Showered With Gifts

Today Gill, Billy, Steph and I were due to head over to Ed and Carla’s in Whitley Bay for some scran and drinks before setting of to the Fat Ox to see the Russ Tippins Band in action. Some of you who have been visiting this page for a while may recognise Russ as the chap who kindly offered his experience to help me purchase a guitar last year. The band only play within striking distance of public transport once every couple of months so we were looking forward to taking the opportunity. However, Gill had to pop down to see Ed last night about work only to find him suffering from various ailments and tonight’s plans were cancelled.

I feel sorry for Carla who was really looking forward to playing host and had already bought in many of the provisions. This isn’t the first time we’ve had to cancel something due to Ed’s ailments and I hope she is p**sed off enough with him to force him to see a specialist because so far he has ignored what is an obvious problem. *Rant over* Seriously though, I do hope he takes time out to get himself checked over because I’m only too aware that a nasty diagnosis could be sitting there waiting to be discovered and the longer you leave them...

I had a bad night again last night due to insomnia and felt quite rough this morning. I now manage about 2 hour’s uninterrupted sleep a night which isn’t exactly ideal. I wanted to do something but didn’t feel up to trailing around town for a couple of hours. In the end Gill and I headed out in the car just to get out and eventually landed at Billy and Steph’s. Steph had been unwell the previous day and was relaxing in the bath when we arrived so we sat and chatted to Billy until she surfaced. Things had improved slightly overnight and she was feeling a little brighter than yesterday but not up to playing Warcraft so offered her computer for my use. As much as I wanted to jump up and get online that’s not why we had popped out so I insisted on being sociable for a while longer. OK a short while longer.

Billy and I logged on and he brought his Paladin out for a play which is just as well as I had jumped ahead of myself and was trying quests for higher level players. His healing skills were in great demand although we did have to utilise Resurrect on my character on more than one occasion. Sam was also online at the same time and posted my character several nice, useful items which although for a higher level character, are now sitting in the bank awaiting my advancement. Steph also popped online to throw even more items at me so I must have the best equipped level 10 rogue on the server by now.

We played for a couple of hours, getting Itwasntme up to 10th level, before we retired back to the living room to watch Newcastle put on a workmanlike but effective display in beating Everton 2:0. Things are really looking up at Newcastle since the departure of Graeme Souness, we are now unbeaten in 5 games and have won 4 of them. However neither Glenn Roeder nor Alan Shearer have the required couching badges to enable them to continue in post until the end of the season so something is going to have to be sorted before then. I hope Fat Freddie has enough nonce to employ a sensible couch this time i.e. not Sam Allardice or Paul Jewel, otherwise it will be a case of one step forward and two back.

In the end we didn’t make it to see Russ play and I was in bed before 9. If I had been out I may have lasted longer but who knows? As it happens I had yet another poor night and was awake again by 2 am. Ho hum.

A Hero Is Born

It’s not that my presents have been burning a hole in my pocket or anything but when Gill phoned to say that she would be working late last night I took the opportunity to head over to Graeme and Sam’s to use and abuse one of their computers. I headed over without even knowing if they were in or not or announcing my impending arrival. Luckily they were in and didn’t turn me away at the door. After minimal pleasantries Sam said “So do you want to create a World of Warcraft character on the computer? Well do you? Eh? Eh?”

So it came to pass that Itwasntme the sneakiest rogue ever to set foot on Azjol Nerub was freed to wreak havoc upon the world. The loathsome ranks of the Horde were seen to quake in their very boots/sandals/hooves/bare feet at the news and rejoicing was heard throughout the lands of the Alliance. It wasn’t long before the legions of foul creatures that have been infesting the Alliance lands were put to the sword, wrongs were righted and I helped myself to some loot. News of my arrival also prompted a request from a prominent guild that I join their ranks, to which I agreed, and several members of said guild travelled to meet me and bestow me with gifts.

In other words I managed to haul my characters sorry ass through the starting quests without too many problems and Graeme managed to get in touch with the guild master, Steph’s brother Stu, and I was assimilated into their ranks. Graeme also brought his main character, a Gnome Warlock by the name of Koolar, down to Northshire Abbey to give me some gear and watch me beat up on some low levels grunts. A further guild Warlock also popped over to see me and ply me with several useful items including a couple of much sought after bags.

By the end of a couple of hours playing, during which Gill had turned up and I downed a couple of glasses of wine, I had managed to complete the starting quests and raise Itwasntme to level 7. As much as I really wanted to carry on I was aware that Gill wanted to be away to get something to eat and I was taking up valuable gaming time from Sam, so I called it quits before I pushed my luck too far. It was very enjoyable starting a character I knew I would be able to continue with once I had all my own gear in place and I believe Itwasntme and I are going to become very close over the following months.

