Since I my recent stay in hospital, my medical situation has dominated pretty well everything that I do. My sleeping pattern is very erratic thanks to my being fitted with a catheter and bag (if you turn over in the night and catch one or other, boy do you know it!) and my mobility is limited. I have managed to drive to the shops and back, but even with an automatic transmission, sitting in the car can be painful. I can walk (slowly) and can climb the stairs in our house (even slower). The latter is very inconvenient as our home office and my toy/wargames room are on the top floor, up two flights of stairs.
Despite all of the above, I am managing to cope, thanks in no small part to my wife, Sue. She has been a great support, putting up will my occasional outburst of ill temper and depression, and keeps me on an even keel all the time. She makes concessions to my condition, but she hasn't allowed me to become a slave to it.
Wednesday is a case in point.
I had to go to University College Hospital, Lewisham, on Wednesday for yet another scan. This time it was a CT scan, and because there was a possibility that they might have to sedate me, I was not allowed to drive myself there and back. The appointment was at 12.15pm, but I was required to be there an hour earlier so that I could drink a litre of special liquid that would enhance the effectiveness of the scan. Although Google Maps stated that the journey would only take twenty-five minutes, we set off over an hour beforehand.
To get to the hospital, we had to drive around the South Circular. For non-Londoners, this is a route across South London that was proposed over one hundred years ago. A short section was built in the early 1920s, but further development was delayed, and eventually a number of local roads were joined together by little more than road signs to form the current route.
The North and South Circular Roads now form the outer boundary of the ULEZ (Ultra Low Emission Zone), and all vehicles travelling inside the zone that do not meet certain exhaust emission standards have to pay a daily charge of £12.50 for cars, vans and motorcycles, and £100 for coaches, HGVs and buses. As a result, traffic levels on the South Circular - which were already high - have increased as drivers seek to avoid entering the ULEZ.
Despite the heavy traffic, we reached the hospital just after 11.00am ... and then could find nowhere to park! As a result, Sue had to drop me off and drive home (a journey that took her forty-five minutes) after agreeing to come to collect me when my scan was over.
After drinking my litre of special liquid and being fitted with a cannula so that a chemical marker could be introduced to my blood system during the scan, I went into have the scan. Unfortunately, the cannula failed and I had to be taken out of the scanner to have a second cannula fitted. This delayed the scan, and I wasn't actually finished until 12.50pm. I phoned Sue, and she drove back to the hospital to collect me. By the time she had negotiated her way there, picked me up, and we had got back home, it was well after 2.15pm. We were both very hungry (I was not allowed to eat before the scan), and after a late lunch, I had a very long sleep in my armchair.
In fact, I kept dozing off until it was time for our evening meal, and I felt dog-tired when I eventually went to bed ... only to find that I could not sleep!
This is not an untypical day for me ... and until my medical problem is identified and I can begin treatment, it is likely to remain so. Doing the occasional bit of modelling or work on the Compendium is helping to keep my mind occupied and the pain at bay, but progress on both is slow.
