Catchup 2018 part 4

Home again 

Once we were back home and TS and family had gone home, I continued to get back to normal. I had bought some new trousers to replace all the ones that were now three sizes too big for me and my new trousers fitted and no longer made me look like a concentration camp victim.

A week or so after we had returned home from the holiday, we went shopping. It was my usual habit, to go to Waterstones and browse the Science Fiction bookshelves to see if any of my favourite authors had released anything new, but the SF section was upstairs and I could not climb the stairs, they were too long and I was still too weak.

Another thing I had not realised was that having lost so much weight, my blood pressure tablets were now too strong and my blood pressure was dangerously low. I recalled, a bit belatedly, that I had been prescribed those pills when my weight was just over 100kg (16 stone). A couple of years before I had been diagnosed as type II diabetic and I had cut out most food containing sugar, like sweets, cakes and biscuits in order to control my condition without medication and it worked, but over those two years I had shed around 20kg and now I was even lighter, at my lowest point weighing in at 70kg (11 stone).

Having worked in the electronics industry and being a hobbyist for a number of decades, I have accumulated a pretty comprehensive set of test equipment that tells me all I need to know about what is going on in and around electrical equipment and I am used to the idea of measuring things that are otherwise invisible.

The tin robot is not test gear, but the Dr Who police box is a mobile phone detector, useful in the lecture room to detect the presence of students with mobile phones still switched on when they have been requested to turn them off.

The human body is just another machine and I like to know more about what is happening to it, particularly since I live inside one. A set of scales only told me my weight but I do like to know more of what is going on inside me. I already have a Fitbit that gives me a rough idea of how many calories I have burned and my heart rate. A while back I had bought a blood glucose tester, so for this new set of circumstances I bought a blood pressure machine from Boots and with that, I could see exactly what was wrong. So off to our local doctors, who agreed with my diagnoses and my tablets were reduced in strength. A few weeks later I was able to get up the stairs in Waterstones for the first time since my illness and look at the books I wanted to see.

A major milestone So now several kilograms lighter and three waistband sizes later, I have returned to something like full health and got back to normal, rather pleased with my new waistline, but I would not recommend my dieting methods.

One unfortunate side effect of that time was that during the height of my illness, I somehow lost all the photos I had taken of our visit to The Arboretum with TCD and TCGD just before going to Wales.

Going out and about

One day TBH saw an advert in the paper from a charity asking for used tools to be donated.  Between us, we had a lot of odds and ends cluttering the place up that we did not use regularly or at all and many of them were still in good order.  I had a fairly comprehensive set of tools for repairing cars, since I have maintained my own cars for many years, including completely stripping down and refurbishing the entire engine and gearbox on more than one occasion. but now I am finding it difficult for two reasons.  One is that modern cars have become very complex in design and do not have much that an amateur, who was brought up in a garage in the 1950s, can fix without some very expensive equipment and the other reason is that I am getting past the point where I am supple enough to crawl about under a car replacing heavy and stubborn components like brakes and so on.    So we gathered up all the odd spanners, jacks ramps and other bits and pieces which I was never going to use again and we took them to Stanton Park where the charity was based.  They also took gardening tools and we got rid of several duplicate tools we had  acquired over the years which were cluttering up the garden shed.

TBH had been to Stanton park before but I had not so it was a new experience for me. We located the building that the charity were using and they were grateful for the tools we donated.

Some of the tools we donated

 Once we had done that, we decided to go for a stroll around the park.   It is a quite a wild place with woods and a lake and was not very busy, making for a peaceful afternoon stroll around the lake.  Although there were no people at the lake, it is often used for fishing.

The lake at Stanton Park

Local towns

TBH lived in the Cheltenham area for several years before I met her and her hairdresser and an optician were both based there and has continued to keep appointments with them. The optician has since moved to Stratford upon Avon, and TBH has followed him there since he is several notches better than any other she or I have tried and we now both go there for our eye appointments. This means that we visit both Cheltenham and Stratford upon Avon regularly.

Both towns are worth a visit, and whenever TBH goes for a hair appointment I am happy to tag a long and I can wander around Cheltenham whilst she is in the salon. When we have an eye appointment in Stratford it is for both of us, so we usually make an afternoon of it.
Cheltenham is a confusing town for me, I often get lost there, so TBH usually drives us when we go there. Stratford is quite different, it is not as large and sprawling and I find it easy to find my way around there. We usually park in a riverside car park and walk into town. Driving and parking in both Cheltenham and Stratford are difficult and in the summer Stratford is usually overrun with tourists.