Discarded Fantasies

With yet another change of mind the doctors looking after my Gran now do think she suffered a stroke. In some ways this is good because it means that she is to be transferred to a specialist stroke ward, when a bed becomes available, and will receive proper rehabilitation but obviously she would rather not have had the stroke. She is apparently starting to complain about her predicament which indicates she is starting to feel like her old self. The current estimate is that she will be an inpatient for about six weeks and impatient for about as long.

Yesterday started poorly for Gill who could finally bottle up and ignore her frustrations/despair at my health problems no longer. I had been waiting for this day since last weeks appointment set back so it came as no surprise; I’m just pleased it came. After a bout of tears I informed her that she was taking the day off and I would join her. It turned out to be a good day allowing us both to voice the concerns that had been dogging us recently and, I hope, releasing most of the stress that had been building up over the past few weeks.

The day off also allowed us to tackle the back room again, this time concentrating on the two cupboards that reside in there. The cupboards mainly contained hundreds of books that I have picked up over the years and I was determined to get rid of as many as I could. Well, when I say 'determined to get rid of', what I mean is 'resigned myself to losing'. In the end I found it easier to part with them than I had thought, the main victims being large parts of my science fiction/fantasy and horror collections, mostly American import stuff I had picked up in Timeslip/Forbidden Planet. I’ll try and flog these to Keel Row books in North Shields but don’t hold out much hope so if anyone out there...

As for World of Warcraft, I am now a proud citizen of the Azjol Nerub server and as such will now be able to interact with all the other sad geeks who I know play. Of course I will only be able to interact with said geeks by using their gear at the moment, hmm...any offers?

Presents

Over the weekend Gill and I tried to put our new positive attitude to work and actually do something rather than sit moping around. We started by popping up to the local Post Office depot to collect a couple of packages that we missed through the week. One was a package containing my dads’ birthday present and the others were my birthday presents from Gill.

For my dad we had purchased some folders and wallets to hold Birth/Death Certificates etc for his genealogy documents. My dad has been looking into our family history for a number of years now and has accrued a vast number of certificates. Gill, who is also a keen genealogist, had purchased some for herself a while back and found them a great help in keeping things organised. We had bought some for my dad at Christmas and he liked the idea so much he asked for further sets for his birthday.

On the way down from the depot we popped into Tesco’s to pick up something for lunch and a bunch of flowers for my mam. I could tell she has not taken the current situation with my Gran particularly well and I thought the flowers might just brighten her day a little. It turns out that the doctors are not sure my Gran has had a stroke now and feel the lack of power in her hand may be down to the fact that she lay on her arm for a couple of hours cutting of the blood supply to her hand. How long it takes for her to get back to the sheltered housing is uncertain because with her shoulder possibly broken and arm strapped up she is unable to self care. I just hope my mam has learnt her lesson and doesn’t offer to look after her because that would be a thankless, painful chore.

Getting back home Gill allowed me to open my pressies even though my birthday is over a month away. In truth I knew what was in the packages because I had been bleating on about them for so long Gill just bought them to shut me up I think. The first package contained World of Warcraft an online multiplayer computer game and the second a guide to the game. I have played a couple of times over at Billy & Steph’s and Graeme and Sam’s and I’m totally hooked. It must be the easiest way to lose several hours without being aware of it known to man and as such looked like the ideal thing to keep me occupied whilst I’m recuperating from my surgery.

There are of course a couple of problems which will have to be addressed in order for this to be possible. As things currently stand I can’t actually play the game at home because neither my computer nor internet connection are anywhere near good enough to support the game. I have purchased a couple of computer magazines to check out the latest gear and it looks as if I’m facing a bill of about £1200 to secure something that wont become obsolete in a couple of months as far as gaming is concerned. This is more than I had hoped but there is no point in buying something which won’t get the job done. Looking at broadband providers they all seem to be much of a muchness so I think I will just upgrade my Virgin account.

Of course I’m going to need somewhere to put all this gear so Sunday saw renewed efforts to clear the back bedroom of 10 years of accumulated crap. I tackled this as Gill worked her way around the other dumping points throughout the house. We both made really good progress and achieved quite a bit before fatigue kicked in. I think a couple of other sessions of similar length will see the problem sorted and we can then make arrangements to get telephone lines sorted and computers ordered.

Just When....

