waiting...

so now the wait begins...
i have been told that i can go home, hurrah!
however, i now have to wait for some medication to come from pharmacy. this can take some time...
last time i was in i was hanging around for several hours and ended up in the rather soulless 'discharge lounge'. fortunately no one seems to be in a hurry to get me off this ward, so it looks as if i will be able to 'enjoy' my lunch any minute now!

there has been some interesting developments over which antibiotics i should be taking, with calls to micro-biology. last night the dr on duty was about to put me on doxycycline, which i was on for a couple of days last week and which made me rather unwell. reading the small print i discovered that it shouldn't be given to people with lupus! apparently the whole thing would be a lot easier and the elbow would have cleared up weeks ago if i wasn't allergic to penicillin. all i can do is give what they take me, which seems rather defeatist, but i've seen so many drs here and they all say something slightly different that i think it will be easier to go back to my gp and just have one dr tell me what to do.

anyway i'll get back to waiting...

e bay

trauma 2 has 4 bays of beds and 4 siderooms. the numbering and lettering carry on from trauma 1, therefore bays e to h and rooms 5 to 8. there is a high turn over of patients here, they are admitted, have their bones set in theatre and then go home. so nurses often refer to their patients by their bed, so you have 'the gentleman in g3', 'the lady in room 8' etc. but what makes me smile every time is when they refer to 'e bay'.
overhearing a conversation between a patient and a nurse yesterday i discover that trauma 2 is meant to be for the men and the ladies on trauma 1. it would appear that currently in truro that there are more clumsy ladies than men as, when i arrived, both e and h bays had ladies in. at one point yesterday afternoon e bay was empty before filling up again but it is now a mixed sex bay, probably breaking government guidelines etc. the toilets here are also mixed sex, which was ok, but now that e bay is a mixed ward there is one gentleman there (though i hesitate to call him gentleman) who never puts the toilet seat down! grrrrrr!

evening update

unfortunately my superduper bedside tv/ phone/ internet screen thingamebob has not been playing ball for most of the day. this has meant that i have been unable to comment on the minutiae of life on trauma 2. so the entries on cleaning/ visiting/ today's meals/ fellow residents/ the nurse's new puppy will have to wait for another day or hopefully another hospital stay. (or indeed never!)
i will report that matthew has managed to break the visiting hour rules every day, by visiting at lunch time and overstaying in the evening. this evening his boss kept him late at work wanting to talk about the royal cornwall show, so he only arrived at 8pm, when visiting officially ended.
i can also report that the food today was typical hospital food. they try and source some local ingredients, so my potatoes have been enhanced by trewithen farm butter pats and i had a langdale farm yoghurt, which i have never heard of and sounds more yorkshire than cornish, but the menu said cornish and i implicitly trust the menu.
please spare a thought for the bloke on the ward who has been waiting since 8am for an op and it is now 10.15 - i think it was the lack of cigarettes that has been annoying him more, but it must be frustrating.
anyway my elbow is still improving, so i'm all set for release tomorrow. in the meantime i'm showered and in my pj's waiting for my evening meds and then it'll be time to say goodnight.

morning all

i can report that things were a lot quieter in sideroom 8 last night and as a result i slept a lot better. i was awake every few hours, but soon dropped off again. i am supposed to have the antibiotics every 12 hours. with having had the first dose at 1am the nurses said that they would set me off on the next dose about 11am. needless to say it was 2pm when i had the next dose, so i was expecting a late night drip again. but after the 2pm drip i had reacted slightly with a slightly swollen arm, so at about 10.30 i was given the good news that i would now be taking tablets instead of having the drip. this meant i had a much earlier night. though i was really getting into my book (the help a christmas pressie from my MIL).
have already seen the consultant, a different one from yesterday, elbow is again much improved so we agreed that i should stay one more day and get this cracked and all going well i shall be going home tomorrow!!
it is now 10.30, i am up, showered and hair washed. i have spoken with matthew, finished the book and chosen my food for tomorrow, now hopefully destined for the next occupant of sideroom 8. action packed morning so far!!! i will now go for a little walk to the shop and get a paper.

