Chest Infection Week Six

A health update for you:

Tomorrow will be the start of the sixth week of my chest infection. Yep, suck bloody weeks of this crap. I never thought the bloody thing would last this long, but it has.

I had a check-up at the surgery last Friday. The original intention when I made the appointment was to see if I could work with my sciatica. (Don't get me started on how I had to jump through hoops just to get that appointment.)

The sciatica immediately took a back seat when I told the guy how the chest infection just wasn't getting any better, how I had countless coughing fits every day, and how I'd thought I'd pulled a ton of muscles down my right hand side because of this.

A Pain in the Arse

I’m currently sitting at the desk, writing this on our main desktop PC. It’s something I haven’t done much of recently. My RSI-type shoulder and neck injury means that sitting here is quite uncomfortable, even more so with the new aches and pains that have come into my life in the last few weeks.

These past few weeks really have been a pain in the backside in more ways than one, but after today’s GP appointment I’m finally getting some answers, because after getting the big negative with the tests for cancer I’ve got a big positive for a case of sciatica.

Not Such a Handsome Beast

I used to think that heavy metal bands had some of the greatest album covers ever. The artwork on some of the albums by Rainbow, Dio, Metallica, Megadeth and their like is second to none.

Then I was "re-introduced" to this from the NWOBHM era while looking for songs for a Spotify playlist. The music's not bad, but this cover, once seen it you can't unsee it. It's considered one of the worst album covers of all time.

Still Miss You Lots Madam

With everything I've had to do today, I only noticed just now from the Facebook memories thing that today is the third anniversary of Frodo's passing.

Frodo was by far the most affectionate and caring cat I've ever known. We often called her the mother of our furry family, although you could say she was the mother of all of us here, human and animal.

She always made the effort to make sure that everyone was okay. Every day, when I got up, or when I came home, while whatever combination of dogs we had greeted me in their usual enthusiastic way, Frodo would sit at the opposite end of the sofa looking on, and after the dogs finished with their hugs and kisses Frodo would come over and site on my lap and greet me with a hug and nuzzle from her nose.

A Clusterfuck of a Day

Today has been a clusterfuck in more ways than one.

I awoke this morning in a great deal of pain, aching from my legs up to my chest, to a text message from the surgery saying that my MRI scan had been cancelled and that I needed to ring them to make an appointment to see the GP. What better time than now I thought. So I dialled their number. I was only the second caller in the queue, which was somewhat surprising given that time of the morning.

When I finally got through I was met with what could be termed as confrontational indifference. I explained my situation to the receptionist, explaining that I had received a text message, as well as recounting what had happened during my previous appointment with the GP a week ago, which included me telling her that one of the things I was told they were on the look-out for was the big C.

So I'm Having a Few Tests Done

I’ve been thinking a lot over the past twenty-four hours, thinking about how to word this, or if I should post this at all. But here goes anyway.

I’ve been feeling ill on and off for a while now. I can’t say for how long exactly because I simply can’t remember, but the story is that on some days I had a dicky tum, and on other days I didn’t and felt fine. After I felt unwell I just took an Immodium and went about my business.

Then I began to get a pain in the upper parts of my legs, and in my right hip in particular. At first I thought it might be related to the RSI-like injury I had with my neck, shoulders and arms. The pain wasn’t too bad, but then it began to spread to the point that the entire area between my upper legs and lower back began to hurt. This included a certain functional part of my body.

Alas, It's Not That Funny Anymore

Over the past few months I’ve caught a couple of old episodes of “Alas Smith and Jones”, the 80’s comedy series brought to us by those “Not the 9 O’Clock News” legends Mel Smith and Griff Rhys-Jones.

I loved these two back in the day, and the younger me was a massive fan of this show back then, so I jumped at the chance to re-live some happy childhood memories when one episode was shown on BBC Four, and another one recently on BBC Two. Sadly, I was quite disappointed.

Don't Let Daddy Kiss Me

When you think of Motorhead and their hard-rocking, hard-living frontman Lemmy you immediately think of songs like Ace of Spades, Born to Raise Hell, Iron Fist, Overkill and the like, songs that make you want to bang your head and raise your fist in triumph. You rarely think about Lemmy and Motorhead having a social conscience and singing about sensitive subjects. That is until you hear them play “Don’t Let Daddy Kiss Me.”

Catching Dreams

About twenty years ago or so my brother Michael and his then-wife Denise brought me a dream catcher for Christmas. I wasn’t really into that sort of thing and I didn’t really know what to do with it until I found out that I was meant to hang it above my bed.

It stayed there for a few years, but over time it began to show signs of wear and tear until I eventually took it down and disposed of it. There didn’t seem much point in keeping something that looked a bit tatty in my room.

The Young Women of Today and the Old Women of Tomorrow

As I stood at the bus stop the other day I couldn’t help but overhear two conversations from two different groups of women, one group of advanced years and one group more or less just starting their journey in adult life, and when I heard just how different these two conversations were it occurred to me that when the younger women reach old age they probably won’t sound anything like the older women do now.