Needles and stitches and so on

Well, I've had the hip replacement and am back home and doing ok, though I wouldn't describe the experience as the most tremendous fun... Many thanks to those who wished me well. Denice, who commented very encouragingly, must be made of stronger stuff than I am. It was, and is, just what you'd expect from having the top of your thigh sawn off and replaced by a bit of metal. It hurts somewhat and you feel a bit wobbly afterwards. But it's fine, and I look forward to the point at which it hurts less than it did before the op - which is not the case right now. And our children sent me lovely flowers. 

The surgeon phoned up last night, which I thought was impressively caring for a chap who does several of these things every day (I assume). He's a really nice chap and he asked how I was doing and I said that I was fine. And then he paused and said, "There was something a bit odd with your post-operative x-ray." And I thought - oh dear. He went on, "There seems to be a sewing needle embedded in your thigh. Does that sound possible?"

Since my mother died in 2012, I've made 25 quilts, hand-quilting them while sitting on the sofa watching tv. Every now and then, I drop a needle, and we search the sofa cushions for them and usually find them. Occasionally, I think, we've not found one and thought - oh well, it'll turn up.

It has now turned up.

He suggested that I should just leave it if it's not causing me any trouble. I'm hoping that the pain in my leg was caused by my needing a new hip, not just by my having a needle in my thigh... . 

He was polite enough not to laugh while on the phone, but I suspect that I've now become one of his funny stories. He's sent me the x-ray and... yup. Completely inside, at right-angles to the side of my leg. 

A few years ago, I was emptying the dishwasher and felt something sharp in my index finger. I couldn't see anything and there was nothing obviously broken in the dishwasher, but I thought it must be a sliver of glass. I went to the doctor and he said that it would probably come out by itself. A year passed and I still had a sore finger. Then one day I felt a sharp pain and there was a tiny bit of glass sticking out, so I pulled it out - problem solved. I don't really fancy the idea of finding just the tip of a needle protruding from my thigh. Hmm. Just stay there, needle. 

Life's never dull...

Getting on with things while I have two working legs

It's been one of those let's-get-on-with-things weeks, during which various (if not enough) useful tasks have been done. Some of these have involved giving stuff to charity shops and having walks in their vicinities. The leaves are beginning to fall, but the colours are still pretty. 

It's been quite wet, but with bursts of sunshine. 

Don't swans grow amazingly quickly from little balls of fluff to these, still slightly brown, large birds? 

I don't like orange but do make an exception for autumn. 

In London, Daughter 2 decorated her windows with Daughter 1's tasteful hand-knitted ghosts,

and took Littlest Granddaughter, aka Very Scary Witch, out guising with some friends. 

Today I went to the station to buy a ticket to Dalmuir, the small town in the west of Scotland where - theoretically at least - I'm getting my hip replacement operation on Saturday. The routine is that you go  to the hotel attached to the big hospital the night before so that you can report for surgery at 7.30 the next morning. Argh. When I asked for a single (ie one-way) to Dalmuir, the ticket chap clearly guessed why I was going and said, "A single? Have you not got much faith in the NHS, then?" 

Mr L is collecting me in the car on Sunday. At least, let's hope. 
 

Agley

Thank you to the kind commentators who wished us well in our medical procedures. 

So here's the thing. We were just leaving the house on Monday to take Mr Life to his hospital on the east side of Edinburgh for his angiogram and possible stent, when the phone rang and it was my hospital, through in the west of Scotland, cancelling my hip replacement operation because of "problems in the operating theatres". 

I had been going to drop Mr L off and then drive home and get the train through to Dalmuir to stay in the hotel attached to the hospital for the night before reporting to the hospital at 7.30 am on the Tuesday. And, because Mr L wasn't going to be able to drive for the next week, we had complicated arrangements involving our son's very kindly coming to collect me on the Wednesday from his home, quite far away, and then, if I wasn't let out on the Wednesday, a helpful friend's doing the needful. 

Anyway... it didn't happen. Which was, as it turned out, just as well, because it turns out that an angiogram is a bigger and nastier thing than we'd expected (Mr L thinks they got it slightly wrong when inserting... I'm very phobic about arteries and things, so let's draw a veil) and he's had a very bruised and sore arm all week, which he isn't allowed to do much with. So if I'd been hobbling about on two sticks, uttering low moans, we'd have been a pretty pair. Also, I wasn't exactly looking forward to having the top of my leg sawn off and now I can pretend once more that it's not happening. Win win. 

