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Below are the 20 most recent journal entries recorded in
Eleanor Blair's LiveJournal:
- Had a CT scan for my kidneys (actually that was before my last entry), but not got the results yet, despite it being nearly 3 weeks now
- Had some friends over for dinner, on one of the hottest days of the year, and really enjoyed eating with the patio doors open beside us
- Been given an appointment for July 28th to go talk to the surgeon at Addenbrookes about having my dodgy parathyroid gland out. Apparently I should get the date for the surgery itself on the day, so looking forward to that, though no doubt it'll mean more waiting.
- Reached the point where I've lost 10% of my body weight, and so should be seeing positive health results provided I keep it off (there's the rub!). Will go see GP (once the damned CT results arrive!) and ask if I can come off the pills. At least the metformin, since it seems to upset my digestive system a bit whenever I forget one or take one with too little food. Have decided to lose a little more and stop at either 90 or 85 kg.
- Been to a fab BBQ in Histon with Mike's colleagues followed by a bijou party for Pete's 30th, both of which were excellent.
- My sister now has a date on which they plan to induce her baby (at just over 38 weeks, for health reasons), which is a week on Monday! So excited and looking forward to visiting her and the baby (and Dave) the following weekend assuming all goes well *fingers crossed*
- Had a day off today to make sure I do use up all my holiday before the end of September. Will still have a week to spare to hopefully go away in August.
- Looking forward to Rae's hen night in Cardiff in mid-August. Half wishing she'd gone for the hen weekend approach given how long it takes to get there. I will be on a train from Shelford before 7am on a Saturday. Ow.
- Joined slimming world's online site at http://bodyoptimise.com and spent a week following their plan
- Taken metformin and statins for just over a week: 1 day of nearly gagging while eating, 2 days of diarrhoea, now just the occasional gurgle.
- Despite the combination of the above I've not lost the huge lump of weight which is typically associated with the first week of a diet, but I shall persevere
- Had my first day back in the office, and resolved to start going in again next week. Stephen has offered me lifts, since I'm very nearly on his route to work anyway. I'm thinking about trying the bike after Easter.
- Been out to my first social event since doing my ankle in, the lovely Alison's lovely birthday party, with the most incredible Star Destroyer cake. It was nice to talk to people.
- Got a letter from the NHS asking me to use their "choose and book" system to get an appointment about the hyperparathyroidism. Only I could neither choose (only one choice) or book (no appointments available) so I rang them up and apparently Addies should write to me directly within the next 14 days and if not I should contact me GP and get them to talk to Addies about it.
- Had a go on the wii fit: 13 minutes of step and two balance games, and beat my previous scores. With a wii fit age of 29 but my highest weight ever. Though it's 161 days since I last tried it. Without my rides to work I need a little exercise of some sort. Ankle didn't mind at the time, tiny bit achy now.
- Ascended a monk in nethack! Only my second ascension ever, and the first time I've seriously played a monk at all. It was rather fun.
