The General Chat Room

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

All the best bbm .... hope it goes well ......

[BBMmk2]

Blast and blast!!! I am fuming right now. As the lifts are not working, I won't be able to have my cataract operation today!!! a rather annoyed BBM!

[Serial_Apologist]

Blast and blast!!! I am fuming right now. As the lifts are not working, I won't be able to have my cataract operation today!!! a rather annoyed BBM!

What rotten luck, BBM! Presumably they'd forgotten to put antifreeze in the mechanism.

Problems of this sort in the NHS go back a long time. I remember posting some time ago how my father really tore into a consultant at Whipps Cross hospital in E London for sending a women of 96 away, having just then at the last minute cancelled her appointment for a scan after she turned up by taxi for the fourth time in a row, telling him, "I happen to know the MP of this constituency and if you don't admit this woman right now I'll have him raise this matter in the Commons!" - to which said consultant said he'd try and get something done. He came back 10 minutes later and said they'd managed to find a slot that very day for her!

[BBMmk2]

My god SA! it makes you wonder it it is the economics of the NHS that are doing this. The lifts were just an excuse.

[BBMmk2]

Update. Heard from Sussex ~Eye Hospital yesterday, via a letter. Within 24 hours,so can't complain! I'm hoping I will have the op next Thursday! Fingers crossed!

[Petrushka]

Update. Heard from Sussex ~Eye Hospital yesterday, via a letter. Within 24 hours,so can't complain! I'm hoping I will have the op next Thursday! Fingers crossed!

Hope all goes well, BBM. If my own eye operation (similar to that done for cataracts) is any guide, you will be astonished at the improvement in your vision.

[BBMmk2]

Hope all goes well, BBM. If my own eye operation (similar to that done for cataracts) is any guide, you will be astonished at the improvement in your vision.

Here's hoping for next Thursday, pet! many thanks for your post. Everybody has been extolling their best to me. One person who is a particularly good friend of mine, a Professor to a music college in the US, was saying that a friend of his for the first time in forty years could read music without his glasses on. I am looking forward to this moment greatly. I will be able to write and play music for the first time in 33 years!

[BBMmk2]

Hi all. Had a CT Scan day before yesterday, now off down to Royal Sussex County Hospital. to see the cardiologist. To find out about the reason why I get light headed, hot and sweaty sometimes. I have an irregular heart rhythm as well!

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Hope the CT scan results turn out well, Bbm - and that today's "investigations" prove equally satisfactory.

[BBMmk2]

Hope the CT scan results turn out well, Bbm - and that today's "investigations" prove equally satisfactory.

Quite complexed! I have to have a b/p monitoring and my heart monitored too.

[Serial_Apologist]

Quite complexed! I have to have a b/p monitoring and my heart monitored too.

- if not Bbm

[BBMmk2]

I have been put forward for a heart and b/p monitoring programme fpr 24 hours! Also I may have a pacemaker put in too!

Fomrumiters don/t forget to use this theread for anything within reason ofcourse.

[richardfinegold]

I have been put forward for a heart and b/p monitoring programme fpr 24 hours! Also I may have a pacemaker put in too!

Fomrumiters don/t forget to use this theread for anything within reason ofcourse.

The heart can frequently be involved in myeloma, BBm. Perhaps you would feel better with the pacer. Think of is it as an Internal Metronome!

[BBMmk2]

The heart can frequently be involved in myeloma, BBm. Perhaps you would feel better with the pacer. Think of is it as an Internal Metronome!

Hi RFG. ah right thanks! It seems one thing after another with me, since my SCT and chemo that I had before! Plus the regular chemo I had before my SCT.

[Serial_Apologist]

Yet another day, one I had been particularly looking forward to - the latest of quite a few - wiped out by weekend public transport cancellations.

I was to have attended a concert billed to include Barbara Thompson's Saxophone Concerto, taking place today in Worthing - to which end I was expected in Sutton at noon to get a lift with Barbara and co to the event, commencing at 2.30. Having last night checked the route and that there were predicted to be no delaying closures or ***engineering works***, I had intended getting the straight-through train from Gipsy Hill at 10.19 arriving at Sutton at 10.46, thus allowing myself enough leeway in case of the grossest delays imaginable, and taking the bike on the train in case the journey was prematurely ended, as has been known to happen. Sometimes they even don't stop at stations in order to catch up on lost time! So, first thing this morning, I re-checked the travel website, to be informed of "slight delays" on Southern. My best bet would be the 10.13 from GH, changing at Tulse Hill for a bus the rest of the way.

On arrival at GH the announcement indicator said there were no trains going to Sutton at all. This was confirmed by the ticket clerk, who advised me either to get the 11.03 from Tulse Hill, not arriving at Sutton until 11.37, thus at best only allowing me 20 minutes to get to Barbara's place, a mile from the station, or to go to Crystal Palace, and catch a bus from there. What was i to do? Had it been dry I could have cycled the distance from where I live to Barbara's in an hour and a quarter. Wet weather these days, when the roads are less frequently cleaned that they have been until recently, what with cuts, is no incentive to undertake even only relatively long distance cycle trips, as I've found out from having had four punctures in the past month alone. I had tooled myself with the minima necessary for any such eventuality: spare inner tube, (because patch repairs take a good half hour in poor conditions when the glue takes longer to go tacky); Marigold gloves to keep hands clean; tyre leavers because the rims being so tight on modern tyres renders them impossible to remove unless you've just won the Strong Man of the Year award; pump; and an old fork for digging out any broken glass etc fragments which otherwise will just repeat the problem further down the road.

At Tulse Hill the announcement board stated that the next train to Sutton would be departing at 11.20. What had happened to the 11.03 - a man with huffing and puffing partner and very impatient small children was asking? - to which the poor hapless man behind the glass responded with hands outstretched in semblance to that famous picture of the Lotus positioned Lakshmi, the Hindu goddess. Back on the bike, a fast ride back to Crystal Palace station, there to find queues long enough to have been attending a Pink Floyd concert. No way would an an inadequately provisioned bus substitute service manage to get me to Sutton by noon. I was already sweat-soaked from inside my waterproofs and starting to feel too whacked to make my way the rest of the nine miles to Sutton, let alone survive the 60 miles each way to the S coast, a concert I probably wouldn't enjoy under the circs, and the likelihood of having to cycle all the way home from Sutton along the notoriously dangerous Croydon road with expected rain continuing, and in the dark.

I rather think Barbara might have liked me to have written up today's event for publication - having done that sort of thing before. As it is I've had the awful discomfort of having to ring her up to say I can't make it.

P*ssed off doesn't even cover it!!!