{"id":100,"date":"2006-06-05T10:57:27","date_gmt":"2006-06-05T09:57:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.boraston.net\/blog\/?p=100"},"modified":"2006-06-05T10:57:27","modified_gmt":"2006-06-05T09:57:27","slug":"monday-summer-at-last","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.boraston.net\/blog\/post-hospital\/monday-summer-at-last\/","title":{"rendered":"Monday&#8230; summer at last?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I was going to write this last night, but after two glorious days, the skies clouded over and we heard the rumble of thunder &#8211; however this morning the sun is shining again and I am writing this sitting out in the garden&#8230;<img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.boraston.net\/blog\/images\/Jun_06.jpg\" alt=\"Me!\" ALIGN=\"LEFT\"\/>and if you look carefully you can see a pair of colourful shorts  &#8211; bought in Dakar, Senegal some years ago &#8211; that I have been living in this weekend!<\/p>\n<p>And it was a good weekend, the BBQ was pressure washed and put back into use, I mowed the lawn, and found it much less tiring than last time &#8211; another good sign!  My sense of taste continues to improve slowly, although my sense of smell is still pretty poor.  However he white wine that I drank at the wekend &#8211; purely in the interests of research, you understand &#8211; tasted very pleasant!  I also enjoyed some of my father-in-law&#8217;s lemon  marmalade this morning &#8211; the first time in several months as it has previously tasted too bitter to me.  Just as well as I noticed some <img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.boraston.net\/blog\/images\/lemon.jpg\" alt=\"Lemon tree\" ALIGN=\"RIGHT\"\/>embryonic lemons on the lemon tree (or perhaps bush might be more accurate) this morning &#8211; by the time they are ripe in the autumn I hope I&#8217;ll be enjoying the odd G&#038;T!  And, we  finally got in touch with tiler, who is going to tile the conservatory at the end of the month.<\/p>\n<p>On the health side, my skin condition is improving &#8211; helped by liberal application of the diprobase.  In particular the swelling on my right leg and ankle (which Linny thought was caused by leaky capillaries) seems much less pronounced &#8211; perhaps because of the and the Dermovate (the steroid cream) I have been applying to them.<\/p>\n<p>I have taken another step forward and started wearing the contact lenses again.  I did start a few weeks ago, but had to stop &#8211; not because of a problem with my eyes &#8211; although Mark&#8217;s (fellow patient) GvHd did affect his eyes &#8211; but because my hands were so rough I couldn&#8217;t clean them.  However the skin on my hands is pretty much back to normal, and my feet are getting there.  I might even have to trim my hair soon!  (First time in 5 months!)<\/p>\n<p>Which brings me to a slightly more serious note &#8211; there are lots of unforseen or less obvious  consequences of these side effects.  Mine with the contact lenses is trivial, but if you look at John&#8217;s blog (you have been looking, haven&#8217;t you?) you will see that the consequences of his GvHd are much more severe and have affected his mobility and quality of life.  I&#8217;m sure he won&#8217;t mind me saying that I admire his stoicism &#8211; and I&#8217;m sure he would appreciate your comments of encouragement!<\/p>\n<p>Hmm &#8211; I see the sky has clouded over and a cool breeze has appeared from somewhere &#8211; maybe that <strong>was<\/strong> summer&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>Onwards and upwards  (By the way, anyone know how to get rid of red spider mites &#8211; two have just been squashed on the keyboard &#8211; leaving red smears everywhere!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I was going to write this last night, but after two glorious days, the skies clouded over and we heard the rumble of thunder &#8211; however this morning the sun is shining again and I am writing this sitting out in the garden&#8230;and if you look carefully you can see a pair of colourful shorts [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-100","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-post-hospital"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.boraston.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/100","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.boraston.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.boraston.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.boraston.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.boraston.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=100"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.boraston.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/100\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.boraston.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=100"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.boraston.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=100"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.boraston.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=100"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}