2009 — 19 January: Monday

First, tonight's picture of Christa, taken on that delayed honeymoon / holiday in September 1975:

Christa in Cornwall, September 1975

What a beautiful woman!

I ended up getting a taxi back from the "General" and arriving home, awash with powerful antibiotics, at about 00:30 or so. I also have a seven-day supply of something called Flucloxacillin, and of something called Phenoxymethylpenicillin, and the vaguely familiar Ibuprofen. Plus an appointment to return for "assessment" (or earlier if things continue to get worse). They were in no hurry to admit me — rumours abound of problems and overloading at that hospital at the moment. I was in no hurry to be admitted. So we opted for the "flood his system" approach rather than the "slice into the finger joint and clean it out" approach. As I lose the use of that finger (temporarily, I trust) so I more fully appreciate its incredible usefulness!

Still, as I said in the context of Christa's treatment in that same hospital, the NHS doesn't look broken from where I view it. I also had plenty of time to listen in, Alan Bennett fashion, to the tales of woe and mayhem of various other patients, not to mention the attempts of police officers to get them to make official complaints, bring charges, identify their assailants, etc. etc. Literally the walking wounded. I had no idea parts of Southampton were so dangerous, frankly. Highly educational, even if it does tend to confirm most of what Theodore Dalrymple writes. And I also had plenty of time to recall my musings on bacterial resistance to antibiotics. (I gather I will be sent an invoice for the prescription charges; at least Christa, having been a woman of a certain age, got all her NHS meds for free.)

G'night, at 01:54, or so. Good grief, the weather forecast is talking about 5 cm of snow. Just what the doctor ordered.

Dopey start to the day...

... by which I mean, of course, that the first batch of oral meds are now chasing the remnants of last night's injected ones. I cannot yet report a dramatic improvement, but rather a subtle diminution of the swelling and corresponding increase in the "motile1 characteristics" of the sore digit. It's 09:31 but I'm not supposed to eat yet which, of course, serves only to make me feel hungry.

Sea of troubles domestical... dept.

Where to start? Well, it's 11:31 and I'm now finally munching a bit of breakfast after a flurry of phone calls. Basically, I hope I've succeeded in getting dear Mama to agree to let a GP visit her2 to assess her state and her capability for continued independent life. Concerned neighbours and ex-neighbours who, between them, manage her shopping, pension collection, and such have all noticed her deteriorating state (as have I, of course, most recently when I called in on her with my cousin at Christmas).

Remind me (again) of the many benefits of increasing age and frailty.

Son of banking package

Or borrow and lend your way to success. As the Brownian motion man says: "Anger is not enough." Time for lunch (13:11 already). The liabilities that the UK tax payer is shouldering are hundreds of billions of pounds, says Will Hutton. Who wants toxic debt? Not me, sunshine, not me.

Well I never... dept.

When I read Coral Island (many years ago) I had no idea that the three major characters in Lord of the Flies (which I read in 1962) were deliberately based by Golding on their earlier counterparts. And "time immemorial" officially begins before 3rd September 1189. How and why would anyone know that? Amazing what you can learn from "Brain of Britain", isn't it?

And, in other shocking news, dear Mama has just called to say she's had not one, but two, separate visits from her GP's surgery. On the first of which, her pulse was taken, and she was pronounced "normal". Nothing quite like an in-depth examination, heh? She's distressed to hear about "my arm" and puzzled as to who could have contacted her GP. But then she's also amazed to hear that I'm 57 and proved unable to recall, or deduce, the age of her other son by adding six years on. The sun is shining there, even if the son isn't! Soon be time to wrap myself round the next batch of wonder pills. It's a GOOD life!

In later news...

It's 21:02 and I've just finished the dishes after the evening meal. One more set of meds to go tonight. Radcliffe and Maconie are keeping me cheerful with their inane but well-informed banter. Irritatingly, my finger is in full-on "hurty" mode which is very wearisome and quite hard to ignore:

My throbbing digit!

It's also interestingly difficult to focus and shoot left-handed. Frankly, last January's pheasant damage was easier!

  

Footnotes

1  A lovely word first encountered in Larry Niven's story "The Handicapped" as was "sessile". Without giving too much of the plot away, I host a delicious quotation here — look for the one that begins "The juvenile seasquirt..."
2  The nanny state, in its infinite wisdom, allows adult citizens to refuse admittance to GPs. I had to resort to mild verbal bullying to get dear Mama to promise to allow a GP into her house. When Christa tried to arrange a similar visit several years ago, it met with a total stonewalling. Today, I pointed out my own medical vulnerability as a lone adult and used that as a bargaining counter. How much of the conversation will be recalled is anyone's guess, but I dictated to her, and got her to read back to me, a sentence noting the date, the fact of my call, and her promise to let a GP across her doorstep.