where's heston when you need him?

have now had my second meal as chosen by the previous occupant of sideroom 8. breakfast is sorted on the ward and was cereal and toast - can't really go wrong with that. lunch was chicken and bacon lasagne with potatoes, green beans and mixed veg followed by sliced peaches and custard. hmmm. this evening i was offered mushroom soup and a sandwich. this i rejected and was offered jacket potato and cheese followed by a slice of maderia cake.
i have watched two programmes recently about hospital food. the first was about how bad the food was and how many leave the nhs malnourished. the second featured heston bleumental trying to change the menu at alder hay. well i wish he would come and change the menu here. otherwise i will end up eating the crisps and chocolates that people very kindly bring in. naughty but nice!

men in uniform

...and i missed them!!!!!
we had a fire alarm this morning. the door to sideroom 8 was swiftly shut and i concentrated on reading my paper. from what i know of the fire alarms here, the continuous alarm means that it is nearby. (intermittant means an alarm has gone off somewhere else.)
i was later told by a nurse that there had been a smell of smoke on this ward and that one of the staff had set the alarm off. and that there had been half a dozen firemen outside my door, a couple of whom were quite dishy.
the smoke was thought to have come from the incinerator chimney and been blown in on the wind, so life carries on on trauma 2

my room

i am currently occupying sideroom 8 on trauma 2. unlike sideroom 2 last year, this room has no ensuite facilities and the view is of a courtyard and the windows of the ward opposite. i always wonder if it would be considered polite to go and introduce yourself to the occupants of these wards, because if you can see them, they can see you! the reason why i've been given my own room is that i am considered infectious - as i came in with an infected elbow. it was because of this that i didn't get my bed until so late last night as the hospital had to play musical beds (with rooms being teamcleaned in between and only one team of cleaners!)
the antibiotic drip was started at about midnight last night and stopped again about two minutes later as the canula that had been put in at lunch time gave up the ghost. a clinical services facilitator was called to insert a new one and the drip resumed at 1am.
i then had a rather disturbed night as i had the drip removed at two, listened to th nurses talking about cross-stiching around half four and the ward beginning to wake up about 6. as this room is near the nurses station i get to hear a lot. and as this ward has pre and post op patients there are always bleeps and alarms. still having had my shower and got dressed, there isn't exactly loads left on the to do list for today.
the good news is that i have yet to meet a 12year old doctor, though the consultant can't be much older than me.

i'm back

i can't really believe it, but i'm back at treliske. this time with an infected elbow - bursitis. after it failed to respond to antibiotics my gp sent me here this morning. i am to be given some IV antibiotics and see how i respond. if i don't then my elbow will be opened up.
i've had to be a very patient girl as i only got to my bed at 11pm. i can tell you a lot about waiting room chairs. i now really want to go to sleep but have to wait for my night time medication and the first dose of antibiotics!
no sooner than i type... i've just had my meds minus warfarin. will be given the IV shortly.
signing off now, but there will be more from me tomorrow.

extreme motorhomes

matthew and i went out for sunday lunch last week, after failing to secure a lunch in st columb minor (meals from 12-3 but they were out of food by 2!) we drove on round the coast to st merryn where we had a cavery.

after the meal we went to constantine and went down to mother ivey's bay the site of some of matthew's childhood holidays, on our way back to padstow we got stuck behind this monster of a camper van. it did seem a little extreme for the cornish lanes that we were traversing, especially as we had to stop every few hundred yards to allow cars coming the other way to get past. this meant that we spent a lot of time looking at the hydraulic bike rack on the back! it was austrian registered, but it does beg the question of what foriegners make of our road system that someone was prepared to drive that all the way from austria for a holiday in england?

