Deja vu (all over again)

Forgive me for plugging this again but while real world sponsorship is going well, the virtual handover of virtual dosh is virtually non-existent (said with tongue firmly in cheek, I know everyone is waiting to see if he completes the ride first).

Here's a copy of of the Cap'n's sponsor form just to show that everything is kosher:

Period. Full stop

Well folks, I'm glad to say that I came home yesterday, a mere 2 days post op. And what a trial those 2 days were The operation itself went very well and only took an hour or so but I was in the recovery room for almost 4 hours after struggling to come round from the anaesthetic.

I came back up to my hospital room at around 2pm and was soon feeling well enough to have a cup of tea and some water although I still had some nausea. I had expected to be in quite a bit of pain and indeed I was but it wasn't where I expected it to be, it was much deeper, I thought it was coming from my bowel. Damn that houmous, I thought. What on Earth possessed me to eat such a thing prior to surgery?

Fearing that I need to do a number 2 I asked to be helped to get out of bed. I struggled over to the loo, bear in mind that I was hooked up to a morphine pump and an insulin/glucose drip through one hand and I had a foley catheter plumbed into my bladder. Unfortunately nothing was forthcoming so I struggled back into my room got changed out of the surgical gown and into a clean nightie and sat next to the bed for a while.

My supper arrived and as I thought the nausea may have been down to not eating since the night before I thought I'd try and eat a sandwich. I mananged about 3 quarters of it before I started to feel very sick and just Capt Scarlet arrived I started throwing up violently. The odd thing was that it was just green water, bilious water that sloshed out of the bowl and all over me and my nice clean nightie. The Capt said it was just like that scene from The Exorcist and expected my head to start rotating.

Back to a hospital gown for the night. All through the night I was in severe pain and felt terrible again, I was given 3 different kinds of anti-sickness medicine and told off for not using the morphine pump often enough.

The next morning I managed some breakfast and was able to have a wash and changed into my only other clean nightwear which was a pair of M&S pyjamas ... while still sporting the catheter which created quite an interesting silhouette.
It was discovered that the canulas in my hand supplying morphine and other goodies were not actually going into the vein, they were just delivering the fluid to beneath my skin so they were removed leaving me with a lovely black and blue hand which is twice the size of normal.

After lunch - a shoe leather/cottage pie which I was unable to eat on grounds of it being inedible and feeling nauseous again, I was whisked off for dialysis.

I arrived at the unit feeling really sick but put it down to the wheelchair ride over - I was supposed to have been brought over in my comfy bed but the only bed route through the hospital to the unit lay through a ward which had just been closed to a c. dificle outbreak. My alternatives were to be taken by ambulance to the unit or go by wheelchair which would involved being wheeled outside on a bitterly cold sleety, snowy day. Not wishing to be a burden on the NHS I opted for the wheelchair.

At the dialysis unit I settled into my chair for a snooze but woke up feeling very queer indeed. I reached for one of the sick bowls that I had to hand just in time as I exploded with green watery nastiness all over again. This time it was so violent that it bounced off the bottom of the bowl and ricocheted all over my face, head, chest, arms, everything was covered. I was so upset and embarassed that I just burst into tears while the clinic manager, God bless her, cleaned me up and got me into yet another hospital gown.

Something was clearly wrong with me so I insisted on seeing a doctor when I returned to the ward. She informed me that most likely my bowel had suffered some paralysis during the operation. Bowels are sulky things apparently and if you touch them as you may well have to do during a hysterectomy, they tend to sulk and stop working for a while.

Well that nasty little tale brings us up to my last day in hospital wherein I was determined to come home. My sulky bowel has started to move things along although it isn't doing it quietly or gently. I'm up and about, had a shower this morning, washed & blow dried my hair, still having a little difficulty getting out of bed unaided but other than that I've made a miraculous recovery.

I haven't noticed any ill effects from being surgically placed in the menopause yet, but I can tell you it feels damn good not to have to go through a monthly period ever again. I have had so much trouble over the years, pain and embarrassment as pads fail to hold everything and I'm in a public place with a huge bloodstain on my clothes or office chair. Never again. Fantastic!!

