One step forward…

As is the way of such things, the poor old FIL is back into the high dependency unit. It goes like this, late last week he was pootling along well and making good steps forward (10m forward on his Zimmer to be exact) and they decided that they would transfer him to a small local hospital for rehabilitation and physiotherapy before sending him home. So, he wakes up on Friday ready to get transferred and after a little while the hospital calls us. Now we thought that it would be to tell us when he would be arriving at the local hospital, but no, it seems he had to do things the hard way; the call was to tell us that he had started to bleed internally – from somewhere in the gut but they didn’t know where and couldn’t see from where with an endoscope. Now where all this came from we have no idea as he went in for coronary artery bypass surgery (hardly connected) but they gave us the grim news that his blood loss was so severe that they were taking him down to surgery and did not expect him to survive.

That was it, we all rushed down the hospital and proceeded to wait…and wait and wait and wait. No one told us anything; no one even offered us a cup of tea. We waited and occasionally chased the staff who said there was no news and a doctor would come and see us (soon!). We waited some more and then were eventually told that he had come through the operation fine and was in recovery waiting to be transferred to HDU. A while later someone took us down to the HDU waiting room and we had only been in there a few minutes when we were collected and taken to another waiting room over the other side of the hospital (at ITU). I was not best pleased at all the uncomfortable chairs and long walks all over the place and the MIL was suffering, but you get on with it in these circumstances, don’t you? Anyway, we were told that they would get the FIL settled and we could then go in and see him – hopefully in about 45 minutes. After an hour had passed, hubby went to see what was going on and after a half hour wait at reception he was told that they had never heard of the FIL! Eventually they tracked him down to the first place we had been taken to – we saw him (he was asleep), the nurses said they had no idea what had happened in surgery and there was still no doctor to talk to. By this time it was ten o’clock at night and we were told to go home and come back in the following day after lunch to see what was going on!

The long and the short of it is this – they opened him up and found nothing wrong. The bleeding had stopped on its own so they stitched him back together and are keeping him in HDU for a couple of days to keep an eye on him. So, here he is, nearly 80 years old, being cut open for no reason – I’m sure that’ll speed his recovery up no end.

Grrr, do you get the feeling that I think the NHS really stinks sometimes?

FIL – the progress report

It suddenly occurred to me that I had left the FIL in Intensive Care – permanently it seems….and that you were all out there still holding your breath and praying. Well, I started to fret about this last night – how could I have been so mean to all my cyberspace friends – how many of them were now blue, red or even by this stage (heaven forbid) green…

Anyway, I am delighted to report good news for the family as the FIL responded well (if a little slowly) to all the treatment he received in the Intensive Care Unit. So much so that he was transferred to a regular ward at the end of last week – they had done a great job all ways round with him. Of course, I personally think that to spend a month in Intensive Care is a little bit of an extreme way to get over the initial agonies of an operation, but hey, it seemed to work. His chest has all healed well and the bypass has been a great success. Not bad at all for a 79 year old (albeit one who was pretty active before all this happened). He managed to get some pretty good hallucinations too^*1 and has kept us all highly amused with his stories of saving babies from burning buildings and Fred Flintstone appearing in a porno movie!

All this is good news but his progress is very slow. I think sometimes hospitals make it very easy to simply not try hard enough. He is mostly just sitting back and waiting for his recovery to happen to him without putting in any more effort than he has to. For example, he was disappointed after being transferred to the ward that no-one would feed him – despite the fact that he (albeit slowly) was able to manage a spoon to feed himself. If something is hard work then he would prefer to simply not bother doing it or get someone else to do it for him. It’s true, he is still pretty weak from the extended hospital stay, but yet more inactivity is hardly building him up. I personally find it very frustrating – a little over a year ago I was trying to get back on my feet after my surgery and yet every day set myself a new target so that I could improve as fast as possible. Now, I really don’t want to sound harsh or impatient with him and I know that I am younger and maybe this helped me, but I fear that he now sees himself as a permanent invalid. His surgery, which was supposed to give him a better quality of life, and which has been an incredible success, has been sidelined by his talk of “I don’t care if I can’t ever get around without a zimmer” and “I suppose I’ll have to have the optician and hairdresser come to the house now”…

Aaargh! Is it just me? Am I being unreasonable with the guy? I guess the truth of it all is that its hard when you are eternally pragmatic optimist and you come up against a real dyed in the wool pessimist - especially one with 79 years of practice.


^*1I was incredibly disappointed with my stay in hospital, which, despite copious quantities of morphine, had no more exciting dreams than usual. So not fair – go through all that getting cut in half business and not even a good hallucination to tell people about!

With friends like these…

So, yet again I was away (I seem to that a lot, don’t I?) and early one morning (well, it seemed that way to me^*1) we were out in a field in the cold and damp. Now, just so you don’t get the wrong idea about where I go when I am away, sometimes its really nice, like earlier in the year in the States, when all we had to contend with was the searing desert heat, strong wind, cactus spikes (great for wheelchair tyres), snakes and scorpions – but more often than not, it is in some field in the middle of nowhere, in the middle of England and it’s cold, windy and often raining! Anyway, having set the scene before all those ramblings (cold, damp, middle of a field remember?) we were all trying our best to look bright eyed and bushy tailed and not to be too grumpy with each other. MY (being very bright eyed and bushy tailed) did his usual thing of trying to get us all warmed up and somewhat less grumpy than we were before, by getting us to sit in a ring and do some gentle physical exercise. Of course, this rarely works, as when we are cold and grumpy the last thing we all want to do is physical exercise (personally my thoughts turn to duvets and hot coffee), but there you go, it has to be done so we do it. It doesn’t mean we are quiet about it – oh no, there’s lots of moans and groans and MY comes in for a certain amount of abuse, but he gives as good as he gets in return.

So, there we are doing our stretches and waving our arms around and MY then leads us on to the torso twist. I ineffectually move my arms around a bit and discover that nothing has changed, since my op I just can’t seem to turn at all. MY (cruel man) yells out – “Come on WW, twist will you?!! Well! I don’t know - anyone would think you had a rod down your back….!”

Hmmm……. very funny MY…..

^*1I think that anything before around 10.30 am should be defined as stupid o’clock and anything before 9 is (as hubby puts it) “up at crack of sparrow fart” (which I always love as an expression….)

Clumsy and Grace

So, there we were (hubby and I) in bed lazing around one morning with Clumsy and Grace both on the bed with us (I know, I know, its horrible unhygienic to let your cats get on the bed, but its not so easy to keep them off…)

Anyway, Clumsy looks furtively at Grace, hoists his rear end off the bed and did that wiggly thing with it (cat owners will know exactly what I am talking about here) and made ready to pounce. Grace, peering out from under her eyelids took rapid stock of the situation and did a quick but cool assessment. As Clumsy leapt up, she swiftly grabbed hold of him, twisted him round and over in a real WWF move, pinned him down on the bed and proceeded to thoroughly wash his head.

“Ah”, said hubby proudly. “That’s my girl – she’s got a black belt in personal hygiene and has had special training in combat ablutions…"

There’s no answer to that really, is there?

Shakin' it all about....

That's me at the moment....in out, in out and whilst not shaking it about too much (the metalwork is not conducive to too much shaking) I seem to have had very little time to actually sit down and blog.

