Lockdown Diary - Monday 7th June 2021

Went for a walk just after the carer's first visit.  Back to get myself organised for yoga at 10.  Abbot nurse is supposed to be coming at 10:30 to change my wife's PEG, which will interrupt my yoga, but there you go.  

Just after the second set of carers arrive and as I'm setting up for yoga I discover a text from the Abbot nurse sent at 7:30.  Apparently the last feed and medication should be from then. Great planning on his part! I reply and say I hadn't seen the text until now (about 09:45), so he has to change his plans - we have to stop the feed now and flush the tube and he's now coming at midday.  Maybe he should have told me this last week when he made the appointment - then I could have coordinated all this with the carers!  On the plus side (for me) my yoga won't be interrupted.

Yoga is done - another good virtual session and next week it returns to being in real life yoga.  Just one problem, I've just realised that I am busy next Monday and can't attend, though I plan to the following week.

Around midday two community nurses arrived followed by the Abbot nurse. There all here to take part in the changing of my wife's PEG.  After all the legal stuff that I have to verbally accept - it's not quite an operation, but it is a procedure which comes with risk, the worst of which being my wife ends up in hospital - the process begins.  In the event one of the nurses asks if she can do it, and so removes the old PEG and inserts the new one (there are a lot more steps to the process than that) guided and overseen by the Abbot nurse.

After the process is completed and they've checked for leaks etc I'm told that we have to look out for signs of discomfort when feeding, fluid seepage or blood in or out of the tube for the next 24 hours. More things to look out for!

A chunk of the afternoon is taken up with all three sons visit to the hygienist with me as chauffeur.  Whilst waiting in the car sons 1 and 2 booked their first Covid vaccines with our GP and have appointments on Friday.  They still aren't doing the under 20s so son #3 will have to wait.

Book club this evening and we're going to be discussing 'The Alchemist' by Paulo Coelho. I have a feeling I am going to be the only one who didn't enjoy it (or to be more precise the only one who actively disliked it), but that's the way things go sometimes, I guess.

Well that was a very lively discussion about 'The Alchemist'!  Unusually we had three new members, two of them international - one in Paris and one in New York city. One other person didn't like the book, though perhaps not as much as me.  I expressed my dislike of the book and my perspective (which after all, is all it ever can be) which ended up taking in alchemy, the history of Magic(k) as well as contributions from across the pond about stoicism and daoism! More bedtime reading! Overall a very enjoyable evening, one of the best book club meetings of the Zoom era!

After that dinner, philosophy, the 'Rub'aiy'at of Omar Khayy'am' (extracts) and the beckoning arms of sleep, which can never come too soon.

Gaz Coombes / 'Vanishing Act' / 'World's Strongest Man'



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