Tag Archives: recovery

The Week Moves On

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I am, as I have said before, on drugs to suppress my immune system. This controls my arthritis and allows me to get around, type and do a bit of baking. Without he drugs, even typing would be tricky, with bent fingers and painful knuckles.

However, I do tend to pick up a lot of low-level infections in winter, and this year I have, so far, had three. They don’t really amount to much, but they do make me tired, hence the amount of time I spend writing about the time I slept instead of blogging. Whilst recovering, I also sleep a fair bit.

I can tell when I have recovered, because my brain seems to move up a notch and I start to write again and answer TV quiz questions faster. I actually beat a contestant on Mastermind last night. I was three behind on the specialist subject (Waterfowl of the British Isles) but pulled it back on the general knowledge. Sitting at home, relaxed, I would still only have come second, because the winner answered all his specialist question and then beat me on general knowledge.

So, self-congratulations done, I’m still a long way off the pace required to do well on Mastermind. I got a few on University Challenge, including a few that the students didn’t get, so I was happy by the end of the evening. Winter Olympics are OK, but it’s nice to have the quizzes back.

 

Julia made a nice curry last night, using the leftover pea soup as a base for the sauce. She also put meat in it, which was nice for a change, as i tend to make my curry vegetarian these days.

I noticed earlier today, that I have done 3,802 blog posts. It made me wonder how many individual titles I have come up with and how many I have duplicated.

I just did a quick search, but after reading about 30 titles became aware that my ability to procrastinate had taken over again . . .

 

The pictures are from February 2015 – I only have 9 photos that month – my early days as a blogger.

 

 

 

The Solution Becomes Clear

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The ground subsided and the tree drowned 

I rose just before 6.30 and, an hour later, am still feeling enthusiastic. I have done emails, comments and reading blogs so far. I am feeling good.

Approximately a month ago, plagued by many minor conditions, I was very depressed, worn out and, to be honest, wondering if this was the beginning of the end. People do die at my age, the obituary columns are full of people who don’t make 70. I know this because I started noticing it and had to make myself stop. I started making plans for sorting my life out so all the admin would be  a bit easier for Julia.

Merle Oberon, Jack Johnson, Benny Hill, Edward I, Geoffrey Hughes, Josephine Baker . . .

Trees near Slaidburn

My tastes, I admit, run to the low-brow. But by 68 they had all become famous, then died. I admit Geoffrey Hughes, most famous for playing a bin man in Coronation St (and Hyacinth Bucket’s slobbish brother-in-law in Keeping Up Appearances) may be stretching fame a bit but he was good at what he did.

Then I got better. It doesn’t take much.

Then I became ill again. Fever, cold, coughing, difficulty breathing, exhaustion, lack of appetite, food tasing strange. Having barely recovered from the firs mystery illness I am in the middle of the second, where I have just spent several days sitting in front of TV, mesmerised by the moving colours.  I’ve spent several extra hours in bed each day and have been able to do very little more than a couple of twenty minute slots at the computer. I have also been sitting on the edge of the bed wondering what I am doing (as it’s either getting into bed, or getting out of bed, or putting socks on, or taking them off, the choice is not huge and the answer should be clear.)

Cormorant at Budby Flash

That was the clincher. I did a lot of that when I had Coved.

So I checked the symptoms of Covid. They aren’t 100% reliable, because everything could be a symptom of something else, but staring aimlessly into space with food tasing like sawdust is highly suggestive.

And, as simply as that, the mist lifts and, having put a name to my condition, I am now feeling better again. Humans are strange things.

Heron at Clumber Park

 

My Winter Sports Career

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Yesterday I briefly allowed myself to daydream an entire new life for myself as a Winter Olympian. I quite like Curling, I can use a brush and, as a married man, am accustomed to taking orders from a woman. The Mixed Doubles would be a good fit. Unfortunately, after looking at the state of the man in our mixed doubles team after all his brushing, I was unable to see myself surviving that much effort. It’s clearly an awful lot harder than it looks.

