a little p e m goes an awfully long way - and I just wish it would stay there!

The mood of thankfulness and rejoicing soured a little, come early evening. On a note of bubbly confidence I suggested, much to ma belle's surprise, that I might join her on the grocery shopping expedition; that was a mistake. No sooner had we stepped inside the store than a rather generalized sense of queasiness overwhelmed me; first thought was that it may be a panic attack but, my efforts to take slow deep breaths made little difference, the discomfort was of a distinctively physical nature and that's when my awareness that there is not a public loo in Waitrose was re-awakened. So home it was, a rather weepy - almost self-pitying - Malcolm headed back to the car to be chauffered home. I suspect that post-exertional malaise, in response to the previous days activity had finally kicked in. Shattered exhaustion, a feeling that my ribs had undergone a kicking - a deeply bruised sensation apparently emanating from inside the rib cage, and haphazardly spasmodic contractions of the calf muscles served to refocus my attention away from the earlier contentment to an obsessive awareness of my own discomfort.

By 9.30pm, a sense of excruciating tiredness left me with no other option than to ascend the wooden stairs. Things then took a turn for the worse, as a nauseating discomfort in both upper and lower limbs militated against the possibility of finding any posture that proved conducive to sleep. First I applied wrist splints to counter the intensely painful aching void which seemed to have taken over the position normally occupied by radius and ulnar. The attempted relief led to a further numbingly tingling sensation that on previous occasions it had served to relieve. A couple of hours passed applying and releasing wrist supports, all to little or no avail. By this time an aching tenderness emanating from (the glands in) the armpits necessitated the removal of my pyjama jacket. Sometime post-midnight I was able to grasp a few hours of intermittent sleep but my emergence into the new day was somewhat marred by a gut-wrenchingly painful sustained bout of diaorrhea.

As the day went on I began to feel somewhat more comfortable and, this afternoon, managed a little trip down to Brookside Nurseries before delighting in a little light pottering around in the garden.