Tag: medical merry-go-round

Vampire DNA at Imperial College and Hip Replacement Update

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I started watching “A Discovery of Witches” whilst in hospital after my total hip replacement. The other night we started series three. The main protagonists “academics” from Oxford University, also a vampire and a witch, had just gotten back from time walking to Elizabethan London in search of an alchemical text. They want to understand the vampire “blood rage” so obviously they go to Imperial College London to do some research. The TV programme had footage of the main entrance on Exhibition Road and drone views of the South Kensington Campus. The wife and I looked at each other.

There is no getting away from the place. It is everywhere like a rash. Like an antibiotic resistant STI it keeps popping up. Since the COVID days it is often in the news.

The story looks at the so-called vampire DNA of the de Clermont blood line and has quite a lot of London footage so-far including mews shots etc.. I do not look back at my interaction with that institution with fond memories. I am sometimes embarrassed to have been associated. And now it is in a bloody TV programme too!! FFS.

I am now four weeks into the time after hip replacement. I can walk around the house unaided, no crutches. Yesterday we walked the hills of Lannion centre and today my muscles ache. The actual joint pain in the hip is markedly reduced from before. There is enhanced flexibility and it seems that the functionality will continue to improve. There remains some problems with early morning-late nocturnal pain in the sacroiliac joints and where the sacral spine joins the lumbar spine. This kicks in around 5 AM. I am down to only one co-codamol a night taken around 2 AM. If I get up and move around, do some back stretches, I can sleep on a bit. I am sleeping through the night. We go to bed about midnight and I am up 6 – 6:30 AM at the moment.

It is not ideal though is tolerable. I could easily take some more dope – some more codeine. But I don’t think that is a good idea. When I am able to lie on my right hip, the operated one, I may be able to sleep better. The pain goes away within minutes of getting up and moving around. The incentive is not to lounge around like a hippie in bed.

The problem is I am not looking forward to going to bed. I am not looking forward to waking up in the morning. A non-ideal situation. Not sure what to do. I may try some back stretches later today. The pain may not go and I might have to resort to my previous medication which worked before the operation. Too early to tell.

There could be an enhanced vigilance at play. The last time I went to sleep, I woke up with an eight inch scar and a lump of Titanium…that is what happens if you doze off..

Luckily I know that many things do indeed pass. The hip progress seems OK. The sleeping and pre-dawn pains could be better.

On the whole the now is a whole lot better than the before….

Hip Replacement – Three Weeks In

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Last night following the themes of Metatron and Seraphim which have cropped up in my dreams we watched a film “Legion” in which a disappointed God sends his angels down to cleanse the world of humans. In that Michael goes against God’s orders. He chops off his wings. He ends up fighting Gabriel and a human baby is saved from slaughter, to provide hope. The film was OK…the plot was a bit formulaic.

What is clear to me is that in the collective consciousness there is vast speculation and extrapolation for only a very few verses in religious scripture. Humans have invented vast tracks of images and iconography to do with angels, the messengers and perhaps heralds of God. Most of those images are very idealized with virginal female angels and muscular homo-erotic male ones. Angels have caught the imagination. Angels, it seems, are rarely ugly. There are no middle aged men angels partially shaven and with beer guts. Although perhaps wise, angels rarely have advancing age. In modern psychology visions of angels might be treated as psychiatric illness. Though they have been a part of religion and hence historically a cause for war over the centuries.

The notion of angels pervades into modern culture. Highfalutin beings with special powers are popular in the “mind”. Supramundane entities are nevertheless anthropomorphic and made in the more idealised aspects of our physical images. Just as we might make God an old geezer, we might make an angel a pretty hunk with flowing locks and wings.

I am genuinely surprised as to the extent of extrapolation from only a few words in religious text.