I’m now into my second day of positive thinking and already events are conspiring to test my limits. Last night I received a phone call from my mam and as soon as she spoke I could tell something was wrong. It transpires that on Wednesday night my Grandma had a fall and damaged her shoulder and was currently on the Emergency Care ward at North Tyneside General. The most recent diagnosis was that she had suffered a minor stroke and was experiencing weakness down her left side. They weren’t allowing any visitors last night in an attempt to give her some rest and do some further tests. Surely a contradiction?

My parents’ relationship with my Gran has been strained to say the least over the past year or so. In truth my dad and she have never got on and they shared what can best be described as a mutual loathing. Last year my Gran took it upon herself to sour the relationship with my mam to the point where they barely speak now and bizarrely if it wasn’t for my dad encouraging my mam to keep in touch the rift may have become permanent. In short my Gran can be a nasty piece of work when she wants to be and then wonders why people start to give her a wide berth.

I have been torn in this dispute because despite my Gran always being the epitome of loving politeness to Gill and I the way she acted towards my mam last year was inexcusable. I have limited my visits to special occasions such as her birthday and Christmas etc. and to be honest I’ve found it difficult to be civil at times. However she is still family and at times like this forgiveness needs to be exercised in order to ensure she gets the best standard of care we can secure for her. I guess we’ll be given a better indication of prognosis once the test results are available later today. In the mean time my mam worries herself silly and I hope my Gran is aware of and appreciates the forgiveness she is being shown, I guess that, with luck, time will tell.

The Cold Light Of Morning

So how do I feel today after what was a surprisingly good night’s sleep? Well, still mightily frustrated it has to be said, but also depressingly resigned to the situation. In an effort to limit any damage I emailed the secretary and apologised for any potential upset or distress I may have caused her and explained that, whilst not excusing any potential offence, my actions were totally the result of stress and frustration. I hope this draws a line under the matter because, frankly, my health is enough to worry about at the moment without any peripheral issues.

Gill and I made a pact last night to try and be a little more proactive about the situation and actually try and live something of a life during the next 4 weeks. We are both aware that this year has been a non event with regards to any sort of social interaction as we have both slipped deeper into our protective cocoons to the exclusion of both friends and family. The situation has not been helped by the fact that I only received half pay for most of last month due to accumulated sickness absence but hell you only live once and if I try really, really hard I can see that I should have a long life ahead of me that can help pay for today.

I also received a phone call from Donna last night whilst Gill was out pandering to her bosses whims; you’re a slave driver Ed! Donna has been a good friend to Gill and I for more years than I care to remember and isn’t having the best of times herself at the moment. We spent an hour and a half putting the world to rights and I think it did us both the power of good to get things off our chests. We are both looking forward to the impending gig by the Drive By Truckers at the Cluny and sounded like a pair of excited schoolgirls with Westlife tickets. I think Donna may have pulled that particular impersonation off with slightly more success than I did though. Hello Donna, if you’re watching :-)

The Waiting Is The Hardest Part

Today I find myself sitting at work surrounded by a dense fog of gloom. This morning at 9:30 I was due to see my Surgeon for the first time and hopefully be given a date for my operation. However, as seems to have been the rule so far during the course of my illness, I returned from work last night and discovered two messages on my answer phone from my surgeons secretary informing me that the appointment would have to be cancelled. Apparently an emergency had arisen that afternoon and so the clinic would need to be cancelled.

Working in the Hospital I am well aware that emergencies will occur just when you least want them to and that the poor buggers who are suffering the emergency would rather not be, thank you very much. Emergencies, of course, should always take priority but boy did it take the wind out of my sails when I heard the news. Never mind I thought, at least it means Gill and I can pop open a bottle of fizz on Valentines Day and I’ll phone in the morning to get the next available appointment.

Fast forward to 2:30 this morning and I find myself lying in bed with my mind working overtime: What if they won’t be able to rearrange my appointment for later in the week? What if the emergency involved the surgeon and he is going to be unavailable for months? What if the surgeon just had to take his kids to school that morning and so cancelled his early appointments? What if the surgeon wanted to wait until Michael Barrymore had agreed to assist him during the operation? All these and many more even more far fetched notions kept me awake until the alarm went off at 6:45. Thus suitably refreshed I headed to work with a growing dread of my phone call to the surgeons secretary and the determination not to throw a hissy fit if I didn’t satisfaction.

Once at work I logged on to the PAS network which lists clinics and the patients attending them just to allay my fears that I had been the only patient cancelled. As it happens I was still down as an active patient for the clinic as were the other 4 people listed so now I was unsure as to whether the clinic had been cancelled or not. Only one thing to do: phone the secretary and find out what was going on. The first thing she said was that, yes, the clinic was indeed cancelled due to an emergency patient requiring surgery, fair enough. However she then went on to say that Mr Hasan only does one adult clinic a fortnight and the next available slot wasn’t until the 15th of March, a whole month away!

