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Sunday 12th
January 2020
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09:17 GMT
Yesterday featured one (or was it two ?)
sunny spells that were not in the weather
forecast. Maybe being rather brief, they didn't
count, but I liked them. Otherwise, yesterday was
rather grim, dull day. At 11° C from midday
onwards, it was not cold cold, but it didn't feel
much under those thick grey clouds. I feel sure
there was also a light shower yesterday, but I
can't remember when it happened - if indeed it
did. It certainly rained after midnight.
As I write the sun has already broken
through the clouds for a few brief seconds. If the
forecast for today matches reality, or perhaps the
other way round, we should get some nice sunny
intervals today. One very peculiar thing about the
latest revision of the forecast today is that the
headline now says "drizzle" instead of "sunny
intervals". What makes this very peculiar is it
doesn't say when this drizzle will happen, and the
estimates for the hourly chances of precipitation
are now all lower, and all apart from that at 11am
and midday are in single figures. The highest
chance is only 12% at 11am. The figure that
usually turns out to be correct is the
temperature, and this afternoon should see 12° C.
That might even feel warm when the sun is out.
Tomorrow could be cool and dry until 5pm when it
should be 10° C, and see the start of rain that
may fall all evening. I don't have much confidence
in today's forecast, and even less for tomorrow.
With two exceptions, yesterday was a
continuation of the resting I was doing the day
before to try and throw off the remnants of my
recent cold. I'm not sure that any of the resting
did any real good. It certainly didn't 100% cure
my cold, and the improvements to it would probably
have happened anyway. The worst of this cold
was probably over a few days ago, but it is hard
to tell because this cold is more notable for it's
lingering effects, than of it's severity. In many
ways it was quite a light cold.
The first exception to resting was in the
morning when I went shopping to Aldi. I did suffer
a bit from a few aches and pains - notably my
right shoulder, which is playing up. My
chest/ribcage was also a bit sore after some
powerful coughing the previous day (and during the
night). The rest of me actually felt quite good.
It was almost nice out in the fresh air. Of course
it would have been far nicer if the sky was blue,
the sun was shining, the temperature was closer to
20° C, and I didn't need to wear a coat.
One of the peculiar things about
yesterday's shopping trip was how I seemed to buy
a lot of stuff, but after coming home I wish I had
bought this, that and the other too. I guess that
is probably true for many of my shopping trips.
Yesterday, like most shopping trips in the last
few months, was guided by the need to be careful
with what I bought so I could avoid certain types
of food. Some, perhaps all the thoughts I had
about stuff that I wished I had also bought, were
to do with actively not buying stuff I would have
liked to, but didn't dare buy. For instance some
crispy rolls to make bacon sandwiches may have
been top of my desires, but was also top of my
do-not-buy lists.
The second bit of non resting I did was to
wash three t-shirts, and some underwear. It is
always good not to let these things pile up, but I
think I did that hand laundry partly because I was
feeling bored of being inactive, and maybe more so
to see how I was feeling. I have to say it was not
the hard work I was expecting, and was probably no
harder, or easier, than any other time.
I think I am doing well under current
circumstances to control what I eat even if I am
failing in how much of it I am eating. The most
important indicator is my blood glucose level. I
would like it to be lower, but the last few
readings have been good enough, and I think they
are under the target that the Diabetes Nurse set
for me. That is not strictly accurate - the target
was actually the long term average based upon the
H1bc1a blood test, and that uses a different set
of figures to the daily pin-prick test. I think my
long term (2 to 3 months) average should be below
the target maximum, but since the start of this
year various things have lead to some very high
transient readings (mainly because of all the
sugar in cough syrup).
While what I eat has been keeping my blood
glucose level heading in the right direction, the
amount I have been eating has done my weight loss
no good. I am stuck at the point where my weight
keeps oscillating up and down in a way that it is
hard to say if the overall trend is up or down.
With just two days to go before my next
appointment with the Diabetes Nurse, I think the
best I can hope for is to match the reading taken
when I saw the dietician 10 days ago.