Then I watched the ski and snowboard events. I’m not even sure what the actually call them, but they are like going down a ski jump and doing skateboard tricks so high up they use a drone the film them. I initially thought the black marks on the screen were litter blowing across the slope when they started off, but it turned out to be the shadows of the drones. It’s all very strange.

SO that left Luge. I mean, you do it whilst lying down and the slope does the rest. How difficult can that be? The worst bit would surely be wearing those stripy skin-tight suits, wouldn’t it. Well it seems there’s a bit more to it than that. The 95mpg speeds are a bit off-putting and the inability to see the bends. It seems you have to memorise them. And be consistent. So quick, and consistent, with the ability to see thorough soles of your feet. Possibly not for me either.

So I sat at home, watched TV, made a few notes and felt much refreshed by the end of the day. I was even able to read some blogs, answer comments, write some poems and do emails. Not the most active of days, but a definite step back on the way to health.

 

Rest and Recovery

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Well, Julia is back. She was released around lunchtime on Friday and my sister came to pick her up with me. It all went well – she was standing by the pick-up spot and we almost got a space. The lack of space didn’t matter as there was a taxi in front of me picking someone up and I slotted in behind him and combined with him to stop traffic. They must have hated us, but that’s how it goes. She had to walk 50 yards whilst bleeding from a neck wound when we arrived, but I fail to see why she should walk a foot further than necessary on the way back.

She has slept a lot since arriving home. Considering that her time in hospital consisted mainly of sleep deprivation and blood tests I can’t say I blame her. Not only did she not get a bed until 5am on the first night, not only was it noisy with someone listening to TV all night, but tey woke her up several times on the second night to check her and to extract blood. They seem very keen on blood tests, which seemed a bit strange as the reason she was in hospital was to try and stop her bleeding.

Anyway, you need to sleep while you are healing, so I have been making her go for a lie down now and again, plus making cups of tea, home made soup and easily chewable foodstuffs. She went out to the country park with my sister this afternoon and they toured the food stalls that are there this weekend, returning home with snack food for tea.

She enlisted my help in removing the dressing before she went out. It’s about the size of a small pillow, and not very convenient if you want to walk around.  The idea is that it applies pressure, and also reveals any new traces of bleeding.. However, despite our efforts yesterday with micropore, it kept coming loose and flapping about so today it had to go.

Imagine a dressing secured by four bits of sticky tape. Three of them won’t stick and the fourth is bonded to the skin by some mysterious chemical process and won’t come off. I tried several ways, including sneaking up on her and trying to surprise it, but it stayed stuck. It’s stuck to her throat and, as you may recall, her throat is badly cut, wounded, stitched, bruised and generally tender. The bruise resulting from all this is about 9″ x 4″. Fort hose of you who use metric that’s about the size of a paperback book. I’ve never quite managed to go metric for size.  For some reason I can do furlongs, chains, yards, ells, cubits and hands but never quite grasped centimetres.  Metres are easy, because they are about a yard, but the rest is a mystery.

 

We got three bits off and detached the dressing from the fourth so she is able to go out with just a light scarf for camouflage. Eventually, I’m sure, the other piece will detach itself, but for now it can stay.  If it doesn’t fall off naturally, I will just have to paint it the same colour as her neck and hope nobody notices.

Good or Bad or simply Human?

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It’s about three weeks since I did any proper cooking. It was very tricky cutting veg, even with my big knife and various ingenious techniques.  I hve confined myself to a few convenience meals and ringing for takeaways. I think I said that even the act of buttering bread or stirring cheese sauce was challenging – that’s how bad it’s been.

Today I am cooking roasted vegetables with belly pork. It’s so simple it’s hardly cooking but the cutting of vegetables makes it easy to compare with three weeks ago. It is so much easier I am cautiously forecasting a return to normality in the next few days. My main qualification for saying that is optimism rather than science, but what is faith without hope? Or charity?

