Monday, December 24, 2007
Pre-Christmas Post
Howdy world...
My recovery from the operation has gone well. I was out of the bandages 2 weeks after the op, and since then my arm has been free. I can move it a bit more than I could before the operation - hopefully more movement will come back as it can still only move about 50% of my left wrists' movement.
My wife's job is a constant source of amusing stories, to do with the myriad books that she processes every day. The most memorable one was a travel book, in the index under the letter "A" was "A typical town in Gambia" - hmmm....!
I'm currently in Cumbria with the in-laws, where I will be spending Christmas (that's pretty obvious really as it will be Christmas in 95 minutes). We got here a couple of days ago at 3:15am - slightly late due to London traffic (I am NEVER going to live there...), a traffic jam caused by a multi-car pile up and fog on the roads. As we were driving along on the motorway unable to see more than 40m ahead of us due to the dense fog, we would periodically see very helpful signs along the side of the road that said "FOG" - which was nice.
Have a merry Christmas everyone!!
Howdy world...
My recovery from the operation has gone well. I was out of the bandages 2 weeks after the op, and since then my arm has been free. I can move it a bit more than I could before the operation - hopefully more movement will come back as it can still only move about 50% of my left wrists' movement.
My wife's job is a constant source of amusing stories, to do with the myriad books that she processes every day. The most memorable one was a travel book, in the index under the letter "A" was "A typical town in Gambia" - hmmm....!
I'm currently in Cumbria with the in-laws, where I will be spending Christmas (that's pretty obvious really as it will be Christmas in 95 minutes). We got here a couple of days ago at 3:15am - slightly late due to London traffic (I am NEVER going to live there...), a traffic jam caused by a multi-car pile up and fog on the roads. As we were driving along on the motorway unable to see more than 40m ahead of us due to the dense fog, we would periodically see very helpful signs along the side of the road that said "FOG" - which was nice.
Have a merry Christmas everyone!!
Labels: Christmas, Fog, in-laws, London, operation
Saturday, November 17, 2007
Post-op post
Hello! Should probably let you all know that my operation last Friday went well. Much scarred tissue was removed (or something like that) and I should have a lot more movement in my wrist when it s fully recovered. Since the op I've done a lot of nothing. My wife has been looking after me very well, and I've been sleeping 10 hours plus every night. Very nice :) I'm only eating about 60% of what I normally do but I guess this isn't so strange as I'm not really doing anything that requires energy. I should be back at work sometime next week, and on Thursday my bandage on my wrist will come off and I can see my shiny new scar. I'll probably be getting a removable splint too - no cast for me his time, thank goodness :)
I'm venturing out of the flat for the first time today as there is a rather important football match which I simply must watch. Come on Scotland...
Hello! Should probably let you all know that my operation last Friday went well. Much scarred tissue was removed (or something like that) and I should have a lot more movement in my wrist when it s fully recovered. Since the op I've done a lot of nothing. My wife has been looking after me very well, and I've been sleeping 10 hours plus every night. Very nice :) I'm only eating about 60% of what I normally do but I guess this isn't so strange as I'm not really doing anything that requires energy. I should be back at work sometime next week, and on Thursday my bandage on my wrist will come off and I can see my shiny new scar. I'll probably be getting a removable splint too - no cast for me his time, thank goodness :)
I'm venturing out of the flat for the first time today as there is a rather important football match which I simply must watch. Come on Scotland...
Labels: football, operation, Scotland, sleep
Sunday, August 19, 2007
I'm still here
Wow, it's been a long while since my last post. I keep thinking "I should make another post" and "I really should get around to my blog" and suddenly it's been almost 2 months.
What's happened since then? Well some friends from my student days visited, Becca & I went to the Keswick Convention (photos will be added soon) and we had our anniversary. Also I have slowly started cycling again, and I found out I need another operation as the bit of bone grafted has grown a bit too much - see the diagram below. That operation will happen in October or November most likely, will involve a similar amount of time off work to the last one, but the recovery will be better, I won't have to wear a cast after it and there are much fewer potential complications, which is nice :)
I haven't had a bit of a rant for a while, so here goes. Desserts at restaurants are overpriced. I mean, you spend £8, £10 or whatever on a main course, which was quite a substantial amount of food that probably cost a bit to buy the ingredients for and took a bit of time to prepare and wotnot. Then along comes the dessert menu. Dessert is a little bit of an add-on extra to the main menu and probably doesn't take long to prepare. In addition, the portions are often fairly insubstantial. In my mind, a reasonable costs would be £1.50 or maybe £2.50 - I'm sure the ingredients for many of these don't cost more than 50p or £1. But what do they charge? £3.50 plus normally - where we went for our anniversary meal, the cheapest I think was £4.25. £8.50 for a small portion of something sweet for us both? I think not! We even saw the portions - they could've been eaten in 4 mouthfuls fairly easily. £1.06 for a mouthful?! It's a similar story in sandwich shops, and they sell slices of cake at anything from £1 to £2.50. The entire 8-slice cake probably cost as much as they are charging for 1 slice.
