Back to June 16--London

 This was written in a notebook as a way of passing the time lying in a hospital bed on June 16.

"I am in a private room in the King Edward VII. Hospital. I have been here since about 1.00 pm. During that time I was wheeled into the operating room, heavily sedated, and my 'Pain Consultant'--one Dr. Tom Gilkes--performed a couple of injections, the aim of which was to get rid of the excruciating pain I had been suffering over the last two weeks.

It took some time for me to come round. Slowly I returned to compos mentis, and then I was served a splendid 'post op' meal: thick tomato soup , roll and butter, roast beef salad, followed by mango-sorbet, which I shared with Joan.

The room here is palatial, with a huge en-suite bathroom. It is equipped with two beds, but I am the only patient."

I might note that the injections gave me no relief at all.

Tuesday July 18

 A short entry--just for the record. 

I went to see my 'regular' doctor today for my six-month check-up. Heart and lungs fine..EKG was OK. I just have to hold my breath until Friday, when I am to call the doctor to hear results of the blood test. And the only thing I might have to be concerned about is diabetes. I believe I have been a bit careless about my sugar intake. Too many biscuits, perhaps. And a few other things--some non-sugar-free-candies, KitKats--irresistible, some non-sugar-free jam...

Well, we will see.

Joan just come back in from a brief evening walk..not content with a run this morning, and swimming laps in the afternoon. For a lady who had her seventieth birthday yesterday, it is pretty astounding.

We continue to have guests using Apt. 1503. They will be leaving on Thursday morning.

I will be going to the physiotherapist for my first session tomorrow.

Monday July 17th

I went to see the orthopedic surgeon today, and it is clear she wants to try modest methods of sorting out my sciatica. So I am on a six day regime of anti-inflammation pills, and I am to book physiotherapy sessions...how many, I am not sure. And if these approaches fail, I will need to have another MRI, unless--somehow--I can get the images taken in London e-mailed to me here.

Otherwise, not much has happened since we have been back here in Washington...reacquainted with old friends, scrapped ninety-nine percent of the mail that came when we were away--started on the huge backlog of New Yorkers, New York Reviews of Books, and London Reviews of Books, and added chess puzzles to my catalog of time-wasters during the day.

Washington is very hot and humid...not very encouraging to go out for walks--which I cannot do anyway. We walked a couple of hundred yards to a restaurant on Saturday night, and I was struggling on the way back.

Tomorrow I have an appointment with my regular doctor. I see him very six months or so. I just hope his examination or the blood test don't come up with something more I need to be concerned about. As my Grandmother Stephens used to tell me--"David: it's no fun getting old." She lived to be 93, as did several of her brothers and sisters. She was, incidentally, the youngest of eleven children, and born when her mother was 48--apparently they kept at it in those days...

One of her brothers was shot dead in Denver, Colorado...how, why, when, I have no idea.

Her sister Winnie--Auntie Winnie--lived to see television--but she wouldn't watch it...supposedly it was the work of the Devil. She lived with her brother Arnold--also in his 'nineties--and he had a TV, but Winnie would sit in a chair facing away from it so as not to see the Devil's work.

Joan is happy to have access to the swimming pool, and she usually manages to do an unbelievable number of laps each day. I went once, but it seemed to exacerbate my condition.

Often, when going to the drug store down on Connecticut Avenue, there is a little Black lady with no legs, sitting in wheel chair. What sort of a society are we where a lady with no legs--both seemingly amputated above the knees--has to sit and beg?

And I could easily give her a hundred dollars and feel no adverse consequences whatsoever. So why do I give her only ten?

Friday July 14th

Just one sentence..last night was the most painful and most disturbed night I have had. But no more about sciatica, Dear Reader--you must be fed up with it.  Maybe after I have seen the doctor on Monday...

I am horrified by all the 'stuff' we have accumulated. Closets full of it. Hanger after hanger with clothes on them that we almost never wear. Two bikes covered in plastic leaning against the wall. I will never ride again, and Joan probably not--so get rid of them! But we don't. Filing cabinets full of papers that are almost all out of date. And then tschokes--all those pretty little things scattered around all over the place--yes, we chose them because we loved them--beautiful glass vases, paper weights, stoneware bottles from my old house in Essex, lovely things---but what is to happen to them all?

These thoughts occur to me now because we have recently given vague consideration to the possibility that we might move to another apartment--there is a particularly good location with great apartments just over the District line in Maryland. But when I look at how stuffed our two apartments are here in VNNC, I quail at how on earth we would sort out what we want to keep and what could be trashed, and how we would get rid of surplus furniture. Sell? How?