No this is not somewhere in Rome, but it is in Cheltenham

One feature of Cheltenham is a rather fancy clock that produces all sorts of actions on the hour.  This is in one of the shopping arcades and it attracts a small audience of mothers with small children.

Just before the clock strikes the hour, it starts to move and various animals emerge from little doors whilst the fish at the bottom blows bubbles and the song I'm Forever Blowing Bubbles is played.  Small children love it and there is often a small crowd gathered just below it a few minutes before it plays.

The fancy clock with a gaggle of mums with their small children waiting for the clock to strike.

Cheltenham, famous for its race course, was originally a spa town so there are a number of imposing Victorian buildings where the upper classes came to stay whilst visiting the spa and there are some very grand houses around the outskirts of the town.  It is also the site of GCHQ, Britain's top defence centre.  Several years ago one of my nephews and his wife, ran a restaurant in Cheltenham and I always got lost when visiting him there, often delivering or collecting mum, who had been invited to stay with them. During one summer break from University, my youngest son (No 2 Son), spent some time working at GCHQ, which is the big government centre for national security and I could never drive straight to his digs to deliver and collect him without getting lost, but I know the central area around TBH’s hair salon well enough to find my way around most of it now.  This proved useful in November when a dire emergency occurred, but more of that later.

Stratford upon Avon, is quite different and has a lot more touristy places to visit.  There is the River Avon and the Stratford upon Avon canal which links the town to the Grand Union Canal near Birmingham and to the rest of the country's waterways according to the signpost.

The most famous landmarks are always pretty busy and I am very proud of the photograph I managed to take of Shakespeare's birth place.  Normally there are hundreds of tourists milling about trying to get a clear shot and getting in the way of each other's cameras.

Shakespeare's birth place

Because it is Stratford upon Avon, the river is an important feature and it joins the canal at a lock just on the edge of the town.

The River Avon with the Shakespeare Theatre in the background

The Toll Bridge and tower

The Lock which joins the canal to the River Avon

A local cafe

Harvest

As autumn progressed, the the hedgerows around home became overloaded with fruit and berries and as the blackberries ripened, we decided to pick them on our way back from the local shops. There is a shopping centre a short walk away and the footpaths and roads we used to get there are fairly rural and many are lined with brambles.

Part of one of the more overgrown section of the footpaths that thread trough and around our housing estate

All kinds of berries were out in force

Elderberries and rose hips, both traditionally used to make drinks, abounded

And of course blackberries by the ton

 Unlike my childhood days, where it was common practice to go out and gather wild berries, no one seemed to be collecting them. So we had the whole lot to ourselves and the result of our blackberrying was a large blackberry and apple crumble, made with a cooking sweetener instead of sugar so that I can eat it without going off my Diabetes diet.

The crumble

Autumn turned to early winter with frosts and dead leaves swirling around making everywhere untidy and soon it was November.

Slimbridge

In early November we went with a friend to visit the Wetlands at Slimbridge, where we got a brief glimpse of some cranes that had been reintroduced to England a while back.

Sir Peter Scott the founder

Not much going on here, just ducks

It was a rather cold rather dull day, but there were a range of birds that only come in late autumn. One of these is the Bewick's Swan.

A Bewick's Swan

We did not see much of the more exotic birds and the place was rather empty of the kind of birds we came to see, but it was full of ducks, all doing what ducks do best.

A duck ducking

Some Bull nice rushes in lieu of a picture of the cranes

An unfortunate incident

As I mentioned earlier, my knowledge of a part of Cheltenham became useful because I had to find my way through the town alone, without my navigator.

TBH had not been feeling well and from time to time had a problem, which caused her to get short of breath and feel generally unfit, so she went to see the doctor, who in order to eliminate possible heart trouble, because of family history, booked her in for an angiogram. This is a procedure where they run a tube up one of your arteries, either from the wrist or the upper thigh and inject dye into the heart so that the blood vessels can be X-rayed. As reported in my 2017 blog, I had been given two of these with no problems whatsoever, so I told TBH it was a doddle and she had nothing to worry about.
I was wrong.

The day she had the angiogram, I stayed with her in the ward until she went into the operating theatre and was allowed to remain until she came out again. All went well, she came out with a pressure pad on the small incision and as with mine, every now and then a nurse would inspect it and reduce the pressure, only in her case, the swelling did not seem to be going down. They tried several different pressure pads and seemed a bit concerned, but after a while the surgeon came to her and told her that her heart was as healthy as any he had seen and she had no problems there. Whatever was causing her breathlessness, was not her heart. He told her the swelling should recede over the next twenty-four hours and sent us home. He also added, if anything different did occur, she should not bother to call, but go straight to A&E immediately. The next day her arm was going down and although puffy not too bad.
Since she had had a good report with nothing showing on the angiogram, we decided we would celebrate by ordering a Chinese takeaway. Just after I had ordered it, TBH went to the loo and getting her trousers back on, something happened to the wound on her wrist, which immediately caused her hand to swell up like a rubber glove being blown up with air.