Last weekend I was away in Belgium with a large group of my best friends and a good time was had by all...apparently even whilst some people were lurking underground and exploring strange places. Me, I just sat in the sun, drank the BUF's cherry beer and spent time catching up with her which was fab (we've not caught up in ages). So, we brought back chocolate and beer (what else from Belgium?) and have already made mutterings about next year...

In the meantime I am off again but this time only about 2 hours drive away from home. Hubby shall be cat sitting whilst I get on with 'my other life'. I know, I know, more excuses for not updating the blog, but hey, I'll get round to it..... I promise!

Finally, to finish with the theme that I started, I saw this on J the B's t-shirt last weekend:
"what if the Hokey Cokey^*1 really is what it's all about?"
...and if you want to know the answer to that, you could try looking here or here or hey - just try Googling it.....(and yes, I know Google is trying to make it illegal to use their name as a verb...)

^*1Umm, that'll be the Hokey Pokey to all you Yanks out there....same language indeed....both speak English do we?

There’s catching up to do....and I'm being slow about it....

So, I came back from the US of A to find hubby was quite excited. My first thought was that he was pleased to have me home but it wasn’t that at all…..the drain man had really been. I mean he had really, really been. He had really been here, had really lifted the cover and had really cleared the drain of all its debris. D’you know, you can see water in the bottom of it! And when it started raining (which it did for about two weeks solid) the water ran down the hill and into the drain. OMG, I cannot believe how excited I am that it’s been done and how disappointed that I can’t bake it a cake.

Now of course all I have to do is make sure I don’t drop my keys down it…<sup>*1


*1</sup>…and don’t tell me that I am the only person in the world who gets a death grip on their keys when they find that they have parked over an drain and have to unlock the car? ^*2

^*2OK OK, so you are one of those posh people with a ‘hoofer doofer’ for your car when you just press a button and the doors unlock and the lights flash – well, you have to remember that my car is 24…. I think hoofer doofers were something else entirely then.

Not fair...

So you know I went away and you know I flew and you’re all itching to know if my metalwork sets off the arch in the airport. Right? Well, I still don’t know and that’s the truth of it. Yet again, lost in the miles and miles of passageways that are Heathrow airport, I was using my wheelchair to get around and believe me, a big lump of metal like that is bound to set of those detectors, without the added complication of any screws and stuff inside your back. In Heathrow I get waved though with just a cursory body search (which means that that there were no rubber gloves or little rooms involved) and that was that.

Coming home from the States, homeland security are a bit more involved, making you take your shoes off and everything so I felt certain that I’d find out something. Well, as expected the arch went off so I went for the pat down. The poor bored lady was telling me I’m going to touch you here and I’m gonna use the back of my hand here and so on and I tried to engage her in polite conversation. I asked her if she was bored with saying the same thing day in day out. I asked her if she was having a nice day and if she liked the hot weather. I really, really tried to be nice to her and then just as she told me I could go I hit her with the whammy question “ can I have the wand thingie?” and she said there was no need. No need? What about my curiosity - isn't that need enough? That is so not fair! - and I still don‘t know if I’m going to set the detectors off. Anyone got a 'Bounty Hunter'??

As an aside to all this, I had to take my shoes off. All my belongings, including my cardigan had to go through the x-ray machine. My wheelchair and cushion were swabbed for explosives and I was thoroughly patted down. Did they discover the pouch that is built into the underside of my wheelchair (and is part of the standard fittings)? The pouch that contains a small tool kit, puncture repair kit and a pump which looks remarkably like the barrel of a gun (when viewed through a steamed up window without your glasses on obviously). Did they heck…..

One last thing, for those of you who have been holding their breath and keeping their fingers crossed for the FIL. He is improving - still ventilated (although with much less support) and we had the news today that he has been able to get out of bed and into a chair for a while. This is a real step forward and we feel much less worried about the future. Thanks for all the support folks...

Spooky goings on…..

D’you know, there’s some spooky stuff goes on in the world and sometimes it can happen to you too. I have had 3 things happen in quick succession (well they say things always happen in threes, don’t they? ^*1) and so I thought I’d blog about them.

The first happened when I was away. There I was, sat on my bed in the middle of the afternoon, having a little rest before the rigors of the evening. I heard a knock at the door, so got up and went to answer it. Outside was my SPF who wanted to rearrange a meeting that we had made earlier. The only thing was, that she hadn’t yet knocked the door, having only just arrived! Somehow, I had ‘heard’ a knock, got off the bed and walked to the door (not the fastest process in the world for me) just in time to coincide with her arrival……oooo!

Then I got home and did a report for the BMB. I emailed it to him and in the ‘send and receive process’ got an email from him asking me to send the report. Scarier still, was the fact that both e-mails had been sent at the same time to the minute^*2 ….wow!

Two days later, I phoned A&T to speak to A. I was on my mobile because I had free minutes that I wanted to use up and T answered the phone telling me that A was out. Within seconds of him answering, my house phone rang and I juggled the two phones (one to each ear – don’t you do it that way?) so I could answer it – it was A! Actually, I have to say at this point that I briefly entertained the idea that I could get them to talk to each other, but couldn’t figure out which way up the respective phones should be!

Anyway, all of this was very spooky and as yet I have no idea if it all means anything. In the meantime…..di dee di dee do dee di dee do ......

^*1I never know who “they” are though….
^*2 - I didn’t check the seconds – just how sad do you think I am??

No news is good news?

So, the FIL continues to hang on in there. Yesterday he started to take a few breaths on his own so things are looking up a bit and we all stopped holding our breath with him....It's still very early days but we just still have to wait, be patient (not my strongest point) and see how it all goes.

Back from our hols

So, hubby and I are back from our hols. We had a week in a cottage in Cornwall and took the cats with us. Yes, I know that this may sound odd to some of you, but they travel well and I’m sure they prefer a two bed cottage to run around in to a 6ft by 4ft space in a cattery (which they’d have to share). Anyway, when we got there ‘Grace’ was straight out of the basket and tail up went running round and round the cottage investigating every little nook and cranny. ‘Clumsy’ was a bit slower to follow but settled in well.

The weather was truly kind to us (especially since I am now typing this with the rain lashing down outside and we got to see all the things that we wanted to see. For those who have the chance, the Lost Gardens of Heligan and the Eden Project are really well worth a visit in my opinion^*1. We also explored endless pretty little fishing villages (doesn’t everyone who visits Cornwall), ate Cornish cream teas and Cornish pasties and sampled lots of the local ales. It was just the thing for a nice relaxing break.

Sadly, our week was cut short as we had to return home in an emergency. The FIL had some problems with his heart and was rushed into hospital. After a few days of things getting worse, he ended having an emergency quadruple bypass on the Friday afternoon and has been in intensive care ever since. He’s nearly 80 so it’s all very worrying and we are at the stage of keeping our fingers, toes and everything crossed and hoping for the best. If my blogging is a bit irregular over the next week or so that’ll be the reason why, so bear with us all and hold your breath with us please….


^*1Both also have pretty good wheelchair access (if you need it) but take my advice and make sure you have either a power trike or a helper….some of those slopes are wicked! Oh yes, and don’t use slick tyres – they are apt to just slide straight down the hill even when your wheels aren’t going round (….you had to be there to appreciate it!!!)

Away again (but holidays this time!)

Just to let you all know that I am going away for a few days so there’ll be no blogging for a bit. Don’t worry…..I’ll be back!

