And so it goes on in The View from the Terrace

It’s over 3 weeks since my last entry and I haven’t kept up with reading either for which I apologise. I went to my appointment about my toenail on the 31st October and the news was good. They looked at it through a special instrument and said that there is no sign of discolouration on the toe itself, just the nail, so it is not a melanoma. The nurse I saw was very nice. She said she quite understood why I was concerned and, with the naked eye, it did look worrying. She didn’t make me feel I was wasting NHS money by insisting on a referral as my GP had. My GP had also told me that they wouldn’t be able to tell me any more without removing the nail and that wasn’t true as they had a special instrument to look through. I am glad I stood my ground. I found a different treatment on the internet. You soften the nail with a special ointment and then scrape the fungus off the next day. You have to do this for up to 3 weeks. Once all of the fungus has been removed you can treat the nail with cream. I have definitely seen a big improvement. If I had found that before I wouldn’t have asked for a referral. I told the nurse about it and she was interested and looked it up. It was mentioned in their letter to my GP of which they sent me a copy. I hope the GP isn’t angry with me for proving that taking the tablets was not necessary. Some doctors can be pompous, hating you to find something they didn’t know about. Many years ago when I had post natal depression I was prescribed anti depressants but the side effects were awful and quite dangerous as they made me dizzy and I almost passed out. I refused to take them as I was going to be alone with the baby all day. I researched other things (in the library in those days) and found a doctor in London who treated her depressed new mums with progesterone. I asked my doctor for it but he didn’t think it would work so I wrote to the London doctor and took her reply to my GP. He agreed to prescribe the progesterone and it began to work within hours. When I saw the doctor again he said, ‘If you believe it is helping I will prescribe it as it can do no harm.’ He said it as though it was all in my mind, so pompous. It angers me that progesterone is still hardly ever used to treat post natal depression because it worked for me and with no side effects. At least my current GP can’t say the improvement in my toe nail is in my mind!

After my appointment I was feeling relieved, my tooth had also begun to settle and I thought maybe at last I can get back to normal life. Then Hubby caught man flu, definitely not a cold but man flu as he was so ill that all he was able to do was sit in the armchair and watch telly. He usually does the cooking so l had to take that over, I would have anyway as I didn’t want to catch what he had. That was fine on my well days but on my ill days we had ready meals. In spite of my efforts I did catch a cold but it can’t have been what Hubby had as I was ill for 2 days where he was ill for almost a week and much worse than me. He couldn’t do anything, except that he did manage his choir practise and his art group.

In the middle of all of that I was in the kitchen when I heard an ominous noise, a rat had got in. It turned out that when Hubby plumbed in the washing machine he had left a gap around the outlet pipe. There was also another small hole, goodness knows what that was for. He has this way of starting jobs and not finishing them and then forgetting all about them. I didn’t know about the holes as they were behind the appliances. Hubby was too ill to concrete these holes so he stuffed them with stones and we hoped for the best. All was OK for a day or two but then I found a drawer that had been left open had droppings in it and also 2 of the cupboards. Fortunately by then the man flu was almost gone and Hubby concreted the holes. He had to clean out the cupboards too as I can’t get down any more with my knees. I spent the next 2 days washing everything that had been in the cupboards and the drawer and so far so good, it hasn’t got back in.

Then on Monday the kitchen door fell apart. It has been dodgy for some time. Hubby had put on a second hand one from the sales to replace the previous one which he had also put on a few years ago to replace the one before that. Hubby is not good at DIY and it obviously needed a new frame, but he kept patching it up. On Monday the patching up finally collapsed so we now have the broken door jammed into the doorway and hope that will keep the house secure until we can get it done. Tony and I have managed to convince Hubby that we have to pay a professional joiner. Yesterday Hubby found a replacement door at a reclamation yard, we can’t buy a new one because our cottage is old and the new ones don’t fit the doorway. Now we have to find a joiner. I do hope nothing else goes wrong before Christmas as that and the door are enough to cope with.

On a brighter note we had a lovely outing to the Everyman Theatre in Cheltenham last Saturday to see Beyond the Barricade. They are a musical group who sing songs from popular musicals. They did songs from most of my favourites, West Side Story, Jesus Christ Superstar, Phantom of the Opera, Les Miserables and even one from Mamma Mia. They also did several from Miss Saigon which I have never seen but now really want to see, that longed for few days in London seems to be turning into a week.

I now have a few days clear before Sunday when we have a folk club followed by another on Tuesday and then a trip to Coventry to our John Denver group the following weekend. Perhaps I will manage to get out into the garden to tidy it up and even plant the rest of my bulbs before the really cold weather arrives.