Hot Easter!

O.K.! So which bright spark arranged for it to be hot on Easter Sunday?

So hot that the STUPID Easter bunny didn't realise that the chocolate would melt, and left one of the eggs in bright sunshine? Surely the person who organises the weather and the EB should be in communication with one another?

Clearly not.

Thankfully it was ESOS (Eldest Son, only son) whose egg was melted, and being fourteen he put it in the fridge and later enjoyed the molten mass that it resulted in.

Family feasts can of course often result in disappointment. On an Easter Sunday before I was born, when one of my brothers was two, he walked down the stairs, chocolate egg in hand (..............well, so I am told. It's a story of good family tradition. You know, the sort, where you have been told so often, you know it so well, you think that quite probably you were actually there after all.........), when the dog, a border collie, ran past, skillfully grabbing the egg on his way, leaving poor bereft two year old brother, somewhat distraught in his wake........ (I think he's got over it now, fifty years on.)

As a result we made sure that we kept our own border collie in the house for said hunt. She looked soulfully from the window at us all, only being allowed out once most of the hunt was done.

There is however - so the Easter Bunny tells us - one Creme Egg still in the garden. Waiting to be found. We always manage to lose one every year. Is EB actually a bit of a chocoholic, eating on his way round I ask?



I then decided to make a simnel cake, forgetting that only one child (Eldest Daughter) likes marzipan. I don't remember that being a problem last year. Perhaps it's because I love marzipan so ate most of it myself.

Never mind. Easter's nearly over.

Back to the diet...........

Again...........

A Real Housewife!

You SEE!!!

SOMETIMES I can be a real housewife.

Not always dependent on the lazy housewife's guide to survival.

AND I remembered the yeast!

The Consultant

What time is the appointment? Says Hubby.

"It's either ten to ten or ten past ten", I say.

Being the organised types that we are, we don't seem to be able to lay hands on the appointment letter at 9 a.m. in the morning, so hubby, in his efficient mode, decides that it's best to play safe and get there for ten to ten.

We scrape in by skin of our teeth, register and sit down. The appointment is of course ten past ten, but better to be early than late. The consultant hasn't arrived yet.

At five past ten a little girl and her mother arrive. I recognise them. The little girl has a broken arm, and they were talking to us in casualty on the night of my - and her - injury. We chat. "What time's your appointment?" I ask. "Ten o'clock."

At ten fifteen we see the consultant arrive.

Ten twenty five, the little girl is called in.

Ten forty, hubby goes to enquire when we might be being seen.

Ten forty and three seconds, just as hubby goes to enquire, I am called. Struggle to consulting room with two leg braces (one too big, for the five foot ten person, and the right one), two books, my handbag and crutches. Haven't been using the various bits of paraphernalia for quite a few days now, so have brought them back to the hospital in good Samaritan style.

Ten forty one, Hubby then re finds me and joins me in the consulting room.

Eleven o'clock, no consultant visible. We are feeling a bit impatient.

Eleven ten: Flash of light!

............Mr. Consultant finally makes an appearance.

(When they finally make a film of my blog, he will probably be played by a cool glamorous type of Hollywood actor. The very beautiful, but a little too cool type.)

Wrenches my leg in various directions and causes pain! Declares that the next stage is physiotherapy. Gives us a sheet to take to the cottage hospital in Ross on Wye, discusses the book in Hubby's hand, with hubby, comments, with amusement,that I am wearing a pink leg warmer on my knee, and .........."vroom"! Flash again .........

He's gone.

Eleven twenty we try to dispatch the crutches to Draconian Nurse. We are dispatched down to another department in the depths of the hospital where all such things are kept. We walk past a large cupboard full of crutches. I'm tempted to throw them in there, but we decide to be good sorts and take them back to where they should go...................

So, at eleven thirty, hop along and Hubby eventually find the right department.

We stand and wait..........

Eleven thirty five, we get to talk to someone.

