Good luck to Rosemary

[Barbara Davis]

Just in case anyone's trying to phone Rosemary, the latest estimate is that her phone will be fixed on Wednesday - but don't hold your breath!

Barbara

[Hilary Johnson]

Thanks for the update, Barbara, and R, glad to hear some better news at last.
Hilary

[rosemary johnson]

Hi folks - phone mended again this morning, so back in touch and have a load of emails to catch up on.
Had really nasty shock today - dentist (who apparently has been having problems getting hold of normal sort of local anasesthetic) stuck into me a new sort with the adrenaline in before I managed to get composed enough to say Not On Your Life. Spent ages sitting in waiting room afterwards, feeling all shakey and getting stiffer and stiffer all over and having panic attacks... well, I hope it was "only" panic attacks from the adrenaline. Was also terrified I was going to start hallucinating again.
Didn't, fortunately, and it's worn off now, but took long enough (1pm appointmnet). nasty.
OK then.
Think I said all about Wednesday's appointment before. Still not done anything further about the order - but the form they gave me looks horrendous.
Friday, then.
Well, some good news and some bad.
My friendly anaesthetist who found himself sitting on the floor holding my hand and talking me through the first hour of those awful hallucinations very friendly, smiling and looked pleased to see me.
Looks younger in his street clothes and spikey hair - three of them, they all looked young. I'm feeling all my grey hairs.
More good news: he was apparently as baffled as me as to why That Certain Surgeon should have told my GP that I had been making "innappropriate advances to a male doctor"! - presumably him, as can't believe it would be surgeon himself!!!!! - and is also unfazed as to why this should be so totally risible. (Senior nurse's comment on this is that Certain Surgeon needs his eyes testing - which I'm taking as a compliment!!)
SO that one's OK........
The bad news is that they don't know what is causing all this either! - they think it is not their drugs as those should have worn off long, long since.
I agree in a "normal" person this should be true but someting hasn't worn off with me.
Long discussion, went through all the chart - he was pleased to find I'd already got a copy via DPA request rather than the reverse!- and decoded the last few bits. All looks pretty bog-standard.
Friendly talk, lots of feeling on same wavelength. A few things I didn't want to know....
SOunds like what I was doing/saying on ward floor was talking out what i was "seeing" in the hallucinations with little difficulty, and having problems putting anything else into words.
Seems the hospital's qualms about letting me go home, and if needed referral elsewhere instead, were because they were afraid if they let me go home with my mohter as planned I'd strangle her. Great minds think alike - I thought that too and had to tell her to pack and go home.
OK, so where are we?
- they agreed it would be possible to test, if/when I get any more bouts of the hallucinations or at least lousy patches, whether I still had opioid metabolites (ie waste products from the painkiller part of the anaesthetic) working their way round and out of my system. Am expecting to hear about how to go about this.
- he's going to get in touch with the consultant whose neurology clinic I was referred to...... will be VERY!!! interesting what my GP told him in the referral, though whether he'll feel able to pass that info back to me without further FOIA request I dunno.
- they are suggesting a psychologist - not, they are keen to stress and "shrink" type, but one to address such issues as why brain should react with those hallucinations in particular (rather than "why should I be pissed off with Certain SUrgeon's Attitude). I looked very dubious about this (!!!!), explained why this was hitting all the wrong nerves with due pithiness, and said I'd think about it.
Hmmmmm!
Now the phone line is working again, will be writing a couple of carefully-worded emails in retrospect, I think.
ALso from what he was saying, it would seem that I was being even more stupid pre-op, under the influence of severe dehydration and splitting headache, it is true, and ultimately my own stupidity, than I'd realised. I'd thought it a case of "brain only firing on 2 and a half cylinders" but it sounds more like only 1 and a quarter. WHich raises questions of a) is this all or mainly down to dehydration after all? b) am I still harbouring odd metabolites from strange things my biology was doing when so dehydrated and c) would it all have been OK if I'd had (or would have, in a future event) that saline drip in y elbow 3 hours earlier? - certainly, I'm still feeling I'm starting to dehydrate again at the drop of a hat and am pysically not quite, still.
SO, some questions answered, and some things sorted out amicably, but still too many questions.
Rosemary

[Barbara Davis]

You are very welcome, Hilary - nice to talk to you after all these years hearing about you!
And thanks for the update, Rosemary - some details I hadn't heard when we spoke. Take care.

[rosemary johnson]

Well, summer sunlight is upon us - this evening in bathroom mirror could see about 2/3rds of my stitch for first time.
Anyone else found it visible in summer evening sun and not other times??
Meanwhile, rang GP's surgery again, attempting to check that they were indeed expecting me to roll up with Specimen to be tested for opioids, as arranged by Hospital, to get someone in office who hadn't a clue what I was talking about, couldn't find anything about it on computer system, and saiid my GP was away and no-one else would be picking it up till he got back.
The following seems to be an all-too-regular conversation with the place:
Them: "Who do you NORMALLY see?"
Me: "No-one! I'm not NORMALLY ill."
Brick wall ..... head............
Have next eye hosp appointmnet Wednesday pm - have emailed to ask can't I just bring the thing in then as I'm coming anyway. No bad thing apptment due, either - both eyes very red and sore and grafted one feeling dry and itchy. Dreaded hay fever season strikes again - well, I hope it is only hay fever in grafted eye, can't be too careful.
Will ahve Qs for Whoever-it-is on Weds re hay fever drops in grafted eye and what is safe.
Wonder if donor got hay fever.........?
Rosemary

[Andrew MacLean]

Rosemary

Do you have hay fever? I am afraid that I never did until they started planting oil seed rape plants all over the place. Now I have a miserable month or so at this time of the year and then things settle down.