Anyhow, here is the top-quality medical diagram of my wrist showing what needs to be changed.
Wow, it's been a long while since my last post. I keep thinking "I should make another post" and "I really should get around to my blog" and suddenly it's been almost 2 months.
What's happened since then? Well some friends from my student days visited, Becca & I went to the Keswick Convention (photos will be added soon) and we had our anniversary. Also I have slowly started cycling again, and I found out I need another operation as the bit of bone grafted has grown a bit too much - see the diagram below. That operation will happen in October or November most likely, will involve a similar amount of time off work to the last one, but the recovery will be better, I won't have to wear a cast after it and there are much fewer potential complications, which is nice :)
I haven't had a bit of a rant for a while, so here goes. Desserts at restaurants are overpriced. I mean, you spend £8, £10 or whatever on a main course, which was quite a substantial amount of food that probably cost a bit to buy the ingredients for and took a bit of time to prepare and wotnot. Then along comes the dessert menu. Dessert is a little bit of an add-on extra to the main menu and probably doesn't take long to prepare. In addition, the portions are often fairly insubstantial. In my mind, a reasonable costs would be £1.50 or maybe £2.50 - I'm sure the ingredients for many of these don't cost more than 50p or £1. But what do they charge? £3.50 plus normally - where we went for our anniversary meal, the cheapest I think was £4.25. £8.50 for a small portion of something sweet for us both? I think not! We even saw the portions - they could've been eaten in 4 mouthfuls fairly easily. £1.06 for a mouthful?! It's a similar story in sandwich shops, and they sell slices of cake at anything from £1 to £2.50. The entire 8-slice cake probably cost as much as they are charging for 1 slice.
Anyhow, here is the top-quality medical diagram of my wrist showing what needs to be changed.
Labels: anniversary, dessert, Keswick, operation, restaurant
Tuesday, June 05, 2007
Things I still can't do with my post-op hand
I think that's just about it...
- Open tins
- Open jars
- Open sachets of tomato ketchup
- Carry heavy stuff
- Cycle
I think that's just about it...
Monday, May 14, 2007
Dublin holiday & cast removed
Hi... here's the rest of my "recent news update" as promised in my last post! Photos of the Dublin holiday, our boat race trip and other stuff from April are available now via the link on the left.
Firstly a bit of waffle about my recent holiday. We went in mid-April for a week to Dublin. We went via train/ferry, which is a better option than flying because a) cheaper, b) more convenient (less legs of the journey), c) less environmentally damaging, d) we like trains, and e) only an hour or two longer than flying when it all is added up. Anyhow, the journey went fine. A slight concern I had was the metal screw in my arm setting off the metal detector at the ferry port (Holyhead), but when I told the security guy and showed him my scar he laughed and waved me around. On the way back I did set it off, I was asked to empty my pockets which I did but I still set it off, then he just let me through. I do think they will be stricter at airports though, I wouldn't be suprised if I got body-searched or something...
The holiday itself was very nice & relaxing, which was just what was needed especially for my wife, who was quite worn out after looking after her invalid husband in the months since my operation. Our hotel room was HUGE and had a 4-poster bed, and wasn't that expensive (£65-£70 a night for B&B for us both). We didn't really do anything exciting. We went to a castle (but didn't go in it), walked around a beach just north of Dublin, went shopping (but didn't buy much), saw The Book of Kells, went on a bus tour and went to Belfast for a day. We had arranged to meet up with two friends in Belfast, but somehow we told them both Monday, but in our heads we had said Tuesday, even though clearly we DID tell them Monday (emails and such prove this)... so anyway net result was they both spent an hour waiting at the coach station for us on the Monday, and we spent an hour waiting for them on the Tuesday!! Doh. Nevertheless, we had a good time in Belfast, following the plan given to us by one of our friends. We went on the bus tour, had lunch in town, browsed some shops, went to the W5 and had food before heading back to Dublin. The W5 centre was an interactive sciencey kind of place, but there were very few kids around that are normally swarming around everything, so my wife & I ran around like little kids instead and had a really fun time in a slightly childish manner :)
The other highlight was seeing 2 Gaelic Football games at Croke Park. They were the two semi-finals of the league, the prestige of which could be roughly approximated to the Carling Cup in English football. There were about 26,000 people watching it in one of the biggest stadiums in Europe (85,000 I think) - but there was still a good astmosphere and the tickets were relatively cheap -especially when you consider we saw two games! It was very enjoyable and the teams we picked to win both won - Mayo (as they have a cool name) and Donegal (the team they were playing aginst had a stylised modern crest which we disapproved of).
