GP Visit
Posted: Wed 23 July, 2008 Filed under: Domestic, Health Leave a comment »Over the last month, I’ve had a really irritating cough – not a chesty cough at all, but more of a persistent tickle at the back of my throat. It’s mainly kicked in when I’ve been talking, and has made me cough each time I spoke.
So last Friday I finally got round to making an appointment to see the doctor. They couldn’t see me until today, which was fine as I was working away from home for Monday and Tuesday.
And of course the cough, after a month of hanging around, completely cleared up between Monday and Tuesday. Typi-fucking-cal.
I still went to the docs, as there were a couple of other bits I needed to ask about, so it wasn’t a complete waste of time. Just pretty much a waste of time. Hey Ho.
On the plus side, at least I now know who my doctor is…
Bad Timing
Posted: Tue 24 June, 2008 Filed under: Domestic, Health, Travel, Weirdness 3 Comments »I’ve decided that I hate my body clock. Or my body clock hates me – I’m not quite sure which, yet.
Last night, at about 7pm I was exhausted, and had totally hit the barrier. I was speaking to Herself, and must’ve sounded like a stunned monkey, really not with it at all. At that time, I was all set for an earlyish night, as it’d been a fairly hectic day.
That’s not what my body clock wanted though. Come ten pm, my brain went *ping!* and I was wide awake again. No caffeine, no sugar, nothing to stimulate it at all, but just *ping!*.
It didn’t slow down again ’til gone 1am. And I was awake again at about half six.
Bastard.
Cutting Out Diet Coke
Posted: Wed 11 June, 2008 Filed under: Depression, Health 3 Comments »I promise, I’m not going to turn into some kind of anti-Diet-Coke evangelist now that I’ve cut it out myself. Honest.
However, I did notice today via Bitful a couple of interesting articles…
- A short piece from the Guardian of a committed dietcokeaholic (hmm, can’t identify with that at all) who cut out fizzy drinks for a month – he felt so good from that, he hasn’t gone back to them yet
- Coca-Cola is phasing out a controversial additive that has been linked to damage to DNA and hyperactivity in children. (It’s a link to the Daily Mail <spit> I’m afraid, but there we go – they’re who had the story
- A story in the Ecologist : “Far from being the healthy drink implied by its sports sponsorships, Diet Coke is a worrying cocktail of neurotoxic and potentially carcinogenic chemicals”
So there we go, more grist for the mill of stopping (and not going back to) drinking Diet Coke®.
Lowered Resistance
Posted: Fri 16 May, 2008 Filed under: Domestic, Health 3 Comments »Following on from the dread puking lurgie a couple of weeks back, I suspect that my resistance to illness has fallen somewhat. I’m not completely sure why, but it sure seems to have happened.
This week I’ve been plagued by a sore throat and cough that just keeps getting worse. It’s not rib-rattling (yet) but I’ve also seen the effect it’s had on a colleague (who I suspect I’ve caught it through – the joys of working in an office that sometimes seems to resemble a plague-ward on a bad day) who is most definitely on the rib-rattling stage.
I’ll see how it goes over the weekend – I’m not debilitated by the cough (at the moment) although it’s making sleep rough. (Not helped by the fact that Psycho Cat followed me into the spare bedroom last night, and still spent the night wrapped round my feet.) Not much fun, but there we go.
And once I’ve knocked this one on the head, I suspect I’ll be making sure I take all my vitamins, and make sure that Vitamin C in particular is kept a bit higher than usual, just to build up some resistance to these things again.
Mains Restored?
Posted: Tue 6 May, 2008 Filed under: Customer Services, Cynicism, Domestic, Health, Thoughts 2 Comments »It’s possible that today we will be finally re-allowed to use mains water for drinking and cooking. It’s not certain yet, because they’re doing ‘final’ tests today to decide. (Of course, if we still can’t, it won’t be final tests, but there we go)
We’ve been on bottled water since 17th April.
In that time, we’ve had a dropped off leaflet about why we couldn’t drink the water, and one letter – addressed to the previous occupants, who moved out at least eighteen months ago. And that’s it. It really hasn’t been Anglian Water‘s finest hour (three-and-a-half weeks. Whatever) in terms of customer service.
Any information that’s been acquired has been gained by us calling them. In fact, we wouldn’t know about today’s tests if I hadn’t spoken to Anglian Water‘s customer services people on Friday. And because they couldn’t be bothered to tell us, it would’ve meant that all the access to the back of the house (where there’s an outside tap they could use to test the water) would have been locked, so they couldn’t test our place.
We also took the opportunity to get them to deliver more bottled water to everyone on the road, as on Friday there were two six-packs of bottled water left on the pallet dumped on the roadside a couple of weeks ago. For a bank holiday weekend. As it is, I’ve been dropping off some of those six-packs of water to the older people on the road (and bear in mind that a good 50% of the people on our road are at least sixty) rather than them having to try lugging bloody heavy loads of water back to the house.
All told, it’s been a total farce from start to finish. And once we’re actually back on the mains service I’m going to be having a serious conversation with Anglian Water about why the hell it’s been such a fuckup. That’ll be a fun conversation, for sure.
Solid
Posted: Tue 6 May, 2008 Filed under: Health, Thoughts 3 Comments »Following on from a stomach bug (food poisoning, viral thing, whatever) there’s a stage in the recovery process that is a real throwback to childhood, but that has a joy all of its own – and far out of proportion with the actual import of the event.
That event is the first post-illness solid dump. There’s a true happiness about this, coupled with knowing that you can finally drop your guard a bit, and not worry that every single occasion involving that area is going to necessitate a run to the closest loo.
Or, to quote a friend…
Thought I was going to fart.
Was wrong.