Under the knife

I’m beginning to dread getting news alerts on my phone these days. We had some friends round for dinner on Saturday night, and around 10.30’ish, or second brandy as I like to call it, the phone came up with the BBC News jingle. The next two hours or so were spent on the BBC website and Twitter as news of the awful, cowardly and senseless attacks started to come through in more detail.

The next morning there were the usual plethora of stupid and misinformed posts on both FB and Twitter, the unfollow / unfriend button has become my ally again.

As far as “health” goes this week, it’s been a difficult one. My throat is becoming incredibly sore and I’m conscious that my swallowing is becoming quite pronounced even when I’m not eating or drinking. My mind is pretty screwed up now as I just want to get this over and done with and try to get on with the rest of my life.

I had a Pre-Op appointment at Churchill today, scheduled for midday. As the parking is a challenge to say the least I rocked up at 10am with the idea of queueing for the car park and then enjoying a coffee. No such luck. The car park was mayhem with cars queueing all over the place to try and find that elusive spot. So I bit the bullet and drove off to the Oxford Park and Ride and caught the bus in. It’s probably a cheaper option than the hospital as it was £4.80 return and only took 10 minutes.

I was seen by the pre-op nurse promptly after I’d filled in a questionnaire regarding my full medical history (I made some bits up to make me look worth saving!) and filled a specimen bottle, easy to have spillage when you’re bursting. Due to my age (!!!!) she had to set up an ECG for me and then it was the usual blood pressure, blood tests etc, followed by making sure I hadn’t made things up in the questionnaire. (Apparently I’m still worth saving even though I’m boring!).

Then the bombshell……. I’m going under the knife on 26^th June, just over two weeks away. 

Now that I know the date I’m feeling much better, albeit a tad anxious. I can now start to try and plan forwards a bit. For example, I’ll probably be in hospital for around two week, that gives a target escape day of somewhere around 10^th July. Our wedding anniversary is on 13^th July, it would be great to be home for that. And there’s the small matter of FB7s on 15^th July, whilst I doubt I’ll be fit to take photo’s it would be great to go up for a couple of hours to watch the Badgers for the afternoon. Something worth aiming for.

Tonight Carol and I are off to a fundraising ball on behalf of the rugby club. I’m singing for my supper by acting as photographer for the evening. The guest speakers are Nick Easter and the one and only Ashley Rowden, so it should be good evening.

The remaining couple of weeks are going to be spent making sure the iPod, Kindle, Laptop etc are fully charged as I intend to keep writing if I can whilst I’m under the care of the hospital. We may even attempt to get a meal at Nino’s sorted out prior to Anna disappearing up t’North. Max has a birthday looming, so we can make it a double celebration. 

I’ll also be using my voice as much as I can, you never know, it could be the last chance I get.

That’s it for this update, short but sweet.

As always, thanks for reading.

To be continued……..

#Shoulder2Shoulder