As I write this, at just gone 9am, the sun is shining. There has been rain, but I am not sure if any of it could be described as heavy, although some of the usual puddles in, or by the road do look quite full. The current version of the forecast shows dark clouds, but only light rain (and not a hint of any possible sunshine). Heavier rain, and sunshine is forecast for 11am, and heavy rain with no sun for midday.  From midday it is supposed to be dry with maybe a sunny spells or two. To my eyes it seems the forecast for today is about 10% accurate. Despite that, the maximum temperature is usually about right, and like yesterday it should peak at 8° C for a couple of hours. Tomorrow could start at just 3° C, but it should be a dry day with sunny spells in the afternoon. They could warm the day up to 9° C. So still not a day to go frolicking in the fields.

    I was in mild pain for a lot of yesterday, and that dampened my enthusiasm to do much. It also encouraged me to keep warm, and so I spent most of the day in my bedroom either laying down reading, or doing stuff on my PC. For instance I backed all my pictures to my two back up, USB, hard disks.

  The most significant pain was from my chest, but by the end of the day I had some proofs that it was definitely not heart problems. This pain, as I think I described yesterday, was high up, around the top of my sternum, and centred on the left of the sternum (or maybe it was the collarbone, but I don't know my anatomy well enough to be accurate). That pain centre was actually quite a tender small and soft lump.

  I had a few other "ordinary" pains, but I was familiar enough with them to usually ignore them. However, some did flare to a significant twinge, as did the pain in my chest, when exposed to cold air - such as is found in my unheated kitchen. That chest pain could very quickly flare up when I went down into anywhere downstairs where there was no heating on. A slightly worrying aspect was that at one point I seemed to be developing a cough.

  Not only did a good cough provoke my chest pain to really spike for a moment, but I was concerned that maybe what I had was Covid ! Several times I coughed up a bit of mucus. Coughing and 'flu like aches and pains are possible symptoms of Covid. My higher than expected blood glucose readings in the morning could have indicated that I was fighting some infection, but I suppose those readings were not that high, and I knew I had eaten a few things that could raise my blood glucose level.
  I think I mentioned that I still went ahead and had a double portion of instant noodles for breakfast despite the high blood glucose readings soon after I got up. They were not as high as these outrageous readings I got when I checked my blood glucose levels a couple of hours after breakfast. Note how they are all high, but very different. The Sinocare meter looks like it has just checked a spoonful of syrup instead of blood.

  The worst thing about these readings was not how high they were, because I knew that was just a transitory thing, but that they showed that on a day when I felt miserable I had to fast until dinner time. Fortunately I had recently bought some sugar free, and no added sugar, biscuits which I could have as something more like a snack at lunchtime. For a few minutes that dulled the misery, but at the same time, going down in the cold kitchen to get the biscuits did cause more pain.

  The curious thing is that yesterday should have been a very boring day. I did no big jobs or projects to pass the time, but somehow time seemed to flow easily with no sense of time dragging. I guess the few little things I did, like making the backups of my picture files, and transferring a copy of my complete collection of music to the iMac 8 in the dining room, helped the day pass easily.

  Dinnertime arrived quickly enough. Yesterday was another day when I wanted, or almost needed to go shopping, but didn't. I still had plenty of food in the larder, but it wasn't what I wanted, and nor was it things that went easily with other things, plus most of it was not very low sugar stuff. What I ended up having for dinner was three, because the first two did not seem to be filling enough, sandwiches made with Polish sourdough bread (which is almost sugar free) filled with ready sliced salami.

  It was a fairly tasty dinner, and three sandwiches made with six slices of bread (albeit smaller slices than most sliced bread) should have been very filling, but I still wanted  more. I resorted to some more sugar free, and no added sugar biscuits. I think the "no added sugar" biscuits were possibly responsible for my blood glucose not being as low as hoped this morning.

  I spent  the evening watching some TV. I watched some of Star Trek: The Original Series, and listened to most of the rest of it. I was easily able to visualise most of teh action from memory. Star Trek: Enterprise was the very final episode, and had the feeling of a hastily cobbled together script because the scriptwriters had used all their best material in about season 3 or 4 seasons. Enterprise was followed by the second episode of Star Trek: Voyager, and like all but a few Voyager episodes, it was crap.

  Halfway through Voyager I switched channels to ITV4 to watch an old, but quite good episode of The Simpsons. When that finished it was time to change channels again to "Great TV!" to watch an episode of The Avengers. It was a more like a comedy - particularly the end of the action. It was while watching that when I decided to take some experimental action for my painful chest.

   I tried an old remedy for assorted muscular aches and pains, plus broken bones ! It was Comfrey paste derived from the Comfrey herb - knows since Roman times as "knitbone", plus other similar names. The paste I have is very waxy, although presumably based on petroleum jelly, aka Vasoline. It doesn't melt easily to make rubbing it in easy, but I managed to massage some into the area which is the centre of the pain. Initially it just made the area more painful still, but maybe it did work, albeit after several hours or more.

  I had also take a couple of Ibuprofen tablets straight after I had eaten, and a couple of Paracetamol tablets about an hour before I went to bed, just after 9pm. I read in bed for at least half an hour, and during that time the pain from my chest waxed and waned. When I first laid down it was fairly painful, but then the pain seemed to fade away until, as an example, I turned on my side so I could reach out for a glass of water. I got quite a twinge when I did that.

  Despite that pain sort of gently simmering away, and an occasional pain from my right elbow joint, I seemed to fall asleep with little trouble. Generally I slept well, albeit waking up every few hours. It was during the later times I woke up that I realised that the pain in my chest had all but gone, and even more was that I could lay on my right side without it being too uncomfortable. It might have even been possible to have gone back to sleep like that - something I have not been able to do for years.

  I think I'll treat myself with more Comfrey cream tonight because it does seem to be effective. I have had no chest aches since getting up, and that includes after going down to the freezing cold kitchen to prepare my breakfast. I sneezed while in the cold toilet just now, and yesterday that could have produced quite a burst of pain, but there was none this morning. I almost feel like I am on the mend, but with the earlier sun gone in, the sky now very grey, and rain hitting the window, I don't feel like I will be going out for a while yet !

  This morning my blood glucose is 2/3rds back down to a sane, but still a little bit higher than desirable figure. Both the Contour and GlucoRX meters gave identical readings of 8.6mmol/l, and I choose that to be the correct figure. The Sinocare meter went out on a limb with a figure of 9.8mmol/l. At least it is below the red line (10.0mmol/l), but I choose to ignore it regardless.

  One thing I have to do today is some washing up. I haven't even washed up the beer glasses from Thursday afternoon, and I supposed I should pull my finger out and do it. I could potentially do some laundry as well, but before that I want to see if just washing up glasses, a bit of cutlery and some dishes causes any unwanted aches and pains. If it dries up outside, as....errr...the latest revision of the forecast says it won't be, except for a single hour at 1pm (Met Office) or 2pm (BBC forecast) I could go out shopping. If I do I will try and keep it simple. I think this return to wintry weather demands simple stuff like stews of meat and green leaved vegetables.
     







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