January Chatty - Happy New Year!

[asymphototropic]

Yes Merry, there was dancing! We had quite a jolly time. I do love to dance.

Debating whether or not to go to the Williamsburg Ball. I have a ride there, but Thingummie major wont be going because of work commitments. I also have work which takes up my weekends, but maybe I can spare one Saturday. Debating yes or no.

[merry]

I hope you go!

A strange day for us today, leaving at 3pm in Fizzy for Ashchurch to take the train to Gloucester, for one of Mr M's medical appointments at Gloucester Royal. I am getting pretty familiar with every floor of that hospital as Mr Merry is like that card game with a person divided into three and you have to match up this body part, or that body part. So far we've done cardio-vascular, eyes, hernia and brain Today's was Hernia, and the Upper gastric consultant was the most handsome man I have ever seen in my life.

He was utterly charming too, and amusing, and soon had us talked into letting him stick a knife into Mr M's vitals to push his hernia back in and sew him up again It won't be until April at least, which gives us time to think about it, because it's not a risk-free op. under GA at Mr M's age, and I've looked up complications and don't much like the look of them... the problem is, the H has stopped causing significant pain for now, but that might not always be the case, and, apparently most hernias involve a loop of bowel whch can turn nasty very quickly. What to do, what to do.....

Poor Mr M! they never let him rest. I just want to get him back to bowls for this season, for the sake of his mental AND physical health, but with this op and needing 10 days of 'in home care' (me) it's going to cause a significant delay to that, but then again, emergency surgery on a strangulated bowel wouldn't be great either....

In a lighter moment, yesterday we went to Dobbies, our new huge garden centre (and more) at the heart of Tewkesbury's proposed new 'Garden Town' of 140,000 new houses between little mediaeval Tewkesbury and Juliet's tiny hamlet of Ashchurch. I paid for a Dobbie's Club membership before Christmas, £15 a year, because we wanted Christmas lights and things and the club card was giving 50% off, so in a sense you could say we 'saved'. It also gives us '2 free hot drinks a month, worth £70 a year! (really?!) so we had the free coffees and Mr M had a piece of cake, so it was quite a successful outing. There is a small Waitrose outlet in the store which is quite handy.

[eccles]

I expect I've already mentioned this: I had a hernia op in 2020. To avoid having to wait I elected to have it done privately, which meant I was able to choose the procedure type and the surgeon. The procedure I chose was a laparoscopy, i.e. keyhole surgery. The big advantage was there was less area left to heal afterwards so recovery was quicker. In fact it was so pain-free all I needed on the day after surgery were a couple of paracetamols. I was given codeine pills to take with me when I left the hospital and never used them. I was told that the biggest post-op problem was people forgetting to take it easy to avoid tearing the hernia because it felt ok so soon afterwards. It cost a little under £3,000.

This is the guy who did it. You might be tempted to snigger about his name but don't do it before surgery.

https://www.nuffieldhealth.com/consulta ... an-titcomb

[Furby]

Poor merry having to travel to hospitals. And poor Mr merry having to be in them.

Nothing is happening with my own potential visits to hospitals etc at the moment as I don't know what's happening and no one to ask because I can't ask the patient personally in the circumstances. I can't even ring because they keep being moved under some NHS scheme of pass the patient. It sounds a stupid nonsense post with half a tale but that's where we are and i just wanted those who know a bit already to know I am ok myself but still know nothing.

[OurCreature]

I had a very interesting (in the sense of the Chinese curse) day today. In the morning I hied me to Boots to buy my blood pressure monitor. I got that and exited via their rear entrance to get the bus back home; I never made it to the bus stop. Instead I had a dizzy spell but this time lost consciousness completely. Those who witnessed it told me when I woke up that I had fallen backwards and given the back of my head a big whack against the concrete floor; it turned out to have broken the skin even through my Switzerland cap that I was wearing, so bled a little. I also managed to bite the inside base of my lower lip so there was bleeding there as well. One of the people who saw me tumble was a police officer, and he recommended that Boots send for an ambulance, which I went along with. Two Boots ladies were absolutely superb at looking after me, and I cannot praise them highly enough.

There was great pressure on the ambulance service today, so the hospital paid for a taxi to get me there. I was seen for the first stage of my treatment around 2 1/4 hours after arriving there, which I thought was good. That took a while and then I had to wait and then I was pushed on a bed trolley to the next stage and, after a bit more waiting, I was seen by a doctor.

The upshot of it all is that the doctor thinks I have a 1st Degree heart block, and is hoping that my 24 HR ECG will shed more light on the matter. She also told me to halve my dose of Atenolol which I take for my blood pressure. In the meantime the medical advice is that I don't drive my car because these attacks seem to be unpredictable.