Hey, these things have wheels….

So, we were at the airport on our way home and needed to get a courtesy bus to get us back to the car park and our cars. I was with the SPF and the BMB and they had all our stuff between them on two trolleys because I was in my wheelchair. This is something that is really necessary at airports as its just miles between point a and point b…anyway, really speaking we weren’t in the airport any longer, but I was still in my ‘chair’ so that’s the way it was.

The bus arrived and the BMB started to load stuff into the back. It was not long before he started to wrestle with a particularly troublesome load (probably mine!) and the SPF rushed forward to help him (abandoning her trolley in the process). Now you are probably aware that these airport trolleys have an automatic braking system and that unless you pull up on the handle they won’t go anywhere. Well, the one on the SPF’s trolley was broken….and we were on a slope. I made a wild grab for the trolley and at this point realised two things:

1. I was in a wheelchair (with wheels) and
2. I didn’t have the brakes on.

It was just at the point that the trolley started to gather pace, that I realised that

1. I was in a predicament and
2. I was heading for the railings.

At this point I let go the trolley with one hand and tried to brake with the other and my frenzied squeaking alerted the SPF to the fact that something was wrong. She caught up with me (and the trolley) and we slithered to a halt – predicament averted!

I did learn that you cannot stop one moving object on wheels with another similar object when there is no braking system involved…….so something positive came out of it! ^*1

^*1SPF, please take note of my positive thinking here….
Please note, no one was harmed in the making of this blog entry. The slope was not a big slope and the SPF did not have to run at 30mph or have her arms ripped out of their sockets trying to stop either me or the trolley. It was amusing tho’…

More bizarre hotel stuff

I don’t know if you know what it’s like when you’re away with a group. You stick together and it’s not always easy to get out so you spend quite a lot of time sat in the hotel lobby at the end of a long day, chatting and waiting for bed time.

There we were again (different night from the teenagers in pyjamas) and we saw someone walking through the lobby carrying a large section of column. It was precisely the kind of thing that supports the tier of a wedding cake, but about 8 ft tall and an arm span around.

In fact it looked so much like a support for a wedding cake that someone commented to that effect and mentioned that it was funny that we hadn’t see the bride and groom. There was a general tittering at the suggestion and at that point in walks a woman in a wedding dress with a man in a tux.

That must have been some wedding, if the cake was that big…

OMG 15 Months snuck up on me…

I just realised that it’s 15 months today since I was sliced and diced. Time just vanishes so fast, doesn’t it (does this mean I’m enjoying myself or something?)

So, where am I with the back? It’s good really. I’d love to report that I have no pain with it but I would be lying if I said that. I will say that pain pills seem to work better than they used to and I assume that this is because nothing is under quite the strain it was so they have more chance to work (if you see what I mean!). Funnily enough, I still get a fair amount of discomfort from where they took my ribs out. I don’t know if it’s the ribs themselves (or the lack of them) or if it’s just that your diaphragm doesn’t like being sliced in half and then stuck back together again but whichever it is, I would cheerfully live without it. Of course being the optimistic little soul that I am, I quite cheerfully live with it too but I do wish all those people who said it was the worst bit of the operation were wrong! ^*1

As to the rest of it, well, I have regained none of the nerves in my stomach or leg but I guess there’s still time. My walking is just the same and I am just as happy and healthy as ever. People are still coming up to me and saying how well I look and the other day I met an old friend and discovered that the 2” I gained in height means that I could almost look her in the eye. In fact – I didn’t realise before that she was quite so short! Hubby measured me the other day too and made me 4ft 11½” which would mean I’d actually gained 2½”, not 2” but then we realised I still had my shoes on.…..still, I feel much taller than that really!

On a cosmetic note, I really do feel a lot less lopsided. I was given the all clear to do core exercises in January and between that, and the fact that I have no swelling left, I finally have a waist on both sides. I know that there are people out there who will understand just how delighted this makes me… I still have the rib hump and I can still see the fact that I have 30+ degree curves inside me but I really don’t think anyone apart from me, my surgeon and maybe some members of the scoliosis forums (takes one to know one) would ever really notice. Amazing, innit?


^*1 Actually, I’m sure its not the worst bit of the op, but it does seem to have the longest lasting implications…

A likely story

There we were, a large group of us, sat in the hotel lobby when a couple of teenage girls walk past us clutching pillows. They appeared to be dressed in pyjamas too, which was odd, but you never can tell with fashions these days so we shrugged our shoulders and carried on chatting. A few minutes later, another small group of girls goes past, again carrying pillows and they were followed by several teenage boys. There was no doubt that some of these youngsters were in nightwear (it was the nightdress that really gave it away^*1) and they all headed off in the direction of the ballroom. Now, I’ve been to ‘that kind of party’ where its fancy dress on a theme (pyjama, roman toga, vicars and tarts, you get the picture) but in all my years of party going, I have never taken a large prop like a pillow….

So, this goes on for some time, small groups of youngsters, in nightwear, carrying pillows, on their way to the ballroom. We never counted them, but I’m guessing over the next hour or so there must have been hundreds of them^*2. Eventually we cracked and as the manager of the hotel went past, we asked him what was going on – “Oh”, he said “They’re having a sleepover” and went on to explain that they were all members of a local church group.

I tell you, if I’d have known church groups were that much fun, I’d have joined one years ago…..


^*1 No, not on the boy!
^*2 This may be an exaggeration, but there were lots

Isn’t that a small country in Central America?

So, there I was, away in sunny Arizona and we were out for dinner one evening. I was having fajitas – I like fajitas, all that playing with your food and wrapping up meat and peppers and stuff with all sorts of dips etc. Fajitas in blighty are very nice, but these were extra good ones so I was happy.

One of the younger members of our group had never had (or even seen) fajitas before and so was quizzing me on the nature of the red, white and green dips^*1 and what each was called. Me being in a good mood was happy to help and asked her if she wanted to try any of them. “Maybe later”, she said, so I carried on eating.

A little later she asks:
“Can I try some of your Guatemala?”

I felt so mean when I fell off my chair laughing…..

^*1That would be salsa, sour cream and guacamole.

Of little green men and a nice man called Dave

Well, I’m back online properly – typing on the big machine with the proper screen and all. Turns out that unless M is right and its all a nasty Microsoft plot to get us all to buy Vista, that my crash was probably caused by little green men….umm, that means no-one has yet figured out why sh*t happens to computers.

Anyway, I called the Packard Bell helpline and expected at least 30 minutes of canned musack so was very surprised to be directed to ‘Dave’ with just a minimum of pressing the * and # keys on the phone. Dave was helpful too and didn’t ask me any stupid questions instead accepting that I knew that it wasn’t a hardware fault and had actually followed all the proper procedures to get to where I was. He diagnosed a faulty partition that even when the drive had been re-formatted hadn’t been properly removed. In order to access it I needed to access the Q: drive – I have a Q: drive I asked? Where’s that hidden? Well, seems its somewhere in my box and so I did as I was told. From there we removed all the partitions and my software and drivers started to load up just as they should.

Whole process (with Dave’s help) – about 10 minutes. So, there you go – there will be more entries later in the week – I haven’t told you about my trip yet after all…..

Nuts to it....