I am afraid that my donors tissue now has have fever as well! I bombard my eyes with artificial tears instead of antihistamines, mostly because I have also been using powerful steroids that serve as anti-imflammatories.

Let us know what your specialist says about hay-fever drugs.

All the best

Andrew

[rosemary johnson]

Yes, I have hay fever...... been afflicted for years.
Living as I do in the big city, it often seems that my hay fever is more sensitive to poor air quality (air pollution/photochemical smog from all the traffic) than actually from a high pollen count.
But this year summer seems to have come so suddenly the h** f**** has just come in WOOOMMPHH! with it.
NOrmally more of a problem is that it sets of my asthma and I wheeze a lot, and eyes get a bit red and sore. This year, left eye is having to do work for two (ie. wear lens every day as can't put one in my other eye instead as don't any longer have all my other eye, and new bit in what's left of my other eye not commissioned with lens yet and gets dry and sore and itchy anyway.
Don't knowif the dreaded oil seed rape is the big problem, as not that much of it in the concrete jungle! - or even Hackney Marshes (what London's Olympic Destruciton Agency haven't stolen to concrete over of Hackney Marshes!)
Rosemary

[Andrew MacLean]

Same thing happened here. Over a couple of days our weather went from decidedly chilly to what felt like high summer. All of a sudden grasses, flowers and OIL SEED RAPE plants were all shedding pollen into the air.

Sore eyes, wheezy chests, itchy ears etc. Oh joy! Still things could be worse; we could live on the Costa del Sol and have to put up with these conditions all year round.

Andrew

[rosemary johnson]

Well, eyes very sore and itchy today. new consultant - yup, her in person, for first time!! Just a shame I was feeling rather headachey and a bit dizzy and generally less than 100% after spending yesterday evening and intot he night with the massage machines, oils, etc trying to tease out enough of Whatever-It-Is to show up in a test.
Wehre was I? - oh yes, new consultant. Thinks the graft looks OK despite the hay fever, and other eye doesn't look as bad as I think it does, and that the steroid drops I'm putting in the grafted eye are good for hey fever, so just put them in both eyes and that should be the best thing for it.
Well, that's an easy approach......
Forgot to ask if that means I shouldn't piggy-back for X hours or at all for the duration.....
Otherwise seems happy with everything. Very brisk and efficient. Very. Seemed to take all about 2 minutes.
Took sample round to GP's (on way back from chiropractor's) this morning. No-one in the reception/office had a clue about this; three people all crowding round a computer trying to find anything remotely relevant. One eventually went to interrupt GP, who apparently knew about it, handed ver form and they bunged it all in a bag and off to a courier before even attempting to answer my queries checking they were testing for the right things (ie. unusual metabolites, not just the bog-standard one)
No-one there at all interested in this, trying to fob me off with responses along the lines of the doctors know what they're doing. Excuse me?? - it was me who asked if this could be done - and me who went through the rigmarole of teasing stuff out of my system, with risk that if I misjudged it badly and got out far too much by accident I could end up either with more brain damage or strangling someone, or...well, OK let's not go there.
Still thinking of whether I should change GP, but who does one know about a new one before it's too late to change again easily.....?
As it happens - gave lots of flabby muscles - and flabby flab - a good work-over, and nothing too bad happened. Hoping this means either I was "thinking through it" with something positive to do, or else that I'm nearly at the end of it anyway (it's felt this week that with the vasodilatory effects of the hot weather it's been slowly leaching out all week with regular patches of feeling not quite right but nothing serious.
SOmething came out - been having stray bouts today of fits of giggles about very little, in between headache and vague dizziness.
SO am hoping have nearly seen the back of this. Live in Hope...... as they say in a village in NOrth Wales.....
And we will see what the results say........ or not, as the case may be.
Meanwhile off to see Duke tomorrow - in a field rapidly getting covered with buttercups (!) and which will very soon no doubt be getting covered in the dreaded ragwort - so we'll be spending our time hauing that up by the sackload full. Gloves, masks, specs....... and in the case of Duke, as soon as he sees us out in his bit of field doing anything interesting, he'll be over seeing wht we're up to, and trying to eat whatever it is. Which rather defeats the point of us trying to remove the poisonous plants from his grazing area......!
Rosemary

[rosemary johnson]

Would you be-Adam'n'Eve i???!!!!
Got home today to find, amongst all the pizza-wars bumph on my doormat, at letter from A Certain Hospital.
With an appointment in June with That Certain Surgeon!!!!!
Yup, the one I have flatly refused to have any more to do with, and was assured at Board of GOvernors level on 4th February I would be moved away from.
WHAT ON EARTH IS GOING ON HERE??????????
DOn't answer that one........
If this is a bureaucratic muddle, it's a pretty, ah, ""unfortunate"" one!
Needless to say, by the time I tried to ring the up and ask what the blazes, the appointmnet s booking people had all gone home and I got no answer.
Aarghh!
Brick wall...... head.........
Duke, meanwhile, is living out in his field all day now (unless some inconsiderate human tries to bring him indoors to groom him and take him for a ride!) and is getting a nice glossy sommer coat again.
Rosemary