I am sure there are services that specialize in dealing with these problems, but still--the idea of organizing a move fills me with apprehension. Of course, Joan is the great logistician, and I am sure she would get on top of it--but still...what to keep and what to take would seem to me to pose terribly difficult problems.

But, I guess, we would just have to be ruthless...

That's an interesting word--derived from the noun 'ruth,' meaning a feeling of pity, distress, or grief, which in turn comes from 'rue'--as in "he rued the day he took the job."

Late afternoon--maybe a thunderstorm on the way...

Thursday July 13

We've been back now since Sunday, and my focus has been on my continuing struggle with the sciatica. I cannot walk very far without the pain kicking in at a distressing level. And so my days are rather like those in London...how to fill them?  The daily puzzles take up only a small fraction of the day. Tennis from Wimbledon also helps. But there is an overwhelming sense of boredom, not much relieved by a stack of New Yorkers to catch up on, not to mention numerous copies of The London Review of Books and The New York Review of Books. I subscribe to these 'sophisticated' magazines, and yet I often skip though an issue and find very little that I want to read--so often the books reviewed deal with the most esoteric subjects--I start reading an article and at some point I often ask myself, do I really want to read a review of a book dealing with, for example, some aspect of medieval governance in The Holy Roman Empire?

Last night, I had a new affliction visited upon me--as if the sciatica is not enough. I got a sharp pain in my neck when I turned my head to the right. It made it very difficult to find a pain-free position in which to sleep. That has always been a problem since the onset of the sciatica, but the neck problem made it much more difficult. So the night was, to say the least, somewhat disturbed, and I have felt very tired and sleepy today. I have used the hot water bottle and the thing we bought in London that we heat in the microwave to apply heat to my neck, and it does seem a bit better--fingers crossed.

It's 94F degrees outside, and the air-conditioning is blasting away. 

Joan has just delivered to me a cherry smoothie...wonderful...she is a great concocter of drinks.

One important thing I have to do is submit to Aetna the medical claims for the treatments I had in London--first the squamous cancer, and then the slew of stuff with the sciatica: doctors' visits, two hospital bills, and two physiotherapy bills. I have difficulty in facing up to getting this sorted out. Tomorrow....perhaps.

One landmark passed this week.  I have finished the book of 201 Daily Telegraph cryptic crossword puzzles. I started it on the 24th of September last year. When we were in London, Joan bought me a book of 200 London Times' crosswords, and I will start the first of those this evening.

When will I have something more interesting to write about--instead of this repeated tale of woe?

Footnote: I do not understand why in some of these blog entries there are a few words in the Very Large print. I have no idea what has caused this to occur. 

 

Tuesday July 11th

 A great deal has happened since the last entry...car to Heathrow at 8.00am on the Saturday. A bit of a struggle to get to the check-in--only to find that United's computers were down. A need for a longish walk to get to the men's room and back, though the legs worked. Once we were checked in, we had to walk to a wheel-chair marshaling area, where we waited for some time before our 'driver' arrived with the wheel-chair. Then off we went, with the first hurdle at Security, where all sorts of things had to be done--stuff taken from our toiletries and put in plastic bags, computer and I-pad taken out, jacket taken off....not an easy transit, but once we were through my 'driver' pushed me rapidly for what seemed like miles, with a couple of elevator trips--one down, one up--and left me at a stop for an electric vehicle, which took me to the United Polaris lounge--where I had some breakfast and a couple of hours peace and quiet, a few alcoholic drinks, and some reading--or was it crosswords? 

The wheel chair arrived to take me to the gate, and from there on all it took was about eight and a half hours to arrive in Washington, at Dulles Airport. Another wheel-chair, pushed by a youngish woman, who stayed with us through immigration and until we picked up our bags. The walk to the taxi rank was no particular problem, wheeling Joan's case, with its four wheels on the bottom.

And the cab home--surprisingly faced with an enormous back-up prior to the light where Canal Road swings over Chain bridge. Stop and go, stop and go...

And wonderful to be home...more tomorrow...

Friday July 7...in the morning

Another wretched night..pain kept me awake.. and it was so difficult to find a position to lie in without causing pain. Up several times to hobble to the bathroom, and then trying to find a comfortable sleeping position when I had hobbled back.

Struggled out of bed at about 7.45am--Joan was already out on her run. Breakfast, Spelling Bee, Wordle. Hot-water-bottle against my back. Settling down to another boring day. At least there is Wimbledon.

Joan--encouraged by me--has set out on a VOD to explore what has been done to the Battersea Power Station, which has apparently been converted into a huge shopping mall. ( Later she sent me some photos snapped on her phone. It looked very impressive.)

Now, standing here at the computer is giving me leg pain. I must move my Mac from the counter in the kitchen to the little round dining table, where I can sit down to type.