Blast off

Well this is it, I'm off to the hospital in a couple of hours and the surgery is scheduled for first thing tomorrow morning. I think everything will be fine, I'm not as worried about it as I was the first time round although I'm questioning the wisdom of indulging my craving for my home made houmous (1 can of pinto beans/chickpeas/cannelini beans or whatever you have to hand, half a jar of sundried tomatoes, 1-2 cloves of garlic, olive oil & salt to taste - whiz them all up in a food processor, enjoy with crisp vegetable sticks) so close to surgery that will leave me confined to bed for a couple of days.


Enter the ICHC online Poker Cats Contest!

Fat bottomed girls*

Captain Scarlet, along with several nurses, perhaps a doctor and at least one patient are all taking part in a sponsored bike ride in a couple of weeks to raise funds for the dialysis unit. I would have a go myself but what with being only 2 weeks post-hysterectomy by then and it being 15 miles through the rough terrain of some Suffolk woodland it doesn't really seem like a good idea. I'll be cheering them on from the relative comfort of a parked car and hopefully I'll be up to turning a few sausages for an apres-bike barbecue.

The money raised will be used by Addenbrooke's Kidney Patients Association to fund all manner of quality of life projects for dialysis patients and their families.

So here comes the shameless begging part. If you would like to sponsor the good Cap'n , click on the button below or over in the sidebar and fork over as much moolah as you can spare. Also, I would be most grateful if you could link back to me from your blogs (or if you would like to add the button to your sidebar, please email me on the address in my sidebar - this post edited to remove the uncoded address due the fact that I'm being spammed left, right & centre).

In the interests of transparency I want you to know that initially the money will be coming direct to my account but I pledge that it will all go to AKPA. I was going to register with Justgiving.com but AKPA themselves have to open an account and I'm not sure they are going to do that (it does actually cost the charity a monthly fee plus fees are taken out of every transaction) so doing it via PayPal seemed like the next best thing. This way I can spread the word far and wide and reach people who I can't reach with a good old-fashioned sponsor form. In about a month's time I will write AKPA a nice fat cheque and Gift Aid it which should give them 28% more than the value of the cheque.

Please help me to raise a bundle of money for a worthy cause.

Thank you!!

*And boys**
**Although hardly any of them actually have a fat bottom, they're all supremely fit because they're medical professionals (snerk)

UFO

You could have knocked me over with a feather when I discovered that the delicious Glamourpuss, mistress of the Pole, she of the gorgeous shoes and undies, has bestowed upon me a Wonderful Women of the Web Award. And the fact that my name was mentioned even in the same breath as Elegantly Dressed Wednesday, well, oh look a flying pig!

Anyway, there are so many wonderful women out there it seems a shame to pick only a few to pass this on to but I would like to pass it on the girls who are listed on my Most Wanted - your blogs and comments make me laugh, sometimes make me cry but mostly you just make me want to keep going. Thanks for that, you are all wonderful women.

Ridicule is nothing to be scared of

Now I'd hate for everyone to think that my life is all doom and gloom because honestly it isn't. Sure I have some medical problems but I try very hard not to let them get me down too much. I'm like a Weeble you see, I wobble but I don't fall down. Generally after some bad news, I cry a lot, drink a lot and then the next day I say to the world "Up yours!"

A couple of weeks ago we had our meeting with The Prof, he who decides who is suitable or not for transplant surgery. The meeting went well as you all know by now. We learnt that when screening live donors the team look for matches across 6 common antigens. Normally a good donor will match on 1 or 2 of these, Captain Scarlet actually matches me on 3 which apparently is quite unusual for donors unrelated by blood. A modern day fairy tale, only my Prince Charming isn't giving me a glass slipper he's giving me a kidney!

So, not only a future happy ending but the good Capt was informed that he is in the top 20th percentile for fitness within the population of the UK. I think this pleased him more than the news that he will make me well again because when we got home, we celebrated with a couple of glasses of bubbly and no sooner had these taken effect than he was hula hooping, virtually naked, on the bed to the funky stylings of Mr Eric Prydz' Call on Me.



I only wish I could figure out how to use the video functon on my phone. Don't you ever, don't you ever, stop being dandy showing me you're handsome. XX

Stubble in paradise

Where to begin? Firstly I must apologise to those who have been worrying about me, needlessly as it turns out because my surgery, due to take place last Wednesday was actually cancelled. I have delayed reporting as much because I have been having a crisis of conscience due to the fact that my Dad has discovered this blog.

Hello Dad.

