When I first opened my curtains the sun was shining, and all the sky I could see was blue. Sadly it didn't last, and now there is a lot of cloud in the sky. The latest revision to the forecast shows sunny spells for 9 and 10am, plus midday and 5pm, but that is all. By midday the temperature should reach 12° C, and stay there for one more hour before dropping back to 11° C, and then 10° C by 8pm. The latest revision to the forecast shows it to be a completely dry day. Tomorrow looks like it could be very wet, and no more than 9° C.

   I think I can say that yesterday was quite a good, and productive day. I thought I had caught up with my lack of sleep, but after writing yesterday's scribble/blog/diary I ended up having a snooze before I did anything else. After that snooze I had a shower, put some washing in to soak, and then got dressed ready to go out.

  I only went out as far as Tesco, and it was the walk to Tesco a week ago that generated enough pain that, along with the very high blood pressure I measured very frequently in the evening when it was peaking really high, inspired me to book into Lewisham Hospital for some diagnosis, and ultimately for a prescription of another drug that would treat the angina I had.

  Yesterday, the walk to Tesco in nice sunshine was perfectly OK apart from the very tiniest of slight shortness of breath stopped me keeping up my full speed potential. I didn't measure it, and so I am just making up guesses, but if my maximum sustained walking speed was 3mph, I could only managed 2.9mph. The more significant thing was no Angina pains, although I was getting some very mild discomfort from my operation scar tissue. That won't go until the outside temperature reaches at least 15° C.

  I had some definite (home made/hallucinated) recipes that required some specific stuff, and I think I bought all of that, and oddly enough, little else besides. With my blood glucose still being very high, I did not want to take chances on anything dodgy. I did buy some cheeses and ham because I believed those to be safe with regards to blood glucose. To go with the ham I bought some small jars of Mustard. I was annoyed that the Tesco "English style" mustard, and I think the Tesco Dijon mustard listed sugar as an ingredient. A small jar of what I think was Polish mustard had no sugar in it.

  The walk home, with 4 x 2 litre bottles of diet coke in my rucksack, and fairly heavy shopping bag, was not significantly slower, and I was feeling mildly short of breath, and a bit tired when I got home. Back in the horrible day of my one and only cardiac rehabilitation class, they had a chart to show levels of breathlessness. At the point you can carry on a conversation without having to stop for breath it was listed as mild, and also the optimum/desired amount for exercise.

  I have to admit it felt good to get indoors, and put my bags down. It also felt good to have got there with no Angina, or other significant pains. The new drug is certainly making a difference. One of the first things I did after putting my shopping away was to start cooking my dinner in the microwave oven. I have worked out the best way to tenderise meat cooked in the microwave is to do it in 10 minute bursts every hour or so until it is ready to eat, although the initial session I use is 20 minutes.

  I wass essentially duplicating what I had started to cook in the slow cooker before turning off the slow cooker before I walked into Hospital, and stayed there for 2 and a half days. It was pork stew, and after sitting cold  in the slow cooker for that time I didn't dare try and eat it, although it didn't seem to smell off. Later in the afternoon I disposed of it down the toilet. Meanwhile, the pork stew I cooked yesterday had one extra ingredient - a couple of big baby potatoes. The potatoes might have been a bad idea when my blood sugar was high, but in the past I seem to got away with eating a small amount.

  For my lunch I had the last 4 slices of slightly stale Polish Sourdough bread. It had been opened at least a week ago, but that stuff doesn't go stale like ordinary "supermarket" white bread, and even when drying out it still makes good toast. The slices from that ready sliced loaf are moderately small, but even so, I did worry that 4 slices might be too much, but I just wanted to use it up. I made two lots of toast sandwiched with ham and mustard in them. They were nice.

  After my lunch I had another snooze. I think I was asleep for at least an hour. I didn't realise how sleepy I was until I started reading, and my eyes started to droop. After I woke up it took a little while before I could tackle the laundry I had left soaking after my shower. It was about half the stuff in the laundry basket (so I may do another load today), and it seemed to be a lot until I finally had it hanging on the clothes horse to dry, and than it didn't seem to be that much, although it did pretty much use up all the space on the clothes horse.

  It was after getting that laundry up on the clothes horse that I tipped the cold, and potentially bacterial infected port stew in the slow cooker down the toilet. I was expecting it to partly clog the toilet or something, but it flushed away first time with hardly any residue. I then scrubbed the big and heavy ceramic container out in the kitchen sink. It is now ready for use again, although since the initial excitement after first buying it, I use it less and less these days.