| Sunday, July 12th, 2009 | |
| 10:50 am | The weekend Nice quite Saturday with much geeking, and finishing the book I started on Friday, with curry and The Commitments in the evening. Slightly spoiled by waking up on Sunday and discovering computer won't boot. We unplugged everything, opened the case, checked nothing had come loose and then tried it again and now it's booting OK. Stupid thing. We intend to spend the afternoon at Shelford Feast. |
| Friday, July 10th, 2009 | |
| 8:16 pm | Stuff wot haz bin happnin' It seems like ages since I wrote anything here. In the meantime I have: There's probably other stuff too, but that's the main events. I've generally had a few chilled out weeks, with far too much time spent playing the Sims, and doing quite a bit of reading. I should give Tom his book back now I've finished it. I have applied for a library card and will see if I can borrow the rest from the library in the village. I have at least got round to cataloging the books I've finished over the last 2 months now, and reviewed them all over on librarything. I'm still really glad it's the weekend though. |
| Friday, June 26th, 2009 | |
| 11:56 am | Perl DBI help Argh, I've got an SQL query which works fine if I run it from Access, and which I think has no errors, but if I try run it from Perl I'm getting an error from the database. Can anyone tell me what obvious thing I'm doing wrong? ( code )
Ah, it seems that in fact the oracle database does *not* support left outer joins, and that the reason it works in Access is because Access translates the query into a form that this version of oracle does support. Many thanks to Paul for popping in to explain (I could have just gone and asked him obviously, but he's been rather busy with exam marking recently). What a nuisance, since this is obviously a much nicer way to do the query than faffing about with a "where not in (subquery)" or similar. (We suspect it is supported in the new version of Oracle Paul's working on migrating to, but sadly I think my code is needed before then). Double correction: it does support them, but with weird syntax. The following code works: ( more code ) |
| Friday, June 12th, 2009 | |
| 4:29 pm | Cambridge cycle commuting Apologies for the repeat, but I messed up the poll. I'm still interested in how far people in Cambridge typically cycle to work. Not that I think this will get very statistically valid answers of course. Poll #1414849 Cambridge cycle commuters (mark II) How many miles do you commute?
View Answers 0 - 1 1 - 2 2 - 3 3 - 4 4 - 5 5 - 6 6 - 7 7 - 8 8 - 9 9 - 10 10+ I am not a Cambridge cycle commuter Do you cross the city boundaries?
View Answers
Yes No Don't know / Other I am not a Cambridge cycle commuter Google maps, and bikely may help you plot your journey to find out how long it is, and here's a map of the boundaries Feel free to add your commute even if you only do it once a week, rather than every day, and do comment with details if you'd like, or vote in comments if you don't have a livejournal account. If your commute is entirely outside the city boundaries but you still consider yourself a Cambridge cyclist (perhaps you live in one of the boundary villages?) then do vote, but please comment. |
| 4:01 pm | Cycle commuting I'm curious about how far people commute by bike in Cambridge. Arse, I missed 2-3 miles off the poll. Please accept my apologies and vote/comment again in the new version. Feel free to add your commute even if you only do it once a week, rather than every day, and do comment with details if you'd like, or vote in comments if you don't have a livejournal account. If your commute is entirely outside the city boundaries but you still consider yourself a Cambridge cyclist (perhaps you live in one of the boundary villages?) then do vote, but please comment. NB in the second question "don't know/other" is intended to cover the answer "I am not a Cambridge cycle commuter". I knew I should have made that a specific option. |
| Tuesday, June 9th, 2009 | |
| 6:44 pm | Hospitals again Consultant appointment today. They took my height, weight and blood pressure first - where I proved you get weird results from the automatic machine if the cuff is too small - 160/94 became 100/70 when done again manually with a bigger cuff, and she checked it 3 times, once standing up, just to make sure. Consultant took lots of medical history information and didn't say much that I didn't already know, other than to mention that actually my calcium levels are only *just* above normal, and if I were older they wouldn't bother operating, and that after surgery my bone density should go back to normal. They do want to do a DEXA scan to check bone density at three specific points (spine, hip, forearm) and I've got to collect some urine samples and have another blood test done, but if the results of those all confirm the diagnosis so far then I'll be referred to the surgeon. Should take 6-8 weeks to get an appointment to see him and then