Here’s a diversion for you. It’s always a surprise to think that the Gloster Gladiator what was basically a design from WW1 fought the Luftwaffe in WW2. For those of you who don’t follow links – this comes from Faith, Hope and Charity being the names given to three Gladiators that defended Malta. It was a bit more advanced than the Great War designs, but it really did belong to a different age, fighting with the RAF over France in 1939, in the Battle of Britain, Norway, Malta and the Mediterranean.

One of the pilots using the Gladiator, was Roald Dahl.  I’m tempted to ask a serious question here, but I won’t. I will just mention that it just shows how complicated it can be to sit in judgement of people. Roald Dahl, anti-Semite and author i need of rewriting, as we are now told we must see him, was also Roald Dahl who risked his life many times to bring down the Nazi regime. Two of the earliest RAF casualties of WW2, by the way, were members of the British Union of Fascists.

Life is complex when you try to sort it out into good people and bad people.

“C’est la vie”, say the old folks, it goes to show you never can tell.

I enclose the quote because you never can tell, and because you don’t often get a chance to quote Chuck Berry in a post about anti-Semitism and the BUF.

A Month of Illness

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It very quickly became apparent that Plan A (the active one involving doing lots of stuff) was not going to happen. It’s too cold and my back feels stiff.

Plan B (the one that involves salmon for tea and some moderate tidying) looks like the one to aim for.

I have others, going right down to Plan F – watch TV, think of a good excuse for when Julia comes home. Even I wouldn’t sink that low after she’s been working all day and I’ve been at home. Not until next week after the novelty of Mondays off has sunk in.

Yesterday was a notable day. My bowels returned to proper function. They have not distinguished themselves during my recent illness and I have been concerned. However, it’s not necessarily a subject for in depth conversation so I will leave it there.

It was also the first night when I have felt comfortable sleeping on my back. I had a much better sleep than usual, slept in too long and, as a consequence have the stiff back I already mentioned. It was good to get back to normal.

The first cough I recall was on the tram as I travelled to my knee X-Ray appointment. That was 14th December or thereabouts. It’s 15th January today, so that’s a full month from one end to the other of the illness.  It’s been a long time, but having lost weight nd had some decent rest I have to admit I feel better than I did a month ago when I thought I was well. Strange how you need to become ill to get better.

Looks like a bishop in a cage – Crowland Abbey

2023 – The Last Post

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Yes, I know it’s slipped round to 2024, but these things happen.

Somehow, with my frequent slippages of time and my good intentions about punctuality never quite working out, it is appropriate that I am late. I have just, as usual, fallen asleep in front of the TV, woken and made a decision about whether or not to blog. Really I should go to sleep, but he urge to write is strong.

I am finally beginning to feel like I am recovering from my chest problem, It’s far from a full recovery, but I am at least starting to feel like I am making progress. It took a while at the beginning as there were symptoms from several things to unravel and I spent at least a week getting worse. Even yesterday, I felt very weak. Today I have begun to feel a little better. It’s surprising that you can sleep for 8 hours at night, then snooze through a lot of the day, and still end up feeling tired, but that’s how I am at the moment. While you are sleeping, you are healing.

Yesterday I decided I wouldn’t make any submissions for December. There seems little point in rushing work which can be left to mature. There are plenty of opportunities for submissions in the next few months – better to do something decent than rush into doing something badly. It always seems slightly rude not to support an editor who has accepted work in the past, but it also seems slightly rude to send something when you know it isn’t your best. There is so much more to making a submission than merely writing it and sending it off.

Photos are mainly Julia.

Back to Life

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I’ve had a leisurely start to the day, to say the least. It started with a cooked breakfast because I wanted to make sure Julia had something decent before she left for work. The weather is not bad here but there’s a chill in the air and the threat of patchy rain to add to the overnight soaking. As I write, Derrick and Jackie Knight are still under an amber weather warning as Storm Ciaran rips along the south coast. Normally I envy them living n the New Forest, but when the weather is intent on breaking branches and toppling trees I find myself less keen on it. I know there are lots of bits without trees (forest in England refers as much to an area of land enclosed for Royal hunting as it does to a place with trees.

