The day started with a blood test. The nurse took part of a tube before it stopped, never to start again. As she moved the needle to restart the flow I had a sudden, sharp pain in the wrist. I mentioned this, thinking she may have hit a nerve, but was told the needle wasn’t deep enough to hit a nerve. Well, it was deep enough to hit something, which stopped when the needle was withdrawn.
We had trouble after taking the needle out as I suddenly bled profusely, and wouldn’t stop. That’s the nature of Warfarin – you bleed easily, except when a nurse is trying to take a sample.
With the original; hole no longer flowing, she tried again. This time we got 3/4 of a tube before it stopped. A certain amount of tube swapping took place and we ended up with enough blood to allow it to be poured from tube to tube to make a full one. If it isn’t full they call you back for another test, which is always irksome.
Anyway, it is done. The results are on target, which is good. Now I just need to wait for the letter to tell me when my next test is due. They send the results and dosing instructions out by email to mke sure they get to me quickly, but they only send the new appointment date by letter, when they also confirm everything else. This is slightly different from the Nottingham system where they rang if anything needed changing, and made the appointment at the same time. I can’t say which is a better system, as they each have advantages, but it takes a little getting used to.
Last week I helped someone with editing a book. One of the suggestions I made was that he should cut down sentence length and complexity. I’m not perfect at this, but I do know a lot more about the basics of good writing than my work might show. I cannot be bothered to use simple words all the time, remove all adverbs or cut out all the verbal tics. I write for pleasure and don’t want to spend half my time sorting out the faults. This is me, this is my writing and these are my thoughts. I’m faulty and I’m happy with that.
Anyway, I fed the first section of this post through a couple of online readability calculators. They calculate mysterious figures with strange names. However, they seem to agree that I am writing reasonably comprehensible words and am very slightly above the ideal scores. However, this still leaves me writing at about t5he level of a Harry Potter book, so I’m happy with that. It’s easy enough for adults to understand but not too basic.
Foodwise, we had our standard breakfast and sandwiches for lunch, so didn’t add anything to the food numbers. The evening meal was a Chinese-style rice dish with green beans, sweetcorn, mushrooms, spring onions, pineapple and broccoli. It also had ginger, garlic and mango chutney, though probably not enough to count. It didn’t have peppers because, in the last couple of days, they have become inedible. This is embarrassing and I hate when I let it happen. They were too bad even for soup.
I was on 23 yesterday, and am now on 27. I have three days to find three more. I’m thinking of vegetable hash tomorrow – sweet potato, swede and cabbage will carry me across the line, which will be good for the first week.
I have mixed feelings about it as a system, but if it starts me thinking about food again, it will be worthwhile. We became a bit casual about nutrition over the summer. We had plenty of salad but teamed it up with too much processed meat and pork pies.