Far out…

Back here on earth yesterday I managed to walk for around a kilometre with only one crutch along the seafront up at the coast. Because it was a nice day there were others taking their disabled and spastic relatives out for a spin. There were a few wheelchairs, one of which looked off road. As the lunchtime witching hour passed more locals were wheeling out their disabled. It was a nice day and the sound of the waves a pleasure on the ear.

Overnight I have my first night without getting up for a shit-TV and KitKat break. I am sleeping upstairs and had a cumulative 6-7 hours with only four wake breaks last night.

This morning I have been out in the garden. In a 2 acre garden it is easy to walk far. We inspected the damage done by the wild boars and looked at the repair to the fence which the wife made. The little buggers have not been back since the hunt visited. Maybe some families had boar for tea. I used the leaf blower to clear the oak leaves from the gully by the pond. I was able to re-tension the five strand electric fence, the coypu deterrent. If we keep them at bay the lotus display next spring-summer will be ace. As winter deepens they come to ours for food. I have indoor and outdoor crutches now. One of which is now very muddy.

I have started to think about doing a small plumbing job.

There is some semblance of normality returning. I did a roast chicken dinner on Friday night and today we have lamb chops in a teriyaki marinade.

The scar is healing well. It is a bit itchy but no longer raised. The pain levels during the day are fine. The flexibility is already better. I can pick stuff up off the floor without kneeling…It is pretty weird feeling a hip joint click and not having painful bone on bone grind. It will take a while to become accustomed. I am happy with the progress at three weeks. I can walk unaided around the house when not tired. It is easy to imagine things getting better.

It is hard to know how well I am doing relatively speaking. We had prepared for more difficulty which has probably made things easier.

As usual preparation nearly always pays off…

My normal physiotherapist will probably freak at how far he can stretch my right leg when I see him next week!!

There is a semblance of normality returning…

How Are Things Shaping Up?

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It will be three weeks tomorrow after the operation.

I can walk unaided a bit now. My energy levels are still a tad low. I have lost about 5kg. I am still not sleeping properly and the dreaming is not back. Tomorrow or the next day the hospital bed goes back. The residual evidence will be crutches and a filling bio-hazard sharps box. I can’t sleep on my operated side yet and wake up to lower back pain. I am off the sleeping tablets and my opiate intake is very low, only light nocturnal. I am due to go to the workplace of the physiotherapist by car early next week instead of having home visits. I will be driving.

The days are long and the relatively sleepless nights longer. I may be back in the garden and on the DIY again soon. I anticipate ongoing interrupted sleep. I do not yet see an obvious end to this.

It is pretty clear that the hip functionality will continue to improve. Many things are already easier than before. There is a novelty factor. I’ll speculate that the movement will become limited by my other arthritic left hip in due course. I will be able to do more than one kilometre walks on the beach relatively soon. I should be significantly more physically able than before.

The rather weird dreaming about arcane scripts perhaps can be explained by my watching of “A Discovery of Witches”. The Tibetan thread is fizzling out. To me it is no big deal. I am accustomed to things like this. Nothing usually happens as a result. There is no inclination to follow up on the physical plane. Like so many times before dream content fades into the nebulousness from whence it came.

The feeling is that whatever it was that may or may not have been going on before is simply fizzling out. In my mind I am envisaging more of the same cook-garden-DIY vibe and not a lot else. It seems that this is the future scope moving forward into next year.  I do not anticipate anything non mundane, nothing overly unusual. Though we did have a ‘phone call from a withheld number yesterday.

I can apply for permission from the French authorities to stay soon. I have the documents ready and should the application progress I will have an interview at the prefecture in the big town sometime early next year.

I am due to see the surgeon in January and he may pencil in phase 2.

It is all shaping up to be much of the same…though more physically able and with much lower waking pain levels.

