Heath Towers Day Trip

Up bright and early, well, early anyway to head off to Heath Towers. First stop was the Dental School then onto the Day Unit for the Immunoglobulins and to see Merlin. Parking as per usual at the Dental School was a nightmare even more so as they have blocked off almost half of their available spaces by having scaffolding up all around the building as they are re-newing the windows. Thankfully Judith was with me so whilst we were parked up in the queue waiting to get into the car park she jumped out and set up my go-cart so that I could get in on time. Unusually I didn’t have to wait for more than about 10 mins before being called in. I wasn’t looking forward to the visit as I was expecting to have 2 teeth pulled out. The registrar I saw explained that this appointment was just a sort of hand over between the Perio department I had been going to and the Oral Surgery department I was visiting today. As such he took a look in my mouth and basically just agreed with what I had told him, that I needed to have 2 teeth out and then 3 needed to be filed down before having a nice new denture fitted. All in all a bloody waste of time. I could have had another couple of hours in bed. They are going to send me an appointment in the post, surprise, surprise!!

On to part 2 then, after stopping for something to eat on the way of course. A rather delicious warm herby sausage baguette. I was a little early, in fact about ½ hour early for my appointment at the day unit but was rather impressed with almost immediately being shown to my home for the next few hours, a chair in Dracula’s Lair as I like to call it. It’s a room with about 8 or so pretty uncomfortable reclining chairs where most of the people there sit around having blood transfusions mostly, being force fed Daytime Telly. I was to be looked after by Jane who is a lovely bubbly nurse but has the tendency to try and do too many things at once and as such it is usually an experience to say the least. So, first things first, trying to get blood from a stone. She set about throwing javelins at my poor hands and arms. The first 3 all ended in complete failure after painfully putting it in then wiggling it around a bit, before eventually blowing the vein completely, causing a rather nice, painful, black bulge under the skin which will make a nice bruise in the morning. After dunking my hand in hot water for 15 mins she tried for the 4th time and managed to get it in all be it very positional as they call it, meaning if you move your hand it stops, which is no fun believe me, at least it’s in though. So 1st of 3 bottles on the go time to watch some Gordon Ramsey Kitchen Nightmares on the Laptop to pass the time. Well it’s better than Miss Marple or whatever it was on the TV. I had a visit from the Wound Nurse about the latest bunch of sores on my legs so it was all change and I was shuffled off into another room so I could be seen on the bed. Another blinking waste of time as when I got there eventually after having to pack up all my stuff and then try and drive the scooter being followed closely by Jane, pushing the drip stand she only needed me to roll up my trouser bottoms, something I could have done sat in the chair. And, you guessed it all the movement had caused the drip to stop . This resulted in about another ½ hour having to cyphen stuff off, pump some fluids in etc, some of which were extremely painful, all as you can guess causing me to get even more wound up by the minute. I had well and truly had enough now and just wanted to pull the bloody drip out and head off home. I find when I get like that, all stressed out my breathing, which was already bad before I had started, gets quite worse and I can find myself extremely short of breath. Ah well back to Gordon for some light hearted entertainment. I was just settling in when Merlin’s secretary arrived to inform me that his lordship will not be able to come down and see me today unless it was life threatening as he was actually in the process of writing up the case for the people in the finance department to fund my treatment for the GVHD in either Birmingham or here and that it needed to be within the next couple of hours. I guess at least he was trying to prove he was doing something about it, but as I was having a bad day my impression was why did he leave it till the last minute to do it?? Still I got to see the ever likeable Registrar, Chris who I haven’t seen for some time.

Finally after 4 ½ hours I managed to get out from there, considerably stressed out and looking forward to getting home and chilling out. As a result of this I fell asleep not long after getting home, managing to catch up I guess on some of the sleep I never got the night before.

Right I’m off to play around with Fedora for a while. Much less stressful.

See Ya!!