I made the mistake of logging onto my blog while using Dad's PC when I was Mum-sitting earlier this year. I didn't know how to delete the address so I simply crossed my fingers and hoped that he wouldn't find the link, but alas he has found my hidey hole. I don't have anything to hide of course and naturally I realise this is in the public domain but this blog has been my therapy over the last couple of years and I have written about things that I would never talk about to my family mainly for fear of worrying them, occasionally for fear of shocking them. Likewise I haven't been able really to pass on to him that I'm uncomfortable with him reading my blog. With any luck he'll read this and problem solved, ahem.

Enough of that squit as he would say.

So anyway I went into the hospital last Tuesday evening - the plan was to dialyse Wednesday morning so I'm in tip-top shape for the operation Wednesday afternoon. I had a terrible night's sleep, couldn't get warm, tossing and turning, hungry, thirsty, worried about the post operation trauma, etc. When 06:00 am Wednesday morning rolled around I started throwing up despite not having anything much to bring up and convinced that it was because I was too hungry I headed off to the dialysis unit so I could have some tea and toast before going nil by mouth from 7:30 am.

When I got there it became apparent that I had quite a high temperature which set alarm bells ringing. The dialysis session itself was terrible, they couldn't get any decent pressures on my line and I ended up clotting the machine and coming off 2 hours early. I also learned that the surgical team weren't prepared to go ahead with the surgery with my temperature being so high, they were worried that I had an infection somewhere. Drat.

I was sent back to the hospital ward to await an examination by a doctor to see if they could find the source of the infection. Someone turned up eventually and gave me a less than thorough going over during which I had noticed a slight redness on one of my legs. I pointed this out to him but he dismissed it as nothing and proceeded to inform me that I should have a chest X-ray and then I would be put on broad spectrum, heavy duty, IV anitbiotics - the kind that unfortunately have a negative effect on kidney tissue but as I already have kidney failure anyway, killing off the little function I have is apparently immaterial. I should add that it is material to me because even having the tiny amount of function left that I have means that I still pee a little bit which means I can still drink up to a litre a day. Losing everything will knock me down to about 500mls a day. It matters, trust me.

Anyhoo, a chest X-ray and a dose of 2 different IV urotoxic antibiotics later and I was allowed to come home but we were none the wiser as to what the hell caused the fever.

The next day, I was at dialysis again and my leg started to itch, I rolled up my trouser leg to discover the leg was inflamed and hot and one of the nurses decreed that I definitely had cellulitis which is simply an infection in the skin. The penny dropped, on the Saturday before going into hospital I had had my legs waxed. One can't have surgery with hairy legs can one? Probably what had happened was that an infection had got into the skin while it still a little raw after waxing. I er, also had another rash that I developed after shaving the other bit that was closer to the impending action, but no-one got to see that one.

I've got to go through it all again soon because I go in for the surgery again a week on Monday. This time without the waxing although I do have to break out the razor again. Ouch.

As a footnote I should add that my chest line has been playing up ever since that Wednesday morning and on Saturday I spent virtually all day at another hospital while doctors fought over whether or not they would put in a new line. Thankfully they decided against it although it took them them until 10:00 pm to figure that out.

Hub cap diamond star halo

Just a brief update for those that are interested.

1. I had a new chest line inserted a week ago. It's on the left side of my chest now so at least I will have matching scars when this is all over.

2. We met the Professor of Transplant Surgery last week and despite other doctors going by my BMI alone and therefore thinking I'm built like a truck oh yeah, he having actually seen me has given the go ahead for my transplant once I'm recovered from the hysterectomy. The irony is that since I'm approved for a live donor transplant I'm also being worked up for a cadaveric transplant (just in case presumably). I'm rather annoyed because I've spent 2 years trying to get on the list and when the Capt came up trumps with the offer of a kidney because I couldn't get on the list they're finally putting me on the list. Confused? So am I.

3. I'm having my hysterectomy on Wednesday. I'll be off work for about 6 weeks (whooppee!!). I'm nursing a Lionel Blair Cut because I desperately needed a trim but couldn't find the time due to the short notice op date and having a very busy week what with more transplant tests today and dialysis tomorrow, breathe, the Capt had to trim my fringe for me. Actually it's quite cute with my longer bits at the side pinging out like wings, very retro and very Charlie's Angels. I would post a link for the Lionel Blair Cut reference but I spent ages trying to find the video to no avail, maybe later I'll find one.

