Week of 10th December, 2018

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Monday, 10th December

The hospital test multiple things, multiple times a day - how effective the epidural is (check to see if a chill spray is felt on various parts of the body) blood pressure, heart rate, temperature, blood sugar (since I'm diabetic) blood chemistry - and you don't get a choice as to when these tests are made, even unto 02:00 when you're trying to sleep. Meanwhile, I'm not bed-ridden - they want me sitting in a chair for substantial parts of the day. Not to mention walking 50 yards round the ward several times a day. Apparently, this improves resistance to chest infections after surgery.

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Tuesday, 11th December

Today, when I got out of bed, I had no more than minor discomfort around the wound site, So it's time to attempt walking, despite previous efforts showing poor balance.

Not so much this time. In fact, it was easier than I thought it would be, to the extent that I took another round in the evening. I'll try four times tomorrow.

In the evening, I fired up latitude, to update these pages, and collect my cartoon strips, one of which I've been grabbing on my phone, becasue it's only posted for one day.

<pause>

And that's done. FileZilla wanted to update to V3.38.0, so I let do that.

It's almost completely depleted the battery

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Wednesday, 12th December

No walkies, today. It was decided to disconnect the epidural, and the catheter, so I decided walkies would be after that. But the catheter didn't come out until 23:00, for good reasons, and by that time I felt like I'd been kicked in the stomach, because the epidural had worn off, and the replacement, oxycodone 5mg oral capsules, one every 4 hours, wasn't as effective. So I lay in bed, and suffered.

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Thursday, 13th December

The signals of urgency relating to elimination functions have changed, but all is working, Thus makes the medical people happy. It feeds their data-packrat tendencies, because they're stiil making observations. Of even more things.

Next , I need to collect the rest of the cartoon strips. And I can go home tomorrow.

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Friday, 14th December

Sure enough, I got away late in the afternoon. But the medics were testing everything, all the way up to the last minute - and beyond. They ran a CT scan just before lunch, the results of which hadn't come through by the time they let me go.

Meanwhile, Kay had been waiting with me since post-lunch - she'd arranged time off, since I have to be accompanied for at least the first 24 hours after discharge.

There being no parking at St. Mary's Hospital, we had to get a taxi. Well, big train or Tube would have been an option, but door-to-door is (much) preferred. The mini-cab phone line offered service aftter a 2 hour delay, which is not on.

But since there's a cab rank at Paddington station, a full-monty black cab can be got for the minor effort of a  short walk. Katy parked me in the hospital lobby, and went off to hire a cab. She found one, just outside, one of the newer Mercedes van conversions, and loaded me into it.

UKP40 later, we're home. And I had no money with me.

Even that short effort left me shattered, so I did very little more.

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Saturday, 15th December

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Sunday, 16th December

2 days of nothing but reading and dozing - you can't call what I was doing at night sleep, it was too uncomfortable. Punctuated with dosing myself with pills. And a daily injection (self-administered) of a blood-thinning medication.

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