Tag Archives: illness

Things Can Only Get Better

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797 views, 12 visitors. The mystery continues. I have not been able to work out why, and it probably isn’t worth the effort.

Royal Mail announced that it is now accepting international parcels again, which is good. However, on reading the actual text rather than the headline it turns out that if you live in Northern Ireland you can post International Mail to the Republic. That’s not a lot of use to most of us and as a news release is misleading and almost untrue.

I don’t know details of the ongoing computer problems but I suspect a lot of it is due to the vulnerability of outdated systems (as was the case when the National Health Service was hacked a few years ago).

The lesson I will take from all this is not the lack of investment in new kit, but the way they kept lying to us about the resumption of services, and the way that all through the pandemic and into the cyber attack, the way they keep charging full price for a shadow of a proper service.

Big news of the day was that Julia was off work ill. She was poorly all yesterday but I still had to force her to take a day off today. I’d be happy to see her have tomorrow off too but they have been pestering her on the phone all day and she says even if she was still ill (she claims to be cured) it’s a waste of time staying at home.

When we retire I am going to make her change her phone number. When we were on the farm she used to give out her phone number to Quercus clients. When she went to work for MENCAP the clients we had in common shared her number so now all the MENCAP service users have it, and even on holidays and Sundays we get calls from them.

She is nicer than me. I would either be rude to people or change my number.

The staff are nearly as bad. Her manager has been ringing up too, to bully her into going back to work tomorrow. They will be sitting in a heated leisure centre with running water and flush toilets. Julia will be out in a garden with one lousy heater in a portacabin, water they take down in containers and chemical toilets. They have no electricity in the gardens, so no lighting either at this time of year. It’s not the sort of place you want to be when you are ill.

Snowdrops in the MENCAP garden

A very short post

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Sorry I disappeared so abruptly.  I wasn’t feeling very well as finished my last post and after closing down and going to bed I started shivering. The next day I found I couldn’t speak because I didn’t remember the words I wanted. Fortunately I’ve had it before so I didn’t panic. It’s phlebitis, an inflammation of the lower leg. It’s been sore for few weeks but I ignored it. I won’t provide a link to the relevant pages as they make it seem far more dramatic than it really is.

So, sorry for my abrupt departure and sorry for all the brief answers to comments.

I’m going to b away for a few more days but hope to be all fixed early next week.

A Little Learning

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After a day of dragging a collection of aching joints around I finally surrendered at 5pm last night and went to bed. Julia returned home from work, administered tea and hot cross buns (yes, it’s that time of year again) and left me to recover in my own time.

She applied fish and chips later in the evening with tea and sympathy and the threatened flu never materialised. That might have been because I averted illness with a well-timed nap and application of carbohydrates. Or it may have I was merely cold, short of sleep and getting old.

Today, I find myself quite perky and have returned to blogging.

We had no internet at work today. When we rang the company they said they knew about it and were working on fixing the problem. They carried on working to fix the problem for another five hours. WE couldn’t put anything on eBay, we couldn’t answer emails, we couldn’t even Google things that cropped up in conversation. We did manage to send some parcels after accessing the internet via the boss’s phone but it is not the same as sitting at a screen.

In 1973 we celebrated EU membership

In 1973 we celebrated EU membership

We had to send two people across the road to use the cash machine because we couldn’t take card payments without access to the internet. They both came back, which was good, because sometimes they just drift off and don’t come back. Fortunately our only telephone buyer of the day rang five minutes after the connection was restored.

At least all this gave me time to polish the counters and clean the work surfaces in the kitchen. I also cleaned about 1,200 photos off my memory card. I tend to leave them there, even though I won’t need them again. I really should start behaving in a more responsible manner with my stored photos.

So, there we go.

Today’s learning outcomes are that I now realise how much we rely on the internet and that I must spend more time organising my photographs and sleeping. But mainly I learnt how much more I have to learn. After a day with plenty of time to think, I realised there’s a lot of stuff out there that I still don’t know.

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

Snowdrops

The Trend Continues

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I forgot to tell you that another of my shirts disintegrated yesterday, I was tucking it in when I felt it give. That’s what happens when you have cotton shirts and a disinclination to spend money. It’s always a bit of a downer when an old favourite disintegrates, though not so much of a downer as when trousers disintegrate, I admit.

After posting I took Number Two son to work and dropped him off for an 11pm start.  About 1 am I had a text.

“Are you awake?”

I was naturally inclined to answer “No.” but decided I’d better admit that I was still up.