another 6-8 weeks before the operation, so I guess I'm looking at October. Oh and if the tests *don't* confirm the diagnosis I'll be back to see the consultant in 3 months time, because they only run the clinic once a month and she's not available in 2 months time. I really do hope they say the right thing, I just want to get this *over*. Still, at least I can probably now thing about booking a holiday in late August. I also got an appointment for a CT scan for the kidney stone through this morning, and that's in a fortnight's time, and will also be relevant. I'm a little unimpressed that wasn't sooner, given that if I were still in pain I'd have to go back to the GPs for a bigger supply of painkillers. Just in case I'm getting hospital withdrawal symptoms in the meantime though I've got an appointment to give blood at the hospital's blood donation centre next week. In other news this morning I managed to make a boiled egg explode, and cover both myself and the kitchen in egg, including the clean clothes and the clean washing up. It was *not* what I'd call a good start to the day. Don't believe Delia when she says 7 minutes is long enough for a hard-boiled egg, especially not in shallow water. And do prick the yolks *before* microwaving the resulting shelled lumps of half-cooked egg-like mess, if you're attempting to finish the cooking process off. They were fine in the microwave itself, but the one which was most whole did not react well to me cutting into it to see if it was done. Thank goodness I was wearing my glasses! |
| Monday, June 8th, 2009 | |
| 6:23 pm | |
| Saturday, June 6th, 2009 | |
| 11:28 am | Thank you Thanks all for the well wishes on the last post. It appears you are all more powerful than you think, or perhaps I'm just incredibly lucky, and believe me I'm touching wood right now, well laminate, but I've woken this morning in no pain at all. Maybe drinking lots and lots of water has helped it break up quickly, perhaps it's just moved a little and will get stuck again somewhere else, but for now I'm feeling very relieved. And we had a nice evening in London visiting Pete and Val (Mike's brother and his fiancee) at their rather eclectic place on Tottenham. We enjoyed seeing their place, having a look at the artwork they've got up on the walls for an event they're running over the weekend (with bands and DJs as well as the art), eating chinese and playing some rather eccentric pool (with a young cat joining in), and generally had a good time. It was nice to see them. We got rather mislaid on our way home and failed to find which bus stop to get off for Tottenham Hale, and in the end realised we were so far past it that it was easier to stay on until Liverpool Street, where we were too late for the intended train but still able to get the last train for Cambridge, so getting home rather later than intended - and with a taxi ride for the last leg, since the last train for some reason stops at all the usual stops *except* Shelford. |
| Friday, June 5th, 2009 | |
| 3:17 pm | Be careful what you wish for I may in the past have expressed some impatience with the fact I've had so many appointments to diagnose and test a condition for which I had no apparent symptoms. This morning however I woke at 5am with a strong pain in my abdomen, mostly in the left lower back, which became stronger and weaker in waves, and kept me more or less awake and uncomfortable until 8am when I could phone the GPs, and get an appointment at 9am. Testing my urine showed signs of blood in it, and it seems that in fact all this extra calcium in my blood has caused the formation of a kidney stone. Ow. I have yet another referral for yet another hospital appointment for a CT scan to look for stones, which is fast tracked and should be within the next 10 days, and in the meantime I have strong painkillers. And a bit more respect for the power of a tiny over-active gland in my neck. The painkillers work, but it's not how I intended for the last day of my week off work! |
| Tuesday, June 2nd, 2009 | |
| 4:23 pm | More hospital tests After visiting the nuclear medicine department last week and the week before for some radiography today was the turn of the ultrasound. And a nice chap called Matthew used that to take a look at my neck too. He's confirmed that a) I do have a dodgy parathyroid gland and b) it's where the nuclear medicine people said it was. It's about 10mm along and 6mm across and apparently an ideal candidate for the sort of minimally-invasive day surgery I was suspecting would be necessary. if it were normal he wouldn't even be able to find it with the ultrasound. And it was nice of him to talk more openly about the fact that that's what's going to happen: I've known for ages, but I think that's the first time I've been *properly* told. And even he seemed to think I'd know already. Clinic is next week, when I get to see the consultant, and then I guess we just see how soon they can fit me in. Bizarrely I was chatting to