it reminded me of the large motorhomes i saw at the royal cornwall show which could be yours for a mere £260,000 and an hgv licence. trouble is you definately wouldn't be able to take one of those down the small lanes, which means your holiday would be spent at motorway service stations.

anyway not long now until our weeks holiday in the yorkshire dales, so looking forward to it!

lejog

i've been meaning to post about this all summer, but failed. as indeed i've failed to put much on here recently, so much so that there is a bit of a backlog of postings, which may or may not appear in one fell swoop...

anyway back to lejog, don't worry this isn't about exercise or anything similarly strenous, it is the shorthand for land's end to john o'groats, should one attempt the journey in reverse it is apparantly jogle. once the days started to lengthen the number of cyclists seen on my journey's too and fro from truro also increased, and it took a little while to sink in as to why. but essentially these idiots, sorry brave folk are attempting to travese the full length of the country. a little internet research shows that the a30 is only attempted by the truely foolhardy and those who aren't interested in breaking records tend to use more minor roads to get through cornwall. i also discovered that coming through st austell is one recommended route with an overnight stop somewhere between par and lostwithiel.

therefore in the morning i often see those attempting the jogle as they set off on their last day in the saddle and in the evening i see those attempting lejog, no doubt a bit weary after their day in the saddle and contemplating all the days ahead!

i did see this group, who were very distinctive, alas they were not cycling at the time but had pulled over to the side of the road.

another namesake

following on from my previous blog entry, i saw another namesake on my way back from truro today. not mine but for my mother. it was an eddie stobart lorry, with the name angela jane, my mother's forenames. haven't yet seen an elizabeth sarah, but i will be looking out for it from now on.

how to work out if someone is an emmet

following on from my previous post on how to work out if the car in front is from 'up country' this post is dedicated to helping you establish if someone is an emmet (cornish term for someone who isn't cornish).

are they...

1. wearing a Lifeguard hoodie, when they clearly aren't

2. in a family group with two grumpy teenagers in tow

3. wearing shorts, welly boots and a kagoul

4. eating a full english breakfast at 11am in a cafe

5. wearing something from the Boden catalogue

6. carrying a Kath Kidston bag

7. showing too much very pale/ sunburnt skin

8. wearing a hairbraid

9. just left an expensive art gallery

10 ambling along in the middle of the road

11. loudly mispronouncing cornish place names

this isn't quite as easy as the car one to pin down on paper as there are various types of tourists. you have your Boden wearing, Kath Kidston sporting types through to your stag/ hen do parties. however it is generally very easy to spot an emmet, you can usually just tell.

in relation to the previous post on cars, i had some responses on facebook that included more suggestions for the list, generally involving behaviour on small, narrow, cornish lanes. and yesterday during my drive to penzance i was surrounded by easily spottable up country cars, i was clocking up points by the bucketload.

my namesake

when i go to the gp surgery for an inr test, the nurses use a special programme on the computer to monitor your results and tell you what dose of warfarin you should be taking. i've noticed that there is another patient on warfarin with the same surname as me, but he is an older gentleman, so there should be no confusing of results!

well today i saw him. i came in and gave my name at the desk and was told to sit down, and as i walked over to the chairs, i noticed this older man looking at me. i didn't think too much of it, picked up a magazine and sat down. (i picked up a camping and caravan magazine - what has come over me? all this camping must be going to my head! do i need treatment? can you have several sentences in a bracket?)

engrossed in my magazine (!?) i suddenly heard my surname, so jumped up and as i was doing so registered that it had been a mr the nurse had called for. and sure enough it was this gentleman who had got out of his chair and was walking towards the nurse. then i realised why he had been staring at me, he had heard my name as i came in and registered. no doubt, this being cornwall, he was trying to work out where i might fit in in his family tree! i don't think we are related, but i could be wrong.

on another note, my inr has dropped, no doubt due to a recent increase in immunosuppressant, i shall be back at the surgery next week...

holiday from hell?