Socks on – no crutches…

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———-

It’s a Mystery

–

Somewhere in the distance

Hidden from view

Suspended in the atmosphere

Waiting to come through

–

Toyah

Written by: KEITH HALE

Lyrics © BMG Rights Management, Downtown Music Publishing, Kassner Associated Publishers Ltd

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This morning a little after 7 AM I did something that I have not been able to do for many months, I put both my socks on, all by myself. The socks are so-called diabetic socks which means that the elastic is not overly tight. The socks are designed to limit need for amputation and are loose. But I managed it with little or no drama.

Yesterday afternoon less than two weeks after surgery I was walking up and down our living room without any crutches whatsoever. I probably did some 40 metres without any crutch. Now I have to be careful to not learn an accentuated limp.

Not bad for two weeks…everyone seems mildly surprised at just how quickly progress is being made. If you would have asked me to bet on it, walking in two weeks, I would not have made a significant wager.

Long may it continue.

Last night I had a dream with a couple of people from my undergraduate chemistry cohort in. The dream also referred to a very specific date and cross referenced another dream also with a specific date. Why I have eighteenth century dates in dreams has no obvious explanation. It is a bit of a mystery perhaps related to the time-walker thread…

During the night the smoke detector started to beep. I can say that taking a smoke detector off from high on the wall when perched on a spiral staircase and unplugging the battery whilst recovering from hip surgery mildly trolleyed due to codeine is not ideal. New battery now fitted and smoke detector is back in place.

Anyway the guys from the hunt are here and hopefully they will deal with the wild boar situation…

Total Hip Replacement – 9 Days In.

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When I was looking into getting this done I found that the available information on line was a mix of promotional advertisement for services, mildly patronising video and that statistical outcome based discussion was sketchy. Urban legend, in other words the ubiquitous they, say that for everyone they know the operation went well and the results were better than before.

I understand that I am at the lower age demographic for osteo-arthritis induced hip replacement and that my disease was more advanced than most. This means that I was probably more handicapped to start with.

The question that always came to my mind was, “who had the first hip replacement and how did they persuade the poor soul to let them loose with the hacksaw?” “Which genius was sufficiently convinced that they could make things better?”

It is pretty clear to see that without operation my decline would have continued and perhaps accelerated. In this sense it could be said that advanced osteo-arthritis is by way of a slow killer. The will to live is gradually ground away like pepper corns in a pepper mill. It is an erosion of body and hence life.

I was ready for the operation.

My dressings are due to be changed tomorrow and thanks to the technical excellence of French medicine so far all seems ok.

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The overall experience at the relatively new private hospital at Plérin has been very good. The cleanliness and general ship shaped and Bristol fashion of the place build confidence. Having experienced several operating theatres I can safely say that the facility there is the best I have been in. The team were very good.

The sense I get is that the whole thing has been a tad over dramatized on-line. But maybe this is testament to the high quality of care I have received. A lot of stuff on-line is old and perhaps historically out of date.

I did not expect to be able to tie my shoe laces in under a week.

I did not expect to be able to open my legs in “box-split” direction as far as I can.

I did not expect to be able to pick things up from the floor…

The weirdest thing is, without doubt, feeling movement and motion in my right hip socket.

The pain levels have been tolerable though modern hospital medicine errs on the side of under medicating. Our GP is of a different view, old-school, and more keen to prescribe pain relief. We have a stocked home pharmacy so to speak. The wife has been very helpful and understanding.

In comparison to when I had fractured my left femoral neck six years ago the experience has been much easier so far.

But nobody has mentioned the difficulty sleeping which I am experiencing. Which for me is perhaps the most difficult part of the recuperation. I have sufficient medication to completely zonk out but I am aware that this comes with constipation and an elevated risk of fall. I have had two nights with two periods of around two hours continuous sleep over the weekend which has been an improvement.  

This is the area I am keen to see improve fast.

It can see the improvements in movement already. I am able to stand and cook stir-fry for around 40 minutes; I can take a shower and on Friday with the aid of crutches I walked around half a kilometre at the local port. Because I have experience from the injury before I have an inkling of time scales.