Can't think of much else. I just want this week to be over. Bring it on!!

Be careful what you wish for

How funny that recently I have been complaining about a lack of time because it would appear that fate, having a warped sense of humour, is allowing me to have a couple of months off. Why? Well, and honestly I'm not making this up to get attention or sympathy or anything like that, I need a hysterectomy.

Yup. My innocent little polyps that have been making my life a misery every month for the last few years are full of "pre-cancerous cells". If I don't have them removed prior to my kidney transplant, which is followed by immunosuppressive therapy, which oh by the way switches off the body's ability to fight cancer, could turn into full blown cancer. Apparently removng them alone is insufficient, no, I have to have my womb, my fallopian tubes and my ovaries removed too.

Oh and in case I forget, no I can't receive HRT because my problems are all hormone related. Hello brittle bones, hello prematurely wrinkly and dry skin, hello droopy boobs, hello hot flushes - goodbye sex drive and please shut the door on the way out, the ability to ever bear children ever again.

I'll be back again when I'm sober, in a more positive frame of mind and when I've run out of commas.

If I only had c-c-c-courage.

Au revoir, not adieu

To my trusty band of readers,

You may have noticed that I haven't written much lately, in fact output has been on the wane for sometime. Sorry. And thank you for worrying about me. Well there's this thing called My Life that keeps getting in the way. Although it provides the inspiration for my writing it also prevents me from sitting down and writing it all out so I'm officially taking a break until I've reorganised my life - and yes I'm working on that, trying to get into a routine of getting to work on time, finishing on time, keeping the house tidy, the Captain fed properly, my parents visited and getting some exercise.

I shall continue to do what I have been doing which is a swift circuit of all my favourite blogs (if you're listed on Most Wanted then that means you), and please remember just because I don't always comment doesn't mean I don't care. Oh and I've acquired a couple of new readers - I haven't fully read your blogs yet or replied to your comments but you are hereby officially acknowledged San & Maz! I've always been useless with small talk and I don't believe in leaving a banal LOL just for the sake of it. My IP location seems to change on a regular basis but currently I appear to reside in London, London City of (which is about 70 miles away but hey ho, I've also resided in Reading, Swindon, and a few others, funny but I hadn't noticed packing up and moving so often).

I envy those who have such busy lives and yet still manage to blog about it all. I'm handicapped by the fact that I can't blog or even just read other blogs at work which is where I suspect an awful lot of blogging gets done. I used to write in my break and email it home but I run the risk of having it intercepted and read and getting into trouble for using an official computer for unofficial reasons. Then I used to write and save it to a memory stick (we have no floppy drives these days) but they're banned now. So you see I literally can't find the time.

My Dad is back home again, he's OK but not great. We're seeing about getting him some home help and I'm visiting more often to bring food and do their laundry.

Currently we're looking at the possibility of my transplant taking place in April or May. It still hasn't been fully blessed by the head honcho of surgery but things are looking positive. The next few months are going to be very busy with hospital visits, I've got to have surgery to remove 2 polyps from my womb in addition to everything else.

Busy times ahead, do keep checking in I will post sporadically (I know, so what's changed?!). Wish me luck.

Crappy New Year

This post is brought to you in partnership with Arniston Bay, a lovely crisp white, a sauvignon blanc, I think, but then again I don't really care because it tastes damn good, especially after chugging the first glass Amy Winehouse-stylee. I think I'm ready for my third.

It's nearly the 3rd of January and I still haven't had my Christmas dinner. I was so poorly with a cold over Christmas that I couldn't eat anything never mind cook it. Capt Scarlet got the cold soon after I did and he didn't want anything either. We decided to have our lovely leg of pork for New Year's Day instead (no turkey for us, we do things different at Casa di Calamity of course).

So, New Year's Eve rolls around CJ and Capt S are feeling a bit better and the pork is nicely defrosting in the fridge. CJ is having her dialysis, Capt S is moseying around town trying to avoid the mayhem at the Next sale when he gets a call from my Dad. He's feeling really ill, could we pop round as he thinks he needs some help.

We arrive to find that he can barely breathe and has chest pains. He's called the doctor and arranged for a house call but the doctor calls back to say that he might not be able to come. Excuse me? What the fuck is that supposed to mean? I call the surgery and they tell me that another doctor will come instead but they can't tell me when, he's already on his rounds. Dad's feeling really bad so I dial 999 and an ambulance is soon on its way.

