Ups and downs

 I honestly didn't think that the recovery from the operation I had at the end of November to remove my left kidney would take so long and be so difficult.

I've had just a few good days, but plenty of bad ones: the ups are short-lived, the downs seem to go on forever.

At least the pain has been largely reduced to a bearable discomfort, though its almost constant presence is very annoying. Apart from that, I become tired very quickly and am still not able to eat as I used to, with far less appetite and a strange alteration in the way I taste things. Sweet things, especially, seem far sweeter now than before the operation.

A few days ago, I felt well enough to go for a walk with Elise along the paseo in Guardamar: the sea was like the proverbial millpond, the sky was a deep blue, only lightly streaked with feathery clouds, the sun was shining, the few tourists from the north were in their shorts and T-shirts (one was actually sunbathing on the beach), the Spanish were in their winter furs (one even had ear-muffs), we were somewhere in between.

Sunbather, 11 January 2013

The walk went well, so we decided to repeat the exercise the following day. This time things did not go so well. I quickly became very tired and felt extremely weak, so we had to return home. Yesterday, too, we tried to have a meal in a local restaurant, but I simply could not enjoy more than the first course, becoming ever weaker and feeling nauseous.

Today I have to have a 24-hour blood-pressure meter fitted and tomorrow I shall visit the nephrologist. The thinking is that the right kidney might not be accepting its added responsibiltiy.

It Never Rains, But It Drips

Well, it's not entirely true to say that it never rains in this part of Spain, but rain is certainly a very infrequent experience. Since returning from Belgium last March, I imagine it has rained at most six times.

A week or so ago, I walked into our downstairs shower-room-cum-toilet and was surprised by a large amount of water covering the tiles. We are not in the habit of having water-covered floors, so something was clearly wrong.

After having removed almost all of the water, it was clear that more was arriving at a fairly steady rate from the back of the toilet.

Closer investigation revealed that, presumably in an attempt by Nature to compensate for the shortage of water previously outlined, the cistern had cracked. Exactly how and when this happened was a mystery, but a moot one.

Fortunately, we have a second toilet upstairs, so it was not going to be a question of buckets and spades. All we needed to do was to turn the water off that led to the cistern and then call Antonio to see if he could replace the cistern/toilet/bathroom/house, in that order of importance.

It turned out that the make of the toilet, Bellavista, is no longer produced and sold in Spain, so it was not possible to buy a replacement cistern, nor even a full toilet of the same model. We therefore opted for a simple model called Victoria, made by Roca, and today Antonio came to fit it. He would have come earlier, but he took some medicine that didn't agree with him and had to spend some time closely examining the inside of a toilet bowl himself, as well as a night in hospital.

Poor dab.

Hi, robot

Long before Apple and Steve Jobs gave us the iMac, the iPhone, iPod, iPad, and i-whatever-next, science fiction author Isaac Asimov gave us I, Robot, a collection of robot-based short stories. One of those stories was called Runaround and had been first published in 1942. It contained Asimov's elegant Three Laws of Robotics:

1. A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.
2. A robot must obey the orders given to it by human beings, except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.
3. A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Laws.

All robots were (are) supposed to be have these three laws indelibly etched into their beings.

A few years ago, we visited our friends, Jan and Nicole, in Belgium. They had just bought a robotic floor-cleaner, a sort of mechanical pizza box that scampered around the house at pre-programmed times (or when commanded to do so), "vaccuuming" the floor, whilst carefully avoiding chair- and table-legs and other possible hindrances to its assigned task. Jan and Nicole were very enthusiastic about it and, needless to say, their enthusiasm rubbed of on She Who Must Be Obeyed, though less so on myself. After all, I had read all the robot stories and novels ever written by Asimov, so I knew what could go wrong…

Well, three years later, it's "Hi, robot," as SWMBO has now taken possession of her very own i-Cleaner, i-Vacuum, i-Sweeper, i-Brush, i-whatever-you-wish-to-call-the-thing.

The chosen model is an LG Hom-Bot, and it clearly does not have Asimov's Three Laws of Robotics built into it.

I swear it's got it in for me.

It runs around the living-room, into the kitchen, into the bathroom, into the bedroom (it can't climb stairs, but we have a bedroom downstairs), and also makes a beeline for me, or cunningly waits around a corner, ready to attack as I approach from the hidden angle, bumping into my foot and obviously attempting to trip me up.

This is in blatant contradiction to the First Law of Robotics.

To be fair to the creature, it seems to do its job well.

I just wish it would follow the three laws.

Tender Feeling

I am very pleased to be able to write that the strong pains that I have felt since the operation seem to have passed.

Wednesday was a terrible day. Not only painful, but I felt really down and miserable. Thursday was already much better, with a lot less pain. Since then things have remained in a positive fashion. I still get the occasional twinge, but nothing like I had before. A big improvement.

What now remains are feelings of nausea after having completed my morning ablutions and, worse, a strange tenderness in the area of the operation each evening and through the night.

This tender feeling is similar to that associated with shingles, so perhaps it has something to do with damage caused to the nerves during the operation. Apparently, it is quite normal, but I wish they had told me that before I felt it, rather than after, as it would then have been less worrying. When the feeling starts, usually at about six in the evening, I can no longer put up with anything pressing on my skin. This makes lying in bed during the nigh very awkward, of course, and I often wake up, having to rearrange the bedclothes, or myself, or both, in order to prevent anything from touching my middle.

Still, a couple more weeks and that should be over too.

