Sunset from Hill House, Mount Helen. February 2024

Saturday, March 09, 2013

Hydes are tumbling, one by one

Fortunately not (yet) too dramatically, but it's been a week or two full of health related incident.

So Tony has a recurrence of his ocular shingles. I think I told you about this earlier in the week. Very unpleasant but happily not yet as deeply unpleasant as the first occurrence (and long may it remain that way, although not being there at all would be even better).

In the meantime, I had noticed that ever since I had that eye infection at the start of the Grand World Tour, my eyes have been a tiny tad grumpy. My left eye (which was the one that had been very upset at the beginning of December) was particularly unhappy and had got to the point where my vision was a bit blurred sometimes and my eye ached sometimes.  When I became aware that it was also filled with loads of floating things which were making it hard to see and that now there were flashing lights to the port side, I decided I really ought to do something about it.

So I made an appointment to see the GP!!!!!!!!!!!

I haven't been to the surgery in Clay Cross since they built the new, super duper snazzy one. I can't say I had ever been to the old one as a patient. I had only been there accompanying other people.  And it was OK, I suppose, but it was definitely showing its age.  The new one is lovely. I said as much to the ten year old doctor who showed me into his surgery (OK; he wasn't ten.  He was probably in his very early thirties, but he seemed fairly squeaky new).  He agreed that it was lovely.  And then said that he didn't think he had ever seen me before.  Looked at my notes and said "Well - no.  I won't have seen you before.  You don't visit us very often, do you!"

The very significant advantage to not visiting your GP very often is that they are inclined, in my experience, to take you seriously when you do.  He couldn't see anything wrong with my eyes but decided to refer it to the Eye Clinic at Chesterfield Royal Hospital. 15 hours later he rang me up to say I had an appointment at the Eye Clinic on the morning after he rang me. The very next day, in fact :-S.

Now this was not a little disconcerting.  Under normal circumstances you have to wait for weeks for non-urgent NHS hospital appointments.  To get one for less than 48 hours after the initial visit to the surgery either indicates something catastrophic is wrong - or that someone has cancelled and you have been extremely lucky.  Not wishing to push my luck I cleared my diary for the following day (a pity really; it was the busiest day I had this week!)

They were very thorough. The nice eye doctor looked long and hard at my left eye.  It may never forgive her. Certainly it didn't forgive me for a long time. It really really didn't like being pushed and prodded and being numbed and having its pupil dilated or any of the things they did to it (they did some of the things to my right eye too, but not the pushing and prodding and stuff.  It was just as well I had cleared my diary for the whole day, though. I really couldn't see very well for the rest of the day.

All is well.  It's just old age creeping up upon my eye.  No dramas there, in the end.

Until Thursday, when I was walking into the main building with my colleague Julia. We walked down into the Atrium and headed towards the main stairs - when all of a sudden I was lying on my side :-S  No stumble with an opportunity to right myself. No tripping over something, also with a chance to right myself. My foot hit a wet, puddly patch, shot away and over I went.  It made my knee bleed ;-(  It jarred my back and my ankle and my knee and all sorts.  It was all very disconcerting.  Although I think it disconcerted Julia more!!  I filled in an incident report when I got to the Adsetts Centre - and now I have attracted the attention of all sorts of Elfin Safety people who want to know what happened and why.  Sigh.

And so to today.  Text message from Stella.  It's Tony's birthday celebration, slightly deferred, tomorrow, at the Prince Patrick in Collingwood. And now - she and Tony can't go (although the birthday bash will go ahead without them). She had been for some blood tests earlier today and her haemoglobin levels are down to barely noticeable.  She has to go to the Hospital for a blood transfusion and stay overnight and  no, it can't wait until they get back from Melbourne even if she does eat half of a woolly mammoth while she is away. So that's no good. No partying for them.

And THEN, as if all of that wasn't enough, Matthew reports that young William has broken his arm doing something martially arty (although Lindsey says it was because he was doing handstands in the warm up bit before the class - although I can't quite see why that would break your arm. Are we sure someone didn't Kickbox him?). That's not good either :-S

William.  Image copyright Matthew and Belinda Hyde

I think Freyja has decided that all Hydes, Hyde relations, people closely connected with Hydes and possibly even people who just know a Hyde or two should retire to their beds with cups of tea and cushions until the Hyde danger appears to have passed!!

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