According to the Number 27 Bus Principle (you know, you don't see one for hours and then 5 arrive at once) the doctor arrives at the same time as the ambulance and I thought we were going to have Gladstone bags at dawn on the drive but they eventually cooperated and pronounced that Dad had pneumonia and possibly a heart attack and whisked him off to hospital.

I should add at this point that my 73-year old Dad is my dotty, doddery, sweet-but-with-a-mercurial-temper, frail 76-year old Mum's carer. She can't be left alone for more than a couple of hours at a time, it's New Year's Eve and no-one in the medical/caring profession actually gives a shit about our predicament. Nope too many parties going on tonight and tomorrow's a bank holiday.

I've been living with her since New Year's Eve, only a matter of 3 days but it feels like a lifetime. She's missing Dad terribly and every morning I have to explain where he is and deal with the floods of tears that follow as she's convinced he's not coming home again. Only someone with a parent with dementia can really relate to how bad things have been. If I was able to care for her in my own home it would be one thing but I'm living out of a carrier bag (all the suitcases are in the loft). I managed to call the Social Services today to see if we can get some respite care for Mum while Dad's in hospital. They're supposedly treating us as an emergency referral ... they'll call back in a couple of days.

I've never stayed at my parent's house before, they moved out of my childhood home about about 17 years ago to downsize to a pokey little bungalow. I always dreaded the thought of staying because they live on the edge of some woodland and their 8 legged visitors should be seen to be believed - those 'little' buggers look like they're made out of Twiglets and you can hear them clicking when they walk across the carpet. I am mortally afraid of spiders so I can tell it's taken some cojones to sleep there.

To make matters worse my parents sleep in separate rooms due to Mum's illness, and my Dad's room is never heated and it is heaving with damp and mildew. It's absolutely awful and I suspect a large contributor to his many chest infections. I scrubbed it from top to bottom today, but it's only one room in a damp house, granted the worst, but there is far more scrubbing to be done.

I get to spend the night in my own bed tonight because Captain Scarlet is on watch - I have to be up early to head out to dialysis in the morning. Poor guy he's in charge of feeding and entertaining Mum - I can't make her eat anything apart from bread and jam and the occasional slice of cake. Her 'meal' times are about 2 hours too early for mine so I've not had a proper meal myself for several days, I'm surviving on tea and cake the same as Mum.

Capt S went back to work today but has taken tomorrow off so I can dialyse, I can take over again tomorrow night, my aunt can cover Friday because I need to dialyse again Saturday morning, back to me on Saturday afternoon but I'm supposed to go back to work on Monday and am in despair over what to do if my Dad isn't home by then (and let's bear in mind a 73-year old recovering from pneumonia isn't going to be fit for much himself). I feel so guilty for missing my home, my bed, my husband. I hate this. I'm only a mile from home but I may as well be on the Moon. It's so lonely, and thankless, and worrying, and ...

PS: I've had a sore throat for 2 weeks, I saw our practice nurse today and she says it's viral, there's no treatment apart from rest and plenty of fluids and maybe some honey & lemon. I'm screwed - I'm a diabetic kidney patient so honey and fluid (apart from some medicinal wine) are a luxury I can't afford. And I still have a 4 pound leg roast and all the trimmings that needs eating.

Queen of the wrapping scene

Merry Christmas to you all.

Well I may be only just over that pesky ear infection and I may have a rotten cold but I'm on top of the world today. Not only do I have Captain Scarlet well trained enough to wrap all our Christmas shopping for me (it's amazing how a creative gal such as myself can make such an awful pig's ear of wrapping presents) but he's also a good enough match to donate me a kidney!

Ding dong!!

They shoot horses, don't they?

It's 03:50 am and for the fourth night in a row I'm spending the night in the recliner. No not the one in the doghouse, I haven't been chucked out of bed, I just can't get any sleep in a horizontal position. I'm suffering with "the most spectacular" ear infection my doctor has ever seen.

It hurts. It hurts with a pain that disables my other senses and makes sleep next to impossible. Yesterday I couldn't even open my mouth wide enough to eat a yogurt. In 2 hours I'm supposed to get up and have a shower before heading off to dialysis. I can't bear the thought of getting my head wet so my hair will have to remain in the state it's in ... chip pan chic.

