Well here we go and we’ll see who gets tired of the minutiae of my life first (might just be me)! I’ve always hoped that some long-in-the-future generation will find some of the things I do quaint or interesting but I fear it might fall in the category of “too much information”. An old writing teacher of mine told us that to hone our skills we should write “anything” as practice so I guess this could just be my “anything”.
Since my accident in June our routine has been the district nurses coming to see me and re-bandage my leg Mondays and Wednesdays and going to the clinic at St. John’s every Friday. Friday has been my “day out” and we usually go out for late lunch/early dinner (depending on when my appt. is) after my time in the clinic.
I must say that the care I’ve received and the doctors and nurses I’ve met here at the NHS have been wonderful. I mostly now see a nurse/practitioner (I’m not sure what her title here is) named Tanya Brandon. She also lives in Fauldhouse which was a surprise the first time we met her but Robert doesn’t seem to have met her before and we don’t know much about her family but she’s so nice and really knows her stuff. As from the first, I’ve become quite the teaching model. It’s rare that a student nurse or someone else doesn’t pop in to observe. I really don’t mind in fact we usually have fun joking about it all and I’m learning more than I ever wanted to know about skin! Apparently these kinds of injuries are quite common in ladies of “a certain age”. The plastic surgery clinic at St. John’s has a very good reputation here so I’m really lucky to be here I guess. I’ve been going once a week for so long I’m becoming a fixture I think and all the nurses now recognize me.
This week I was a bit apprehensive to see what she thought of it after my course of antibiotics last week. Last Friday we both noticed some redness around the wound that hadn’t been there Wednesday when the district nurse had changed the dressing. When I got out of the shower Thursday I noticed some red spots that sort of looked like either pimples or shaving rash so when Tanya noticed it the next day she called in the doctor to prescribe some antibiotics because we wanted to catch any infection quickly before it got a start. I certainly didn’t want to end up back in the hospital like I did in July!
And just who showed up to look at it but the doctor who sent me upstairs in July—Dr. Brom (Bram?) I’m never sure of his name. They call them all by first name so I have no clue what his last name is. He’s young, tall, handsome with a nice smile and from some Eastern European country but his accent isn’t too heavy so he must have been in the UK for a while. I just don’t like him because in July he said I had to stay in the hospital and should have a skin graft (which I never had after all). This time, though, he just wrote me a 5 day prescription and we high-tailed it out of there before he changed his mind!
So I won’t get too medical/technical with you all but this week she noticed the little pocket that the district nurses noticed that seemed infected and now seemed to be healing better. She called it a “fat necrosis” (I’ll explain it further to you individually by email if you really want but not if you’re eating) and we have a bit of a new treatment. We’re back to the “silver” dressings which should encourage granulation (new skin growth) and clear up the necrosis. There, you know as much as I do!
After her poking and treatments my leg is usually sore and stings. Robbie had to go to Bathgate to the Social Security office which was unusual because he usually goes on Mondays. I sat in the car since there’s no need for me to go in there with him. Yesterday, and today here have been beautiful weather-wise: sunny but cool so I didn’t mind sitting in the car with my book. On a wall in front of us there was a patch of wild blackberries so I could also watch the birds coming to eat them. There are a lot of types of birds here I don’t recognize and they don’t have the birds I’m used to like cardinals and blue jays. What they call a robin is nothing like the robins we know which is a shame because they’re one of my favorite birds.
Rather than going out somewhere to eat we decided to go home and have fish and chips. As I’ve told you before that is definitely one of the biggest things I would miss terribly. Both of us hadn’t eaten since breakfast so we were both very hungry. Still, no matter how hungry I am when I start my fish supper I can usually not finish it. You get a huge piece of fish and loads of chips and it’s so yummy but so filling! Evening TV (the soaps: Emmerdale, Coronation St. and East Enders) then I came upstairs to finish the book I’ve been reading.
In the last couple of weeks I have been shocked, shocked (like Claude Rains in Casablanca) to find out that my Robbie is hooked on television roulette. Late at night one of the channels has this roulette program where you can log on and play roulette. Of course, Robbie just plays for fun and has never bet any money for real or logged onto the internet site to play but he keeps track of all his “winnings” and has his own “system” (mathematically based so it works---riiight!). Last night we were watching it in bed and I tried my own “system” and won almost as much as he did (ha!) on paper but then I lost some and fell asleep!
For my part I have been “addicted” to computer games like Cake Mania and Diner Dash in all the varieties. I think I have about four different Cake Mania games and four different Diner Dash games. And no, it’s not because they’re about food—I’ve also tried one called Passport to Perfume that I quite like. Ok, ok, I can hear the screams of “waste of time” from here but in my defense, it’s taken my mind off my pain sometimes and kept my mental faculties sharp and helped speed up my cognitive reaction times. After all, you have to quickly make decisions and carry out tasks...allright, allright, it’s a waste of time but heck, we all need a recreation!
So, speaking of wasting time, I better close this and get downstairs and peel some potatoes. I want to make a beef stew for our dinner with some leftover gravy I have. It’s a good cool fall weather dinner. Oh, one more thing, speaking of fall: yesterday our drive to the hospital clinic was just beautiful. Autumn colors over here are more golden than the russets and scarlets I’m used to but with the golden sunshine it was just a lovely day and a lovely drive. A few orange berries and red bushes made splashes of color along the roadside too.
Hope you are all enjoying a golden autumn day! Lots of Love!
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