Peter's Hospital Diary

Felicity has gone off to another event – the Henley Regatta, although it is debateable whether there will be more water falling on the Thames than is in it, judging by another downpour we had here this morning. In fact I have now taken the bourgainvillea back indoors after I found it standing in a pot of water this morning. It will, I hope, dry out a bit in the conservatory. The lemon tree also looks wet, but is a bit heavy for me to manage on my own. It seems pretty healthy, although it has shed a couple of embryonic lemons. However it must be tasty as there is evidence of caterpillar damage to a couple of leaves (and I picked one off it this morning).

I am now pretty much recovered from the week-end of lecturing. My mouth seems slightly better, I hope a result of carefully applying the Adcortyl to the affected areas and the continued regime of softer food. I have my appointment with the oral team on Thursday week (12th) so it will be interesting to see what they say. I also had my last two vaccinations this morning, the last diptheria, polio and tetanus and the first hepatitis A vaccine. The next one will be a ‘flu jab oin October, and a booster Hep A next January, so in a couple of weeks I will be able to use the other ointment that I obtained on the last visit to Guy’s.

I am considering a couple more tweaks to the blog server this week, so it may be off-line for some short periods. Persevere – it will be back. The changes will probably be in the evening, and I hope it will be off-line for no more than an hour at a time. (For those of geek persuasion, I am going to change the file and disk system to Logical Volumes, rather than fixed size partitions, which involves creating the logical volumes, copying the various file systems to them, then reformatting the old partitions to logical volumes)

Onwards and Upwards!

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Up in Worcester where I spent the last two days on another step on “getting my life back” by taking part again the LeukaemiaCARE training programme. I was a bit worried about the lecturing and teaching because of my mouth and the effect that talking for so much would have on it, and more importantly, the effect on the intelligibility for the course students, but it proved not to be a problem, and as I was co-presenting with another volunteer, Mike, it wasn’t too much of a strain on my voice as Mike took over the difficult bits! Thanks Mike!

It was an enjoyable two days and so good to be getting back another element of my life. There were also some funny moments! We went out for a meal in the evening, and I very carefully chose food that I thought would be bland and soft. However the restaurant was a bit busy, and when the main course arrived, it was with chips (and I had asked for rice). That was changed, and it came back with rice, and I took a mouthful… and discovered it was Piri-piri rice with bits of chilli in it! I dropped my fork and legged it to the bar for a glass of water to put the fire out! It did the trick, and my meal was then served with boiled rice – and all was well! Other positives were that I was able to manage a cooked breakfast (bacon, mushrooms and scrambled eggs at the B&B. I have to say that I have been pretty tired today though!

There have been comments about the lack of news on another star of the blog, the bourgainvillea! So here is a photo of it, with the rejuvenated lemon tree! I am a bit concerned about both of them with the rain, as neither of them like to have permanently wet roots, so if the heavy rain persists, I might have to bring them indoors.

And finally, another photo of Olivia (and a similar one posted in gallery). She came over last night to stay to give Vicki a good night’s sleep, and she was good as gold. She was a little unsettled at first, but went to sleep at about 11pm, slept for 3 hours, then after more food, sleop for another 5 hours. A bit more food and she slept for another 3. Hard to believe that she is now nearly 6 months old – and of course 6 months since I came out of Southampton General. Reading the posts at that time (in the January archive) it seems hard to believe… On that subject, you might want to pop over to say ‘Hi’ to a brave man at John’s Blog where he is having a bit of a tough time

And finally, there is a bit of news over at PaytientCrime!

So a good week with some major milestones passed – Onwards and Upwards!

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