So, here I am, perched on the edge of the sofa with the baby laptop (which runs as fast as the average slug), on my knee. Why you may ask when I have a perfectly good desk with a nice shiny new(ish) desktop just waiting to be switched on and used. Wrong! Those of you with good memories will know just how new the desktop is so may be surprised to know that it isn't working quite the way it should.

Now I know I shouldn't name and shame, but I am seriously p'd off with Packard Bell (ooops, did I just mention their name?). A few days ago hubby turned on the PC to be met with the ominous message "config.sys is missing"! Now why this should make a hap'orth of difference I have no idea since that file isn't even used by XP, but it did and the damn machine refused to start.

I came up with the brilliant idea of using the recovery disc that came with the machine and in a foolish, fey and reckless moment stuck it in the drive and headed for the repair console. Within moments, my hard drive was being reformatted and then came a soothing message which was something like:

"Don't worry about a thing - you are just the moron who operates the machine. You know nothing but we do so we will put everything back to normal for you by transferring a few files" - actually it may have just said "copying files now", but you get the idea...

After an hour of reading this message and no lights flashing on the machine I turned it off, gave up and went to bed. In the morning in a much better mood (not) I loaded up my own version of XP but discovered it didn't have all the drivers I needed so it was back to the recovery disc to load them.. Guess what? It reformatted my hard drive again for me (so helpful...). At least this time after the soothing message ("Don't worry - we know best") it did actually copy some files. I then got anther message (hurrah!) saying "restoring operating system...this may take some time...... I was really good, I waited patiently, I resisted the temptation to throw the machine across the room, I didn't strangle anyone with the cables, I didn't even kick the cat with frustration probably 'cos I would've fallen over) - and eventually the message went, the screen went blank and then I got a dos prompt. I rebooted (thinking that XP would then start) and got...a dos prompt. I checked the contents of the hard drive....wow...an operating system...a dos one that is....

I am going back to the shop......I may be some time.....so if I don't blog for a while, you know why........

I’m hooo-ome…..!

Well, here I am, back in Blighty and wondering when my jet lag is going to creep up and smack me in the face. I feel remarkably chirpy for someone who has just been travelling for 26 hours straight up. OK OK so I have some aches and pains and stuff but I’m in a good mood all the same.

The trip went, ummm well, it went, shall we just say that? I have to say that I have had better ones, but it wasn’t an unmitigated disaster so there you go. I did at least get a suntan even if it wasn’t the best way to do it.

You see, on the first day I looked at my suntan cream and thought I ought to have something stronger (having gone from a British almost winter) to the desert state sun. Now I don’t use a huge factor sunscreen, its not that I’m exactly olive, but I just don’t burn that easy so I though that rather than opting for my normal 8, I’d push the boat out and go for some 20 that I found lurking in the bottom of my case. I lathered it on and sat out all day (I have no choice in this given the nature of my sport) and by the end of the day was looking exceedingly pink on the arms. This is like the first time I have burned since well, I can’t remember when and everyone was there trying to tell me how hot it was and how I shouldn’t be surprised.

Well, I was surprised and the next day decided to try the factor 8 just in case there was a problem with the ole lurking bottle. What happened? Well, I was fine, no more burning for me. So then I fished out the bottle of factor 20 and turned it upside down. Expiry 08/02. Oh dear…..I think that explains that then…..

Moi?

I feel stressed….. I am trying to prepare for a major trip away and before I go we are trying to get the bathroom finished. On top of that I have promised to get a coat sewn for someone before I go; the ironing pile is as tall as me; I have several family commitments that cannot be broken (unless of course I can get my brother to shift his 50th birthday); my mother is due home from Australia (and I am supposed to be picking her up from the station at silly o’clock on Thursday night^*1) and I am trying to do all this with my wrist in a splint. Do you get the idea that I am trying to do too much? Moi? Would I? Surely not?

…Of course, there will be those of you who say I should be getting on with all those things rather than writing my blog, but I need a break from it all godmammit (Janet…^*2)

Anyway, just in case I can’t slope away and update y’all^*3 again then I shall be back in 10 days time. After a full 36 hours sleep (which I anticipate needing as a very minimum) I shall come back and tell you all about my adventures and you never know, if the bathroom has come on a bit, I may even be able to do it clean too!

^*1 I guess that’s actually Friday morning in fact.
^*2Just gotta love that show….
^*3 This could be a clue to where I am going…

Oh no…it’s tiny!

So the bathroom is coming on gradually. The new wall is up, plastered and tiled. We are ready to get the plumber in to fit the new radiator – yippee! At this point I should mention that we picked the radiator out of a catalogue as we had a particular style in mind (well, I did anyway and hubby went along with it) and they didn’t have one in stock in the shop. So, it was ordered and delivered with the rest of the bathroom (which is sitting in the study behind me as I type) – this is where it has been for the last month! Anyway, the radiator came in a great big box which we opened at one end, checked the fixing pack was inside (i.e. make sure contents were complete) and then promptly taped shut again as the cats had decided that it was nothing more than a large cardboard play tunnel and were desperate to get inside.

Actually, on a bit of an aside, what is it about cats that they feel compelled to sit in cardboard boxes? Bugalugs is, at this moment, sat inside a box (which incidentally has no bottom) looking very smug and blinking up at me^*1. Why? He was in it within 20 seconds of me dropping it on the floor and will only leave it if I manage to find another box for him to try out.

Anyway, back to the radiator – we were ready for the plumber to fit it so unpacked it from its enormous box, removed all the polystyrene packing which was needed to fill such a big box and took it upstairs to the bathroom. It was at this point that we noticed that we have 9ft ceilings - well in fact we did know this before, but there’s nothing like a too-small radiator to show these things up! It looked tiny in the room – weedy I think was the expression hubby used. Worse than that – one of the legs was bent! So, that was it, I had to get on the phone and sit in an automated system listening to canned music for 20 minutes^*2. Finally I got through to someone who told me that the earliest they could get a replacement to me would be at least a month as they had none in stock but if I wanted I could take it back to the shop and see if I could swap it for another model. Result!

So, that was what we did – took it back and found something else. The something else which was what hubby had fancied in the very beginning so it's alls well that ends well!

^*1 All cat owners will know exactly what I mean by this blinking business…
^*2 This is my personal hate, hate, hate! If they are busy, why don’t we get an engaged signal. If they are not there why don’t they just not answer? I hate having to pay to listen to their choice of, muzak and press buttons which never get me anywhere. I have taken to doing nothing when they say “if you have a touch tone phone press the star key now”. Normally it at least gets you through to a person …who will then put you on hold and make you listen to their choice of muzak….grrrrr!!! Do you sense how much I hate these things yet?

More on major splatter.

Writing my last blog entry reminded me of a couple of major splatter incidents that have happened to us over the years and somehow the memory of them is much funnier than they seemed at the time….

Firstly, many years ago, I dropped a pyrex bowl full of spaghetti sauce in the kitchen and the base of the bowl hit the floor and bounced back up (amazingly the bowl stayed intact). The contents of that bowl flew out so far that they hit the ceiling and the walls either side of the room and we ended up having to redecorate just to cover up what looked horribly like dried blood splattered all over the place.

What made matters worse, was that having redecorated (in a colour that actually looked much, much nicer on the paint chart than it ever did on the walls), we had another little mishap. We had friends down for the weekend (the BUF and her VNSO in fact) and hubby went out to the kitchen to open (another) bottle of red wine. Just as the cork came out, the bottle slipped, hit the floor and (unlike the glass bowl), exploded. Red wine went absolutely everywhere, including halfway up the nearest (newly painted) wall. That did make a mess and we wiped off the worst of it before opening (another) bottle of red wine and getting back to wherever we were in the conversation.