my neighbour across the road a couple of days back, and it turns out *she's* going in to have surgery for the exact same thing. An unusual version of small world syndrome! Here's hoping it goes well for both of us. I also took the opportunity of a hospital appointment when I'm coming from home rather than work (I've got the week off) to take the bus and take my crutches back. Which got me a couple of funny looks, walking briskly and carrying them over my shoulder. And it was such a nice day I walked home along the Shelford bike path, enjoying the hot sunshine, the wild flowers and the birds. And I'm pretty sure I saw a yellowhammer. Bright yellow head, sitting on the fence only a few feet away briefly before it flew away. I've never seen anything quite like it but the information boards at Nine Wells local nature reserve had mentioned it, and looking it up it definitely seems right. Lovely. Thank goodness for factor 30 sunblock though. I took a similar length walk when visiting my parents on the bank holiday weekend and factor 8 was definitely not enough for the job. |
| Tuesday, May 26th, 2009 | |
| 4:10 pm | Working lunches When Julia and I recently moved office we took advantage of the new space to buy a kettle and a really small fridge. This means my lunch can now involve such exciting things as pot-couscous and salads which would be a bit grim if left at room temperature until lunchtime. But I still can't manage soup unless I bring a flask, or anything as exciting as a ready-meal or a jacket potato. Still, it means I'm no longer living on sandwiches, soup and crisps from our mini-canteen. What cooking/catering facilities do *you* have at work? (NB your "canteen" could just be a vending machine). ( poll ) We still have to do the washing up in the sinks in the Ladies mind, which is mildly off-putting. |
| Sunday, May 17th, 2009 | |
| 9:19 pm | Eurovision Song Contest Drinking Game
( Rather long... ) And thankfully that's the lot. I can see why Norway did well (a nice sentiment, well executed, cute singer in a cheeky chappie sort of way, but I found the English just a tiny bit simplistic in places, as if obviously written by a fluent but non-native speaker), and also Iceland and Turkey. I have no idea how we came 5th, or why Azerbaijan was popular and Germany not. Moldova nearly scraped into the top half, and deserved better. And France were much better at singing a straight song than we were. And if you judge it on Eurovision clichés as embodied by this game then Germany and Ukraine were clear winners, with France coming last. |
| Wednesday, May 6th, 2009 | |
| 7:25 pm | ha, you wait 10 weeks for an appointment and then 2 turn up at once Having finally managed to make an appointment for the relevant endocrinology clinic today I've got home to a letter telling me to come to an appointment in Nuclear Medicine next week, so they can inject me with something radioactive and take pictures to work out where my dodgy parathyroid gland(s) are. |
| 10:32 am | I can Haz Appointment! Two calls today, one at 9:15 when I established Nadia wouldn't be in until 10 and would only be in this morning, but did get the person I spoke to to observe that Nadia's phone was giving a useless message and promise to leave her a note. One at 10:30 when I actually spoke to Nadia: she *did* get my message last week, but there was a problem with the clinics and she needed to talk to one of the doctors which is why she didn't call me back yet. And the clinic I need only runs once a month and the next available appointment is on the 9th of June, but I do at least now have an appointment. I explained how much trouble I'd had getting hold of her, and she said they do seem to have phone problems like this sometimes but when they report them nothing is wrong. Hmm. Still, progress at last. This doesn't manage the "where possible we'll try to arrange your first appointment within five weeks" - 9th June is 10 weeks and 1 day after I saw the GP. I wonder how likely it is that "in line with government policy [...] you should wait no longer than 18 weeks from the time you are referred to a hospital specialist to the time you begin treatment or are admitted for an operation". That would have to be by the week beginning 30th August. |
| Tuesday, May 5th, 2009 | |
