… CONTINUED FROM DIARY No 23 …
This particular blog is admittedly self-indulgent.
Do I care?
No.
But you have been warned.
SUNDAY 28th JUNE
In my previous Diary blog Andy Dunlop, esteemed President of the World Egg-Throwing Federation, suggested, rather persuasively, that my ongoing problem with raised calcium levels in my body was paralleled by the troubles of a dog called Rigby and that the cause might be my parathyroid glands.
Today, American comedian and occasional burlesque performer Lynn Ruth Miller contacted me:
“That is a very delicate difficult surgery and…”
So you think it is your parathyroid gland?
That is a very delicate difficult surgery and can leave you with injured vocal cords.
Be very wary of parathyroid surgery John,. They were going to take mine out years ago and then decided it was too risky.
Here are the advantages: improved bone health, reduced risk of kidney stones and improved quality of life.
You also have better memory and no aches and pains.
However the surgery is very dangerous because you run the risk of injuring your thyroid gland and your vocal cords. Those little glands are very hard to find.
I have really terrible osteoporosis and I was all excited to have this done but the guy who everyone thought was the only one I dare trust to do this thing simply didn’t think I was a good enough candidate for the surgery.
I assumed he either hated women or Jews or the elderly. Possibly all three. So here I am sagging, shrinking and unable to touch my toes; not to mention my lousy tummy and disgusting personality.
My left shoulder as was in 1991 – pulverised in two places
MONDAY 29th JUNE
I wonder if maybe my parathyroid glands were affected by my occasional ongoing shoulder problem.
In 1991, when I was standing on a pavement, I was hit by an articulated lorry. My shoulder bone was pulverised (medical talk for ‘powdered’) in two places. I also had a skull injury – as I fell, I hit the back of my head on the sharp edge of a low brick wall – and, it later turned out, the bottom of my spine was also damaged by the jerk as my head stopped when it hit the wall and the rest of my body continued downwards.
In 1991, I was taken to the same local hospital I was taken to for my calcium/kidney function problem a few weeks ago.
Because I had broken bones, I was looked after in a Bone ward but, because they were worried there might be brain damage (from the skull injury – my brain would have hit the inside of the skull) I was bureaucratically under the care of the Brain people, who had their own ward(s).
The nurses in the Bone ward were very attentive but, when the Bone consultant did his rounds, he always ignored my bed because I was not his patient. Once, I heard him explain this to the student doctors who followed him round absorbing all he said: “We don’t deal with Mr Fleming. because he’s not our patient.”
The Brain consultant never visited me, I guess because I was not in his ward.
But, after about a week of observation, I was released. Late one afternoon, a very tired and clearly very overworked junior doctor from the Brain lot came down to my ward and told me I could go home.
A map of the Rhineland in 1905 looks a lot like the inside of the human brain but is not
I was released but, really, for about nine months after, my mind would occasionally sort-of de-focus and I would be unable to string thoughts together – I presume from some form of concussion. And I could not read for a while.
If I tried to read a newspaper, it was as if my brain would lose focus halfway through the first or second paragraph. I still cannot read printed books, though I can write them on a computer screen.
After about a year, my shoulder still tended to feel like it was having a sharp knife stuck in it for maybe 90% of my waking hours. To protect my shoulder at night, I had to learn to sleep on my back with my left arm stretched out at right angles to my torso. This stopped me turning over.
But it also eventually meant that, instead of my shoulder bone mending back to its original state, the two broken, sharply-pointed ends overlapped each other. So my left shoulder is a tiny bit shorter and weaker than my right shoulder.
The pain in my left shoulder was eventually sorted by a Chinese doctor (ie Chinese medicine) and only gives me problems now if I lean too heavily for too long on the not-healed-correctly left side.
Occasionally, still, I also get some muscle pain in my right shoulder and at the back of my neck because (I presume) the muscles are not quite right. Maybe these muscle problems affected the parathyroid glands in my neck? Maybe not.