I can walk around the house with a single crutch. This has confirmed that I am in fact left handed. The amount of stuff I use my left hand for has become so obvious as that is my single crutch hand. I was “trained” to be right handed. But is pretty obvious I am not.

I have walked ten metres without any crutches. So I can see the progression.

I estimate that I could probably drive the car. It is easier getting in and out than before the slice and dice. The advice is not to drive and while I am still a visitor to the “opium den” this is wise. 

Boredom during the waking hours of night is perhaps the most irksome. Luckily shit TV is a good soporific.

All in all I am feeling a whole lot better and am more functional than we had anticipated and planned for. All those preparations have worked out worthwhile and made it easier for us both. It is mildly surprising in a pleasant way.

We shall see how things progress…

What is on my Dance Card?

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Most of the preparations have gone ahead. I had an argument with a loo seat yesterday. I was trying to fit a replacement one and I could not get the old fitting to budge. Erring on the side of caution I did not force it. It is a bit of a botch but it will have to do. The nurse had said that I should not do DIY in case I get a cut and thereby raise the preoperative risk of infection.

Tomorrow I am due an operation with general anaesthetic.

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Which means this time tomorrow I am scheduled to have had my replacement hip fitted. I might be back in my room. This schematic looks benign, the one below less so.

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I suspect that I will have a lot of bruising and maybe my leg will be a little blue…it does not look dainty or genteel. I will be wearing sexy stockings and be on the heparin injections.

The hospital bed has arrived and is installed downstairs here in the office and physio appointments are in the diary.

I probably won’t be adding to the blog for a while and will have to make old-school paper notes of any dreams.

I don’t know how well I am going to respond to the general anaesthetic. Ten years ago I had post-operative recall of watching the surgery from above. This was either an out of body experience or a dream. I have done even more meditation since then including things which you will not find discussed anywhere. I am sure that I will be physically unconscious, I am  not sure what my consciousness as a whole will do. In principle and assuming nothing goes wrong the surgery should take less time than the laparoscopic colectomy for the T3 tumour I had in 2015. I am less likely to wander off as it were.

I am going to be relying on people, those at the hospital and the wife here at home. The estimate is that it will take a couple for weeks for me to be able to get into a normal car. I will be on the compound during this time. I will be on crutches.

In the near future it is the hospital tomorrow and here thereafter. Maybe in a couple of weeks we can go for a hobble up at the seaside. I should be back at the stove cooking by then…

So not a lot on the dance card…

Pyjamas and Preparation

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The places where one is most likely to bang into someone by accident are nodal points, points with high average footfall. These include hospitals, airports, train stations and supermarkets inter alia. I have in the past met people “by accident” at such places. When we went back to the UK recently I knew that there was an increased chance of bumping into to someone I once was acquainted with at Gatwick airport. To meet them in rural Britanny is unlikely. My “circle” extended briefly into the “circle” of others. No such meeting occurred. Fate did not see fit to organise an encounter. Of course in spy novels and films “chance” meetings can be engineered. Were I to bump into someone from my past locally, I would err on the idea of engineered rather than chance. The only people we meet in the local supermarket are the wife’s hairdresser and the geezer we bought the house off. These are spatially likely given our normal trajectories.

Living like we do our normal circle extends 20 km in radius with extensions to 50km for occasional hospital and coastal visits. The chances of me crossing circles is zero outside these ranges.

At the last hospital visit the nurse said that I am not allowed to be “balls out” and must therefore buy some pyjama bottoms at least. I bought some at the M&S outlet in Gloucester Quays. I have some stumpy short fat bloke track suit bottoms on order and a new pair of Crocs in the post. They were not doing a pre-diabetic special offer on the joggers. My hospital wardrobe is taken care of. I can wear my “Trust me I am a Doctor” T-shirt, my psilocybin zwitterion and “breaking bad” ones too. As a rule of thumb hospital temperatures are adjusted to encourage the growth and spread of penicillin resistant bacteria and  upper respiratory tract viruses. I need to get my flu and covid vaccinations done next week. Hospitals are always too hot.