12 days till Christmas Day, and I haven't done a blasted thing yet. I should be writing cards instead of blogging - I can do that without disturbing anyone else's sleep. I had to have an internal ultrasound scan which revealed that I have some kind of growth in my womb - nothing nasty apparently but there will be plenty of knees apart humiliation to deal with it.

Will someone please put me out of my misery?

PS Thanks for all your comments over the past few posts. I really appreciate them despite not replying or following up on your blogs. I've had some connection trouble for a week or so - bought a new PC which has Windows Vista which of course doesn't seem be compatible with anything else in the house including our wireless router. It's got a 21" widescreen flat panel though. Woo.

Fluid dynamics

When you’re on kidney dialysis you develop a fixation for drinks. It’s just like when you’re on a diet and you cut out chocolate and chips – all you crave is chocolate and chips. Well when you’re on a fluid restriction (1 litre ... 1000 mls ... 1¾ pints ... not very much) you crave a drink and it sucks. See, the first verb that popped into my head was ‘to suck’.

There’s fluid in just about everything you eat never mind drink – fruit, veggies, pasta, rice, soup, ice-cream, custard, gravy, jelly, yogurt – you need to be aware of the fluid content and count that into your allowance. It's like shooting the rapids.

The renal diet is also pretty restrictive especially when combined with a diabetic diet but the food has always been the least of my worries. You can buy sugar free alternatives for most things, you can take tablets to absorb much of the phosphates in meat, dairy, soy, fish, nuts, etc, you can find lower potassium fruits & veg or boil them into submission but you just can’t get drinks that are low in H2O.

Just lately I've been drowning in fluid insults, here's a few that have been floating around lately.

What’s worse than having a UTI? Having a UTI when you don’t have much U in the first place and you can't drink buckets of Robinson's Barley Water to flush it out.

As if being diabetic and having kidney failure isn’t enough, I’m starting to experience problems with me women’s bits as I get older so I have to have an ultrasound in a couple of days just to make sure I don’t have fibroids or worse. The appointment letter said I should drink 1 pint of fluid an hour before the scan and arrive with a full bladder. Ha! I could drink a gallon of water (I could, really) but hardly any is going to make it through to my bladder.

I have a follow-up appointment with the gynaecologist a couple of days after the scan. The appointment letter said to bring an early morning sample of urine. Lucky they don’t say how big the sample should be but I might be able to manage a couple of teaspoonsful.

And who says Germans don’t have a sense of humour? Not only do they engineer terrific cars and roads to drive them on, they are also the world leaders in making dialysis machines. A company called Fresenius actually owns many of the dialysis units in the UK, they are staffed with NHS nurses & doctors but Fresenius provide the consumables, facilities and the training.

Some of their newer machines have fancy alarms that sound when you’ve finished your session, mine being an older one it just says boop-boop-boop over and over which is unimaginative but functional. When I had my line changed last week I had to dialyse at Addenbrooke’s and the machine I used was one of the newer ones. When I finished it started to play a movement from Handel’s Water Music. If that isn’t taking the piss I don’t know what is.

Jerry! Jerry!

I get such a kick out of reviewing the statistics on my site meter. It's not the numbers that does it although yesterday I got 27 hits as opposed to the normal average of 17. Go me! I love having a nosey at what brought the reader to my corner of the blogosphere.

Soggy Pussy gets a lot of action, as does Big Prick of course and I snigger gently to myself when I imagine the fully charged, exploding with testosterone teen disappointedly reading about cats or injections. But whilst perusing the info this morning I came across a rather plaintive search from the US and I fear there may be a couple gearing up for an appearance on Jerry Springer.

"a man has type b blood and his wife has type a blood. they bring home a new baby from the hospital. on a visit to their doctor two weeks later they discover their baby has type o blood."

Oh dear.

Uncivil engineering

We have no heating in our building at work. Well actually we have a boiler and radiators but they don't do anything at the moment. The radiators are those heavy cast iron things that look like whale ribs and pre-date the war and I'm not talking about the Gulf War or even the Great War, I'm talking the Crimean War. Most of the radiators have been retrofit at some point and have temperature/on/off controls on them but not the one in my office. The one in my office doesn't have such new fangled niceties, you have to turn mine on or off with a spanner.

Of course being a government building the central heating goes on and off on specific days of the year regardless of the outside weather conditions and earlier this year come about May, it was sweltering outside but the heat was still on so I had to do my magic with the monkey wrench. Either that or bring some birch twigs to work to thrash the First Sergeant with. That's not a bad idea anyway, I'll try to remember that one.

