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5 January 2011

Posted by DMC on 5 January 2011 in Diary |

I suppose I must start with the daily dose of cricket. Don’t worry folks there’s only two days to go before the end of this particular series, but what a wonderful two days they should prove to be.

England resumed batting overnight and only lost three further wickets during the whole of the day’s session, finishing 208 runs ahead of Australia with three wickets in hand, when bad light stopped play. Two highlights were Alistair Cooke’s 189, just failing to get a double century for the second time in a test series, which would have put him in to the history books along with the legendary Wally Hammond, and Bell ‘s 115. With another 20 or 30 runs added tomorrow morning, leaving the best part of two days to get Australia out, it would seem that the Ashes are in the bag, although as they say, it’s not over ‘until the fat lady sings ‘. (I know this is a totally irrelevant comment but do you know the origin of this expression? As I understand it, it came from the early musical halls when the star of the show, the top of the bill, who was usually the last act, was usually a plump lady singer.-opera singers and the like, in the early days always seem to be plump, maybe it was something to do with their lung. capacity. However, the present generation of ladies with beautiful voices are certainly slimmer and more attractive).

Do I need to report that yesterday Althea came to the house to perform her magic on my hand and toenails?

When I mentioned, in the 2 January entry, my recommendation for new readers to approach this blog from the bottom up rather than starting with the current day’s entry, I should also have mentioned that the archived diaries do, in fact, start at the beginning of the month and run through to the end, so, for example although the current entry will show the December dates in reverse order if you go to the archived entry for December you can read this chronologically from the beginning of the month.

It has been like Piccadilly Circus here today. First of all, , my faithful secretary Doreen turned up, to sort out to my backlog of papers, bank statements, etc. In the middle of this session Clare,. the pretty young district nurse, dropped him to take blood as a result of Dr Michael’s letter to Dr Lort – there are various things they wish to check in connection with the bone pain. Whilst all this was going on I received a telephone call from the surgery explaining what is happening in connection with the possible bone scan. Apparently the matter has to be referred to the Primary Care Trust (PCT) who decide whether or not to refer the patient to an orthopaedic consultant and to which hospital, hopefully to the hospital of the patient’s choice, in my case Addenbrookes.. Then presumably that consultant reports back to the PCT who would in turn authorise the bone scan, or not as the case may be. It sounds a rather convoluted process and one that I’m hoping to compress once the referral is made to the consultant. After all two or three months can be a significant period of time in the remaining life of an MND patient.

Hard on the heels of Clare came ‘Jane the sheep’, muzzled up and refusing to come anywhere near me and she had a suspected cold. Very considerate of her. Then, finally I received a phone call from Sharon at Papworth Hospital who apologised for not reacting earlier to Alice’s request for someone to come and fix and demonstrate the humidifier on the respirator, but the nurse who normally deals with this was away sick and anticipates being able to come next week. On the same visit she will bring with her the latest nose and face mask which might be more satisfactory for my shaped head than the one I have at present which tends to leak jets of air.

A busy day!

1 Comment

  • Barbara says:

    Dear Mark
    I have been reading with concern that you are experiencing discomfort, and pain. This is not necessary. Please ask your doctor friend to prescribe the latest form of the traditional “Brompton Cocktail,” or whatever is the going thing for pain relief. Expecting you to be stoic at this juncture is absurd, and cruel.

    I am sorry if I sound cross, it is frustration that I am expressing here.
    b

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