after the first hour or so* i can report that the weekend's camping trip went reasonably smoothly. the tent stayed up - although it took longer than the 12 mins that vango say to put up - you can stand up in it and cook in it, the campsite was lovely with a good sea view and the weather was extraordinarily kind. so much so that i can plan the rest of my greenbelt trip in reasonable confidence knowing that i can always hide in my tent if things get too wet and muddy (my previous two experiences of greenbelt).

there was a lot of comparison's going on on the campsite - tent sizes/ styles/ cooking arrangements and so on. it was also quite fun guessing where people had come from and realising just how brave young romeo opposite was, coming camping with his girlfriend and her parents - and they were all in one tent!

we cooked on our new barbeque (ask matthew about barbequed toast), visited the tea rooms at Heligan, had a kip on saturday afternoon and had friends around for a barbeque on saturday evening. sunday morning was lovely and sunny so we revisited dodman point (picture above), which was only about a mile and a half away. it was here about 18 months ago that matthew proposed to me, then we had it to ourselves for a long time, this time we had to share with, amongst others, mr 'i love talking' from goran haven. we then packed up our tent and were home within half an hour. really quite civilised.

however on my way to work on tuesday morning i saw a family on their holiday. it was mizzling and they were about to tackle the hill outside tresillian on their bikes. dad had panniers and a pull along buggy thing on his bike (couldn't see if there was a child in it or if it had equipment), mum had panniers on her bike, eldest son (11ish) had panniers on his bike, and younger son (8ish) didn't. all i could think was - this is so not the kind of holiday that i could ever go on. camping might just about be doable, but a cycling and camping holiday - now way!

* within the first half hour, my choice of pitch was dissed. my suggestion re direction of tent was dissed. my guy rope directions were dissed (later proved to be right). when we got the direction of the ground sheet wrong i really was ready to go home.

holiday makers?

how to work out if the car in front is from 'up country' (on holiday in Cornwall).

is it/ does it have...

1. a foreign number plate

2. a VW campervan

3. a campervan (any make)

4. a roof box

5. a roof rack with surfboard(s)

6. a roof-rack with bike(s)

7. a roof-rack with boat

8. a roof-rack with canoe(s)

9. a shiny clean 4x4 with tow-hitch

10. towing a boat

11. contain any of the following - body boards/ windbreak/ cool box/ wetsuit/ picnic rug

12. being driven between 30- 40mph on a 60mph road

13. driver has just worked out he is in the wrong lane at the roundabout/ traffic lights

i actually saw just about all of these on the way into work this morning, so i am now thinking of a points system so i can start to rank my journeys too and fro from Truro. just how many points could i award for a foriegn plated vw campervan with a boat on the roof in the wrong lane at the trafalgar roundabout?

you will note that i have excluded caravans as they are just too easy to spot, as is in fact any car that is in the queue at Temple on the A30 on a friday or saturday.

camping

as mentioned in the previous post matthew and i are going to Greenbelt at the end of the month. this is a work trip for me, and matthew has very kindly agreed to join us. we shall be taking a group of young people from across Cornwall. this is the first time that i will have been since i was a teenager myself and my memory is mainly of mud!

we took stock of our camping equipment, we both had bits from before we were married, and decided that we needed a bigger tent to accommodate the two of us. matthew then took the requirements one step further by requesting one that he could stand up in (he is 6ft 4). so after some research we ordered a Vango Icarus 600. it is quite large, so large in fact that we can't actually put it up in our garden, so this weekend sees us undertake a camping trip just so that we can have a go at putting up the tent!

in the process of buying the tent we have of course spent more money on additional accessories, including a canopy extension, new airbeds (and pump) and a barbeque. tonight we wrote a list and discovered that if you go camping you need to take an awful lot of stuff with you. in comparison there is something quite simple about booking into a b&b.