So, this year when October the 16th rolled around it had already been pretty cold so I was glad to be able to crank that err not-quite-a-knob and get some heat coming through. Unfortunately the water from the radiator started to ooze out of the err not-quite-a-knob thing. It seemed to settle down after a while so I just thought the system needed bleeding and had sorted itself out.

Last Monday I had to go in to work when everyone else was off enjoying a belated Veteran's Day day off. I noticed a dark patch under one of the sofas and concluded that the radiator had been leaking rather a lot more than I thought. Oops. Since I was not expecting to see anyone before my surgery I left a note for the boss and scarpered.

This week the heat isn't working at all so we had the building manager put a work order in to the Civil Engineers Squadron who manage all the estates maintenance (I'm keeping everything crossed that it hasn't gone tits up because of the leak in my office). Someone came out today to have a look. Do you know what the guy's diagnosis was?

"Uh, yeah, it's broken"

Really? Gosh. And all this time I've been twiddling my monkey wrench wondering what the problem was.

Dinner for two?

It's been fairly dull here at Casa di Calamity just lately and although this blog is called Medication Time I am leery of turning into a medical bore and I'm having trouble keeping to my resolution to write more often without resorting to writing about my health issues. So when I read Rachel's account of the demise of an unwelcome house guest I was reminded of something that happened a few years ago in the company of my dearly departed old moggies Wuggy and Pud'n.



Wuggy aka Mr Puff and Pud'n aka Fifi Pud'n-tops (c'mon, everyone gives their pets daft pet names in addition to daft proper names ... don't they?) brother and sister, died within 6 months of each other aged 16 about 5 years ago now. Wuggy had cancer in his mouth and Pud'n developed kidney, thyroid & liver failure after having her teeth cleaned under general anaesthetic.

They were a special pair of cats, very loving and became my surrogate children after Henry died so I was devastated when their time came to an end. Unlike the 2 we have now they weren't a huge threat to the local wildlife. Pud'n liked occasionally to catch a baby rabbit and chew its hind legs off in the cloakroom and Wuggy was a great believer in catch & release. More than once we would have to chase his guests around the hall. Once we were plagued by the most revolting smell that got worse day by day - it turned out to be dead mousie gently mouldering under the washing machine. Bless.

One day I discovered one of our padded placemats was frayed and shedding its stuffing. I thought it must have got stuck in the drawer and ripped at some point. Then I started noticing tiny brown lumps on the worktops in the kitchen. At first I thought it was coffee granules, I thought maybe my Dad had spilled some when he was housesitting one day. Now in my defence I'm not a coffee drinker but all the same you might want to ask for tea if you ever come round for a cuppa because those brown lumps turned out to be mouse shit.

The thing that really gave the game away was when I pulled a brand new packet of Digestives out of the larder cupboard and discovered a very neat hole that went right through the packaging and the biscuits - it was like someone had taken an ice cream scoop and carved out the biscuits.

Imagine the scene back at Mouseville. Mrs Mouse meets her mate at door

"Now then Murgatroyd, hasta had a good day at t'biscuit mine?"

"Ee bah gum lass, ah've had a grand day but that seam o' Digestives collapsed today"

"By 'eckerslike, it didn't!?"

"Aye, lass, almost crushed me under all that wholesome goodness and dunkability. Ah'll 'ave to move on to t'chocolate Hobnobs afore long"

The kitchen was scrubbed inside and out and several mouse traps were purchased, baited with chocolate and generally ignored by the mouse population. We assumed Murgatroyd must have moved out because we didn't find any more evidence of him for several days.

One evening Pud'n was sitting in front of the gas fire in the living room. It wasn't lit so she wasn't sitting there for warmth but she certainly seemed interested in it for some reason. She wouldn't budge so Capt Scarlet decided to have a look at what she was so taken with. With a torch he spied a pair of beady black eyes staring back at him.

"A mouse!" he cried and proceeded to dismantle the fire. This of course prompted the mouse to scurry away and hide while the Capt poked the void behind the fire with whatever he had to hand. Pud'n lost interest and left the room.

The mouse snuck out of a gap and scarpered for a corner while I tried to catch him. He managed to do an entire circuit of the room with us pouncing and moving furniture but to no avail. He made it back to the gas fire. We went out for a KFC.

