The Hospital Blog

If you don’t follow me on social media and only follow me via this blog you’re probably wondering what’s happened to me. Well, yours truly finally got the treatment he needed when I was taken into hospital for treatment on what was originally diagnosed as a chest infection but which actually turned out to be pneumonia.

I spent two weeks in hospital undergoing various treatments, being poked and prodded, having various needles and tubes inserted into me. I posted a few updates on Facebook, but as many of you probably don’t follow me on Facebook a couple of the posts from there. I didn’t really write anything of length until about a week into my stay, by which time I’d undergone a second procedure to drain fluid from my chest and right lung.

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.

When Prince Stole The Show

If you’ve ever browsed through Youtube looking for classic rock clips there’s a chance you may have seen a certain performance from the 2004 Rock & Roll Hall of Fame ceremony. You know the one I’m talking about, the year that Prince was inducted, and the year that blew everyone else off the stage.

It was the year that they paid tribute to George Harrison. Having inducted him into the hall for his post-Beatles work, a who’s who of Harrison’s friends took to the stage to pay tribute to the great man with a rendition of While My Guitar Gently Weeps. His Wilbury band-mates Jeff Lynne and Tom Petty were there to lead things, George’s son Dhani was next to them, and behind them on keyboards was Steve Winwood. Alongside them were musicians who had worked with both Lynne and Petty, such as guitarist Marc Mann, who was scheduled to handle the mid-song guitar solo.

My Take on the Schofield/Willoughby Situation

It's been all over the news for days now, since Phillip Schofield announced his departure from "This Morning" following speculation about his failing relationship with co-host Holly Willoughby. Here's my take on the situation:

Kitten Sam

A very special, if somewhat grubby, photo, found by my brother Paul when he was sorting some books out yesterday.

My first cat Sam, taken in September 1986 on the day we adopted him. He was six or seven weeks old, and he was joined later that day by his best mate Shep. It was a new experience for everyone with Sam being our first ever moggy.

How Was I "Dealt With" Exactly?

I was going through the files on my flash drive the other day. You know how it is, you save things on there for later and then you forget it’s on there until you see it months or even years later.

The image you can see with this post comes from a Facebook post about four or five years ago. It was around the time I instigated legal proceedings against my former boss in an attempt to get back the wages and holiday pay she owed me (she never actually paid up, so that’s money I’ll never see.)

What Did Anglo-Force Look Like?

I've been playing around with one of those AI art generator things, generating images for some of the old Anglo-Force characters in a 1950's comic book style.

Immortal wizard Dr. Phineas Magus

Take a Look at My Tree

 So I've finally signed up to LinkTree and put all of my accounts into one place. It's all there, social media, MixCloud, Spotify, Youtube, etc, etc.

You can find my LinkTree account at https://linktr.ee/julianradbourne, or you can scan the QR code. Enjoy!

If I Were a Soap Opera Character

Ten things that would have happened to me if I was a soap opera character and not a real person:

The First Blog of the Year

I’m going to begin 2023 with a little confession for you. It’s something I’ve only told a couple of people, but given my history I probably should have told a few more people.

You see, I’m not really a big fan of December, particularly the first two weeks, and one day in particular. I always feel sad in the run-up to December 13^th, the anniversary of my mother’s passing. But this year for some reason it hit me really hard.

We're a Bloody Joke!

When I was growing up we Brits seemed to have a snooty kind of attitude as far as countries with weak political systems were concerned.

It's as if we constantly looked down on them. "Look at Johnny Foreigner over there!" we'd say with our noses in the air. "What a joke they are with their contstantly-changing leaderships!"

How many Prime Ministers have we had since the Brexit campaign in 2016? Now we're the bloody joke.