There has been a very light mist since I first peaked out the window at about 6.30am. Only one hour of mist is shown in the forecast, and it has been moved to 10am in the latest revision. That revision has added a few more hours with dark grey clouds, and also it now shows 4 and 5pm as light rain. It may now take until 3pm for the temperature to reach 10° C.
Tomorrow will be a dull day, although only a few hours may feature dark grey clouds. Most cloud should be/could be white cloud, and it won't thin enough to let any sun through until possibly just before sunset. It may only reach 9° C tomorrow.

    Today is a special day because it is a return to this blog, or diary, or whatever this scribble is, after a few days "holiday" in Lewisham Hospital. As I wrote on my previous entry on Sunday 3rd March, I was going to do one more blood pressure test, and if it was high I was going to take a walk along to Lewisham Hospital. That is exactly what happened.
  The good thing about heart problems is that they are taken very seriously but the emergency department because they can be life threatening. At first I was fast tracked through to the diagnosis room, and as usual with almost any visit to A&E I had a canula fitted, and it was soon used to take a couple of blood samples. They were looking for one particular enzyme in my blood that is formed by the breakdown of heart tissue. The test takes a few hours, and that meant a wait.
  A fair bit of time had passed when I took this selfie of me wearing a hospital gown (but still wearing my jeans and shoes) as I waited in one of the cubicles for a doctor to have a chat about my symptoms, and also to be hooked up to a heart monitoring machine. Like for most of my stay in hospital, I still felt fairly cheerful. Notice the fashion accessory - an earing (actually an oximeter clipped to my earlobe).
  This photo said it was taken at 9.37pm, but the time on the monitoring machine says it was 9.03pm. Whichever time was correct it was still a long time after I had walked through the park in the early afternoon to get to the hospital. I have just noticed, by zooming in on the original high definition picture, that I seemed to have been hooked up to the machine at 4.39pm. Some stress would make my blood pressure a little higher, but the systolic pressure shown on the screen, 190, is still very high.
  Once again there is a discrepancy between the apparent time stamp on my photo, and the time displayed on the heart monitor machine. I think I had been given a big dose of Aspirin before I took this snap. It shows my blood pressure down to 149/77. One of my GP doctors said not to worry about any reading under 140, and by this time my blood pressure had come down to 149. That is still very high, but getting safer.
  Before being sent up to a ward, or actually taken up on a trolley, to Chestnut Ward, bed 39, I had the obligatory wrist band put on. I shall keep it as a souvenir, and, maybe jokingly, in case it matches the colour of a wrist band to go back stage at a gig !
  Once on the ward, and settled in, I tried to get some sleep, but I barely got 10 minutes sleep. It was very noisy on the ward on both nights I stayed in hospital. There were only 4 beds in the section of Chestnut ward, but everyone was hooked up to a heart monitoring machine, and the bleeped away through the night. One shift of nurses talked and joked with each other quite loudly just outside the still open doors to the ward, and there were a couple of the patients. Both were almost senile (I think I was the youngest of them all), and they made a racket at times.

  One man, who was in a very bad way, was suffering from bleeding in the intestines, and I think he shitted the bed three times while I was there, and was also copiously sick once. Another man was probably just disorientated, and scared, and he called out mostly nonsense, very loudly on his first night there (he came in shortly after I had arrived). He was also prone to screaming every time a doctor or a nurse tried to move him in certain ways, or tried to take blood samples.

  The picture above was my breakfast for both mornings I was there. It was brown bread toast. It sort of tasted like wholemeal bread, but I am not so sure it was not low/zero sugar as good wholemeal bread should be. Although it was not of any concern of the nurses or doctors, I was concerned about the blood glucose readings I was getting at the time. Some were very high, but those taken hours before breakfast could be reasonably low.
  I was lucky enough to catch a snap of my lowest, and really good blood pressure reading 110/60. This was after some quiet rest, and after some drugs. I was, at last, back to the typical readings I was getting through all February (and previous months). Most drugs were pills, but I was also being injected in the belly with a blood thinning drug/anticoagulant called Heparin. I think it is the same drug that is prescribed for those prone to deep vein thrombosis on long plane flights. They have to inject themselves a few hours before boarding the plane. It seemed to have a positive effect, although the injection site could sting for a few minutes.

  On both days I had toast for breakfast, as I noted above, but I skipped lunch. I was very aware of how high my blood glucose rose while I spent a week in hospital in 2019. I assumed it was because most of the food had too much sugar in it, plus the lack of exercise while laying on my back all day. I only had one dinner while I was in, and it is pictured on the left.

  It was described as beef casserole with a vegetable medley side.  It was quite small - that is a 9 inch plate (possibly even 8 inches), but it was surprisingly tasty. Maybe they substituted cheap horse meat for beef, or something. I ate this on Monday night, and had ordered something similar for Tuesday evening, but I was discharged before it could be served.

  One frustration during the last two days of my stay in hospital was the the cardiology department was obviously very busy. I had been admitted as a medical patient initially, but was soon handed over to Cardiology. The first time a cardiologist came to see me we only chatted for a short while before his pager went off. He apologised that he had to rush off, but would be back later.

  He did briefly put his head in to apologise for it being so late coming back, but also that he was still busy and had not forgotten me. I later found my case had been discussed within the cardiology department, and chaired by the senior cardiologist. Late on Tuesday morning I was visited by a nice Indian looking woman cardiologist (plus a seemingly subordinate man - possibly a trainee).

