REFRESHED or NOT

To sleep, perchance to dream; no that’s not it, I dream that I may once again experience a sense of refreshment from my sleep. I have, quite simply, lost track of how many months, or even years, have passed since I last remember having felt really refreshed after a night’s sleep. The one thing that’s for certain is that I now require at least eleven hours of bed rest per night just to function quite modestly.

What has brought this state of affairs to a head is the (apparent) payback I’ve experienced the past couple of days, a result of having an early appointment at the local hospital on Monday morning. By early, I’m talking a 9.20 appointment which incurred my curtailing my bed-rest by just over two hours; that experience may, perhaps, demonstrate that I do in fact receive a certain amount of refreshment from my normal extended bed rest, hence the payback yesterday and today.

Yesterday was the first time, for a while, that I was totally unable to tackle the short evening walk with Piper; a sudden onset giddiness alongside unsupportive (de-boned sensation) lower limbs. Today, I started the evening walk but was suddenly overwhelmed by a sense of breathlessness / gasping for breath accompanied by a not unfamiliar discomfort in the upper abdomen, alongside a bruised tenderness in the armpits (axillary lymph nodes).

Apart from the sleep deprivation (early appointment), the hospital visit went well; I saw consultant, went for X-Ray, saw consultant again and, in spite of having heard an apology for delay in the clinic, was back on the road home, with ma belle chauffeuse, within 80 minutes of the clinic appointment time. I now await an appointment for an arthroscopy of the right knee.

The excitedly enthusiastic welcome home from Piper, our delightful hound, was overwhelming; he re-acted as if he’d missed the pair of us (ma belle et moi) for at least a couple of weeks. Of course my excursions away from the immediate vicinity of the homestead are quite rare occurrences so, the simultaneous absence of both his people may prove a little unsettling for our boy Piper.