It was frightening for both of us and extremely painful for TBH, so after quickly cancelling the takeaway, I drove her to the Great Western Hospital A&E. This was about 6 PM.

When we arrived, the first consultant we saw had suggested she hold her hand up to keep it drained, but this was extremely tiring, so they eventually hooked a sling on one of those stands they use to hold a drip and for the rest of the time we were there, TBH had her hand up in the air whilst sat next to a drip stand.  We were seen soon after arriving but after several long long waits between different people examining her wrist, we had been there for six hours.
TBH, understandably was not feeling like food, but I had begun to really miss my Chinese takeaway since I had not eaten for over twelve hours, so I got a snack from the incredibly expensive snacks machine, which had to do me until I could get home, but going home turned out not to be an option for a few more hours.
By the time the final consultant came to give an opinion, it was close to midnight. All this time TBH had been in considerable pain.  At this point we were told TBH needed a vascular specialist.  There was no one in the Great Western Hospital with the necessary experience, but they would arrange for her to go to Cheltenham General Hospital, which is about thirty five miles away.
We were then told that there would be no transport to Cheltenham until morning, so if we had our own transport, we could go there ourselves if we wanted. Since we had arrived by car, this was the best solution, so just after twelve midnight, I set off to Cheltenham taking TBH to the General Hospital there.

It was an easy ride at that time of night, but when we got to the hospital, navigated there by TBH, we found it all locked up except one small hatch at the ambulance entrance where the night duty person was available behind a locked grill.

The rear entrance

This is where it got confusing. The GWH hospital back home had sent over TBH’s details, but she was already on record at this hospital under her previous married name and her first name had been given incorrectly by GWH, so they could not find her. After a long search eventually the errors were eliminated and we were allowed in. Her escort took us via a lot of unused storage areas and I lost my sense of direction completely, so when I went to go home, I had to ask how to get out of the hospital before I could get back to the car, which was not easy since the place was largely locked down for the night and there were very few people around.
Before that, she was given a bed and a few minutes later a doctor and his protègè arrived and her case was discussed and a few shrewd suggestions as to what had happened. They could do very little immediately, but they would examine her wrist properly in the morning and probably seal off the offending artery which it seemed was leaking into the arm instead of passing the blood on to her hand in the proper manner. Once settled and she was tucked up for the remainder of the night, I set off for home.
It was a strange journey home, the roads were all empty, my stomach was also empty and worst of all, so was the passenger seat beside me.
It was around two thirty when I got to bed and the next day I returned to Cheltenham only to find that there was no parking I could use.
Cheltenham General Hospital is an imposing place when viewed from the front and has two small car parks.

The main entrance

The night of our arrival there, we found the emergency entrance which had no car parking other than for ambulances. Outside the street parking was free at night and so I had parked there. 

I did not need to be at the hospital too early because TBH was having her operation that morning, so I made the mistake of trying to get to Cheltenham early PM.  That day was a Friday and that is the day that everyone and his dog tries to get down the A417 to the M5 after leaving the M4.  A few miles before the road goes down Birdlip Hill, at the notorious Air Balloon roundabout the dual carriageway becomes a single lane and a queue often forms that backs up a couple of miles on the end of the dual carriageway, so I was frustrated by a long long wait.  Once through, I went straight to the place I had used the night before but every street parking space was taken.  Now I was getting concerned because TBHG would be wondering where I had got to and I started to panic, so I desperately searched for somewhere to park, but in the end got well and truly lost in Cheltenham.  Eventually I got my bearings by accidentally finding the part of Cheltenham that I knew and I was able to find my way back to the hospital car park.  Luckily I found a rare empty space, only to find that the machines needed both more cash than I had and did not take anything other than coins even though you needed to pay over ten pounds for a day’s parking. I did not have enough coins and it had not occurred to me that that would be a problem. 

I had grown used to using paying only a pound or two on our local parking machines for a reasonable stay but here it would cost me six pounds minimum for the time I needed. Also it had been my usual experience for parking machines that charged this much being equipped for a card payment or notes, but Cheltenham had not seemed to have caught up with this idea, so I had to pop in quickly and explain why I could not stop for long and got an update on her progress. 

They had given TBH her operation and she was still woozy from the anesthetic, so she said it was no point in staying for long anyway so after only a rather short visit, I returned home. There I gathered up all the loose change I could find, raiding the housekeeping purse and finding odd coins here and there until eventually had enough coins to feed the parking meter for enough time at the next visit on Saturday.

