Shoshiplatypus

Somewhat of a frustrating day today, leaving me feeling as if I’ve been wading through treacle for most of the day!

A ripping start to the day (not…)

When I made the bed this morning, I ripped the sheet. It was old, and definitely in need of replacement, but not a great start to the day, which got progressively worse.

CT scan appointment

Yesterday morning, the Exeter hospital phoned me to make an appointment for a CT scan before my upcoming operation to repair my parastomal hernia. They had several slots on Friday, Saturday and Sunday, but I said I couldn’t make an appointment while my hubby was out, because he needs to drive me. She said that was fine, and to allow me time to contact him on his mobile, she said she would ring me after lunch to firm it up.

She did not phone.

This morning, it got to about 11 a.m. and nobody had phoned, so I decided to chase them up. It took me a while to find the correct number, and when I got through and explained the situation, the woman (a different one from yesterday) said that an appointment had been made for me on Tuesday morning!! I told her this was quite impossible – firstly, I have a Tesco delivery booked, and these delivery slots have to be booked a month in advance because of everyone panicking about the dreaded C-word, and also, I had made it quite clear yesterday that it was not possible to make an appointment without consulting my hubby. I said that the woman yesterday had promised to phone again and she had not, and the woman today said, “We are very busy.” I said it wasn’t terribly efficient of them!! I told her I’d been informed that there were slots open on Sunday afternoon and she looked it up, and found a couple in the early evening, so she booked me in for 6.10. My hubby had said any time during the second half of Sunday would be fine.

These people are hopeless. I have had endless inefficiency from them since I was referred nearly three years ago – being lost in their system, then the complaints department losing my complaint… (who do you complain to about the complaints department?!!) and I had to wait for another appointment to see the surgeon exactly two years after the previous one.

Pain

The breast surgeon told me, at last week’s appointment, that the pain under my arm was likely to get worse. This is the result of tissue damage from the radiotherapy I had in the summer. It is getting worse. I find I can no longer sleep on my left side because it hurts. Sleeping on my right side is something I try to avoid because there’s a danger of lying on Kermit’s bag and squashing it, with extremely undesirable results! (Kermit is my ileostomy.) The bag does tend to get pretty full overnight. Fortunately I have an orthopaedic bed and I can adjust it so that I can sleep on my back if necessary. I have had to do this after all my various operations until things had healed up enough to let me sleep on my side again wthout discomfort. Perhaps I am going to have to resign myself to this method of sleeping permanently from now on.

Boiler

A couple of days ago, our lovely plumber came to service the boiler. He is so kind and thoughtful. He had phoned me last summer to remind me it was due, and I told him I was in the middle of cancer treatment and wasn’t sure which way the wind was going to blow, and could we leave it for a while? He said that was fine, and I could phone any time to book him in. After this I kept forgetting all about it until last week, when I eventually got round to phoning him again. The first thing he did was to ask how I was!! He said he had felt reluctant to phone me because the news might have been bad. Anyway, he came, and sorted out the boiler and another slight problem (a leaking cystern in the flat loo).

This morning, we had no hot water!!

I phoned him to let him know, and he asked me to check the pressure, which was right down again. My hubby had mentioned last week that a small pipe coming out of the wall to the outside by the back door was dripping, and I had forgotten to mention this to the plumber. I didn’t know if it was anything to do with the boiler. It had stopped since he came, anyway. He said that he had pumped out part of the inside of the boiler, but if it filled with water, this would cause this small pipe to drip, as it was an overflow. He said this part of the boiler may need replacing if it happens again, but he talked me through resetting the pressure again and so far all is well. He has shown me this procedure before and I do have to do it once or twice a year when my bathroom radiator needs bleeding – it is very tall, being a heated towel rail, and if the pressure goes down a bit, it gets cold at the top. Each time I bleed it, it reduces the pressure a little more, until eventually the boiler fails to heat the water.

Anyway, for now, all is well. The man is a star – nothing too much trouble!! What a different kettle of fish from the previous plumber we used to use (recommended by a friend) – he was so unreliable, not turning up when he said he would, and when chased up for another appontment, would say, “I was ill,” or “something came up.” He never thought to tell us he wasn’t coming… It was more of an irritation than anything else because I am here nearly all of the time, but for someone who has to take half a day off work in order to be in for the plumber, this would be a major pain! We don’t use him any more!

Accounts

Boring job at the beginning of each month. More than frustrating today because my upstairs laptop in the office was working super-slow on the Internet – pages taking up to 15 mins to load! This is worse than dial-up… (anyone remember that?!) At least I managed to get online banking set up on my new phone this afternoon, and was able to access my account with no problem at all, so I don’t know what was going on with the laptop. My hubby was also messing me about with his receipts and I had to hang about while he sorted those out, durng which a friend of his phoned and they were on for ages… Thumb twiddling time at my desk!

I did manage to make a start on the accounts today, but unfortunately have not nearly finished. Horrible job!

Mis-spelt bred

Today I made another batch of spelt bread. The last lot I made, last week, didn’t rise as much as I would have liked, so I decided to increase the amount of yeast, hoping for a better result. If anything, it was worse!

Very dense, very flat, and heavy as a brick. It tastes OK, though. I need to do some research and find out why spelt flour behaves so differently from normal wheat flour.

Not my day, today.

An OK kitty

One thing really cheered me up today! I discovered this delightful video in my YouTube feed, of a kitty who is definitely “OK”!