Will they shave my chest again to put cardiac monitors on during the operation? Yeah probably… more itching.

We need to look at placing the second mattress on our bed. To get a loo seat raising contraption and perhaps a litter picker for dropped things. We have a prescription for a hospital bed which will sit here downstairs in the office. We will have the local nurses visit; they are already practically a part of the family. I’ll get a yellow sharps box for my pre-filled heparin syringes post hoc. I was OK injecting myself last time. We have got laxatives to counter the morphine induced arse-corks. I need to check the plumbing to the cess pit. I have 15m of plumber’s rods. This may be done next week.

The initial guess from the nurse is that I will go in on a Friday for the slice dice and drill. Assuming I can stand day one, I will probably be sent home Sunday. The physio thinks I will be housebound for two weeks. After that I may be able to get into a car. In France the pharmacies are shut Sundays so we need to make sure that I have a good opiate stash.

I am due a coronary CT-angiogram next week. Because of the holy Trinity of fat, fags and booze there is a mild concern. This may or may not turn up something, it could be that last obvious showstopper.

This morning I was pleased to wake up without some weird London based stress bunny dream. It seems so far away, another world. I am 95% sure now that I won’t go ahead with the idea of trying to apply for a quantum telepathy patent whilst I am incapacitated. It would only make the dramatics worse.

I don’t know why I keep getting these dreams. I personally think I am at peace with all that palaver and have been for years. Maybe I am kidding myself. Maybe the dreaming is just showing the unresolved issues of others.

Not my circus, not my monkeys.

If I had a pretty head I would try not to worry it.

Only a few weeks to go and the pepper mill in my right hip might be replaced with something less frictional and painful. I may even be able to put my own socks on…

It is probably best to have no expectations. The only thing for sure is that it will in some way be different and I will have wound closures and bruising. A physio is due to visit soon after the butchery.

Three weeks from today…I could be on my way to the block…

Nie mój cyrk, nie moje małpy…

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Upcoming I have a choice which is not really a choice. It pertains to sahasrāra, “thousand-petalled” chakra.

I am due some surgery which might be as long as two hours. During which time I will have {hopefully} substantial anaesthesia and probably some induced paralysis. I may be intubated. The last time I had titanium put into my hip to repair my broken femoral neck I was sedated but largely conscious. I had fentanyl direct into my spine. I asked to watch but they refused. Someone had to hold up a “curtain” whilst they drilled away so I could not watch. I can remember the whole-skeleton vibrations. This is not a Beach Boys song.

“Drill music, also known as drill rap or simply drill, is a subgenre of hip-hop music that originated in Chicago in the early 2010s. It is sonically similar to the rap subgenre and lyrically similar to the gangsta rap subgenre.”

I have had previous shorter less profound anaesthesia. The last time when I was deeply “under” for six hours I subsequently had recollection of looking down at the operating theatre from above watching them doing a/my laparoscopic colectomy. There was weirdness after the operation and I reckon something untoward happened. This was either a dream or an out of body experience.

I have already met the triage consultant anaesthetist. She seemed OK with me going ahead in principle. This conversation was in French. I did not broach the subject.

I have done extensive Tibetan death practice which prepares the withdrawal of consciousness, the Antahkarana and Sutratma are loosened and stretched prior to removal of anchorage at death. The crown chakra is opened so as to facilitate a quick and seamless exit.

Whenever I have tried to broach the subject of meditation with anaesthetists before it has largely been ignored and the subject changed. They may have perhaps been imagining this reassuring. It was not. I am not going into this kind of thing afraid. I was not shitting my pants and anxiously blathering.