When I knew I was going home instead of being kept in hospital a doctor lent me a mobile phone to ring Nancy and Jeff so they could take me home. That was at 18:15-ish and they got me home just before 19:00. So I spent the best part of 7 hours in A&E. I could see they were jolly busy even so relatively early in the day and by the time I left A&E was packed out. I thought the care I received was very good.

So that was my interesting day today. I hope they and I can sort this out, not least because I don't want to lose my ability to drive my car. Roll on Wednesday and the ECG.

[merry]

Oh OC!

Lost for words... what an awful day.

Waves of love and support for OC from all his friends at HF

[merry]

How are you today, OC? I hope you slept OK. I bet you woke up battered and bruised though.

I'm sorry you're still in limbo re the hospital thing too, Furby.

As someone said in Chat last night, "You lot are making me dread getting old"

(I don't consider us 'old', not Old-old, because 90 is OLD, but I see it must look different from down there

[eccles]

Gosh OC. This is the first time I've caught up with these events. As with the others, I hope for a speedy recovery.

[TRavine]

Oh my gosh, OC, what a terrible and SCARY thing to go through! I am so sorry!!

I hope that the doctors will be able to sort everything out quickly and that you will finally get some rest from all those medial issues. Have a virtual hug!!

[OurCreature]

Thank you, everybody.

I tried using the BP monitor today. It has a little graphic on its screen to say whether or not you have put on the wrist cuff properly. My BP was something like 145/77 with a pulse of 51. I shall set up a small spreadsheet for monitoring purposes and start recording the readings on 1/2/24.

[merry]

That doesn't sound too bad to me. Mr M's BP and pulse would be similar and they always seem happy with it? he is on betablockers and amlodipine though, which might make his pulse etc artificially low.

How have you felt today, were you achy after the fall?

[OurCreature]

Thanks, Merry!

One of my BP medications is Amlodipine and they have very recently doubled the dosage to try to get my BP down. You already know about the A&E doctor halving my dose of Atenolol. The other pill I take for my BP is Ramipril. Also they changed my statin because they think my cholesterol level (at 3.6 IIRC) is too high so Simvastatin is out and the new one whose name I forget is in. The GP told me that the new to me statin us the one they prescribe as a first try for everybody who needs it; apparently a possible side effect is swollen ankles but not so far for me. The pharmacy rang me on Friday to check they were OK but as you know I was elsewhere . IIRC there was a time when a reading of 3.6 for cholesterol would have been considered to be good.

All of these medication changes happened after the dizzy spells began.

As to aches and pains; I have none of those at all arising from my blackout. I was a little sore at the back of my head yesterday but that now feels slightly sore only if I touch the offending spot and depress the skin a little.

It is my annual January catch-up lunch with my friend Bob on Tuesday and I was going to do the driving. I have told him that he has to do the driving now, but he is happy to do that instead of me. I shall reward him by putting one of Nancy's Bella Vita vouchers towards the cost of our repast.

The cats were quite funny on Friday evening. Mina made a great fuss of me, whereas Midge was more O you are home; pray continue as normal. I thought they would be most anxious for some wet food, but they didn't really want it and left most of it uneaten which is unusual for them. So I think His Lordship was anxious about my absence but decided not to show it.

One thing that I shall have to master is ordering groceries online. I shall get those from Waitrose and to hell with their premium over Morrisons.

[merry]

Awww at the cats! see, they do care

Yes, online groceries are a boon! You'll remember Darkshire Lass in Chat the other night saying she and her husband have finally taken the plunge with online deliveries and are loving it.

I use Waitrose most often myself now, having been a loyal Tesco person for decades. The price differential between the two has really shrunk. And I love Waitrose food. Their website isn't too bad. Ocado is the worst website but they too sell nice food. If you get on with it all right, I can't see you ever looking back. It's fine to go round a shop if you enjoy a bit of a mooch and looking to see what's new, etc, but honestly, why would one trog round a supermarket amid crowds and queue and lug the stuff to the car etc if one's only getting in the usual weekly stuff.

[Furby]

Poor oc. Bumps on the head aren't good at any age but not knowing why is very stressful when they find out what's wrong at least you can make dealing with it plans. All the medicines sound very complicated and might be fighting each other. If you had the spells before though what have doctors said before or is it just the see how you go response.

I started the online grocery because of COVID and couldn't be bothered going to the shops now. Occasionally for fruit or meat I might as I like to pick my own best things. I went for bread and milk last week as i have been running down the Xmas stockpiles and not ordering anything new. They really don't want customers in shops anymore there were no tills on and half the self service tills having a rest and only 2 staff guarding the ones that worked. The staff didn't yet do that thing bank staff do saying do you know you can just go online begone and don't bother us with pesky work but I half expected them to.

