Monday 13th January 2020

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Monday 13th January 2020

09:08 GMT

Yesterday had different sunny intervals than the sunny intervals I was hoping for. Most of the time the cloud was quite thick, and it often looked like it would rain. Then a small gap in the clouds would come along, and for a few glorious minutes the world was bathed in sunshine. After that it was back to really dull and horrible. It probably was 12° C for a couple of hours in the afternoon, but by then I had lost interest in the world outside.

The forecast, as updated at 07:26 looks pretty grim. I assume it has probably been revised since then because the world outside my back bedroom window currently looks like this....

Large areas of the sky are blue. The backs of the houses on the left are lit up by sunshine, and at the same time, my front bedroom (which faces south) was being flooded with sunshine until a few seconds ago. The cloud that has just obscured the sun may pass fairly quickly, and maybe there will be more sunshine. This is more like the sunny intervals I was expecting yesterday. Meanwhile the revised forecast still says this morning will be overcast, and the afternoon will be heavily overcast. By 5pm it may start to rain, and the rain will continue late into the night. Some of it may be heavy. The current prediction for the temperature is that it will soon be 10° C, but may go up to 11° C during the heaviest of the rain.

Curiously enough, the forecast for tomorrow seems to match today better. Sunny intervals are forecast for a couple of hours in the morning. That will give way to light cloud until that gives way to heavy cloud, and it starts to rain. A further amusement will be strong winds to go with the heavy rain, but those strong winds will also be warm winds raising the temperature to 13° C as sunset approaches. It should stay "warm" well into the night.

My plans to go out, even to the local shops, came to nothing yesterday. I was not feeling terribly dynamic, but the nail in the coffin was the weather. Every time the sun came out I started to get ready to go out I barely had time to put on a sock before the sun went in, the sky turned dark and sullen, and it looked as if it was about to pour with rain. With each sunny spell only last 5 minutes, and the gloom between them lasting more like 20 to 25 minutes, I soon got fed up, and gave up. I couldn't even be bother to go to the corner shop.

Yesterday turned into another day of rest and relaxation. It's hard to say if it helped me recover from that blasted cold, but just maybe I do feel a bit more dynamic today, and I am 93% certain I'll be going out for a walk. There was actually another good reason for not going out yesterday, although that would only be revealed later in the day - at what would probably be a very inconvenient time if I had been walking around London as I thought I might.

One reason for not feeling very dynamic yesterday morning was a sort of feeling of stodginess or bloat. It was a mild feeling, and not even uncomfortable, but it existed. I had been to the toilet twice in the morning. Apart from the quantities seeming to be a bit smaller than I expected, it was all perfectly normal. I am unsure of the exact time, but let's say between 2 and 3pm, it felt like I needed to go to the toilet again. There seemed no pain, no urgency, and so I didn't rush. Once I sat down I exploded. Over the course of two visits in quick succession it seemed like my entire digestive tract had been cleared out. There were some ominous internal gurgles later, but they came to nothing.

If only that episode had happened in the morning I would have expected to get a nice low reading on the scales, but by the I had eaten and drunk enough to make any figure meaningless. I suppose the good thing is that once over the initial shock, I felt rather better for it. Unfortunately it did nothing for the persistent remnant of my cold - a cough ! I guess that cough is slowly going away, but it is doing it in what seems like a strange way.

Yesterday I wasn't actually timing it, but it seemed like a couple of hours could pass between and notable bouts of coughing. At the same time any episode of coughing was getting shorter and shorter. One thing that doesn't change, and has happened this morning, as well as in the night, is the nature of the worst aspect of the cough. Sometimes there is a slight tickle at the back of the throat, and a little cough usually takes care of it. It probably happens when my throat gets dry, and as such is unremarkable.

The type of cough that is most annoying, and can strain my chest/ribcage is rather different. It is a feeling that my airways are getting restricted or clogged. A couple of squirts of Salbutamol (the spray used by asthma sufferers) can speed up, and make the process a bit more effective, but is not really needed. A good deep cough will dislodge a bit of sticky mucus, and everything is back to normal - at least for a while. The worst time for this is in the middle of the night, and it is then that I have resorted to using the Salbutamol spray to speed things up. On at least one occasion in the night, I coughed up a huge amount (or so it felt) of mucus in one go - enough for it to bubble and gurgle as I tried to clear it from my airways.

As far as I can tell it is just clear mucus, and so I have no idea where it is being produced....well, obviously from down somewhere near the lungs. If it was yellow/green I would assume infection that might need treating with antibiotics. If it had blood in it I would assume I was about to die, but plain clear, but vey sticky, mucus is a mystery. It is probably something life threatening, but I'll worry about that after I'm dead.

If it sounds like I did little but cough yesterday, that would not be far from the truth. It was a boring day, but fairly typical for a Sunday. I did a few odd jobs on my PC, and did some reading. Occasionally I would see what was on TV. Somehow the day passed reasonably quickly, and maybe there was one indication that despite the boredom I was feeling better in enough ways to have some reasonable control on my eating.

I had some good periods of sleep last night. In between them I was awake for fairly short periods of time to have a wee, and to cough up a load of mucus, but I got back to sleep easily after each episode. This morning I have already coughed up one lot of mucus, but I do sort of feel mostly OK. The sunny intervals that continue to pop up this morning probably help a lot. It does seem that my blood glucose has stabilised again. I had a reading of 7 again this morning, and while 6 would be better, 7 probably represents something closer to my morning average over the last few months, and was considered good by the Dietician.

Even my weight wasn't too bad this morning. If I work hard at it, and my bowel movements are satisfactory, I think there is a chance I might show a weight loss of 100gm when I see the Diabetes Nurse at the hospital tomorrow. My plan for today is to go for a walk in the park. I haven't decided if I will attempt an extended route, or if I will go more or less direct to the pub. I am very much looking forward to seeing Angela at lunchtime, although at this point I am only assuming she will be there. After that I will try and grit my teeth, and not eat anything until dinner time - and even then I will try and cooks up something very light. I will admit that after a couple of pints of Guinness that could be difficult !