for this trip we are going all the way to the Roseland (about 10 miles), we have gemmed up on the instructions including video and hopefully all should go quite smoothly. so please think of us tomorrow night, unlike the video i suspect we shall have a minor argument whilst erecting the tent, the tent pegs will be a lot harder to put in and it will definitely take longer than the suggested 12 minutes.

herman

we have a new lodger at home. goes by the name of herman. he doesn't require too much attention, just a daily chat and occasional feeding. though my budget for eggs, flour and sugar has suddenly increased. the bonus is that every ten days or so you do get some cake to eat! so he probably isn't doing too much for matthew's and my waistlines.

i was given a herman starter dough, with instructions of how to feed and care for it over ten days. on the tenth day you divide it into five, save one as your next starter, cook one and give the others away to your friends. worrying that i might run out of friends, i have discovered that if you only give him half quantities, you have enough mix for 3 portions and therefore only have to give one away or (some could say even better) cook two cakes.

i have cooked the original recipe and then had fun experimenting with different ones, so far a carrot cake, two lemon drizzle, one chocolate and one coffee. the carrot got given to my aunt in thanks for putting me up for the night (it was then put in the freezer to my uncle's disappointment), one lemon and the chocolate are lurking in the freezer. the rest have proved to be very tasty and moist. i did try and make some biscuits, but they didn't work too well.

this is quite good timing as i am building up a stock of cakes to take away to Greenbelt at the end of the month. but if anyone would like to take a herman and have a go themselves, please ask.

good life update

just to update you on our garden produce. we've had a few, very tasty, strawberries, but with only four plants there were never going to be loads, however the plants are reflowering so we may get a second crop. the potatoes were a let down. having had loads of healthy looking leaves, they suddenly wilted, so we decided to harvest and got a lot of very small, but again tasty, potatoes. i think ants were the problem here, the bin was full of them when matthew harvested.

my carrot got attacked and was never more than a very skinny root. the beans are now flowering, but seem to need copious amounts of water, similarly with the tomatoes.

to date the success has been the chilli plant and we have harvested four now, with more setting, in fact in a few minutes i hope to eat a lovely chilli con carne made with homegrown chilli!

so in summary, not a brilliantly productive garden so far, but still some hope for the future!

little miss sunshine

yesterday was my postponed nine month dental check up. it was postponed from the easter holidays as i was a bit poorly back then, so it got rearranged for the summer holidays.
for various reasons i have kept with my dentist in hereford. yes it is a bit of a trek back there now, but it generally gives an excuse to visit friends and it is nhs! so although it was a four hour journey each way, involved an overnight stay with relatives and quite a bit of petrol, the actual treatment only cost me £16.75 - bargain! apparantly i have got lovely teeth and because i was a such a good patient i got a free sticker - i chose the Little Miss Sunshine one!

bargains?

today matthew and i 'saved' £76. one of our favourite glass shops Jo Downes had a 70% off sale, and for once there was no 'up to' in tiny weeny letters on the sign. even better this reduction was on everything (except mirrors but it did say that in reasonably large letters, they were 20% off), so we bought a soap and moisturiser holder (see picture) for the Moulton Brown products that we bought in Bath, another sale 'bargain', and some other bits and pieces that either we will use or that will be finding their way as various Christmas and Birthday presents over the coming months. in all we purchased 8 items for less than the full price cost of the soap holder - not bad.

this almost beats the amazing £300 that we saved at the Swindon outlet centre back in May, there we had to spend £150 to save the £300. actually mathematically it probably does beat that shopping trip, it's just that the numbers are more impressive on the Swindon trip.

but the question is - how much of this sale stuff is actually a bargain. do you really need it? will you use it? all questions to be considered. in Marks and Spencers amongst the debris of their women's sale clothes one woman did comment that what seemed like a bargain in the shop wasn't always a bargain by the time it got home.

if you notice the time of this post - yes it really is stupid o'clock - i can't sleep, and having done so well on my 'bargains' earlier in the day, i feel it is now time to surf the net looking for more - but don't tell matthew!