The further win is that Mr L didn't need a stent and his heart seems to be more or less ok. Which is good. 

So we didn't do much all week. I'd had to cancel two friends who were coming for coffee on the Tuesday - this was before I knew the date (ha!) of my op - so I uncancelled them and they came and made sympathetic noises. 

And I've been getting on with my cot quilt because Daughter 2's friends' baby's is due in December. So that's been quite fun. 

Edinburgh Son-in-Law has been away down in Worcester with the Edinburgh Two, visiting his parents, so Daughter 1, who sadly hadn't enough holidays left to go with them, has been on her own. So today we went out for lunch with her and had a nice wander through Dr Neil's Garden by Duddingston Loch. It's still beautiful even at this time of year. 

You wouldn't really think, would you, that this was in the middle (well the eastern middle) of a city? 

The garden was made about fifty years ago by two doctors in the grounds of Duddingston Kirk. 

When I first visited it as a girl, there wasn't much: mainly heathers and small conifers. 

But sadly, it's a while since I was a girl. 

While the years have given me wrinkles and arthritis, they've only added to the beauty of the garden - which is open to the public, though is never busy. And when I've been carried off by those years, the garden will still be here and still be beautiful. Which is a comforting thought. Will I have had the op by that point? Watch this space. 

Not pottering

I was down in London last weekend, babysitting Littlest Granddaughter while Daughter 2 and Son-in-Law 2 were at a wedding. We played hide-and-seek. Can you possibly guess where she is, in this photo?? 

We read lots of stories. 

It rained, really quite hard, so that we couldn't go out. When I was a mum, I was famous for dragging my three out for Wet Walks. But I don't feel that I can exert so much authority over grandchildren and anyway, it was really very wet. But the day passed pretty well anyway. 

On Sunday the sun shone, so Daughter 2 got some plants planted. When they bought the house, the back garden was all grass, but she's gradually filling it with flowers. The soil is very solid London clay, so hard work to do anything with. 

Meanwhile the Edinburgh 2 are down in Devon with their cousins on their dad's side, which is lovely. 

About fourteen months ago, I got seen by a consultant who said that I needed a hip replacement operation, but the NHS has big backlogs so I was expecting to wait several years. However, to my surprise, I was recently summoned to a hospital in the west of Scotland and so went there today. I travelled by train, which was easy enough, though I did get up at 5.30am to do so - I was worried that the later train might be cancelled. I was in fact far too early, but that's better than being far too late. I saw a different consultant, a nurse, a nurse practitioner, a pharmacist and an occupational therapist, and they were all very nice, and it turns out that I should get the operation within 3-6 months. 

It seemed a good idea to get the op when it wasn't for several years. Now I'm thinking - hmm! oooh! - that's not very long. 

Still, it would have cost about £16-£18,000 to get it done sooner, privately, and this will be free. So - good old NHS. And I'm just not going to think about it until I have to. 
 

Complications

I don't want to compare my life with David Cameron's or Barack Obama's but it sometimes seems a bit complicated. Grandson landed back in hospital in the middle of Friday night with the same problem as three weeks ago: a bad cold which went to his chest and gave him problems in breathing. Once he was admitted and put on steroids and other puffer stuff, he improved a lot and enjoyed playing in the hospital playroom, coughing and sneezing over all the little souls with diabetes and broken legs and so on - which doesn't strike me as ideal, but what can you do when the playroom is at the end of the ward? I spent most of the day with him so that Son-in-Law 1 could go home and sleep. One young mum whom we met the last time was still there with her baby, who still had a feeding tube up his nose. I felt so sorry for her, especially as she has another little one as well. Being in hospital with a child even for a couple of days is stressful and tiring even if your child isn't all that ill. I can't imagine what it must be like for weeks.

I spent one week in hospital with Son when he was 2. We were in isolation because he had an unidentified virus (which turned out to be severe tonsillitis) and it was horrible. He had a high fever so the windows had to be open to keep the room cool and I wasn't supposed to hold him because this would make him hotter, but of course the only thing that would comfort him was for me to cuddle him and read him stories. The same stories for a week. The loo was several minutes' walk away, as was the canteen, and of course there were no such things as mobile phones so the phone was several minutes' walk away too. You can do without eating for a day or so but for a week, no. He screamed whenever I left him and was too young to understand that I'd be back before long. And we were all alone apart from brief visits from doctors or nurses. Eventually a doctor gave him antibiotics in case he had tonsillitis and he started getting better. All the time I was so worried about him: doctors were muttering darkly about leukaemia.