I was aware of the risks during profound and prolonged anaesthesia last time. But the person responsible was unwilling to engage. I will again be in a situation where the medical professional who may know plenty knows nothing about Tibetan death practice. During unconsciousness the “personality” part of my make-up will not have any control. That awareness will sleep. The risks of physical plane death are enhanced over the normal bio-mechanical, at least to my mind.

Even should I try to explain this in either French of English, I suspect that I will not be taken seriously.

So, do I refresh the practice in case I need to go?

Or will refresher practice facilitate and even encourage withdrawal?

Do I try to broach the subject?

I have no control of this situation if I want to be operated on. I am not in charge.

I guess I will just have to take the risk…

Hmnn…

Exhausted and Sighing

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Not long back from our fun filled and action packed day at the hospital. I am exhausted and sighing. If I had known we were going to have group presentations on diet and physiotherapy exercise I would have been less keen. I’ll speculate that I was not the target demographic.

All of the group were older than me and less apparently crippled.

Given I used to do courses on presentation skills…

It is difficult enough to be talked at in French. It is harder to listen when you are not overly interested. What struck me most was just how passive everyone was. No banter, no piss taking, no humour, no fun. I was  tempted but refrained. When I did the naughty boy speeding course the facilitator worked out that I was game for a laugh and did not mind having the piss taken, we made it more fun for everyone.

One of things we have learned here is if there is a single penny coin of the train tracks of the system it can derail the whole caboodle and that takes years to get going again.

There are a couple of appointments which are due for me, which I might not need. If I cancel these it frees them up for someone else. This would be good citizen thinking. This however could throw a spanner in the workings of the system juggernaut. I’ll take an opinion from the GP tomorrow.

An after lunch monotone in a foreign language ….difficult to keep attentive..

When we went I had two questions in mind.

  1. Do I need to take the pre-op iron tablets given a high ferritin level?
  2. Can we get a prescription for a medical bed for downstairs given a spiral staircase?

The answer to the first was no and the answer to the second was yes. This was as predicted.

I have learned two new things. One about using a second mattress and the other about a rubbish picker.

I have had my high resolution pre-op X-ray and the anaesthetist gave a verbal go ahead for general anaesthetic. From what they said I could be out in 48 hours or less.

From my perspective this did not need to take six hours. But systems are systems.

The take home message I got was that the French are very concerned as to when they are going to get to eat after the operation. It was mentioned several times.  It had not even occurred to me.

For me morphine is a pretty good appetite suppressor. So I doubt I’ll fancy a kebab or lamb vindaloo. I am not fussed about a Madeliene and a coffee.

The other take home for a “hermit” is that it is very tiring being around people for any length of time. Which suggests that limiting my exposure to others remains a good idea. That way I don’t upset people and piss them off. I don’t get tired from picking up their vibes. It sounds like a win-win.

…

Is It Me Being Self Important?

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At the moment the wife is checking though the forest of paperwork for tomorrow’s putative appointment. I asked her opinion, “do you really think it is worth getting it all together and going down to the hospital tomorrow?” It has taken me well over half an hour. There are a lot of test results.

This is the kind of doubt sown by unilateral cancellation without communication. There is in my mind a significant chance we will be back here soon. We will not be having a full fun hospital themed day out. It is just over an hour round trip.

Viewed from one angle I can see that things must conform to how they are supposed to be. In my view it would have been decent to have saved me the trip on Monday. I am not yet fully telepathic.

There is a saying about buses that you wait for a bus for ages and then three come along all at once. I have had two appointments cancelled already this week…am I jinxing it again?

Is it me being self-important or do some people need to brush up on their interpersonal skills, their consideration for others?

The jury is out. It is probably me… it usually is…it is always all my fault.

The bottom line is that it does not really matter to anyone but me if I tip up or not. Nobody has rung to confirm. Is that my job? Someone else could easily take my slot…I am sure there are many people in need.

It is a weird feeling…there is a planning blight now hanging over…this need not have happened…

We shall see what transpires…