“Can you leave the chain off. I’ve been throwing up and I’m coming home.”

Oh, the language of Shakespeare…

So, to cut a tedious story short, I went to pick him up. If I’m going to get him to leave home he needs to save his money, not squander it on taxis. We nearly reached home before he decided to throw up again. Fortunately he managed to get out of the car before it happened.

I think it’s true to say that he has the same gastric bug as Julia, He just doesn’t handle it with the same panache.

We returned home around 2.30 am, which left plenty of time to write my haiku quota and get to the hospital for a 7am blood test. This was handled so efficiently that I was back at the car and out of the car park before my free half hour was over.

I had the results by 11.20. I passed, though they have adjusted the dose and I have to go back in two weeks.

I wonder if this is a sign that things may be looking up.

The Downward Trend Continues

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Since I last wrote of my dull day things have showed little improvement. Nothing interesting has sold, nothing interesting has been loaded on eBay and nothing interesting has happened.

I say “nothing interesting” but had better qualify that. Nothing good and interesting has happened. I removed one of my dental crowns whilst chewing a caramel, which was interesting, particularly as I have a history of swallowing them.

I’ve wedged it back in for the moment as my six-monthly check up is due in a couple of weeks and I’m hoping to avoid a special trip to the dentist. It’s only come out twice since then, one of them being when I flicked it out with a toothpick.

Then there was the car insurance – it’s gone up by 15% so far and we haven’t even discussed my unfortunate brush with the speed camera. Someone is taking the mickey.

This morning I woke and as I sat on the edge of the bed I noticed blood dripping onto my legs. It was a bit of a surprise at the time but I have a history of nosebleeds so I’m not unduly worried. The main problem is getting the blood out of the pillowcase. (You may want to bookmark this page under “Famous Last Words” in case I’m wrong).

Minutes later things took a turn for the worse when I was informed that Julia was ill. She did this by groaning dramatically, making a sweeping arm gesture and croaking “I’m ill.”

She slept all day and has consistently refused food so it’s quite serious. I hope she gets well soon because I had to make my own sandwiches this morning.

Finally, I had a rejection on my last haiku submission. That was depressing for about twenty minutes, but after that I had plenty to do and forgot about it until now. I’m having a think now, not sure whether it’s part of the downward trend or something I should zone out.

According to my current thought process every rejection brings an acceptance one step nearer, so a rejection is actually a good thing.

 

A Waste of a Day

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I spent a lot of yesterday in bed with a fever. It came on shortly after I finished my last post and lasted until the early hours of this morning.

As a result I’ve been sitting round the house recovering and doing little else. Even typing seemed like too much effort.

By 6 o’clock I felt well enough to go shopping and at 9 o’clock I went to Trowell Services on the M1 to pick up Number One son on his return from Portugal.

I am now going to publish this, go to bed and prepare for a more productive day tomorrow.

Explaining my few days off

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Sorry about the lack of posts over the last few days. I knew I was going away for a long weekend and had intended writing posts in advance so there wouldn’t be a large gap.

Fate, however, intervened. Planning tends to be hit or miss with me; I’m often very organised. But if I’m not very organised I tend to be very disorganised – there’s rarely a middle way.

All the arrangements were in place for a visit to Norfolk and Suffolk to see family and I had set time aside to write a couple of posts to fill the time while I was away. Then what happened? Let’s just say that it was medical. Embarrassingly medical. Some years ago I said to a friend of mine, after a couple of visits to Male Urology and the insertion of a camera into an orifice definitely not designed for cameras, that it would be nice to visit the doctor and be able to keep my trousers on.

“You’re in your forties,” he said in a resigned voice, “get used to it. That and the fact you’ll never be able to hear the snapping of latex gloves without wincing.”

I didn’t know what he meant at the time, a state of innocence that lasted until my first prostate examination. It’s difficult to discuss without overstepping the boundaries of good taste but let’s just say that whether you believe in Evolution or Intelligent Design, you’d have thought that a small trap door would have been a more elegant solution…

Anyway, I’m not cured but I am at least able to sleep for several hours without my bladder waking me up, and I’m down for another trip to Male Urology. I’m hoping that camera technology will have advanced a little in the field of miniaturization.

Male Urology is comedy gold, I promise you. I am already grinning at the memories. Unfortunately, it isn’t tasteful so it will remain A Story That Cannot Be Told.

In the meantime I will compose a post that actually has something to do with Life of a Care Farm in Nottinghamshire, as the title says.

Watch this space.