Robin Hood lurking in the Forest

Sherwood Forest and the New Forest, very different places these days, were once mixed areas of heath, farmland and woodland set aside for Royal hunting and under the Forest Law rather than the normal law of the land. To a certain extent, the New Forest still is. If you let your horses and pigs wander free round here people would soon protest. And the pigs would soon be in freezers.

After breakfast I went back to bed to continue my recovery before rising for a second time to do a few odd jobs. The phone is currently squeaking at me to remind me that I have a phone call to make. There is always something to do. For the last ten days this “something” has mainly been sleeping and whining, but now it’s time to return to real life.

Acorn Sculpture – Sherwood Forest

Still Sleeping, Recovering and Repeating . . . and Browsing

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Today has mainly featured me sleeping, recovering and repeating, as mentioned in the previous post. It hasn’t, unfortunately seen me doing much in the way of work. When the doctor suggested another week off I was happy as I was feeling quite ill at the time. I also thought I may get some time for writing. Unfortunately this hasn’t happened as I am still quite out of it. This is what I’ve discovered before – healing takes longer these days.

Tomorrow I will try a little harder. Julia is off tomorrow, so although she will find lots to do, I will be able to spend at least an hour or so with her, probably more if I act in a pathetically needy manner. The doctor did say that she would rely on boredom and daytime TV to drive me back to work and I can feel it happening. Even if it does turn into a discussion of my shortcoming and my need for exercise (we don’t see eye to eye on that at all) it will still be better than sleeping in front of antiques and makeover programmes.

Where, I ask, have all the decent quiz shows gone?

I found a really interesting internet site earlier on. It seems to be South African in origin (it features the letters “za” which I always take to indicate Zuid Afrika) but I won’t hold that against it. I still haven’t got rid of all the junk I picked up when using a South African family history site so I am always a little suspicious. However, it did present me with the snippet of information that some Roman Coins had been found whilst excavating a Japanese Castle.

The link is a different link so you don’t need to worry about the security. They are 4th century coins but the castle thrived  from the 12th to 15th Centuries, so they seem to have spent a lot of time travelling. Were they actually used as payment, or did Japan have coin collectors a thousand years ago?

I am distinctly short of suitable photos.

Japanese Quince – Arnot Hill Park

 

Sleep, Recover, Repeat

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Clara Butt – Obverse

Clara Butt Reverse

Sorry. They say sleep is essential to recovery, and I seem to have been concentrating on recovery (in a chair in front of TV) for the last couple of days. The good news is that it’s working, but I do seem to have slacked off on the blogging.

In the wakeful gaps I spent some time reading a book that claims it’s possible to write a novel in ten minutes a day.I must have bought it a few years ago, judging from its position in the pile. So far it’s proving to be a disappointment. I know it’s theoretically possible to write a novel in ten minutes a day (even Don Quixote, if your taste runs to that length) but I was hoping for more specifics. So far it’s been about how to manage time.

This is useful, but so far it’s more about time management than writing. However, the fact I’m writing this is proof that it works. I’ve planned a sliver of time to write and I am using it. later I will watch an antiques programme then, probably when I wake up, I will write more. Or eat then sleep then write more. I’m undecided on the exact order.

Leicester Base Hospital showing soldier in “Hospital Blue” Uniform.

The “Base Hospital” was also known as the 5th Northern General Hospital. In 1914 it was empty, having formerly housed the county Lunatic Asylum. In 1921 it opened as a University, eventually becoming Leicester University.

I can tell I’m getting better. Last night I went to bed after deciding I didn’t have the time or energy to do the display on fund-raising flags I was planning for the Numismatic Society. This morning I woke up with the outline in my head. The brain is a wondrous thing.

It’s  bit nippy now, despite supposedly being a warm day. I’m going to go into the other room now, put a blanket across my knees and try a spot of recovery.

Sir Harry Lauder Obverse

 

Sir Harry lauder Reverse

Sir Harry Lauder was a man of many parts and the first British recording artist to sell a million records. His son was killed in 1916 and Sir Harry spent much time raising money for the war effort, including his Million Pound Fund to help disabled Scottish soldiers on their return home.