Anyway, it made me have great sympathy for parents with chronically ill children. It must be terrible.

It also makes me think of those sad gravestones that you see in old churchyards, commemorating tiny children who died. Seemingly healthy little ones get ill so quickly and while nowadays we can often make them better again quite soon, in those days things were more likely to end tragically. And I'm sure people loved their children just as much then as we do now.

Grandson is home again today but the worry is that this will happen every time he has a cold.

Anyway, Granddaughter came in to visit him and wasn't too worried.

 

And Sirius (still holding his own) was fairly relaxed.

 

As was Cassie.

Spot the differences between these two pictures of Cassie. Yes, she's sitting slightly differently in picture 2, but actually picture 1 was taken a few minutes ago while picture 2 was taken last week. What you don't see in photo 1 is that just after taking it, I decided to move round to get a slightly cuter angle, knocked over a cup of coffee and sprayed it EVERYWHERE (apart from on Cassie). She was most indignant at the ensuing mopping-up.

As from tonight, we have four African people with us for a few days (three children who belong to an African Children's Choir and their chaperone - though they'll be out during the daytime - they just need breakfast, packed lunch and dinner) and friends for lunch tomorrow. Apart from that, life is simple.

And it is, and it is - compared to what it might be.

Cats and innards

Yesterday: Cassie sits on a plant while watching an insect. Well, she wouldn't want to sit on the chilly concrete slab, would she? (Does anyone know what that plant is? It's deciduous with spires of small, rather insignificant flowers in July. I grow it for the foliage - now greatly improved by Cassie.)

Meanwhile, Sirius surveys his terrain. Those irises are good, don't you think? I love irises.

Thank you so much for your good wishes regarding my innards. So far, I regret to say, they continue to be somewhat volcanic. This is difficult since my mum is now in hospital with precisely the opposite problem, and because she's in the oncology ward, with lots of people on chemotherapy with suppressed immune systems, I didn't feel I could go and see her today in my diseased state. Though arguably my mum could do with a dose of what I've got... .

Enough. I shall go and practise my difficult Mozart, even though I've called off tomorrow's piano lesson.

Remember, remember the 4th of November

Someone asked what NaBloPoMo is (I got it right this time) and since I didn't know the name properly I looked it up and found this page:
http://www.blogher.com/blogher-topics/blogging-social-media/nablopomo
which was a surprise, because I didn't realised that you registered for it and there were prizes and things. I haven't done more than glance at this because I'm exhausted, but I will at some point - it's all to do with blogging every day for November, though. Anyway, I'm not doing it properly because I've already missed some days.

To continue from yesterday - I'll not write about the morning (castle and enormous building site) just now but skip on to the afternoon, when Mum suddenly took very ill at about 3. Her main symptom was almost complete incoherence apart from saying over and over again things like, "I feel terrible." She could manage short repeated sentences - she said, lots of times, "Can anyone help?" - but most of the time she sounded as if she was talking (with remarkable fluency) a different language that sounded a bit like English, but wasn't. I can't remember anything precisely, but she was saying things like, "Cart oval fring sporn fallt premmed." And she would gaze at me expectantly, waiting for the answer, as I played this over in my head, trying and failing to make sense of it.

Anyway, in short, I called an ambulance and she was taken to hospital, where we spent many hours in a receiving ward, she getting more and more ill and agitated and unable to communicate and me talking to various rather baffled nurses who ran tests on her. We all wondered if she'd had a stroke but she also seemed hot and uncomfortable while shivering and shaking, so she seemed to have a temperature though in fact, according to the thermometer, her temperature was only slightly raised. She also had a urinary infection, but she'd had this for a few days with no apparent ill effects.

Eventually, at 10, she was taken on to an assessment ward and given more antibiotics and I came home, very worried. If there one thing that my mum wouldn't like - and neither would any of us, but maybe especially my mum - it's not being able to talk.

This morning Dr Son, who has just finished 8 days of night duty during which, as you will perceive, he didn't shave (hmm) came down from Perth for the day to visit us and his granny. When I phoned the ward, however, I was told that she was much better, which cheered us up. Here he is, unshaven but cheery.

"An old lady [patient] told me that I was a hunk," he informed me. "She didn't seem to notice that I hadn't shaved. She said that if she was 40 years younger, she'd marry me."