"Are they your crutches then" says the lady at the counter.

"No says Hubby . They are yours. That's why we are returning them to you."

"Put them over there then".

"Don't you want to know where they have come from, so that you can check them back in?" I ask.

She looks confused.

Clearly this is beyond the scope of questioning normally allowed to patients.

Someone else comes to the desk. I explain that I want to return the crutches, and for them to know that I am returning the crutches, so that we are not sent a letter in a few weeks asking for the return of the crutches, or something. By now I am feeling a little flustered. I hand her my letter that the consultant has given me, so that she can see that I am a genuine patient and not just an actress or something, acting on the casualty set. Oh yes, maybe they saw me coming.

Finally dispatch crutches and make our way back to the car.

Get back to the car at quarter to twelve. Drive to Ross on Wye to make an appointment to see the Physio.

Walk in to the hospital. See sensible person immediately. Have appointment organised within two minutes. Will have to wait two weeks for the appointment, but we are so shocked by the efficiency of the cottage hospital that we are bowled over, and don't mind waiting two weeks for the actual appointment....................

Still............. at least we were able to advise the consultant on which book he should read next.

Brown

To blog or not to blog. That is the question.

When things are getting you down a bit, it's easy to bury your head in the sand and pretend that it isn't happening. To forget to do the things that normally keep you on an even keel and to just be you.

The alternative is of course to write about all things and people that are currently annoying you. That can be very cathartic, and is wholly recommended. Usually.....

Unfortunately though, in my case, unlike you clever people who decided that blogging with an air of anonymity would be the way to go about things, I decided to go all out for five minutes of fame, and wrote in my real name from the beginning. It means that now, if you type Sally Lomax into Google, you cannot help but come across my blog.

This is great.

I have fame.

Well fame that is if you count typing a name into Google and it coming up with you. It's a sort of fame. It's not Marilyn Monroe, Posh Spice or Claudia Schiffer type of fame. But it is unmistakeably, unavoidably NOT anonymous.

And this is great.

Because it's sort of what I wanted.

Until that is, when someone says to you, that to blog about what you like, and who you like, isn't ethical.

That can sort of throw a BIG spanner in the works.

That is NOT so great......

Suddenly, your cathartic little way of getting round all things bad and negative in life is not available. Suddenly you think that everyone is reading you, (a relative word I know, because I keep a fairly close watch on my stats through the site metre), and everyone (in that very sort of small way) knows when you might happen to mention something, that MIGHT be something to do with them, which actually you would prefer that they hadn't read, about them that is, and although you actually wanted to say this thing, whatever it is, you sort of wished you had some other way of saying it, because you don't actually want the whole world to read about it here!

Sort of...........

And yet........ you sort of do want the whole world to know what you are thinking too........... at the same time. What has happened isn't fair perhaps, and people are being judgemental and harsh over things over which you have no control. You are not there to defend yourself, and no-one else has come forward to tell you that it's OK, they do support you, they are just however going to play the game and not let on that they support you. Instead, there is deadly silence.

You are left without any outside support. Your family love you, and tell you so. But of course, it's a bit like your Mum telling you that you are pretty when your first boyfriend has just chucked you. You sort of don't believe it, even though you should , because after all mothers know best. I know. I am a mother.

But in the meantime, all I can say is that it has sort of gone wrong recently. Ever since falling off a stage. I seem have fallen from grace from people who I thought were friends. And without mentioning anything too specific, it's all to do with the fact that I wrote a blog about falling off the stage, and then told lots of people who I hadn't previously told that I write a blog, that I had written a blog. The result was plenty of publicity. And the problem was that I didn't let other people who might have been affected by such publicity, know that I was going to write about that particular subject and let lots of other people know, in advance. Of course, I personally didn't see the need to ask permission to write about it, when I had been writing my blog openly for the last six months.

So I didn't ask permission....

And I did write.