One thing I forgot to mention from the day
before yesterday is that I had contact from
Patricia. She was busy over Xmas and New Year with
relatives and stuff, plus she has also been busy
with work. She contacted me from Chile where she
was contracted to do some live court
interpretation (English<>Spanish). It seems
to be a jet setting life to be an interpreter. Her
client paid for a flight from Argentina to Chile,
and for hotel accommodation plus her fees for the
job itself.
One important bit of of our exchange of
messages was that Patricia says she will
definitely be staying in the UK this year, and it
might possibly be quite a long stay. Despite it
seeming to me that Britain is going down the
tubes, Patricia is thinking of trying to apply for
"settled status" to make sure she can hang on to
her British bank account. She feels she can trust
a British Bank more than one on any other place
she frequently visits.
If she does have an extended stay in the
country I think it is almost certain that she will
be renting somewhere to live with her partner.
That probably means I won't have the pleasure of
her staying here - unless she uses here as a base
to do her property searches while her partner
visits his folks in Wales. The more I think about
it, the more that seems likely. Anyway, even if it
is just the occasional visit, I look forward to
seeing Patricia again, and I hope that I may have
something like a proper garden to show her (plus
other home improvements I have made in the last
year).
I spent yesterday evening relaxing...sort
of. It could have been a boring time. I scanned
the TV listings for some entertainment, but it
seemed very thin on the ground, and then I noticed
this movie on Talking Picture TV. It is a movie I
have watched once or twice before, and while it
may not be stunning, it is infinitely better than
Star Wars, and what is more important is that it
is a British Film and not full of yanks running
around in panic as they always tend to do.
All through the day, and into the evening,
it sometimes felt like the last remnant of my
recent cold had all but gone. That was the cough
that has probably bothered me more when I consider
that I didn't expect to get a cough like that 6
years after pausing smoking. For much of the time
it has been a mild cough, but even a mild cough
can be very wearing when it won't stop. Some days
it has felt like hard work to find the enthusiasm
and strength to do some things. It was not
fighting that sort of fatigue that made yesterday,
and even more so the day before yesterday, so
useful.
So through the day my cough was very
intermittent. I never stopped to time it, but I
would guess there were many hours when I wasn't
bothered by the merest tickle. That all changed
when I laid down in bed. Initially it was just to
read, but that started the cough up in a small
way, but once I turned out the light, and turned
over, the cough became dominant for a while. For a
while I thought it was just a sort of cold tingle
from the toothpaste I had used before going to
bed.
Maybe that toothpaste tingle didn't help,
but it was soon over shadowed by the same thing as
the night before. My breathing became very
slightly wheezy (although I am really looking for
different word that seems less emotional). Before
long I felt the need to try and cough up some
sticky mucus, and like the night before, I
eventually resorted to a couple of squirts from my
Salbutamol inhaler. Very soon I coughed up a
couple of big gobbets of mucus, and then felt fine
to go to sleep.
I think I used the inhaler once more in the
night, but with or without it, once I had coughed
up some mucus I felt fine to get back to sleep.
Apart from these short interruptions, it seemed
like I actually got an unusually good night's
sleep..although maybe it doesn't always feel like
it with hindsight.
This morning my airways seem fairly clear,
but an occasional tickle demands a cough -
occasional, but more frequent than I like. My
weight still seems stuck higher than it could be,
but maybe not as bad as the day before. My
blood glucose level is satisfactory, but as
always I would prefer it to be a bit lower. My
blood pressure remains boringly low. I think I
only bother to take it so I can wave a piece of
paper at a doctor if I see one, and he dares to
try and measure it in the surgery.
For all the things I can actually measure,
and what they may say, I still don't really know
how I feel today. When the sun has gone back in
after a few minutes of weak sunshine, I feel like
laying on my bed, and closing my eyes so I can't
see the grey cloud, and if I happen to fall
asleep, so much the better. Better still if I had
an amazing dream ! Back in the real world, I am
contemplating going out for a walk around Soho
today. At the moment I don't have much confidence
I will actually do it. One thing that would make
the decision easier would be if the forecast sunny
intervals seem to be a real thing. Perhaps the
most exciting thing I might actually do is to go
and buy more seeds from Poundstretcher. As usual I
will just make up today as it happens.
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