| 4:59 pm | A bank holiday And a very relaxing one too. Friday night/Saturday morning we had to ourselves. Mike's parents joined us on Saturday afternoon and we drove over to Ickworth near Bury-St-Edmunds and wandered briefly round the gardens (before they closed) and more leisurely round the park including lake and vineyard. Cleverly we discovered that the loos at the house also close at 5, and the alternative loos are at the vineyard *after* we'd walked back up the hill to the carpark. Services on the A14 to the rescue. Mike and I were making the most of our new status as National Trust members (my birthday present to him) or it would have been a rather more expensive trip. Sunday we had a nice breakfast, pottered round the garden centre, had a big lunch and then waved Evan and Gina off and spent the late afternoon and evening watching Snooker and playing Lego Star Wars. And Monday we attacked the garden: Mike did some weeding and some wonderfully aggressive pruning while I spread 200 litres of nasty smelling bark as mulch on the front garden (which consists mostly of shrubs). It looks great, but it's still a bit whiffy. Ankle's still improving lots, which is great. And for the parathyroid I now have a letter from Addenbrooke's themselves asking me to ring and make an appointment (within 7 days of receiving it) which I attempted to do on Thursday - only to find the phone number redirects to the wrong bit of the voicemail system (asking me to enter a mailbox number) and it took 4 calls and quite a bit of redirecting before I got the (hopefully) correct answerphone and managed to leave my name, hospital number and daytime phone numbers. Since then they have entirely failed to call me back, and I'm beginning to get paranoid, but when I tried to call again today I got the broken voicemail again and just couldn't face more phone tag. I am not happy. The fact I've already waited 14 days + 10 days to even get the letter in the first place makes me even less so. I guess I'll try them again tomorrow. Oh yes, and I'm not moving to Dreamwidth, although I am willing to read your journal there via openid if you've moved, see link in my LJ profile. I'll still be posting here. |
| Wednesday, April 22nd, 2009 | |
| 12:33 pm | Where was I? We had an Easter: Sion and Ingi renewed their wedding vows with a touching ceremony in the light rain in their garden, and a lovely party. And Jan and Owen stayed over so we had a lovely big fry-up for breakfast and lots of chocolate on Easter Sunday itself. And on the Monday we cycled out along the Shelford-Addies bike path and finally got to go for a walk around the little nature reserve and see the Nine Wells springs and the obelisk, as well as assorted birds and wild violets. Mike and I took Monday and Tuesday off work this week, and had another lovely long weekend. Gardening on Sunday, a long walk out at the gogs on Monday which resulted in minor sunburn (why do I never learn that even in April it's not safe to go out for two hours in a strappy top at lunchtime on a sunny day?). And yesterday was Mike's birthday: we cycled into town to go shopping shopping and had a nice late lunch at Tatties, then came home and spent the afternoon playing Lego Indiana Jones on the wii: one of the few games where game play is much improved by having two players! Then we headed back out on the bus for dinner. The plan was to go to Alimentum, but I hadn't booked, and they seemed to have some sort of function on. We weren't sure if they also had normal tables through in the other room, but it was impossible to say how long it would be before anyone would be available to ask, since the function guests were just arriving and standing around drinking bubbly. So we took plan B and went to Nando's instead, which was fun and tasty if not in the same league. We'll just have to go to Alimentum another time. I've bought Mike membership to the National Trust for a year for his birthday, with me as joint member, so it looks like we'll have to make some holiday plans around that later in the year. As you can tell from all the cycling and walking my ankle really is getting much better. I've had my first two physio appointments, and am improving vastly. Exercises include practicing standing on one leg and on tiptoes, and now trying to balance on a wobble board. More fun than exercise! I'm wearing my walking boots whenever I'm out and about, and have a walking stick borrowed from Anna: I always feel like I'm barely using it, but then I try walking about without it and find I'm much more hobbling. So today is my first day back in the office completely under my own steam, and it feels very liberating. And all the more new and exciting because the main route into the department has finished being resurfaced and they've finished demolishing the portacabins in the courtyard (which have been here longer than I have) and we're soon going to be moving into a new office, so it's all very shiny. If I hadn't had my bike key disintegrate on me earlier (now fixed with sellotape) or discovered this morning that the fridge door had been left open a crack and the light had cooked everything on the top shelf it would be a really brilliant day. I still haven't heard from Addies about an appointment to sort out my overactive parathyroid, but I've chased via the GP, and have instructions to chase again in about a week's time. All in all life's pretty damned good though. |
| Wednesday, April 8th, 2009 | |