Cassie ran up Son's front, an operation not entirely without pain for him, and sat on his shoulders. You can just see Mr Life's toes in the bottom right hand side of this photo. He was lying on the sofa in his pyjamas, with a rug and Sirius over his legs.

So Son and I went to visit Mum and she was pretty well fine. Slightly muddled as to what had happened even today and unable to remember much about yesterday, but basically back to about 90% of her usual ability to speak.

I went back this evening and she was again fine.

I'm not a person who gets very tired on the whole but right now I am, as I said before, exhausted. But very very relieved. Urgh.

Happy Guy Fawkes Day, British people.

No picture but a day of contrasts

Well.

It occurred to me this morning that I'd vaguely thought I might do NoPoGoFlow or whatever it's called but had then forgotten about it. I know that starting now is a bit of a cheat. But I thought I would anyway. Only it's been a bit of a mixture of a day and it's too late to go into it in detail. But it started with a castle and a huge building site in the morning and featured a hospital for much of the afternoon and evening.

No one is dead.

So - apologies for a seriously rubbish post but I need a long, bubbly bath.

Back tomorrow.

Events!

You may remember that we climbed Blackford Hill on New Year's Day and I slipped and fell on the way down. It was memorably sore but I thought I'd just sprained it and spent the week hobbling about. However, it remains very swollen and bruised, so today I saw sense and went to the hospital and they x-rayed it and it's broken.

I've now got crutches and am not to put any weight on it. I have to sit with it higher than my heart all weekend. This is very boring. I've got an appointment at the fracture clinic on Monday morning, where doctor Son says that they may give me a weight-bearing plaster, which would make walking easier. And by the way, he's got engaged to his young lady.

So far this year:

I've broken my ankle
I'm going to be a granny!
Daughter 1 and SIL plan to move house (before the baby arrives in July)
Daughter 2 has moved to London
Daughter 2's getting married
Son's engaged
My mother's going to move in with us, selling her flat and somehow getting rid of her extremely numerous possessions.

It's all a bit exhausting for a person who likes a quiet life.

Fortunately, Cassie and Sirius Cat are taking it all calmly. And Mr Life is nobly rallying round.

Hospital visiting

We're coming up to the national exams in Scotland, the time of year when all the students who have been coasting along, thinking of education as something that’s just poured into their brains, have suddenly decided to do lots of work. They then give it to me to mark. So I’ve been rather busy.

My deaf, confused aunt is still in hospital. Her hip is mending but she seems to have some problem with low blood pressure or possibly her heart. The hospital's about half an hour from here so the round trip takes up a goodly portion of the evening, which doesn’t help the marking. When I visited her yesterday, one of her hearing aids was missing and as I rooted around looking for it, a nice young doctor appeared. Because my son is also a nice young doctor, I smiled warmly at this one. The only snag about him was that he was foreign – maybe Greek or something? – and so even I had some difficulty understanding him. Auntie Jean clearly couldn’t hear a word, though he decently bent over her and shouted in her ear, which helped a bit.

He knew that she too is a doctor. Indeed she can still talk impressively about doctorish matters even though she can’t tell you what she had for her tea. So he addressed to her in medical terms, which I’m sure she would have appreciated if she could have heard him. And of course I, who could hear him, found the accent quite challenging and didn’t know what he was talking about anyway.

Auntie Jean: I’m going home tomorrow.

Nice young doctor: Well, we’re just going to do a JPD test on your haematitis to check for any peridot. [This isn’t what he said at all, of course, but he made sounds approximating to these words.]

Auntie Jean: Very nice, thank you.

Me: What’s a JPD test?

NYD: It’s a [something I couldn’t make out] to make sure that she [something else I couldn’t make out]. And a bit of oxymoron [or whatever].

AJ: I’m going home tomorrow.

NYD: [Loudly] No, not tomorrow. We need to get you checked out first for PRD.

AJ: Yes, and it's wise to make sure there's no ultrapulmonary fusion [or words to that effect].

NYD: [nodding] Yes.

Me: PRD?

NYD: Postural random dentifrice [or something] – her blood and [something I couldn’t make out].

Me: Oh.

AJ: Is it tomorrow I’m going home?

The three of us smiled bemusedly at each other and after a bit more, he moved on to the next patient. However, I really appreciated his attempts to communicate and felt sure that his mum would have been proud of him.