The next day we noticed that the wall wasn’t really very clean and tried to wash off the rest of the wine. Well, it seems that Cabernet Merlot is quite a good dye and it wouldn’t scrub off. Never mind we thought, newish paint - we’ve still got paint in the tin – we’ll just give it another coat – job done! Well, the paint went on, the wine stain bled though. Another coat of paint – it bled though again. Stain proof paint? – Nope – bled though….and in the end we half panelled the walls just to hide it.

I just hate to think what the new owners thought when they bought the house and (probably) stripped off the panelling. They’re probably looking for bodies buried in the garden as I write this….

How to rebuild your wall – the messy way….

Well, after taking the wall down, we had to put one back up – it being a bathroom - privacy being an issue without a wall there^*1. We boarded out the new wall and then decided to mix up some plaster to skim the joints etc.

Hubby, being a trusting soul left the job of mixing the plaster to me while he went off to do something else. I tipped the water in the bucket and then added the plaster one dustpan worth at a time (I can’t do that thing where you lift the bag up and tip it – much too messy (and heavy)!). It is at this point I should tell you that rather that using the kitchen whisk (don’t laugh, it’s been done) I had attached our whirligig thing to the drill to make the job easy.

Now we’ve had our whirligig for a while and its getting a bit old, but over the years we’ve used it for all sorts from paint to cement to cake mix (well maybe not really cake mix – I’ve never actually needed to make a cake that big) and its coped admirably with everything so I really didn’t doubt it for one instance - even though its starting to get a bit rusty. Well, I should have doubted it, ‘cos as I stuck it in the bucket and turned it on, the whirlies came away from the gig (or at least the arms kinda parted company with the shaft) and as they flew out sideways, they produced a fountain of plaster, plaster powder and water which flew upwards and outwards at great velocity. I shrieked (well, anyone would have) and hubby came running. He came though the door (I think expecting to find me fallen over or electrocuted or something) and found me, the walls, the bath, the ceiling, the window and everything else, dripping with this gloopy mess. He laughed so much he nearly wet himself – sympathy – not a chance…..

^*1OK, OK there are two sides to a wall, I admit it!

Ummm, just how easily are walls supposed to fall down?

So, we are (finally) doing the bathroom. When we moved in (nearly 6 years ago) we decided it needed doing and have been putting off ever since. Well, a permanently dripping tap which turned into a running tap tipped me over the edge….”I’ve found a plumber”, I said “and here’s the bathroom catalogue – pick something!”

So, we settled down to lots of shopping, decided on suites and tiles and all sorts and finally made up our minds. So far, so good!

The next job was to start ripping out the old suite and generally make good before getting ready to re-tile and the get the new suite fitted. We live in an old house – its Victorian – which is very nice, but sometime means your floors and walls are a bit on the wonky and worn side. In fact, sometimes these things get patched up relatively unsuccessfully – usually by previous owners. One of my personal pet hates was the fact that we had Victorian 8” moulded skirting board on one wall and 1960’s 5” plain on another. It will all have to go we (I) decided and be replaced with new (Victorian style) skirtings. Well, we knew that the plaster on that one wall was a bit dodgy, and taking off the skirting would make a bit of a mess, but I’m OK at filling (I’ve had a lot of practice over the years on various walls, cars and of course the wrinkles on my face) so we thought we’d go for it. Well, after pulling it off, there was a bit of a mess and a bit higher up the wall a large chunk of plaster had fallen out. Never mind, we thought, we’d just hack back to a good bit and re-plaster the little hole as necessary.

Tap tap with hammer…..

Oops – umm, how did that happen (three feet away a 2ft by 1ft section of plaster lands on the floor)….

….never mind, we’ll just hack back to a good bit and re-plaster the 'little' hole as necessary.

Tap tap with hammer…..thud, crumble crumble…thud…oops…

“Umm, hubby – have you found a good bit of plaster yet?”

Well, finally we had hacked back to good plaster and we stood back and surveyed our work. There it was – a 2ft by 3 ft section up in one corner of the room and apart from that the whole wall lay in bits on the floor.

“So, that’ll be rebuilding the wall then, before we start the tiling?”

Good Ole US of A

So, I’ve been away for a couple of days and while hubby stayed at home and hacked all the tiles off the bathroom walls, I was off gadding about at important meetings and stuff. In addition there was also some preparation for the latest upcoming trip which is going to be 10 days in Arizona at a major event.

So our conversation over the dinner table turned to the forthcoming trip and it went something like this. EO^*1 was getting quite animated:

• EO: “It’s brilliant that we’re going to Arizona isn’t it...?”
• Me: “Well, yes, I’m really looking forward to it”.
• EO: “…and I was in touch with my friend TJ and he tells me that the Americans are going to be there….”
• Me: “Well, they would be - its Arizona…”
• EO (in a rather more excited tone): “…but the Americans are going to be there…”
• Me: “I think they’ll be a lot of Americans there…”
• EO: “…no, I mean the Americans”
• WW: “I still think there’ll be lots and lots of Americans there – you do know Arizona is in America don’t you?”

…at this point EO nearly threw her dinner at me^*2 until she realised that I was deliberately misunderstanding her to wind her up…I knew all along that she meant the American team with whom she is quite friendly and who will also be at the same event.

^*1 Eeyore’s owner – well, not his real owner obviously ‘cos that would be Christopher Robin wouldn’t it?
^*2 There are worse things you can do with mass catering….like eat it!

Well, I did promise…

So I did promise to tell you the tale of the big bad cable tv man and the even bigger badder satellite man (or was it the other way round) so here it is.

Once upon a time, there was a hubby and his warped woman and they lived happily in a little house not too far from what used to be a coal mine. They liked watching television, especially science fiction programmes like Stargate and warped woman was also very, very keen on 24. 24 was halfway through the series and getting very exciting so she eagerly looked forward to Sunday nights when she would watch it and then phone ‘A’ and have a good chat about what had happened.

Time passed by happily until one Wednesday night when hubby and WW were watching the late news. It said that Virgin Media were dropping Sky channels at midnight. Well, hubby and WW were a bit mystified at this but since Virgin had only just taken over their cable channel they thought it couldn’t really apply to them and so went to bed and dreamed of spaceships and Jack Bauer.

In the morning hubby phoned WW from work – “Have you checked the TV today?” he asked, “Do we still have Sky?” When WW looked, Sky was gone from the channel line-up and there was just a message from Virgin saying that due to a rise in price they would no longer be supplying Sky Channels. There was much weeping wailing and gnashing of teeth over this – no more Stargate, no more Jack – what were they to do?

Well, as with many tales, this one too has a happy ending as WW phoned the Sky company and the nice men from Sky came and fitted a shiny dish to the back of the house. Since it points straight at the sky, it gets all the science fiction straight from the spaceships and Jack is back saving the universe from the bad guys. All the services seem to work better than the cable did and through some quirk (yet another mistake by the cable company in fact), its costing less too! WW and hubby are now very happy and think that every cloud has a silver lining.

The End!

