad hand day and by the time I had finished doing the comments andĀ  a few other bits all I could do was sit in front of the TV and hold a hot water bottle while contemplating removing two of my fingers with a bread knife.

Yes, I was brought down by my two little fingers. Thy have swollen up and started hurting, and in doing so prevented the rest of my hands from working and removed my will to live. It’s strange how something that is under one percent of body mass can stop everything working. I must definitely start that diary I keep talking about and see if I can trace what is making this happen, or even spot some early warning signs.

However, for the moment I am living in ignorance. They aren’t too bad this morning but they still aren’t right either – time will tell whether they improv or deteriorate in the next eight hours.

I’m certainly having a better time than one of the patients at the surgery. I had a text message yesterday telling me that the surgery had not issued my prescription for PregabalinĀ  and that I had to contact the doctor to discuss my symptoms. So I contacted them. I actually got through without being put in a queue, for once. The conversation went like this.

“Hello, you’ve just sent me a text about a prescription.”

(They did the name and address and date of birth check here…)

“Yes, Mr Wilson, we can’t issue that prescription unless you talk to a doctor first.”

“Well it’s not for me, I haven’t ordered anything and I don’t know what Pregabalin is. This is a message for somebody else.”

“It’s for your Sciatica, but you need to talk to a doctor first about your symptoms.”

“I haven’t got Sciatica, this is for somebody else.”

There was a short pause as they digested this. I don’t suppose they get many patients denying they have symptoms.

“Oh, I’m sorry, we must have sent it in error.”

“No need to apologise, it’s not a problem for me, but I’m a bit worried there’s somebody who needs a prescription who won’t be getting one.”

“Oh, yes, we’d better look into that.”

I hope they did, and I hope they eventually issued the Sciatica pills. I’d hate to be sitting at home expecting a cure, only to find they’d given it to someone else, someone

who is a little worried that they will cock up his Methotrexate in a couple of weeks. I’m steadily losing confidence in the NHS…