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...

lack of focus

I've been a bit silent for the last ten days or so. partly to do with work and partly to do with a long weekend on the isles of scilly watching matthew rowing. i'll have to fill in some of the blanks later.

today i was back to being elizabeth as i had an opthalmology outpatients appointment. this was at penrice, the st austell hospital and meant that i could walk there. a good thing as part of the procedure of looking into your eyes is to dilate the pupils, which means you lose focus for a while and life becomes a little blurry and driving home would have been highly dangerous. it only took me 35 mins to walk there and slightly shorter on the return journey as it is more downhill. it was also a good thing to walk as the parking was particularly horrendous today. an older gentleman who was waiting for his appointment filled me in a bit with the history of the hospital and informed me that the land was given with a condition that there was never to be a charge for parking. which explains why it appears to be the only hospital in the world that doesn't charge for parking and would make a stay in penrice an awful lot cheaper than my recent stay at treliske.

another far too young consultant, dr jones (david) looked into my eyes and found nothing untoward except a tiny 'insignificant' cataract in the left eye. which is all good news, though one has to question when an 'insignificant' might become a 'significant'.

then i had a very painful walk home, trying to find shade from the sun and doing some of it with my eyes shut. why when it seems to rain in cornwall 95% of the time, was my walk home on a beautiful sunny morning? i'm at home now waiting for my eyes to return to normal so i can drive to work and have just hung out the white bedsheets, more pain! i might have to dig out my sunglasses in a minute.

name and status

this was something else i noticed about being in hospital this time, but i need to explain a couple of things first.

firstly my first name is elizabeth - though i have always been known by my second name of sarah (mum didn't want me to be teased about my name at school, my initials would have been spelt SEW). from talking to others, i know that i am not the only person called by their second name, in fact it is quite common, it just seems to cause confusion.

secondly that i had a very unusual surname - in fact if you come across someone else with the same surname - we're most likely related. for many years i hated my surname being unusual and that no-one knew how to spell or pronounce it, and began to look forward to changing it to something easier. however somewhere in my late twenties i actually began to enjoy having an unusual name (i did once look something up on the internet about the geography of surnames and how they had spread across england over the 20th century, only to be told that they couldn't do my surname as there were under 100 entries on the census).

nine months ago matthew and i got married and suddenly i realised that i was going to have to give up my name, so i compromised and have retained my maiden name as an additional forename and still use it for work - mainly as i have worked around the country and youth work people know me with my maiden name.

so that is the background to my name.

not using my first name is interesting, most people know me as sarah and it is only really the medical/ dental and other official people who ever use elizabeth, so i do answer to it on occasion (but not if they try to be friendly and call me liz - who is she?). previously in hospitals people have referred to me as elizabeth - the doctors, nurses, radiologists whoever. however this time i was very definitely Mrs Hodge, which i found quite strange. probably as after only 9 months of marriage i'm still getting used to it myself, but also the change from first name to married surname. maybe there is some hospital policy? it did take some getting used to and really didn't feel like it was me, though i did tell everyone that i was sarah - some learnt it, others didn't and to one or two i was merely 'the lady in sideroom 2'!

when i was first hospitalised with lupus, many of my student friends came to visit and kept asking for sarah and after some confusion found me (it was a time when a lot of people learnt that i was using my second name). a year later when i went in again for a few days, they very proudly remembered that i was in fact elizabeth - but by then i'd trained the medical people and they all knew me as sarah, so more confusion ensued.

this time there was some confusion, especially for work colleagues who had to think hard about my married surname, let alone what my first name was. but i think everyone found me in the end. so if i did confuse you - i'm sorry, i don't mean to be difficult.