Actually, this isn’t strictly the end, as I simply wish to add a comment. There has been a certain amount of name throwing via the press between Sky (the Rupert Murdoch Empire) and Virgin (the Richard Branson Empire). It seems that with the renewal of a contract Sky wanted to raise their prices – they think that since they have the best channels (well, they have apart from the BBC) then they should get a fair (or unfairly high depending on who you listen to) price. Virgin didn’t want to pay any more than they were already paying and so said that unless Sky asked for a more reasonable figure, they wouldn’t pay up and therefore wouldn’t continue to have the right to broadcast Sky channels. They also figured that people would stick with them having decided that Sky channels weren’t that good after all.

I might have agreed with them, or at least sympathised with them except for one thing. In their infinite wisdom they didn’t see that we, as customers, needed to know what was going on. They chopped our channels without bothering to tell us in advance and without apology afterwards. In my book this was inexcusable. They have my e-mail address (heck they supply it), my phone number and my address. One e-mail could have been sent to every customer at a pence cost to the company, but no, nothing, zilch, nada. So, we continue with the phone and broadband until they pull the next stunt and the TV comes from the sky (literally!) ….and yes, silver linings and all that, it has worked out cheaper – about £15 a month (no, I don’t know how either!)

Oooh the pain

I haven’t blogged anything for a whole week now. This is partly ‘cos:

1. hubby has had a week off (yay!)
   
2. we no longer have a bathroom (see note 1.)
3. I have a baddie wrist (tendonitis) – this means I am only typing with one hand and it’s a pain in the ….wrist actually (well, what did you think I was going to say?)

I fully intend catching up soon with Virgin Media and Sky One (please note, I’m not as mad as I was), tales from the plumber’s life (or at least why we no longer have a bathroom) and an amusing tale from (almost) over the pond as well as other such drivel just as soon as I can type with two hands.

Magnetism

So I was just in Tesco and I saw a "Magnetic Excercise Bicycle" for sale.
What's that about?
Does it mean that for storage you can just stick it to the fridge or what???

I think I have been very quiet lately…

I think I’ve been quite quiet lately in my blog^*1. This is mostly ‘cos I have a completely utterly boring life and I didn’t want to write blah blah blah, blah blah blah and all that stuff.

Seriously, I don’t know if it’s true that I have a boring life, as I do get to zot off all over the place on trips and stuff, but my life is not exciting in a sky diving, roller coaster kind of way. I wonder sometimes about what is (or what seems to be) an exciting life to another person. F’rinstance, is my life exciting to someone else, or do you have to be Victoria Beckham (you will love how verbose she is on this, her very own blog), before your life gets exciting or do you maybe have to be Ellen McArthur ? Do you suppose that poor ole Ellen when she is halfway across the Atlantic, freezing her nuts off (or would be if she had any) suddenly sits down and goes, ‘Gosh, isn’t this exciting?’ – or do you suppose that she ties another knot (or whatever it is she does out there) and thinks - ‘Gosh, this is boring – wish I had a telly so I could watch Sky One^*2’. Maybe Victoria Beckham after doing her 3000th crunch before breakfast with her kid constantly interrupting her and wanting to know if he can have spaghetti hoops for breakfast – with marmalade – thinks ‘Gosh, this is boring – I wish I could do something different with my life.’

What I’m trying to get at here is that surely it’s all just a matter of perspective. As they say (whoever they are) one man’s meat is another man’s poison but I guess mostly people think that something (anything) different from what they do would be more exciting. Grass is greener and all that…

As for me, well, often I think that all this excitement stuff is overrated. Give me a boring old night in with my best friend and a bottle of red or a good book and a nice warm room and I can be happy. That’s not to say that I’d trade in the exciting stuff, but it’s nice to have a balance…

^*1 I had to add the term "in my blog" here as everyone who knows me knows that I cannot be quiet for any length of time at all. The term chatterbox was invented for people like me....
^*2 This is another blog entry and one that I am still too furious to blog about ….watch this space for ranting and raving soon….

Why do some things make you feel so guilty?

I just had one of those highly inspirational e-mails – you know the kind of thing I’m sure, but this one said:

“Never save something for a special occasion. Every day in your life is a special occasion”.

Now, it’s not the sentiment that I want to draw your attention to – even though I actually think that one is one of the best around. In fact, many of these messages have really good things to say or for us to think about, but I often don’t like to receive them. So why is this – it’s got nothing to do with the message, or the person who sent it to me – but everything to do with those horrid few sentences at the end. You know the bits I mean – the bits that say forward this to 5 of your friends or you will die of Dengue fever or forward this to 5 of your friends or suffer bad luck for a year or forward this to 5 of your friends and something good will happen or even forward this to 15 of your friends and you will win the lottery on Saturday! Why, why, why??? I am now taking to stripping out all of that and sending them on to the people to whom I think they will make a difference but secretly I fear that Dengue fever is just waiting around the corner. What is it about the power of words, that those delivered by total strangers are able to make me feel guilty about not forwarding them – and – I know I am not alone! It’s this whole guilt thing that leads to people forwarding chain letters around the world because they are too frightened not to ………

Well, I think I've found the solution to nasty tropical diseases for anything I get that I don't want to send on - it's Chain Letters Anonymous!

By golly it’s dark in the sticks….

So I went away (but as you can see I came back so that’s OK). I had a pretty good weekend (this is an understatement as things went very well and so I actually had a very good weekend) but as usual at these things I ended up absolutely pooped! ^*1

After a late meeting on the Friday night I finally got back to my room and decided to have a bit of a relax and read before going off to sleep. Now I should have realised that there was going to be a problem straight off, but I am optimistic little soul and just though it would be OK. You see, the light switch for the bedside light was mounted on the wall, kinda half behind the headboard. So, I propped a couple of pillows up against the headboard, turned on the light and picked up my book. I relaxed back against the pillows and the light went out! I leaned forward and it came back on! I shifted the pillows just a bit and discovered that the light when on off on off on off every time I breathed in and out which was really just plain annoying and not conducive to a nice relaxing read!

So I got up and got a pair of socks out of my suitcase and wedged them between the headboard and the wall, made myself a cup of hot chocolate (since I was up and halfway to the kettle anyway) and settled back down. The socks did it nicely and the light stayed on. So, there I was, just getting to a juicy bit in the book and I leaned forward to pick up my cup. Unbeknownst to me, the socks escaped and fell down the back of the headboard and when I leaned back against the pillows, yep, you’ve guessed it - the lights went out!

Well, this was just getting a tad annoying by this stage, but now I was missing my socks so I got back out of bed and got down on the floor and started fishing under the bed with my walking stick. I knew it was a bad idea to lean on the bed to do this, ‘cos just as I managed to hook them from the furthest corners under the bed (thankfully there was no monster^*2 under there) I pushed a bit too hard on the bed and the light went out again. This time, when I shifted my weight the light stayed off and so there I was in pitch blackness (this place is out in the boondocks so no street lights) in a strange room and with no socks to boot.

Well, finally I shuffled around and found the right switch and eventually got my socks back. It was sometime around this point that I realised that I had neglected to lock my door when I came in so anyone could have walked in and found me with my a*se stuck in the air and my head under the bed and the only explanation I would have for it was that the lights kept going out unexpectedly!

^*1In fact so much so that after I got home I started drifting off to sleep whilst watching CSI – and it was a good one! True it wasn’t the series with Gary Sinise (I have a soft spot) but all the same, there I was eyes slipping shut like some old lady in the corner…
^*2Which is good because I didn't have one of these handy.