Tomorrow I must go to see a nephrologist in Alicante. Now that I only have one kidney, it is supposed to take over most of the functions of the kidney that has been removed, so, basically, one kidney must do the work of two. Well, my remaining kidney seems to be not too happy with this arrangement and is reluctant to take up the added burdon. Negotiations are therefore in order, and the nephrologist must act as the mediator. More pills, no doubt…

(Incidentally, Tender Feeling is the title of a song sung by Elvis Presley in his 1964 film, Kissin' Cousins. Numerous other titles of articles in this blog are names of songs sung by Elvis: how many can you find?)

Poor week

Well, it's been a poor week, recovery-wise. I've always been aware of a pain where the drainage tube had been sticking through me, on my left side, but it became particularly bad towards the end of last week. Saw the surgeon on Tuesday. He checked that there was no broken rib (the pain was just like that of a broken rib) and, finding none, suggested that a nerve had become trapped during the operation. Time would be the healer, but meanwhile he prescribed some morphine patches.

I put up with a patch until Thursday lunchtime, when I just had to remove it: I was falling asleep all the time, not eating, dizzy, vomiting… and the patch did little to relieve the pain!

Yesterday I had an injection of some sort of anaesthetic, which caused some temporary relief, but today the pain is back again. At least now I am feeling less tired than before, so something seems to be getting better.

I thought you'd be interested in seeing how the scars left by the incisions progress, so here's a "before and after".

Before

The "before" pic was taken just a couple of days after the operation and the whole thing looks rather like a butcher's shop. Elise calls it Feretería David. The white patch at the top right is the dressing of the drainage incision.

The staples were removed during two visits. A machine very similar to an office staple remover is used and very little discomfort is experienced during the procedure: just a little pinprick at the removal of each staple.

After

The "after" image was taken last Sunday (16 December), so close to three weeks after the operation. The whole thing already looks a lot more apetizing (well, that's one way of looking at it…) and in time the marks of the staples and other dark areas should disappear, leaving behind an almost pristine me. Well, that's the theory, anyway.

What a Crazy World

Listening to Joe Brown's 1963 recording of What A Crazy World We're Living In makes me think of the crazy week we've just had.

I'm not talking about anything related to my recovery here, but about the absolute stupidity of a so-called developed world.

First, of course, is the mass killing of schoolchildren and teachers in Connecticut, USA, by Adam Lanza, a "smart but shy nerd." Well, the smart but shy nerd had little difficulty in getting hold of at least three of the several more weapons that his mother kept in the house. Once again, then, the USA is faced with what it considers to be the "problem" of gun control. So what's the problem? You legislate to control the sale and possession of guns and you operate an efficient, corrupt-free police force. Stuff the fact that some out-of-date part of an old constitution, written at other times, when other mores were in place, stipulates the right to bear arms: that was then, this is now. The USA is supposed to be a civilised nation; it is supposed to set some sort of example. Instead, it allows archaic, conservative, right-wing nonsense to guide it in so many ways: there are schools in the USA where Creationism is taught, for heaven's sake! That's nothing short of Christian fundamentalism gone bonkers. It really is time for the USA to grow up.

What a crazy world.

Then a piece of news that most will not even have noticed. The EU has agreed to recognise a unitary patent, recognised in 25 of the 27 member states (here's an article with the details). This will make the protection of inventions across the EU a far simpler and cheaper process. But, hang on, why not 27 of the 27 countries? Well, it was decided that, in order to limit costs and bureaucracy, patent requests could be made in any of the three most-used languages of the EU, namely English, French, or German. Fine, this is an EU-wide thing, not a local issue, so nonsensical national pride should have nothing to do with it. That's not how Italy and Spain see things, however. They refuse to take part in the agreement because their languages are not included in the list of approved ones. I'm Welsh and there are instances when I would like to see Welsh used (signs in Wales, education in Wales, legislative procedures in Wales…), but this is not one of them. It is time for member states to put away their petty, petty nationalism and work for an efficient, effective Europe.

What a crazy world.

And then, of course, there's the iPope. What a plonker! A couple of weeks ago he tried to get rid of the ox and the ass from the nativity stable/cave (a mother-earth symbol handily modified by Christians, so a completely false image, anyway), and then he tops even that bit of publicity-mongering by becoming a Twit—er, sorry, a Twitter—and having his own spot on Twitter. Perhaps he will now issue a Papal Ban, renaming himself Pope Benetwit. The chap couldn't even touch the button on the screen of the iPad he was using to initiate his great adventure into cyberworld, so just how much actual input he will have in "his" messages is anyone's guess. Still, the blind faithful will believe that every message is from his own shaky, yet holy hands and directed directly at them. And they will live in the certainty that when their time comes, Saint Tweeter will be waiting for them at the pearly Bill Gates.

God, I'm glad I'm an atheist.

What a crazy world.

Amen to that.

Unstapled and unplugged

We went to the hospital this morning.

The remaining staples were removed from the incisions of the operation and blood was taken for laboratory analysis. All seems to be going well with the incisions, though they remain painful and irritating. We shall have to wait until next week for the results of the analysis, of course.

I did not think that the recovery would take so long or be so uncomfortable. I remain very tired in the afternoons and evenings and still have quite a lot of pain.

While at the hospital, we took the opportunity to have our eyes checked. They should have been done over a month ago, but, of course, we had other things on our minds.

After that, we went to the cafeteria to enjoy a light breakfast (had to be without food or drink earlier for the blood to be taken): freshly pressed orange-juice, tostada de tomate rallado con aceite de oliva y queso, and coffee.

Arriving back at the car, Elise tried to start it and got nothing at all: flat battery. In her hurry to get to me after having dropped me at the hospital entrance some three hours earlier, she'd forgotten to turn off the headlights after having parked the car. Fortunately, this sort of thing is covered by our car insurance, so a quick call to Mapfre had the problem sorted out within half an hour. An excellent service, if you ask me.