2007 — 29 August: after noon already?

Today's equally decent main meal is now being digested as She sleeps peacefully for very nearly two solid hours. This is marvellous.

So, once again, brekkie and all morning meds safely onboard, plus I've picked up Her next batch of morphine tablets, paid the paper bill, and thereby had a spot of fresh air and exercise on a gloriously sunny morning.

Pain in the bum

When the GP asked (on her lunchtime visit yesterday) "How's the pain in the bum?" I said I was not too bad; they both laughed, which was nice to see and hear. I must admit laughter is not the number one phenomenon in our lives just now, though we do try. This afternoon, we're due a visit from a member of the palliative care team, who will advise us on how to tweak and tune various meds to do what we can to keep pain under control as much as possible.

She came, she saw, and she'll be doing her best to conquer (for those of you familar with either the Roman conquest of Britain, or the Sellar and Yeatman parody variant). This is also marvellous. Did you know that nerve pain can sometimes be lessened by low dosages of an old style tricyclic anti-depressant? No, nor did we. Bring it on!1 Plus it turns out there is a wealth of cushions2 and whatnot available to assist sitting. This will shortly be demonstrated to us, it seems.

Lessened risk of soup spillage

An enormous thank you to Roger F for not only tracking down, but also picking up, and delivering, a Red Cross "over the bed" table trolley. This will be on loan to us, and my grateful cheque will be in their envelope. And this too is marvellous.

Driving along

When one has the official DSA theory test for car drivers as one's bedside reading, one has no need whatsoever of any form of sleeping draught, trust me. (I'm on page — yawn — 175 of 438 or so. Rivetting? Hardly!) Mind you, before I get to my dose tonight, I should really re-draw Her medicine chart.

  

Footnotes

1  Shades of that old AA Milne verse about the King asked the Queen, and the Queen asked the Chambermaid "Could we have some butter for the Royal slice of bread?" The palliative specialist care nurse asked her medical team, who agreed and conferred with the GP, who promptly wrote out a prescription (Amitriptyline, for any anoraks reading) in time for it to be faxed over to the local chemist and the surgery kindly rang me so I, in turn, had time to repeat my morning walk on a gloriously sunny late afternoon to go and pick it up, in time to add the first dose to Her already impressive set of medicaments tonight... This, too, is marvellous, and very impressive.
2  She's blissfully enjoying an ice cream downstairs on the sofa and watching Hardy Kruger in the 1957 film The one that got away on Film 4 as I type. This is the first time in three weeks She's been able to do this. (I can still remember the cover of Big Bro's paperback of this [largely true] story, by the way.)