yonmei

04:06 pm: At sea.
Today, does not exist. We set sail yesterday.

Meantime, I have a dental appointment tomorrow at 2pm, and an ENT appointment at 3:20. Oh joy, where is thy sting?

Also, I finally saw the second half of the House sixth-season opener, and I don't think this is too much of a spoiler when I say that while the West Wing season four finale/fifth season opener was more of a let-down between fantastic buildup to disappointingly-flat, that's not saying very much. I mean there was angst and trembling blue eyes and so forth, but other than that, really. It was awful.



Tags: dentist panic, house md, nose of a nose, running away to sea, west wing

08:44 am: bloody hell
I wish I could make up my mind not to go into work today.

I'm awesomely tired. I'm still getting sporadic nosebleeds, especially but not limited to when I sneeze.



Tags: being ill, nose of a nose, work

04:16 pm: Of all the things not fun about having a cold
I think nose bleeds (even micro nose bleeds) are still the worst. Discuss.

Okay, sore throats are not fun either, but they go away with the magic of ibuprofin. The only thing to be done about micro nose bleeds is to put pressure on a sore nose till they stop.




Tags: being ill, nose of a nose

12:11 pm: UK to US: The Truth About the NHS!
Signed the petition, added a comment:

My grandfather lived long enough for me to remember him because an NHS surgeon performed a quadruple bypass on his heart when I was two. My dad is still alive and well (and able to see and to bake his own bread) at the age of 82 because NHS surgeons performed operations on his wrist, his eyes, and his heart, in the past five years. I've had regular visits to my GP and to consultants over the past two or three years to establish why I felt like I had a perpetual cold in the head: turned out to be a dust allergy, for which I get regular medication and pay £104 a year for all my prescriptions. I would have been functionally blind since I was 7 if not for NHS eye-tests and free NHS specs till I was 16: I pay for my lenses now I'm working full-time, but when I was a student or looking for work I could get free lenses when I needed a replacement prescription. The NHS keeps me healthy, keeps me sighted, keeps me free: the US corporate control of healthcare is not only evil, it's inefficient and stupid.

Update: Wow. I think the petition went up this morning and there were over 10,000 signatures by the time I signed it: at 17:11 today there are
29,740 30,369 signatures.



Tags: evil american politics, evil americans advertising against nhs, family stuff, my health, nose of a nose

04:17 pm: Of strawberries, carpets, cats, and kittens
I am in my bedroom, and Bob is sitting beside me, looking very wary and disconcerted. A bloke called Alan, who looks far too young to have a regular job (yes, yes, I am getting old) is cleaning my hall and stair carpet, for £45. The company what is doing it is H2O. He is using some kind of powdery green chemical which - I was checking out the label on the giant carton - is remarkably short on specifics: it's Heavy Duty Detergent, made by Prochem, 30% phosphates, do not get on bare skin, keep away from small children. Contains ionic and anionic cleaners, FWIW.

Anyway. The point of paying someone else to clean the hall carpet is to find out if this improves my nose. My allergy, rather, but we'll call it my nose. Properly, my guess is, I would need to have someone else clean every carpet in the house, but as I am achieving this by stacking the various things that normally live in the hall in my bedroom or the sitting-room, I'll stick with the carpet which I definitely notice as incredibly dusty a lot of the time. (It gets vacuumed more, but needs it more.)

Alan rang this morning to find out if he could come round earlier than 4pm (the original appointment had been made for arrival any time between 4 and 5:30) but I said no, as I had my usual Saturday stuff to do.

Walked over to the pet shop (the nearest one to me that sells Hills Science Diet: I also bought a bag of Burns biscuit to see if Bob could also be tempted with that, and a wee bag of cod liver capsules, which I intend handfeeding to Bob on a daily basis (because it will make me feel better about her being so skinny, since you ask, not because the vet is specially recommending this). And as I was packing all this into my backpack, the assistant tells me they have a new litter of kittens in.

Cally's mother Amber came from this shop, back in 1988 - back then, before the SSPCA had got going on "Please sterilise your cat unless you intend to be a breeder", the "new litter of kittens" happened quite a lot. Less frequent now. Much less frequent now. The pet shop always used to accept a healthy litter, at least six weeks old and weaned, and offer them for sale for £5 each plus. (The plus would be where they made their profit: when Ajay bought Amber and Witch, she got a stack of stuff with them - the kitten food, litter tray, handbook, plus a load of free advice.)

Anyway, so, I went to look and stayed to squee. I feel slightly guilty because of the health risk (to the kittens: while my cats are vaccinated, no one asked me if I was safe), but I even picked two of the kittens up: a tiny little fluffy grey thing with four white paws who looked at me with amiable bewilderment, and a slightly larger fluffy grey thing with a ginger mask, who was practically dropping asleep from over-excitement (I put her back in the cage after a minute, and she went from bounce to nap before she could yawn). I was tempted - I really was - but Bob was not happy about Wolf, and though the pair of them are getting on much better now (I distinctly saw Bob sniffing/licking Wolf over last night) I don't think she'd be happy to be presented with Brand New Kitten. Though Wolf would probably think it was cute. But no. One should never impulse-buy kittens. Though I saw a couple of girls who were squeeing before I left who very evidently wanted their mum to impulse-buy kittens for them. There was also a very bouncy long-haired tabby, who if I'd been seriously on the look-out for a kitten, would probably have been my serious considered choice: awesomely pretty when she grows up, plus clearly extremely healthy, active, and definitely weaned. (The smaller kittens, I suspect, were still doing a "where's mum??" a bit.)