I think I will try massaging with the spiky ball...

Done--but, of course, no miracle occurs: don't suppose I am going to get a miracle, but I can hope that slowly, slowly the sciatica disappears.

But my mood is verging on depression. It all goes back to the start of my relationship with Joan, when I worried and worried that the age difference between us would result in her having to look after me in my old age--perhaps crippled, perhaps with dementia. And it took quite a bit of worrying about this before I committed myself to the relationship.

And here we are. She, fit and well, running a few miles each day, and often adding a few more miles in walks. And I, staggering around with a painful back that keeps me in the apartment day in day out. Have my fears eventually come to pass? Or will I break out of this depressing situation?

3.30 pm...Joan returned at about 2.00 pm., and she is now sitting opposite me at her computer, writing a judgement for the EBRD Tribunal, incorporating the comments of the other two judges on her initial draft.

I did win my chess game against the computer. Usually I lose because I make some silly move that loses me a major piece.

This is all for today.

Thursday July 6

 The main event of the day was the 11.00am appointment with the lovely Clare Spencer, the psysiotherapist. Whether or not she does much to solve my sciatica problem--well, who knows? I certainly enjoyed the back massage.

We went there by Uber, and--as usual--I was completely lost as to the way he took us. Unlike a cab, where one can always wonder if the cabbie is taking you the wrong way round and running up the meter, you pay a fixed price for the Uber, and the driver can take whatever route he wants. But today, after a ride down Bayswater Road past the Lancaster Gate Tube Station, I got hopelessly lost where we were until we turned into Wimpole Street and rolled up at number 66.

The bottom line from the lovely Clare was--it will all work out, and surgery should be the last thing you should think of--sciatica usually goes away "My Mother's partner is the same age as you: his symptoms were exactly the same as yours: and now he is back to his old self.

So back home--again the route was mysterious until we hit Bayswater Road close to Hyde Park Corner.

And then, for the rest of the day, the usual routine--doing the KenKen, a crossword puzzle, watching the tennis from Wimbledon, reading my library book, sitting with the hot-water bottle on my back, and massaging myself on the floor with the newly-acquired Spiky Massage Ball.

Later, I walked up to Holland Street and along to Horton Street before turning back. I required one 'shoelace' pause before getting back to Number 3.

And now doing this...which is time-consuming as I am a very slow and inaccurate two-finger typist.

Want to check the Murray/Tsisipas game.

Independence Day

    A long day...with visitors, and lots of TV tennis from Wimbledon. 

    Brian Martin and Peggy Lou paid us a visit, arriving by car at about 4-00pm. Brian--as usual--foppishly dressed, and she in a rather weird pants suit. Brian relating long stories and Peggy Lou talking nineteen to the dozen. 

    It was raining when they arrived--by car, and, of course, there was nowhere for them to park. Joan had to go with them and direct them to the public parking garage below the Library.

And so we had a couple of hours of chit chat, a glass or two of Prosecco, before they left at about 6.00pm. We had been eating much of the finger-food Joan had prepared, so we did without an evening meal.

So the evening dragged out a bit. We watched a couple of TV sitcoms that were mildly funny. I prepared a hot water bottle and kept it pressed against my lower back and the top of my thigh for about half an hour. Whether it does any good, I cannot say. It certainly feels good when I do it, but whether it has any lasting effect, who knows?

Joan has gone to bed..she falls asleep quite early, and I have come out into the main living room to kill a bit of time--I cannot get to sleep until closer to midnight.

I'm going to finish this tomorrow...

Wednesday...good night's sleep last night, but the general back/leg situation is still the same today. Joan had her Zoom call for an hour from 9 to 10, and I shut myself in the small bedroom and did Spelling Bee and Wordle. Strangely, I got to Genius without getting the pangram.

So I now face a long day until Joan gets back at about 5-00pm. God knows how I will fill it. There is Wimbledon tennis, but that doesn't start until 1.00 pm---heavy rain yesterday, and most matches postponed, and many from yesterday not yet finished.

3.30pm. 

I think a lot about my mother's life. Married in 1928, first  baby in 1929--John, and from then on a mother and a housekeeper, with additional children--Anne very shortly after John. Then, after a five year break, I was born in 1935, Rachel in 1937. So there we were, a family of six, which my mother had to feed each day, had to do the laundry by hand each week, hang it out on the clothesline to dry, make the beds, clean the house, feed the dog, do the grocery shopping, manage the housekeeping money that Father gave her each week And that went on with four children through the war to 1945, when John went off to do an apprenticeship at an engineering firm in Rugby. And so the workload for Mother decreased a little, but there were still five in the household until I left to go in the Navy in 1953. After that I am not sure of the timetable when Rachel went away to London with Alain, and Anne married Lawrie. But Mother's life was still mainly domestic. She and Father had no social life, took no holidays. They did travel to Germany for my marriage to Kinny, but I can think of no other travel or holidays away from home until Mother and Father came to the United States and spent time with me in Washington and Rachel in Dallas. And from then on, watching television, and looking after Father as he became increasingly sick, bedridden (with his bed brought downstairs), needing the nursing she provided, until he died.