  In between some of the things I did yesterday I tried to catch up with all the more interesting technology news stories on https://www.theregister.com/. There was, and still is today, a lot left to read. Many articles I just skim through, but some I read in depth, and I love all the snarky comments on some topics. Eventually, after snoozing, laundry, reading from book or on line, plus preparing dinner, it was finally time for dinner.

  It seems that the TV companies have started their spring season with very few watchable programmes. There were a few things on later that I hopefully recorded on my big TV in the front room, but at dinner time there was nothing to amuse me. I ended watching a recording of The Avengers from my archive of recordings. I think, but can't be sure, it was an episode I would have missed while in hospital. It amused my while I ate my pork stew dinner - which was very tasty.


 The time on my blood pressure says I took this reading early in the afternoon, although I thought it was later, but it shows a pretty impressive low systolic, and diastolic pressure.  Note the little heart symbol near the bottom of the display is showing little ghosts after it. It is a sign that the machine has detected some heart flutter, OR, it has detected I was holding the machine too near my PC speakers, and the loud bass notes were interfering with it's heart beat detector.

  After eating dinner I washed it down with some chilled tap water. A week or three ago I bought a couple of 2 litre bottles of "English mineral water" (which is probably straight out the bottling plant's tapwater). I have been refilling those bottles with my tap water, and particularly when chilled, it tasted just as good, and maybe slightly better. When well chilled it slips down so easily, and before I know it I had refilled my glass enough times to get through a whole litre of water. Maybe that was a good thing.

  Drinking so much, and more, shortly before bedtime may not have been a great idea, but it didn't seem to matter. It was still another hour or two before I would go to bed, but once I did I started reading in bed. I guess I probably read 4 or 5 pages before my eyelids were drooping. I think I was possibly fast asleep by 9pm. I seemed to sleep really well again last night, and I can only recall a short period of insomnia at around 2am. Despite drinking so much water I didn't seem to need to get up to pee more than a couple of times in the night - probably less than usual.

  It would have been nice to have remembered some of my dreams from last night. I know I had some, and I think I even remember that one or two involved railway station, and possibly slight different, or maybe just old, trains, but all such details seemed to have faded away seconds after getting up.

  Yesterday morning I went to the toilet, for "number twos" quite copiously. This morning it seems I might be constipated, or perhaps it will all happen a little bit later. Other than the feeling that I should go, rather than need to go, I guess I feel moderately good this morning. I might have a few slightly stiff joints, but I seem to be mostly pain free. On the other hand I don't feel very dynamic. I suspect it is because the initial glorious sunny morning has given away to sullen clouds, and it now looks dull and cold.

  One suspicion I had was that my high blood glucose readings, particularly in hospital, could have been caused by dehydration. I did seem to sip water quite frequently, but I guess I was only drinking about 1.5 litres of water a day. Maybe the 1 or more litres I had in the last few hours before bed really rehydrated me. this morning my blood glucose was still slightly higher than preferred, but it was close to (high) normal again. All three meters closely agreed with readings of 8.6. 8.6, and 8.7mmol/l. Today I would like to take steps to reduce that, but I don't feel that I will be fasting at all today. Somehow the weather doesn't feel good for it.

  The other significant health measurement is my blood pressure. With almost no effort I got 106/43 with a pulse rate of 59 beats per minute. The systolic pressure of 106 is about what I was getting for weeks before the blip that got me into hospital. What is notable is the Diastolic pressure. This is the pressure of the blood between each beat of the heart. Prior to the new drug it has been typically 58mmHg, and 43 is a new low. It definitely suggests that the new drug is working well to dilate my arteries, and making it easier for blood to flow.

  As I write this it is looking quite dull outside. The lovely blue sky at 8am has been replaced by pillows of clouds, and it seems most unlikely we will see any sun for ages. The temperature has now reached just over 10° C, and just maybe that is a little in advance of the forecast. Maybe the temperature will exceed 12° C later on, but without the sunshine it is unlikely to draw me out for a walk, or even a ride on a train. The one thing I feel sure I will do today is more laundry. As well as the second half of the laundry basket, I now have two towels that need freshening up. One is a medium sized bath towel, and that will be really heavy once soaked in water, and will need a lot of fighting. That will probably be put off until maybe tomorrow or even later.

 5 to 10 minutes later, after a visit to the toilet, and despite my gloomy thoughts, the sun is out again ! I still don't think I will be going out because it is already getting dull again.
     







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