And then I walked down to Tattie Shaws and bought pears from Belgium and apples from France, and four satsumas, and ... my first strawberries this year. I've been resisting the berries flown in from Spain or elsewhere, because really, I know they won't taste of anything much: but Scottish strawberries, misshapen and slightly pale though they are, perfume the air: I bought a whole punnet, and ate half within minutes as soon as I got home. Yum. (The other half I kept for breakfast tomorrow.) You can get "fresh strawberries" that have been airlifted in so easily that it's way too easy to forget what strawberries really taste like - the scented, indescribably sweet, fruity flavour of a berry that was sun-ripened and attached to a bush only 24 hours ago.

The Alan finished, and my carpet is now way cleaner than it was. (He poured the water from downstairs down my kitchen sink, which I am none too happy with: I need to go buy sink unblocker now.)



Tags: berries, bob, carpet cleaning, cats, kittenlove!, nose of a nose, wolf

10:28 pm: Nose bleed
Not a major one. But enough to make me consider that operation on my nose to straighten out the kink.

I am also half-watching a movie with Alan Alda playing the national security advisor to the President. It's all about someone getting murdered and dumped on the White House front lawn after she has sex in the Oval Office.

There are lots of other things to like about Barack Obama being President, but one of them is definitely that he spoils the lazy-movie-casting tradition that anyone can be the President in a movie providing he's a middle-aged white man.

I need to write 200 words of fiction tonight. At least 200.

One of my nostrils hurts. It is a very odd feeling. I mean quite distinct.

Tags: i want a cup of tea and a tonne of sympa, nose of a nose

09:19 pm: Huh. Little blue pills.
( Cut for boringness )

Tags: nose of a nose

11:00 pm: Monday, Monday, Bloody Monday
Oh it could be worse. I suppose.

Judge Dredd is on Channel 4. I am tired. Today I joined Action Against Allergy, because the thing I decided I really needed when prioritising the things I need to do and buy is talk to other people who are also allergic to dust/dust mites and can (I hope) tell me things like "oh yes, that air purifier is totally worth it" or "no, don't bother with those special mattress covers". Or vice versa.

I wanted to hand in my new prescription today but the practice is closed because it's a public holiday in Edinburgh. I feel curiously indignant: if the pharmacy round the corner can be open on Monday, how come the health centre can't spare someone to stay in and collect prescriptions? Why, it's almost as if these NHS employees want a long weekend.

Mmm, ibuprofen.

We got a new co-worker. I need to think of a nickname for her.

Tags: being ill, bloody bloody bloody, nose of a nose

08:02 pm: Kinky noses and dustballs
Yesterday, I had a nasal endoscopy.

There were 3 medical students in the room at the time, and I was asked if I minded them being there, but (a) on a point of principle I've always felt you should say yes if asked and (b) it turned out that having the students there meant the consultant was on the absolute best professional behaviour, which was cool. (Unless he's always like that. I guess I'll find out next time if the medical students aren't there then.)

So. I got a local anaesthetic, which tastes absolutely foul by the way, and a tube with a camera on the end of it up my nose. Both nostrils. ( More )

My newly-discovered allergy to dust and to dust mites has a set of strategies for avoidance that I need to consider - plastic curtains for the bedrooms, at last getting the carpet in the hall/on the stairs ripped up/replaced with lino, considering getting a no-bag vacuum cleaner (though Ajay offered just to change the bag on the vacuum cleaner for me every time she visits). Also banning the cats from the bedroom. (Wah.) Anyone know of a dust allergy support group where I can find out about priorities...? There's a whole lot of stuff on this list.

Tags: being ill, nose of a nose

06:58 am: Nose and camera
At the end of May my GP told me I would probably have to wait six months for an appointment with a consultant: but I got a letter last week offering me an appointment today at 10:30 in Lauriston Place.

The letter was fairly unspecific about what the appointment would entail - but I think (and so I warned my manager) that it'll be a nasal endoscopy. ( Ugh )

In other news: the viewing screen of my camera has again been damaged while inside the protective case. It's not unusable, but it will mean I won't be able to see the pics I was taking properly until I upload them - especially not any effects of light or dark. It's like a shadow lying over the screen.

I'm not going to spend over a hundred pounds on getting a new screen put in - really not worth it, unless I can get Canon to acknowledge their protective case is faulty and issue an improved version (last time, they just told me - politely - that they were sure I was lying about the camera being in the protective case when the screen broke). And I certainly don't want to buy another Canon, and I'd been thinking that I wanted to treat myself to an improved camera with a higher pixel rate, if I could - so: any recommendations, in the £150-£200 level pocket-size?

Tags: camera disaster, nonphotos, nose of a nose

11:55 pm: OW WOW OW IT BURNS IT BURNS
( screams of pain )

Tags: nose of a nose