Once you get shopping setup it's quite easy and the bad parts are them not bringing what you wanted so you need a store cupboard to cope with the occasional baskets with things missing. And the other thing is lifting the groceries from baskets on the floor it's not really very old person friendly I found.

[OurCreature]

Thanks you Furby! I'm already set up for Waitrose because I use that to buy in bulk the coffee that 2 of the ladies who live at KW like - they came to Mum's funeral so they are special. I shall see to it that they receive refills from time to time. KW is more or less impossible to do door to door on public transport; the nearest I can get is just over 3/4 of a mile away from KW so it is a fine day only job once a month.

[OurCreature]

Merry, do you order milk with your grocery deliveries? Does it last to its date? I'm going to order some anyway tomorrow along with the rest of the groceries.

[eccles]

OC, I have bought four bottles of four pints semi skimmed milk before now after a mix-up, took a month to use it all and it didn't go off. I kept one on the go in the fridge door and the rest in the salad drawer at the bottom of the fridge, which is only one or two degrees above freezing. If you use full fat milk then it probably wouldn't last as long but it will easily last the BBE date. If you run past the date just use the sniff test. It will smell off long before it will harm you.

I have recently been going to real shops in between home deliveries, This is mainly because there are a few products that Aldi sell that Asda doesn't, and I figured that if I'm going to Aldi I may as well pick up the usual essentials like bread, fruit, veg and milk. I go out walking nearly every day and I can incorporate an occasional shop into that.

Four years ago I had never used home delivery and I bought a shopping trolley to save getting weighed down with bags, then the pandemic struck and it remained unused for years as I switched to home delivery. Then when I got my new camera gear I found that if I removed the shopping trolley bag I could attach my camera backpack to the frame and I wheel my camera and a couple of lenses around on that. It works a treat. I've since bought another identical shopping trolley and have recently been using that for in-store shopping. If I ever tear the bag I have a spare from the repurposed trolley that will fit.

Having said all that, I agree with Merry, home deliveries are great. You can do searches online and find your product. In the meantime your real supermarket wil have swapped stuff around for the umpteenth time so you can no longer find it which I find a real pain . I do an update to my shopping list on the evening before delivery which highlights most of the missing items so that I can choose an alternative and minimise the number of substitutes that the store picker chooses.

Asda, and I think others as well, will allow you to either return unwanted substitutes to the driver, or simply accept them then ask for a refund for ones you're not entirely happy with and keep them. You'll probably guess which I usually choose.

[OurCreature]

You'll probably guess which I usually choose.

Yes, Eccs...........

I've placed the order for delivery, including 4 pints of milk in a 1 hr slot on Friday afternoon. There's a £4 delivery charge; you can have a 4 hr slot for £2 but I thought keep it convenient and short. I think I shall soon get used to this.

If I run out of anything I can get the bus into Totton to maintain supplies; but that will only be for thinks like bread. And they are building an Aldi next to the football ground and that is walkable; it's due to open sometime this year.

[eccles]

Yes, Eccs...........

I should add that if the sub is a near replacement then I won't cheat. But Asda, my supermarket of choice for deliveries, in their infinite wisdom sometimes make some pretty outrageous substitutions. I happen to like "Jacobs Cheddars", which are thin cheese biscuits. There is an exact store branded copy called "Cheese Thins". They are sometimes out of stock and I once got a packet of water biscuits as a substitute. I'd never heard of them but they were a sort of tasteless cream cracker. Someone had seen the word "thin" and decided it meant "tasteless", but because I'd never heard of them I asked for a refund. When I tried them I was glad I did.

On another occasion I ordered 4 bottles of McEwan's Champion Ale. If you like your craft ale this is one of the best that you can get from a supermarket. It is strong, rich, dark and malty and worthy of the name. On one occasion they subbed it with Banks Exceptional Amber Bitter. Someone saw the word "exceptional" and believed it. They were wrong. In polite circles it would be described as gnat's or cat's.. insert your own noun. I suspected it was an offload because it was marked down at half price. I accepted it and claimed a refund just to find out how bad it was. It was bad. Really bad, nevertheless, I consumed it in the name of scientific research.

Other subs have been quite good. After one such sub I found that Warburton's Crumpets were rather better than store's own and I shall buy those in future even though they cost more. I suspect the reason is that Warburton grow their own crumpet weevils. A little know fact is that crumpet weevils are only found in the UK and it is these which create the holes in crumpets. In the same way as brewers are protective of their own specific yeast culture, crumpet weevils are equally prized for the unique quality that they impart to crumpets. It would appear that Warburton have a finer strain than those left to mere store varieties.

[eccles]

For those who don't believe the last paragraph that I posted, I will draw your attention to the following.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milbenk%C3%A4se