  She said they had concluded that my high blood pressure, and chest pains were caused by Angina, but the restricted artery was a different one to the ones replaced during my operation in 2013. They possibly hinted that this artery not allowing proper blood flow was not likely to be directly lethal. The thought that drug treatment would be good enough. The drug prescribed meant just a single pill extra to my morning dose of drugs.
  Another of my discretely taken photos on my last afternoon in the hospital. Joana was head nurse, and she was a really nice person. She looked like she may have had Chinese ancestry, and maybe why she dealt with the very old patients so well. Although very busy she was happy to spend a minute or two answering some of my questions - even ones not directly related to my case.
  I was lucky that I was completely mobile in hospital. Having done it before on my last two stays in hospital, I insisted on being shown how to disconnect myself from the heart monitor machine when ever I wanted to leave my bed to take a look out of the window, and to go to the toilet. There are quick disconnect plugs to the machine, and it is all very quick and simple to release yourself.

  Sometimes I went to the toilet just to stretch my legs, but I also seemed to be peeing a lot, even for a time when my careful eating reduced my blood glucose down to safe levels (albeit not for very long). In most modern hospitals the toilet is combined with a shower. I have heard that those suffering from painful piles can hop off the toilet after use, and then shower instead of using toilet paper !
  Getting out of hospital is far harder than getting in, and since last time it is more like (I imagine) getting released from a high security prison. It meant going through at least half a dozen security card opened locked doors. Finally I was out, carrying my rucksack with all the useful stuff I had taken with me to the hospital, but also a box of my new drug to take.

  My ward was in the Riverside building. From the outside it looks as if the inside should be very linear - basically large rooms either side of a long corridor - but it is all twists and turns inside, and what with all the security doors it is like trying to get out of a maze. It was shortly before sunset when I was back out in the fresh air, and there was enough light to take a slightly low contrast of the main entrance of the building - that I never used - there are connections with the other hospital buildings, including the sinister feeling discharge lounge.

  It was a nice feeling to be free, and I set out at a brisk walk through the park to home. I kept up a pretty fair pace most of the time, but I did stop for a few seconds for a breather at a convenient place to watch the river for 10 or 15 seconds. I did have some chest pain, but it was not all that strong, and it didn't feel like Angina pain. I think it was just the cold (maybe 10° C) air causing trouble, although after the hot feeling hospital it was nice to cool off by leaving my coat undone.

  As soon as I got home I put my dinner in the oven for a long reheating. It was half a chicken carcass that I had sealed in a bag, and put in the fridge after using half of it for a meal before I went into hospital. After a few days in the fridge I hoped it had not grown any harmful bacteria, but I seemed to get away with eating it.

  With dinner in the oven I went up to my bedroom, and I think before I had even stopped to take my shoes off, I checked my blood pressure. The readings are shown in the picture on the left. I thought a systolic pressure of 114 was exceedingly good after a brisk 15 to 17 minute walk (I didn't actually time it, and relied on measurements takes ages ago).


  Once I had got the heater on, and changed to indoor clothing, I had a chance to look at the box of pills I had been prescribed. Their name is Relosorb XL, and I am to take half a pill every morning. They work in a similar way to Viagra pills by relaxing the arteries, and allowing better blood flow.

 It does look like I may have drawn the short straw with these pills. I was not told by anyone in the hospital, but the small print of the leaflet in the box warns against drinking alcohol while taking them, with warnings of possible dizzyness or light-headed feelings when moving fast after drinking. I shall have the chance to test this this afternoon.


  Stuffing my face with double roasted chicken, and nothing else other than some mayo and a sprinkle of "Italian herbs", was very enjoyable. It was not a healthy meal, but it should have been almost sugar free. Before and after eating I spent transferring the pictures from my phone and editing them. Then I caught up with emails and the like. I felt really tired, and was looking forward to my own bed. It was later than expected, around 9pm I think, before I was in bed.

   It didn't seem to take much time before I was fast asleep, and I slept like a log. I barely remember it, but I think I woke up twice in the main part of the night to go for a pee and to adjust the heater. I forced myself to try and sleep a bit later, and it was about 7.10am when I got up. One of the first things I did once out of bed was to take screenshots of the weather forecast, and then I checked my blood pressure. I expected it to be high so soon after getting out of bed, but it was similar to the figures after got soon after getting home from the hospital.

  While my blood pressure was very good, my blood glucose was very bad. My three meters read 9.9, 9.2 and 9.7mmol/l. I wouldn't mind if I had eaten anything known to have a lot of sugar in it, and I hadn't eaten much of anything. The proof of that was when I got on the scales this morning. It seems I lost about 2kg since I last weighed myself here. As a diet it has worked really well, maybe magnificently well considering I spent a couple of days mostly on my back. I guess it is just hospital trauma like last time. On that occasion, 2019, my blood glucose was so high I was booked to see the hospital diabetic nurse, but by the time the appointment came through everything was back to normal. In fact my blood glucose control was so good that the nurse said my last two months of readings, downloaded from my own blood glucose meter indicated I was more like being in a pre-diabetic condition, rather than full diabetic.

  Today I still feel very slightly groggy despite getting some good sleep, and I dread to think how bad my spelling and grammar is today, but at least it has improved after a few hours. My plans for today start very simple. I can't wait to wash my hair, and have a good scrub under the shower after not doing any more than washing my face just once in the hospital. After that I will get ready to go out.

  Despite warnings of the possible side effects, I will be drinking alcohol, namely Guinness, in The Jolly Farmers as usual on a Wednesday. The only fly in the ointment, but a good one, is that I think Kevin intends to meet me there. That means it will probably end up as a 4 pints session instead of a 2 pint session. Lets hope I don't fall down in the park this time !
     







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