And now, on a Monday evening when maybe I should be writing something funny and clever about dresses for Chris's "Fun Monday". Dresses that I may have worn, loved, cast aside. I am instead writing about being dropped from on high. And not just onto my knee.

So, on clothes, I feel as if I am lying in an outfit that I once bought when I was pregnant. I always managed to buy at least one strange outfit, every time I was pregnant. This particular time I bought a brown sleeveless jacket and long brown skirt. I hate brown. Probably because I was forced into it at school. It's the one colour that always made me feel ill, and, after buying brown in the early stages of pregnancy that time, it made me feel even iller. I still associate the colour brown with morning sickness............

Think brown. Think Pavlov. Think sick.

I think that right now that is how I feel.

Brown.

Fracture Clinic

"So where does it hurt exactly?" says the consultant.

We have been sent to the fracture clinic. "But there's nothing broken. We know that from the X-ray", I say to Hubby. But the fracture clinic it is - because it is an easier word for people to remember than the Orthopaedic Department.

It's a bit like when I was having babies in hospitals. One set of paediatricians used to refer to themselves as "paed's" apparently. One paediatrcian who visited us, told us a story that he thought very funny, when one woman, clearly a little post maternal, had been asking to see "Pete". It had taken the staff a little while to sort out the confusion. I think that now they refer to themselves as children's doctors.

"It's my knee." I say, earnestly.

He looks at the mad woman who has fallen off a stage in a very kind, very nice but ever so slightly patronising way. He gives the sort of look that you might give to a slightly helpless and dumb animal.........

"Yes", he says. I think that we have established that.

Just then, the phone rings. A mobile. I panic and think of all the notices around the hospital asking you to switch off your mobile phone. Did I switch mine off I think? Or is it Hubby's?

No, it's o.k. it's the consultant's mobile phone.

His bank manager or someone needs to speak to him about pressing matters.

At least it wasn't my phone that sent the heart monitors flying. Phew!

"You need complete rest." He decrees. "And this thing isn't doing any good at all." He is referring to the stocking that they provided me with in Casualty on THAT Saturday night.

Instead, he rolls out draconian nurse to place leg brace on said knee.

After much huffing and puffing, she finally manages to get on said leg brace. It looks like a sort of blue corset for the leg, pulled together by Velcro. Very nice!

The only problem is that it goes right into my crotch as I stand up.

"Is this the right size," I ask?

"Oh yes" she says. "They are big and uncomfortable." I look at hubby. He looks back at DN. Surely not? We eventually persuade her that perhaps the next size down MIGHT be a little more comfortable.

More huffing and puffing and a smaller leg brace - still very big though - is produced, and put on.

I get sent round to x-ray to make an appointment for an MRI scan. Unfortunately it is a wild goose chase. Contrary to what had been believed in the fracture clinic, appointments can't be made on the spot and so I huff and puff all the way back, on my crutches, back to the front of the hospital again with the VERY large, but slightly less large than the last one, leg brace.

We get into the car.

"Have we got the instructions for this leg brace?" I say to Hubby.

No evidence of any. So off he goes, back into the hospital and claims a new set of instructions. I read them avidly. With a cocktail of analgesics affecting your brain powers, it's amazing what you find interesting.

"This leg brace is for someone of 5'10"!" I say. Slightly on the large side for someone not quite 5'3".

Hubby turns the car round. Goes back into the hospital AGAIN. Negotiates with DN. She isn't happy. Apparently they are sized according to leg width as well as length. Hubby, who a scientist and so very good at understanding things like measurements, points out that all the lengths come in different widths, so there is one designed for my, clearly very wide, but very short, leg.

He comes back to the car triumphant.

I get home and realise that I haven't asked the consultant any of the questions that I wanted to ask.

So I call. Trouble is, that I don't have his mobile number like the bank manager, so unfortunately his secretary is unable to help.

Never mind.........

Thank goodness for common sense in the place of six years at med school!