2007 — 11 August: taking it very easy
I'm afraid some days the pain is worse than others. This is one such day so far. I truly hate this disease.
Inching back to normality
The meds are doing their job. The latest chip and PIN card has been activated. The implicit invitation to spend £59 annually for their ID theft protection fee has been declined (this was essentially a straight play to FUD on the part of the "activation" clerk, reading from — and irritatingly unable/unwilling to deviate from — an inept script.) "Did I realise identity theft is the fastest growing crime in the UK?" "Would I like to know how to protect myself?"
One might think that a curmudgeonly refusal to let the card out of my physical control, use it only in reputable retail outlets, check the online1 balance at least once per day, change the PIN regularly, and not write anything down or fail to shred every piece of mail from the issuer might almost be sufficient. Besides, even today's Guardian (in a letter from a victim) confidently assures me that much the easiest route to success in the online fraud business is simply having one (or more) bad apples on the inside of the system:
I was divested of more than £2,000 from my building society current account and was told by its investigation department that the most likely method was one dodgy employee on the end of the phone when I'd ordered clothes, or theatre tickets, or books. My name and debit card number would have been jotted down and then sold on to the end user who paid for things in the same way, over the phone.
Blue Belle's nagging propensity
The new alternator slipped slightly, giving the belt's pulley a chance to start grinding its way through the fibreglass bonnet, dammit. Fixed now, though. Bad Girl!
When the pain retreats
I know She looks marvellous in these gardening pictures, but She points out that being upright is currently one of the few pain-free positions. Of course, gardening is good therapy, but the pain at other times and in other postures is damnably wearisome for Her. And I can't say it does much by way of increasing the local sum of human happiness hereabouts. I truly hope each Chemo cycle will improve things further by chipping relentlessly away at these horrible tumours.
But, when it's beaten back, both the world and my beautiful Girl are in a happier place. She likes this photo. It was taken around 5:25 pm today. On balance, we've decided this was actually a pretty Good Day, too. We toddled gently round local houses twice. We also spent some time picking over some very happy memories together. And so, as a somewhat more famous Diarist was wont to say, to bed. Actually, She's already (21:34) fallen asleep ahead of Her morphine and last antibiotic of the day, but She's used to being woken for these in due course. If not by the noise of the distant fireworks that are, I suspect, connected to the arrival (or maybe the departure) of the QE2 down in the docks.
Good Night!