| 4:26 pm | Bizarre behaviour of LJ mail Hmm, strange. Livejournal is quite happily sending me comment notifications and so forth to the address I have registered with them, however messages to lnr@livejournal.com which are forwarded to the same address are not getting through at the moment: with it complaining that the mail server isn't saying anything quickly enough. Despite it being the same mail server. I've no idea what it's doing differently when forwarding mail that would cause problems. Anyway, in the meantime I recommend mailing me as eleanorb at either chiark or gmail if you want to get in touch. In fact I'd recommend those most of the time anyway! |
| Sunday, April 5th, 2009 | |
| 11:15 am | Stuff and things Things I have done recently: Don't expect regular weight or diet updates, I just want to quietly get on with it, rather than talking about it. |
| Friday, March 27th, 2009 | |
| 1:00 pm | Health update Doctor confirms I have primary hyperparathyroidism, which is what's causing the raised blood calcium, and will refer me back to the hospital to deal with it, and it's nice that it's been found. Edit: aha, I have the results of these blood tests in the post: serum parathyroid hormone 188 ng/L (14-72 is normal), parathyroid hormone 19.93 mmol/L (1.48-7.63 is normal). I'm not quite sure what the difference between these two is :) Doctor also notes that my blood sugar *is* slightly raised (6.5, below 6 is normal, over 7 is diabetic), that I have slightly too high cholesterol (7), and that they did some liver function tests which show I may have "fatty liver". Overall together they add up to "metabolic syndrome". I asked about Metformin, which he agreed was a good idea. He also suggested statins. And I also asked if it could be related to PCOS (as I've only had 3 periods since coming off the pill about a year ago and am a bit hairier than I used to be) and he suggested they probably do all tie together, so I'm going back on the pill too (which can reduce the risk of womb cancer as well as because I'm bored of condoms: I only really came off it out of curiosity anyway, since I've been on one form or another of contraceptive pill nearly all my adult life. So I have a paper bag full of drugs. I'm also encouraged to lose weight, which will help with all of the above (apart from the hyperparathyroidism, which isn't connected to the rest). Interestingly he reckons since my weight is currently pretty stable I'm probably not overeating, but also that I probably don't need to cut back from what I'm eating now once I've lost weight, I just need to make some serious changes to lose it, and then keep my eye on the ball to catch it if I start gaining again. I'm not 100% convinced I won't just regain any weight lost with more on top, which is what I've done before. We'll see. To round off he took height, weight and blood pressure, which I'll list here to remind myself. 1.70m, 110kg, 135/87. So I went to the co-op and bought lots of fruit and veg and some fat free yoghurt. I'm now contemplating whether joining Slimming World again is a good plan, even if it's only online until I'm more mobile. And at the same time not sure if this is even sensible or possible, but I really do feel like I ought to try it and see if it does fix the metabolic and cholesterol problems. *sigh* |
| Tuesday, March 24th, 2009 | |
| 10:05 pm | Update It took an hour to go to the docs and back, and cost 13 quid in taxi fares, but at least I got to buy some more food in the co-op while I was out. 3 more blood samples taken, the results will take another couple of days, and then the doctor will want to make an appointment to talk about them (I'll make sure to make it for later in the morning though, that way the local taxi firm will have finished with the school run and it'll be cheaper). Right now the ankle seems to have ceased getting much better. I can walk around the house, but if I try any longer distance I've got a really painful step about 1 in 20 or so. And of course all my muscles are weirdly stiff from being used in unusual ways. But I have an offer of a lift into work a couple of days next week, which will be good. I am becoming rather too fond of Deal Or No Deal and Come Dine With Me, both of which really are car crash TV, but conveniently on at lunch time. Amusingly Mike also stopped at the co-op on the way home and bought identical bread (something our co-op seems much better at than those in Oxford) and the same chocolate puddings. And he used yesterday's leftover gravy to make a lovely lamb stew, which ended up leaving more gravy. Which we ate while watching Reservoir Dogs, which I'd never seen before. A combination which was perhaps a little unwise. Now I'm off back to my book. I'm 7 books behind in cataloguing the ones I've read this year, which is very lax, but I keep putting it off in order to have more time reading :) PS the comment spam this time was remarkably relevant, so apologies if I deleted anything genuine. If you wish to make comments but don't have a livejournal account please sign or initial them, if you wish to make anonymous comments which aren't mistaken for spam you could sign them "anon". |
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