When we brought the food back we plonked ourselves in front of the TV to eat and after a while Murgatroyd crept out from his hidey hole and started nibbling something on the carpet. When we moved he scurried back to safety.

We started eating again, he crept out of his hole and started eating too. I went over to see what he had found and it turned out to be some kernels of sweetcorn (OK I am officially the world's worst housekeeper - I couldn't remember the last time we ate sweetcorn). I went into the kitchen and dug out a huge plastic salad bowl, crept back into the room and made myself as inconspicuous as possible. Sure enough, Murgatroyd crept out from his lair again and I plopped the salad bowl down over him. My patented humane spider catching technique apparently works on small mammals too!

At this point the cats wandered back in the room to see if there were any hot wings left and they couldn't believe their eyes when they saw little Murgatroyd sitting in his plastic Thunderdome calmly munching bits of sweetcorn and being incontinent in a way that only mice seem to be able to. We let them study him for a couple of minutes while we took photos and had a good giggle and then I slid an old calendar under the bowl and took him outside to release him. A mouse tale with a happy ending!



(Click on the pictures to get a bigger frame)

Jeux sans frontières

Judgemental isn't usually a state I find myself in, my motto normally being 'Live and let live' but I'm going to have another mini rant now.

I'm sure 85% of bloggers, if they're honest, will have visited Belle de Jour (her blog of course, we know she only makes housecalls) if only to see what all the fuss is about. I have, in fact I recently purchased Belle's book (I think everyone's blog should be available in paperback - it's so much more convenient for catching up on past posts and we should all be paid for the entertainment we provide). Let's leave aside whether we believe any of it is actually true or not, let's ignore for a moment its subject matter. Let's focus instead on where I bought it for the bargain price of £4.99: Sainsburys.

Yes a no holds barred, explicit account of 6 months in a London call girl's life is available in your local family supermarket. Now let's go back to the subject matter, how to fist/rim/bugger/all-of-the-above-in-combination-with-a-cucumber comfortably and professionally is on the shelf without so much as a parental guidance sticker.

I knew it would be saucy but I didn't expect it to be as explicit, I thought it would be tamed somehow. At least the TV show is on after the watershed and is G rated. I bought the book because I think bloggers deserve some compensation/recognition and it is far easier to tote a paperback around than a laptop even with wi-fi. I also thought it would be a jolly wheeze to leave something with a picture of a scantily clad Billie Piper (Billie Piper? Puhlease) in the communal library at the dialysis unit when I was finished with the book. Now I'm not so sure, I may be single-handedly responsible for a reduction in the burden of the elderly on the state pension.

I don't consider myself a prude otherwise I wouldn't have bought the book, but I do worry about what effect it could have on a minor. I remember vividly being about 12 and after rooting around in my brother's bedroom (illicitly of course, yes I was one of those horrible little sisters) I came across his collection of topshelf magazines. I remember being at once fascinated and disgusted but it's not the photos that haunt me, it's the letters from the readers. Somehow putting slightly aberrent practices and fantasies into print is more disturbing than pictures. Bugger, I used the word aberrent, I must be a prude after all, just call me Mary Whitehouse

Land of soap and Maury

What is it with daytime TV? Do the producers assume that people who watch TV during the day are brain dead? Jerry Springer? Jeremy Kyle? Maury Povich? I'm stuck at home feeling unable to lift anything heavier than a remote control and you give me show after show about girls who are trying to figure out who actually fathered their children. This last one had 9 men tested but not one of them was the Daddy. 9!! Don't these people have any self-respect? Why air your fishy laundry on national television?

Is it that these shows and the low lifes on them are supposed to make us feel better about our miserable lives stuck at home in front of the telly? I demand to know what happened to A Country Practice, Take The High Road and Crown Court? Quality Shirl, quality.

Smarter than the average bear

Here's a little tribute to someone who never fails to bring a smile to my face these days, Bob T Bear (Esq.), bear, agony uncle, spy, connoisseur of chocolate peanuts, friend. In fact when I was on my way home from the hospital yesterday for some reason I kept thinking about a video Bob made of himself setting some marigolds free. Every time I thought of him in his shiny red wellies it made me giggle out loud which was quite a feat considering the 14-hour trial that the day turned out to be.

Bob - this is a test to see if your instructions work:



Yep, Bob you're definitely smarter than the average bear!