Slowly but surely ...

Over the past few days, my ability to get about and do things has gradually begun to improve. I even managed to get up two flights of stairs to our home office and my toy/wargame room yesterday, and to walk up to the local postbox to post our somewhat belated Christmas cards. The latter involved a walk of less than three hundred yards in total, but it took me nearly ten minutes and I needed a long rest afterwards.

The problem with my excessive exudate seems to be coming under control, thanks to a course of antibiotics and regular changes of the wound dressing. I am hoping that by Christmas I will only need to have the dressing replaced every two days rather than daily ... but whether or not that happens is not in my hands.

Sue is planning what we will need to buy to get us through the Christmas holiday. Before the latest changes to the Coronavirus Tiers, we had booked Christmas lunch at a local restaurant, but since London moved into Tier 3 from Tier 2, it has shut. We have looked at various alternatives, but it looks as if we will have to eat Christmas lunch at home, something we have not done for years.

One thing that I have managed to do since I left hospital is to read quite a few books, and once I am able to spend some time in our home office, I hope to write about them on my blog.

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Thanks again to everyone who has sent me emails or made comments on my blog wishing me a speedy recovery. I am told that I can expect to have made a full recovery in two to three months, depending upon my body’s ability to heal.

And this week’s new word is ... Exudate!

An exudate is a fluid that filters from the circulatory system into lesions (such as surgical wounds) or areas of inflammation. In my case, it is an almost clear fluid.

Exudate supports the healing process by facilitating the diffusion of vital healing factors (e.g. growth and immune factors) as well as the migration of cells across the wound. It also promotes cell proliferation, provides nutrients for cell metabolism, and aids autolysis of necrotic or damaged tissue.

In my case, my wound is producing a high volume of exudate, and this is saturating my wound dressing. The latter keep leaking and having to be replaced. I’m being prescribed antibiotics to help ensure that the risk of secondary infection is reduced and to assist in reducing the flow of exudate.

Until this problem is solved, I’m unable to do many of the things I’d like to be doing, and both Sue and I are becoming increasingly frustrated. There is only so much sitting and reading/watching TV one can do before boredom begins to kick in ... and we are fast approaching our personal limits.

That said, I’m eating and drinking normally, I’m learning to cope with my stoma bag, and I’ve had lots of time to think about wargaming ... and I’ll be writing more about this in due course.

Ups and downs ...

I’ve been back home for nearly forty-eight hours, but have yet to have a good night’s sleep due to problems with my high tech, post-op wound dressing.

I won’t go into the unpleasant details, but it began to leak almost as soon as I got home, and after numerous phone calls to different people involved in delivering NHS medical care in ones home, I finally had some running repairs done last night.

Despite this, the leakage got worse overnight, and this morning a local District Nurse completely removed the original wound dressing and replaced it with conventional dressings. These will now be replaced on a daily basis until I am fully healed ... and the concerns I had about the nature of the leaking matter have been answered.

Once I am fully rested, I hope to resume blogging regularly. I have lots to write about, in particularly about books that I hope to add to the stable of PORTABLE WARGAME publications.

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I’d like to thank everyone who has made a supportive comment on my blog during my current health problems. Reading you kind words and best wishes helped raise my spirits, especially during the long, dark, and sleepess nights.

And so it ends ... sort of!

After nearly nine hours in surgery, I emerged at just after 6.00pm with a section of my colon removed, and a stoma.

I am now fully awake and drinking copious amounts of water.

More news when I’m feeling better!

And so it begins ...

I have to go to hospital this morning to have a COVID-19 test as part of the preparation for my forthcoming surgical operation. Once I've had the test, I will be going into isolation (or purdah) until Wednesday, which is when my operation is scheduled to take place.

During my isolation, I have to begin preparing for my admission to hospital. Until I go in, I have to use a special antiseptic body-wash when I take a shower, taking care not to wash off the markings that have been drawn on my stomach area by the stoma nurse. On Tuesday I will have to begin a programme of drinking specially fortified health drinks as well as self-administering an anticoagulant by injection at lunchtime (something that I am NOT looking forward to!) and an enema early in the evening (again, something that I am not looking forward to doing).

I will have to try to be in bed early on Tuesday night as I will have to self-administer a second enema at 6.00am on Wednesday morning, prior to getting to the hospital by 7.30am for my pre-op session with the anaesthetist at 8.00am. Assuming everything has gone without a hitch, I should then have my operation that morning.

None of the above is – as far as I can tell – normal pre-Covid-19 procedure, but is due to the current pandemic. The medical professionals want to ensure that patients undergoing surgery spend as little time in hospital as possible, as this should reduce the possibility of COVID-19 infection and to ensure that beds are occupied by patients for as short a time a necessary. Hence the reason why I won't be going in the day before I have my operation to have the anticoagulant injection and enemas.

This all seems a bit strange to me, but I suspect that this is going to be part of the 'new normal' that we are going to live with for the foreseeable future.

Nugget 331

I collected the latest issue of THE NUGGET from the printer yesterday morning, and posted it out to members of Wargame Developments that afternoon.

I had already uploaded the PDF version to the Wargame Developments website, and it can be downloaded and read online using the password that was sent to all members when they resubscribed.

IMPORTANT: Please note that this is the fourth issue of THE NUGGET to be published for the 2020-2021 subscription year. If you have not yet re-subscribed, a reminder was sent to you. If you wish to re-subscribe using the PayPal option on the relevant page of the website, you can use the existing buttons as the subscription cost has not changed.

Amazon KDP publishing and distribution: Some anomalies

I suspect that like a lot of people, I had the impression that Amazon was a monolithic organisation that had its tentacles pretty well everywhere ... but I have recently discovered that this is not true.