That’s it – I’m off

Just thought I’d better stick a post up to tell you I’m not sticking a post up (am I making sense??). I shall be away for a few days so there will be no new entries until next week. Now I know you are all bitterly disappointed and wondering how you will fill your empty days, but I’m sure you can manage.

I shall be back after the weekend with tales of derring do, fun, excitement and really wild things (and if nothing exciting has happened I shall make some stuff up!).

In the meantime, take a deep breath – hit the big Google button and let me know if you find anything exciting…..

I have been nominated for an award

I have been nominated for an award, which has totally mystified me as I have no idea why they thought of me. Now don’t get me wrong, I know I’ve done a couple of unusual things in my life that are noteworthy (like having spinal surgery for one), but I didn’t expect to be nominated for anything, let alone this.

Let me explain – out of the blue I had an e-mail from a college tutor saying he wanted to see me. Now I resisted this initially ‘cos he’s not my type (OJ!) but was intrigued so toddled off to see him. He had decided to nominate me for an adult learner award – as a couple of years ago I decided (somewhat foolishly) to do a school exam in physics. Now in itself that doesn’t sound too mad, except that I had never done any science in school and was having some problems comprehending what an atom was, let alone trying to understand such alien concepts as pressure, torque, moments, magnetism, waves and quantum mechanics^*1

So, mad woman that I am, not only did I do a GCSE in the subject, but got persuaded to carry on and do an A level too. Funnily enough, I mostly enjoyed it (apart from the maths and apart from the aforementioned quantum mechanics….) and I thought that that was that. Having learnt why sticks look bent in water and how electricity gets down wires and also that neither of those things have anything to do with little green men was enough for me….

So, why nominate me for the award? He wouldn’t say, just that I was the first person he thought of. I’m thinking at this stage that there is an age limit associated with this and it’s none too flattering – still regardless of the reason I’m chuffed just the same!

^*1 Have I lost you yet?

Snow pictures

Well, I promised some, so here they are:

Well, above is proof that it was snowing alright....

...and on the left we have an idiot driver who thinks that it's just fine and dandy to whack a couple of cars as he slithers his way along. (This photo doesn't show just how steep our hill is, just how icy the road was and just how stupid he was to even think of doing what he tried to do).

Maybe I should give him a PWSBK award?







I love it though - it always looks so pretty - all that fairy dust on the trees - just like someone's been out with the sugar sifter!


Hope you like the photos.....

...I guess that'll be it for snow and excitement for another ten years so I thought I ought to post them now while I have the opportunity!

So sad...

Today I heard the very sad news that someone from one of the scoliosis forums died after complications from her scoliosis surgery. She was due to be fused from T6 to L3 through a posterior only incision which is supposed to be the most risk free way to do it. She had a very experienced surgeon but the anaesthetist made a mistake which meant that blood ended up being pumped into her lungs and she suffered a massive stroke which ultimately led to her death.

Her surgery took place exactly 12 months after my surgery and so I felt some kind of connection with this lady whose thoughts, concens and fears were the same as for us all. She was only 31 and will be missed by us all on the forum.

It is very sad and I want to join in with so many other people in sending warm thoughts and sympathy to her family....

Ah, snow. Don’t you just love it?

So we had snow. We don’t do this very often in the Southern half of Britain, let alone where I live so it is always the cause of much excitement and confusion. Me, I think it’s great to look at but here’s the rub, it’s cold stuff and even before someone shoved a yard of metal in my back I didn’t like the cold. Now I have my own personal inbuilt cooling rod, I like it even less – except through the window when it is very pretty and sometimes fun and always great to take pictures of (I shall stick some up for you in a few days…).

We haven’t had significant snow since we moved in here 6 years ago and they forecast that Thursday was to be the exception to that. They closed the schools in preparation – the news reporters all took up heir allotted posts at the areas worst (potential) accident black-spots and we all looked to the skies. Well, when the snow started falling you could just see the country’s weather forecasters all smiling glibly and patting each other on the back for having got it right (remembering at all times that this is the country where Michael Fish famously said that there was no hurricane on the way). In fact, they forecast that it would snow from the wee small hours until lunchtime and this is exactly what it did. Hardy souls like hubby went to work and the rest of us just decided to stay in and do things Friday instead as the forecast for then was for nothing more than a bit of rain….

So, Friday, hubby goes to work as normal and a bit later I looked out the window to find that it was snowing again – completely un-forecast! It looked bad too – I couldn’t see the hill behind the house but figured that it would all be over soon and pretty much ignored it. An hour or so later I looked out the front window to discover that the hill outside was covered in snow and was freezing fast. People had started sliding sideways down the hill and we were gathering casualties by the hour as they bounced from one pavement to another hitting cars and walls as they went. Some seemed to think the best thing to do was to accelerate all the way down the hill (presumably with their eyes closed) and others seemed to think that just locking up the wheels and wiggling the steering wheel from side to side (also presumably with their eyes closed ) was the way to go. My car was protected for several hours by someone who missed it by about 2 inches but then got stuck diagonally in the road just ensuring that everyone had to go round him (and me)! I have to say that I spent a large part of the day in the window holding my breath…..but thankfully my little car survived the afternoon - safe but a bit frightened!

Occasionally someone decided that they could make it up the hill (presumably because they thought that they were a superb driver whose Renault Clio has better traction than anybody else’s) and a lot of people had to swallow their pride and reverse (or at least slide) back down again. I saw one guy impressively sail up the hill in a Subaru Impreza – reckon he must have had spiked tyres he did so well, but apart from the odd Jeep or Landrover (who are obviously experts as they plainly do not buy these vehicles just to do the school run...) he was the only one who made it. Actually, that’s a fib – a Rover made it earlier in the day, but he hit 3 cars that I could see – an almost new Rover – not a nice way to treat it….

Anyway, for quite some time I was able to judge how deep the snow was (about 6”) by the pile on the top of my car until some ‘orrible little oik decided to scrape some off for snowballs – OK so it gave me a measure of how much had fallen in the two hours (about 2”) until another equally ‘orrible little oik decided to do it again. I bet they are exactly the kind of children who grow up to write their name in the snow too….My my, that makes me sound like a grumpy old git myself, but I really do like the pristine-ness (is there such a word?) of fresh snow.

So, the forecasters were wrong again and the country ground to a halt for another 24 hours. I was just grateful that it cleared enough for us to get away to PTV and HLW for the weekend – I was horribly afraid that they would be eating posh food without us and that we would have to have beans on toast or whatever I could dig out of the freezer as the news had reported that the shelves in Tesco were empty after panic buying! Winter eh? Two days of snow and the world goes mad….

A comment on yesterday

So, a year and a day eh? (don’t worry, I shan’t do this every day- ergo- a year and a day, a year and two days, a year and….well, you get the picture!).

I just thought I’d leave a brief note on further updates on my back (for those of you mad enough to want to check up on me). I intend doing an update every 3 months for this first (second) year and then we’ll see if there’s any point in doing any more. In the meantime, there’s always space in my blog for more dribble - oops, sorry, that should have said drivel, I was just thinking about chocolate at the time and it sort of slipped out. No, don’t be so gross, I didn’t need to mop up the keyboard or anything…..

It’s my anniversary….

…I’m 12 months post op today and what a wild ride it’s been!