I don’t think she could tell that this had not gone down well; at worst I had assumed I might have to wait a further week or so. She took my stunned silence as an acceptance of the situation and proceeded to tell me that an appointment would be sent out in the post to me. I recovered enough to ask her to repeat what she had just told me and sure enough I had heard correctly. I was still stunned and although I asked why I couldn’t be put into the next clinic on the 1st of March I wasn’t alert enough to ask why one of those patients couldn’t be moved back a week when told that the clinic was “...Fully, in fact, over booked”. In something of a stupor I think I mumbled some thanks for her help and put the phone down. Another month! I’ve barely made it on a day to day basis up to this point, running on basic life support, never mind having to find the resolve to last for another 4 weeks.

After providing me with a cup of tea to try and get some life into me Jan suggested that I take a look on PAS to see if I had been allocated a time yet. Calling the clinic up I entered today’s date by mistake and had to shuffle through the clinics until reaching the listing for the 15th. As I passed the clinic for the 1st I happened to notice that there were only 3 slots allocated for that clinic which didn’t strike me as being either fully or over booked. Right I thought, if the secretary hasn’t yet entered any appointments into the remaining slots perhaps I could ask her to look kindly on a fellow hospital worker and slip me in.

I should have known better. Telling her that I had noticed only three appointments booked for the clinic on the 1st she rather icily informed me that Mr Hasan would only see three new patients per clinic and as she had stated previously the slots were fully booked. I apologised and said that as there had been 5 slots on the list for this week’s clinic I had assumed, wrongly apparently, that each clinic could accommodate that number. She took this opportunity to accuse me of checking up on her and calling her a liar. This is not at all what I had expected and was lost for words as she continued by suggesting that I might even have been checking other patients’ details! That was the comment that broke the spell...How dare she?

I explained, in as calm a voice as I could summon at this stage, that that was a very dangerous accusation to be making about a fellow professional and she had better qualify her comments or withdraw them. She spluttered around the subject and added that I needed to understand that every patient that comes to the clinic is concerned with their condition not just you. This was going from bad to worse faster than a UFO band reunion and I could tell that the situation was irretrievably lost. I just told her to get the appointment in the post and thanked her for the help she had given me before putting the phone down. So I now think I have an enemy for life and just wonder what surprises she is going to have in store for me. I found out later after she reported me for ‘improper use of PAS’ which, sensibly, has been investigated, found not to be the case, has been dropped and is going no further. How nice.

So here I sit stewing in my own frustration at the continued wait to see the surgeon, anger at how poorly I reacted on the phone and despair at the thought I could have inadvertently soured my relationship with my surgeon despite never even talking to him!. My boss is going to try and see if he can get things pushed forward but agrees that things don’t look too promising. Four more weeks and a non too friendly secretary who has no doubt had a word with her scalpel wielding boss, great. I’m looking forward to this with even less relish than I was previously.

Alive

Just in case you were wondering I am still alive. A combination of mild depression, fatigue, an appalling internet connection and work has kept me away from the computer. Yes that’s right work. As of Wednesday the 25th I’ve been back to work, although I haven’t picked up my patient workload because I don’t know how long I will have before my surgery. So for the moment I am just coordinating the set up of a couple of new trials and any other odds and ends I can help other people with.

It has been great being back and actually doing something constructive with my time. I must at this point thank everyone here in the unit for all the help they have given me since my return and their willingness to continue carrying the extra work I have lumbered them with. I’ll make it up to them all once I am able.

The depression has been the result of my continued wait for a surgical appointment and the seeming lack of concern exhibited by the Trust. I know I keep banging on about it but how the hell do ordinary patients cope with the stress the system causes? Anyway, I finally received my appointment to see Mr Hasan this week and will go to his clinic on the 15th of February. I assume the appointment will be an information giving exercise about the surgery and I will be given my surgical date there and then. Or is that just being too optimistic?

In anticipation of my impending surgery I now know I must do something about our internet connection. I have tried on a couple of occasions to post updates to the blog but the computer was having none of it, refusing even to connect to the update page. With the thought of three months or more recuperating and a dodgy internet connection I know that a new computer and broadband have moved from ‘would be nice’ to ‘f**king essential’! So time to finish sorting that back bedroom I guess.

I’ll back fill some details of the past couple of weeks over the weekend just you all have something to read other than me whinging.