This often happens for me at Christmas time, perhaps it’s a little earlier for me this year. Maybe you also go through a little reflective phase, where you look back on things and ponder the future?
I took the above photograph on a recent Sunday afternoon walk, just using my iPhone. I thoroughly enjoyed going for that walk on my own, although it was tricky at times as I trudged through a field on wet sticky clay; it felt as if I had concrete boots on.
Nevertheless I enjoyed walking through some fields, just outside the village. The air was still and misty. I could hear some crows crowing and little else, especially as I tried to ignore the distant hum of the M1 motorway. I enjoyed being on my own with my thoughts, though I admit they were randomly jumping around from issue to issue. But then that illustrates what life can be like at times when there’s so many things to juggle.
The week itself
We are delighted that Becky and her hubby have come to stay for a few days, a kind of early Christmas get-together. Becky, as a trainee teacher, had a negative COVID test and as they live in the Exmoor National Park and have otherwise had little human contact, we figured it was safe for them to visit.
So on Friday, Hannah (right in photo) was mountain biking with some of her fellow students and Becky and myself went along to walk through the same woods. A kind of Dad-daughter thing which doesn’t happen so often these days. Tender times indeed.
We have visited my mother-in-law in her nursing home. She remains grumpy and rather disdainful at having to be there. Understandably Rachel finds it rather painful seeing the decline of her mum and we remembered how, just a few years ago, how she was so good at solving problems and coming up with clever ideas.
Decorating – I have now started the process of decorating the hall, stairs and landing in an effort to update the dated 1980 beige colour scheme. So far I’ve washed the ceilings, walls, doors and other woodwork, plus repairing some cracked plasterwork. It is quite a task with two stair cases and fourteen doors! This should keep me busy for a while.
Once this has been done, I will tackle out bedroom in the new year. This will involve having a new basin and a new fitted carpet, a ceiling repair and new wall lights. The painting will be easy and enjoyable.
Afterwards, I think we will concentrate on further decluttering and resuming some hobbies – yay!
Running – Having been nudged by my friend Jon, who I used to run with back in the summer, I decided to have a couple of test runs, to see how my plantar fasciitis felt about it. The upshot is one of optimism – although I’m not clear of the dreaded plantar, it is definitely getting much better these days. Healing the injury has been several months and I’m almost there. I am thinking it is going to be a tricky thing to manage. A part of me will be wanting to run and run in order to regain some lost fitness. And yet I know full well doing too much will send me back to hobbling around.
Health – I have had a recent course of antibiotics in respect of another UTI. Actually I suspect I get UTIs quite often and they resolve themselves on their own (gallons of water and cranberry juice helps).
Transferring to a different medical practice / Doctor’s Surgery was straight forward, ish. Straight forward in that I filled in the necessary forms, provided address and passport ID details. Organising repeat prescriptions was tricky with delays and queries on the dosage, and then the pharmacy was out of stock on one item. Hopefully sorted now.
My new Doctor, whoever this might be, has asked for me to have some blood tests, for monitoring purposes or so I understand. Unfortunately they don’t take blood samples and so I had to drive into Dunstable which turned out to be a protracted process. To make matters worse, I asked if they could also take my blood samples needed for this week’s routine renal appointment. As for urine samples, a case of “do this, pee there, take it over there”. So I have no idea if all of this will come together or not!
Blogging – continues to be interesting for me, aside from simply recording an online journal. I had been approached by some financial advisors to contribute to their article on ‘top tips’ for early retirement. I’ll talk more about that another time.
Also there is a steady flow of people clocking my exercising with a catheter post from 2018, when for a few months I had the extra plumbing installed. Sometimes people leave comments, other times people will contact me directly for advice. Naturally there’s limited advice I can give as I’m not a Doctor but I can offer some suggestions based on my own experience or just a bit of encouragement.
Nevertheless it does show the value of blogging and connecting up with folk all around the world!