2007 — 13 September: idiots and kind people
Idiots are the people (armed, I suppose) who raided a delivery van (I'm told) at our local bank branch and got two of themselves shot dead by the police on what should have been a beautiful morning. What a sodding waste of life.
Kind people include my chauffeur Peter, and the chap in Southern Foam near Belbins who cut a couple of pieces of foam into shaped cushions for me this afternoon to help Christa sit (and who flatly refused to let me pay him). Plus an old chum from IBM whom I found working a Waitrose till for a couple of afternoons per week. She was immensely sad to hear about Christa's illness and very kind to listen to me so sympathetically.
X-rays
Christa's radio-therapy is surprisingly tiring, but the stretcher ambulance transport is sheer magic. The hard radiation couch makes for a very painful few minutes, which is where the oral morphine1 comes into its own. Plus I can't see any diminution of Her pain yet. I suspect I will always hate this loathsome disease.
See what happens...
... when I resume diary entries? We're now waiting for an out-of-hours doctor to visit (hopefully before 11:15 pm or so) to try to solve the fluid retention problem that has flared up this evening. And we (badly) need the sleep to be bright-eyed and bushy-tailed for tomorrow's third radio-therapy session at 09:12 of course. Thank whatsit we're coming up to a weekend, heh?
Doctor came, saw, inspected, consulted with consultant (who happened to ring back while he was here) and decided that this was all "normal" as a side-effect of radiation (shrinking capillaries, etc.) Pity the treatment booklet overlooked a mention of this, but plaudits, once again, to the NHS and its out-of-hours service. And sotobed at about 22:30. Good night!