Anyway, apparently I should have had physiotherapy and outpatient care when I left the hospital in 1991, but this never happened, presumably because of the bureaucratic complication that no hospital department was 100% in charge of me. My brain was too much like confused wobbly jelly to really think straight until much later.
This might also partly explain why, though I admire nurses and other frontline NHS staff, I have a high disregard for NHS bureaucracy… Did I mention I have a high disregard of all large, faceless bureaucracies?
My missing tooth cap
TUESDAY 30th JUNE
Today I went to my heavily-masked and plastic-visored dentist to get one of my capped teeth, which had fallen out, re-inserted. It was not simple and may not be long-lasting as the (dead) root into which the cap is inserted via a spike, is apparently fractured or fracturing.
It never rains but it pours.
WEDNESDAY 1st JULY
Social distancing is still in place because of the coronavirus pandemic. This has some bizarre effects as in the Ladies toilet at an IKEA store in London.
I did not, for obvious reasons, see the Ladies toilet first-hand myself, but a friend took a photo.
It is reasonable to tape off alternate sinks to maintain social distancing. But this does not explain why IKEA has closed alternate (and entirely separated) cubicles, as can be seen in the mirror at the top of this photo.
The Nokia 3210 (1999)
Today, still on the subject of human bottoms, someone else told me that there is a good second-hand trade in old 1999 Nokia 3210 mobile telephones.
In the early days of mobile phones, this particular phone was very popular with the inmates of UK prisons.
Mobile phones, of course, were not allowed in UK prisons, so they had to be smuggled in.
I am reliably informed that the Nokia was popular in prisons because it was small (certainly compared to modern phones) and had rounded edges. This meant it could be shoved up inside the body where the sun don’t shine by a prison visitor and then removed, given to and used by the lucky prisoner who had ‘ordered’ it.
The Nokia 3310, released in 2000. A snug fit in an XL condom.
To preserve cleanliness, the Nokia was usually put inside a condom (XL size) before insertion.
After it was removed, I remain uncertain whether the XL condom was thrown away or used.
But the Nokia 3210s were much used and – even though drones are now often the preferred method of getting things into prisons – the popularity of the Nokia 3210 and its 2000 successor the Nokia 3310 remain (I am told) very high.
This may or may not partly explain why, in 2017, a new version of the Nokia 3310 was released to an appreciative world.
Plus ça change, the more SNAFU…
THURSDAY 2nd JULY
I have a telephone consultation with the NHS Kidney Man (or Woman) on Monday. The fact that it is a telephone appointment – not a face-to-face one – was confirmed in a letter and by phone last week.
This morning, I received a text message telling me that my face-to-face consultation next Monday has been changed to a telephone consultation.
No, you did not mis-read that. Did I mention I have a high disregard of all large, faceless bureaucracies?
A glass of water by my bedside for when I wake up parched…
FRIDAY 3rd JULY
I continue to wake up at least once an hour throughout the night every night with my mouth bone dry, almost as if bits of my mouth want to stick to other bits they are so parched dry. I need to drink water – I have a bottle and a glass by my bedside.
I think it has to do with my kidney function being abnormally low or my calcium level being too high or both – but what do I know?
I counted the number of times I woke up during the night last night – ten times.
So par for the course.
SATURDAY 4th JULY
Today I asked Andy Dunlop, esteemed President of the World Egg-Throwing Federation, if there was any further news of Rigby the Dog and his parathyroid glands.
Andy’s reply was:
Ahhhhh, I was hoping you wouldn’t ask.
He’s now home. Arrived last night. Tests dispel initial and obvious parathyroid thoughts but reveal a very rare type of blood cancer.
Treatment will either be put on hold and he will live a long and happy life or not.
This was discovered by invasive biopsy of bone marrow.
Rigby the Dog will live a long and happy life or not… like all of us…
… CONTINUED HERE …
SO IT GOES - John Fleming's blog 