After the holiday we had 3 days at home before going back to work, which was also nice and relaxing. One of those days was Game Day 2007, when we had some friends around and played board games all day long, which was fun as always.
*****
And now, the latest news about my arm. The cast was removed and I now have a removable splint - hurrah! I'm supposed to take it off 4 times a day and do some simple exercises to build up the non-existant stength in my wrist - I do this and sometimes take it off on other occasions, as it gets quite icky and sweaty in there. In August I will have another X-ray which will probably result in the splint coming off too, hurrah!
I have been left with an impressive scar, and for some reason accelerated hair growth in my wrist area - it's quite freaky actually. Rather than me explain it, you can see for yourselves.
Hi... here's the rest of my "recent news update" as promised in my last post! Photos of the Dublin holiday, our boat race trip and other stuff from April are available now via the link on the left.
Firstly a bit of waffle about my recent holiday. We went in mid-April for a week to Dublin. We went via train/ferry, which is a better option than flying because a) cheaper, b) more convenient (less legs of the journey), c) less environmentally damaging, d) we like trains, and e) only an hour or two longer than flying when it all is added up. Anyhow, the journey went fine. A slight concern I had was the metal screw in my arm setting off the metal detector at the ferry port (Holyhead), but when I told the security guy and showed him my scar he laughed and waved me around. On the way back I did set it off, I was asked to empty my pockets which I did but I still set it off, then he just let me through. I do think they will be stricter at airports though, I wouldn't be suprised if I got body-searched or something...
The holiday itself was very nice & relaxing, which was just what was needed especially for my wife, who was quite worn out after looking after her invalid husband in the months since my operation. Our hotel room was HUGE and had a 4-poster bed, and wasn't that expensive (£65-£70 a night for B&B for us both). We didn't really do anything exciting. We went to a castle (but didn't go in it), walked around a beach just north of Dublin, went shopping (but didn't buy much), saw The Book of Kells, went on a bus tour and went to Belfast for a day. We had arranged to meet up with two friends in Belfast, but somehow we told them both Monday, but in our heads we had said Tuesday, even though clearly we DID tell them Monday (emails and such prove this)... so anyway net result was they both spent an hour waiting at the coach station for us on the Monday, and we spent an hour waiting for them on the Tuesday!! Doh. Nevertheless, we had a good time in Belfast, following the plan given to us by one of our friends. We went on the bus tour, had lunch in town, browsed some shops, went to the W5 and had food before heading back to Dublin. The W5 centre was an interactive sciencey kind of place, but there were very few kids around that are normally swarming around everything, so my wife & I ran around like little kids instead and had a really fun time in a slightly childish manner :)
The other highlight was seeing 2 Gaelic Football games at Croke Park. They were the two semi-finals of the league, the prestige of which could be roughly approximated to the Carling Cup in English football. There were about 26,000 people watching it in one of the biggest stadiums in Europe (85,000 I think) - but there was still a good astmosphere and the tickets were relatively cheap -especially when you consider we saw two games! It was very enjoyable and the teams we picked to win both won - Mayo (as they have a cool name) and Donegal (the team they were playing aginst had a stylised modern crest which we disapproved of).
After the holiday we had 3 days at home before going back to work, which was also nice and relaxing. One of those days was Game Day 2007, when we had some friends around and played board games all day long, which was fun as always.
*****
And now, the latest news about my arm. The cast was removed and I now have a removable splint - hurrah! I'm supposed to take it off 4 times a day and do some simple exercises to build up the non-existant stength in my wrist - I do this and sometimes take it off on other occasions, as it gets quite icky and sweaty in there. In August I will have another X-ray which will probably result in the splint coming off too, hurrah!
I have been left with an impressive scar, and for some reason accelerated hair growth in my wrist area - it's quite freaky actually. Rather than me explain it, you can see for yourselves.
Labels: Belfast, cast, Croke Park, Dublin, ferry, holiday, operation, scar
Wednesday, February 28, 2007
New cast
Here's the cast I got put on in Thursday. It's fine most of the time but has been a little bit iffey recently. We'll see how it goes. I've also put a whole load more photos up over Christmas/New Year and from the start of this year - that's me fully up to date now with photo uploads since last August :) For a quick laugh look at this photo - note the spelling...
Here's the cast I got put on in Thursday. It's fine most of the time but has been a little bit iffey recently. We'll see how it goes. I've also put a whole load more photos up over Christmas/New Year and from the start of this year - that's me fully up to date now with photo uploads since last August :) For a quick laugh look at this photo - note the spelling...
Labels: cast, operation, photos