When I published THE PORTABLE PIKE AND SHOT WARGAME book in paperback and Kindle editions, I assumed – wrongly, as it turned out – that it would be sold by Amazon worldwide. In fact, although this is true for the Kindle edition, the paperback edition cannot currently be bought online in quite a few countries. The following table shows where the paperback and Kindle editions can (indicated by a tick) and cannot (indicated by a blank space) be bought.

Whereas I suspect that sales of the book will not be particularly high in most non-European countries, the anomaly that the paperback cannot be bought online across the globe is something that I hope to address. To this end, I have ordered the printing of several 'author's copies'. When they arrive, I intend to sell them direct to those purchasers who are currently unable to buy the paperback in the country where they live. I am not sure how I will do this, but it will probably involve purchasers emailing me a request and me responding with an invoice that – once paid – will result in the book being posted to them.

All of this will, however, have to wait until I have had my forthcoming operation. In the meantime, I ask those potential purchasers to remain patient.

Reflecting on my recent wargame

My recent wargame about the assault on Fortine Olivaro has given me cause to have a re-think about one or two things.

Firstly, using the small dice and dice holders to record each unit's current Strength Point Value (SP) was easier that trying to keep a manual written tally, and is something that I will probably now adopt as standard for my future wargames. I may even resurrect an idea I had some years ago about using a couple of knitter's stitch counters to keep a tally of each side's losses.

A pair of knitter's stitch counters. These can be bought in most specialist haberdashery, sewing, knitting, or craft shops.

Secondly, the size of the grid (which was a 6 x 8 hexed grid) did not restrict me as much as I had expected. I deployed the game equivalent to three infantry divisions plus a tank unit in a space that was smaller than the 8 x 8 square grid I used for the final battle of my recent Operation Barbarossa play-test campaign ... and yet the latter felt much more crowded. Perhaps I ought to think small rather than trying to 'go large' for my much-planned, long-term Eastern Front/Great Patriotic War project.

Thirdly, I preferred using the multi-figure bases of small 15mm-scale Peter Laing figures in preference to the single 20mm-scale figure bases I used in my recent Eastern Front/Great Patriotic War play-test mini-campaign*, and I am wondering if I ought to re-examine my original decision to go down that route. This was reinforced by my re-reading of the battle reports from my A WINTER-ISH WAR mini-campaign, the Morschauserland vs. Eastland battles I fought back in the late Summer of 2015# using Martin Rapier's and my own versions of Neil Thomas' ONE HOUR WARGAMES rules, and the earlier Barbarossa Mini-campaign I fought in early 2015~. The multi-figure bases worked well in all those games, and looked no worse (and in some ways looked better) than the single figure bases I have used more recently.

So, where do I go now? That is something that I have to think a bit more about before making any changes that will be difficult to undo in the future. I may experiment a bit with basing some of my 20mm-scale figures onto multi-figure bases to see what the end result looks like ... but whatever I do, I am not going to rush into it in a burst of misplaced enthusiasm that I will live to regret.

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* Eastern Front/Great Patriotic War play-test mini-campaign battles included:

• Battle report: 1st German Infantry Division vs. 2nd Russian Rifle Division (28th June 1941) (27th August 2020)
• Battle report: 1st German Panzer Division vs. 1st Russian Rifle Division (28th June 1941) (29th August 2020)
• Battle report: The battle for the Vilno-Pskov Road (11th October 2020)

# The Morschauserland vs. Eastland battles included:

• One Hour Wargames (20th August 2015)
• One Hour Wargames ... the re-fight! (25th August 2015)
• One Hour Wargames: Pushing the envelope (28th August 2015)
• One Hour Wargames: Play-test of my own World War II version of the rules (5th September 2015)

~ The Barbarossa Mini-campaign battles included:

• Barbarossa Mini-campaign: Battle No.1: Control the river (15th February 2015)
• Barbarossa Mini-campaign: Battle No.2: Late arrivals (17th February 2015)
• Barbarossa Mini-campaign: Battle No.3: Triple line (20th February 2015)

The Portable Pike & Shot Wargame ... has been published!

I understand that both the printed and Kindle editions of THE PORTABLE PIKE & SHOT WARGAME book have been published, and are now available to buy from Amazon.

The printed, colour, paperback is on sale for £14.99, and the Kindle edition is available for £4.99. The former should be printed and delivered to Amazon Prime members by Sunday 29th November, and the Kindle edition is available for immediate download.

This took less time that Amazon KDP told me it would, and I was somewhat surprised to find that both editions were already on sale, especially as I was still revising the cover for the Kindle edition yesterday!

One of the anomalies that arises from using Amazon KDP is that as the editor/publisher, I have to wait in line for my copies of the printed book to be delivered. Lulu.com would not let a book be released for publication until I had ordered at least one copy, but Amazon KDP seems perfectly happy to do so as long as I have reviewed the book online in each edition. This means that the contributors and myself will probably not have a copy of the book until some time after it has been read by members of the paying public.

Regardless of this, the book is now on sale, and I have managed to achieve the goal of getting it finished and published before Christmas. I have a feeling that there will be several copies being bought as Christmas presents ... either to 'give' to oneself or to give to a member of the family to 'give' back on Christmas Day!

A provisional date ... at last

I’ve just been given a provisional date and time for my admission to hospital for the operation on my colon ... 7.30am on 2nd December.

I am having a pre-operation assessment with the nursing staff and anaesthetist on Thursday afternoon, and then must have a pre-operation COVID-19 test on 29th November. Assuming that I have not been infected with the COVID-19 virus, I will be in quarantine from then until my admission to hospital.