Be warned, this is a long post too…

It is hard to believe that in the last 12 months I have been opened up, had my insides rearranged during surgery, had 2 ribs removed, ground up and stuck back inside me in a different place and had a couple of large chunks of metal shoved inside me. I’ve had my lung collapsed and been in ITU for less time than anyone ever expected. I’ve had nerve damage that meant I had to learn to walk all over again, let alone learning to do it a different way because my balance has been completely changed. I’ve bought one pair of very funky walking sticks and am contemplating a second set. I have taken my wheelchair to Belgium, Czech Republic and China and have exceeded my wildest dreams of timing during my recovery. That’s some ride, isn’t it?

Getting this surgery done seemed to take over my life. It was never far from my thoughts before the op – when I wasn’t wishing I could get it over with, I was wondering if it was really necessary at all. Talk about the sublime to the ridiculous, but it’s true, that’s the way it was. Then of course, it happened and my life for the next few months was just plain hard work – from those first moments when (excuse me for being gross) I had to have help to wipe my own bum; through the effort it took just to get a drink once hubby had gone back to work; and then all those exercises that I had from the physio – it’s not the easy route by any means…

Having said that, it was the most worthwhile thing that I have done in recent years and indeed it may turn out to be the most worthwhile thing I ever do for my future health. I would go through it again if I had to and that’s saying something!

There are lots of reasons to consider surgery like this, but none so compelling as the prospect of doom and gloom in the future. The trouble is, that it’s the hardest one to quantify too – there’s always the feeling that you will cope whatever happens over time. Whatever pain you are in, well, you know what its like; you fear that things will get worse instead of better or that the recovery will be so painful and stressful that it isn’t worth trying. Of course, the decision is a hard one to make and that’s especially true if you have borderline curves (say 40 degrees). Of course, for me, (although I had had a pair of 45 degree curves for around 20 years without them ever moving) I more recently had a documented history of progression – my curves weren’t just progressing, they were accelerating. It seems they shifted the normal 1-2 degrees a year for a few years and then started galloping along at 6 degrees a year. 6 degrees! That’s 12 degrees in 2 years, 18 in 3 years etc – just do the maths. Bad news, when you start from a 75 degree curve!

So, I got it done and I am happy. I have still ended up with what some people would consider significant scoliosis (with curves of 30 degrees thoracic and 33 degrees lumbar). That will never go away and in time, my thoracic curve may shift and need more surgery – not at the moment though (and hopefully not ever). I still get significant back pain and still get the heartburn problems. That’s the bad news though and sounds worse than it is because all my symptoms have been massively reduced – probably by 50% - which coincidentally is about the amount of correction they managed to get in my curves. Now I wonder if there’s any link between those two facts…..

So, that’s it really – I get less pain now and that should always be true. My curve hasn’t moved for 12 months and that should also always be true. My heart and lungs are no longer in danger. True. My internal organs ditto. I am fit and healthy. So that’s all the practical stuff, but then there’s the other stuff which is just a nice bonus - like gaining 2 inches in height and being able to wear some clothes that I never thought I would. The operation has given me all that and was so worth all the agonising, all the risks and all the effort. If anyone out there is contemplating going through it, think about it carefully, consider your own circumstances, but don’t fail to get it done just through fear of the unknown.

Comments on toplessness...

So, I posted my topless photos and went away for the weekend. When I came home I checked my statcounter and discovered that over the weekend I had had about 5 times as many hits than I usually get on a weekend (and for once I am not exaggerating!). I mentioned this to hubby as I was mystified by the sudden increase in readership.

"Ah", says hubby sagely "that'll be all those teenage boys Googling 'topless photos' while their parents are out doing the weekend shopping."

Oops....


Interestingly too, I am fascinated to learn that there is now a verb to Google although Google themselves want to try and keep it out of the dictionary...it's an amazing (and confusing) world isn't it?

Cars…don’t you just love ‘em….

So there I was, sitting in my nice comfy chair in a nice warm lounge waiting for the dinner to cook and hubby to come home. I was warm and snuggly and happy with life as I’d had a day where nothing had gone wrong (don’t you just love them!). Anyway, all that was about to change as hubby came in looking very cold and peaky and muttering things about doom and gloom and the state of the world. “We’ve got a problem” he says – “the car window is broken!”. Well, you know that thing where twenty thoughts all rush through your head at once? Yes? Well mine went something like this:

• The car window is broken...
• Someone broke it...
• Someone broke in...
• They will have stolen something...
• That means insurance...
• Even if they didn’t steal anything it still means insurance because the window was broken...
• Oh no, we’ll have to call the police because otherwise the insurance won’t pay up...
• The police are useless they’ll take all night just to do the paperwork...
• Tea will spoil...
• B*gger, there goes my evening...
• And so on and so on up to twenty…

Well, that was it, coat on, and toddled outside to examine the damage. Turns out, that the mind race had been completely up the spout, it’s just that the poor window had fallen off its mountings and disappeared inside the door. There was just this little triangle of glass poking up out of the gap! No wonder hubby had looked cold and peaky – he'd had to drive back from the car park on the coldest night of the year with just a 3” triangle of glass between him and the outside world! Anyway, the electric motor was still working OK, so between us we managed to poke the button and push and pull the glass until it at least covered most of the hole and the evening wasn’t spoiled at all!

Just in case you want to know what has happened to it now, I took it to the garage and P@NGD managed to get it shut – he also disconnected the switch so it’s fixed where it is just for the time being. We’ll get it sorted when the weather is warmer I think…

On the subject of cars, I took extreme pleasure this week in watching the 50,000 roll round in my little car. I also took it for its MOT and it passed first time. Now you may think that this is nothing exceptional for a car with such a low mileage, but when you consider that it is just a few months short of its 24th birthday, I think its pretty good. Now, next year it will be 25 years old and that will really be something – I definitely see the need for a party then….

More topless photos

I just realised that I promised you all some more topless photos, so today I got topless and took them. Focus isn’t that great, but what do you expect with the camera balanced on top of the TV and the curtains closed so the lighting was poor. What do you mean, why didn’t I open the curtains? I was topless to take these, why do you think? I know we have a nice big fence, but I wouldn’t put it past the kid in the upstairs flat across the back lane to be hanging out of the skylight with a pair of binoculars^*1 ….


Anyway, here are the results for you. I am now not far off 12 months post op and as you can see my scar is really very, very neat. All the redness is fading well and although I’m sure it will never disappear, its hardly ugly. The second photo also really shows up the fact that they didn’t do too much about the rib hump and I guess its worse that a lot of people would like in my situation. For me, I don’t care – I can’t really see it without twisting to look in a mirror – actually that’s not true. Pre-op I could twist to look in the mirror, but now – hah! Twist? No way…! So.. I can’t see it and if anyone else can, who cares?

Actually on the subject of twisting/bending etc, it is surprising how you can cope without it. I can still bend from the hips, its just my back doesn’t bend and I can still twist at the neck (but not in a Linda Blair kind of way) – in fact, my physio recently was surprised at how I could pick stuff up or look behind me with really minimal movement through my back. Good news really even if I did want to spend my life with hunky men at my feet picking up stuff that I drop (but not on purpose of course!)….

^*1 Actually, I have no idea if there is such a kid, or even if the house with the roof-light is spilt onto flats but a girl can get paranoid when she’d topless - all sorts of scary things flash through your brain….