After feeding in enough coins for three hours, I went to TBH’s ward only to find that she had been declared fit to go home and so was packed and ready to leave and I did not need all the time I had finally been able to pay for. Her hand was still quite painful, but it gradually started to look like a normal hand and the pain diminished, but it had been a worrying time for a while.

It was starting to go down at this point

More worrying than I had known too. On the first day of tests, they wanted to do a scan of her wrist to see what was wrong in detail. Because she was still in a lot of pain, just before they took her in for the scan, the nurse gave her some Tramadol to ease the pain. She had never taken Tramadol before and to the medical staff’s alarm, it knocked her out completely. TBH remembers being wheeled into another room and then with no discernible break, she was back in her bed in the ward with an oxygen mask on and was surrounded by a ring of concerned faces. She also discovered that she now had a red band on her wrist instead of the usual ID band, to warn staff she reacted badly to Tramadol.

During the night, one of the other patients had woken her up telling her what sounded like “The place is full of flies the place was going to be blown up and we must get out quickly.” The lady was in a real panic and TBH rang her bell to alert staff to calm her down. Turning to go back to her own bed the lady fell over. The night staff arrived and immediately took over but were of the mistaken belief that she had fallen out of bed. It was not until morning that TBH was able to put them right and tell them what really happened. The staff told her that the lady had been suffering from dehydration because she was not drinking enough and must have been delusional as a result. On reflection, it made more sense to TBH that she had been saying was that the hospital was full of spies, not flies and was suffering from some kind of persecution delusion. It is not uncommon, my mother went through a phase like that when she was in hospital once. She had refused to drink because she was convinced the staff were Germans and were trying to poison her. Because she was not drinking her delusion got worse and so on and the staff were at their wits end trying to help her. She had only been able to drink after I had arrived to see her and had reassured her she was not a prisoner. Ironically, having come to visit her as soon as mum was reassured, she took a long drink and then almost immediately fell asleep and slept for the next eight hours.

Meanwhile, now TBH was back home and improving slowly, her arm was beginning to show terrible bruising whilst slowly reducing back to normal size. It was painful for a long while, but gradually that lessened and now it is completely back to normal, although it does pain her a bit now and then. So, now we had both had some horrible experiences that year.

Christmas

Finally it was almost Christmas and time to go stay with the family in t’north. 

The local park near the family home has a hot house and every Christmas they have some kind of display.  This year, along with Santa and his helper on a sleigh, there was a model village complete with skaters, a merry go round, a train and a working ski lift.

Park hothouse decorations

After the usual celebrations, on Boxing day, The No 1 son and I decided to go for a walk on the common, a place which overlooks Morecambe Bay.   The weather was not good, but it was dry and we drove out to the common and parked the car. We wandered up to the summit of the low hill that makes up most of this place to get the widest views. There is an ancient stone circle somewhere on this place, but try as we could, we could not find it, so after a while we decided that we had had enough and so headed back to the car.

Google Earth view of the common. The bottom left hand corner is a beach with the tide out.

After walking for a while and not finding the car, we realised we had become disoriented and had been going the wrong way. When we realised this, we tried to retrace our steps and find our way back, but this did not work too well either and we found we were completely lost. We started to circle the hill hoping that we would find a landmark or recognise where we were but to no avail.

Eventually we found a footpath that seemed to lead to some kind of civilisation and hoping to find a sign post on one of the roads, we kept walking. After a longish walk and no signposts, I started to worry that we would have to ignominiously call for someone to come out to guide us back to the car,. I could describe the route we had taken to our car parking place, but I still needed a sign post to know where we were because we still had no idea where we were in relation to the car. There was no signal on either of our phones, or we could have tried looking for a map and so we simply walked knowing that eventually we would come to a road with a signpost.

The dry stone walls either side of the footpath were a complete ecological system in their own right

In the end I saw a distant church and recognised it as Bardsea church and from its position, I knew what direction our car was, but it was now a long long walk.

The distinctive steeple of Bardsea Church.  You can just make out the coastline of Morecombe in the background.

I was not fully recovered from my summer starvation and was still a bit weak and  the No 1 son was starting to get concerned that it was all too much for me but whilst I was getting tired, I felt it was probably doing me more good than harm and so we staggered on, down towards the shore opposite Morecambe bay. Once at the road that runs along the shore line, we could then walk along a road to the turning where we had parked the car. So in the end we did not have to call for help and we told no one that day we had managed to get lost.

Finally it was the New year and that was the end of 2018, our annus horribilis.  Now we had the hope that 2019 would be a much better year.