Six months later, she had a stroke. In the hospital, Anne, Rachel, and I talked with the doctor, who told us something like, "We can keep her alive by extreme methods, but she will not recover in any meaningful way--she will be bedridden, unable to speak properly and she will probably not know anyone who visits her. Or we can let her quietly die now."

We agreed she should be allowed to quietly die now.

John arrived, and exploded at our decision--no way could we let her die, and he overruled us. She lived for six months longer, in exactly the condition the doctor had described.

A life mainly spent doing things for other people--her family.

Monday July 3...wandering on...

 I am standing up at the counter where we have all sort of messy papers, medicines, two computers, writing pads, pens, pencils, connectors for charging, and heaven knows what else. Phones being charged.

Joan is in the middle of sorting out the evening meal. The TV is on mute, broadcasting the Wimbledon tennis.

Today, for me, has been just like the others. A slow start, but not so cramped up as I have been on earlier days...is there an improvement? Not sure. From time to time I walk and walk around the apartment, but usually I have to stop as the pain increases. Two sessions of the hot water bottle against my lower back, and that does seem to do something for the pain. Hot water bottles bring back early childhood memories: my mother used to put our hot water bottles in our beds well before we went to bed, so that the beds were warm when we got into bed. We had no form of heating in our bedrooms at 23 Glenhurst.

I am now under orders to start doing the salad--my job for every meal, so I will have to pause this effort.

Back after the meal, and my other main duty--doing the washing up, while Joan dries. We have a dishwasher here, but we have so few dishes, it doesn't seem worthwhile to fire it up.

Tennis still on...Wimbledon is a huge event  here, and the BBC seems to have more or less constant coverage.

We seem to be in a mind-set now that focusses on our return to Washington...the car to Heathrow, the walk to the check-in desk--will the wheel-chair be there...will the bad weather in the US delay the incoming flight...Joan is a worrier and seems to be able to imagine the most outlandish scenarios that might affect us...(That's unkind, David).

I have a Cryptic Crossword Puzzle book with 200 crosswords in it. I see that I bought it on September 24, 2022. So I have had it for 280 days, and I have completed 189 puzzles. I will keep at least a couple to do on the 'plane going back.

Sunday July 2

I am sitting with my hot-water-bottle up against the small of my back: it does seem to provide some relief. The situation was bad last night when my leg suddenly seemed to get numb. It was still that way when I got up a couple of times in the night, and it continued to be bad this morning. Got better as the day went on.

Joan went off to Richmond to do one of her favorite walks along the Thames, from Kingston-on-Thames back to Richmond. She got the Tube to Richmond, and a bus from there to Kingston to start the walk. She was back here around 2.30pm, and she is standing at her computer, busying herself with something. 

Classic FM playing some dorky music in the background.

Inspiration fails me today, although I am still brooding somewhat on the breakdown of my marriage to Eudoxia. Strangely my memories about marital discord are negligible, and what I do remember from those years seems to revolve around John's progress from the school at the Cathedral (I forget the name) to Sidwell Friends, and then on to a boarding school in New Hampshire, and finally back to Washington and graduation from Walt Whitman in Bethesda.

Saturday July 1

    My confinement to the apartment means that I am often at a loss as to what day it is. But as I type in a title to each blog, I only have to look at the top right hand corner of my computer screen to see the day and the date. Often the day surprises me...I thought it was the day before or  the day after....

    No sign of any back improvement today. As I sit here, I have--if not pain--at least discomfort, which from time to time as I move around on my seat sometimes becomes pain. If you see what I mean...

    Back to life story...lots of visits to Greece...Eudoxia's mother lived with us for a year. My parents visited us en-route to Dallas to see Rachel. I had picked them up in my Beetle at Kennedy Airport and driven them down to Washington. I am not sure that I would have the inclination now to drive from Washington to Kennedy Airport to meet anyone. 

    I do not recollect marital tensions in those early years. I think these all started to come to the fore as John got older. Perhaps differences in how to deal with a child began to surface and became more pronounced, creating strife and arguments. Increasingly I thought about divorce, but the idea of contesting custody of John was too daunting. I thought I would lose--I understood the courts were very biased towards mothers getting custody, and I seriously felt that John could get very screwed up if he lived with her as a sole parent.

To be continued...