I’m not allowed to lift much. I’m not allowed to turn my head much. I’m not in any pain, just discomfort. I feel rather drained, but other than that, I’m fine in myself.
I have a ton of jobs to do around the house, but I cannot do the mright now. I wanted to get out in the garden and get some stuff sorted out, but it will have to wait.
What can I do right now?
Well, I can sit here and write like this. I can read books, blogs, and magazines, and I have many of each, so no shortage there. I can take myself out for a walk. That’s fine as long as it’s not raining or too cold. I can listen to music. I can watch TV, which is my case will mostly be YouTube videos of interest. I can do some photography editing indoors, and if I go out for a walk, I can take my camera with me. I could walk to the pub for a couple of beers, as I’m not on any medication that would prevent it. At the moment, though, I’m not really feeling like that.
Right now, after I’ve posted this, I’m going to go get myself another mug of hot coffee.
So the day has finally arrived. I was told initially that I would have this operation last February. I was told this the previous August, so it’s a six-month wait.
Non-urgent operattions are often pushed back, which, although this can lead to extra discomfort, and perhaps a longer time in pain, have to give way to the life -theatening events.
The whole thing really goes back about ten years or more. I started getting a cough. Not all the time, but sometimes when sat down after walking about or other exercise, or after eating. Down theyears it got slowly but surely more persistent.
I went to my GP. As I have a history of Acid Reflux, he prescribed an extra dose of Omeprazole. That didn’t do any good, and I didn’t really want to be taking more Omeprazole, as there’s some evidence that long-term use of it isn’t always good, in any case.
In 2016, I had been diagnosed with Crohn’s disease. In 2023, I mentioned this cough to my gastroenterologist, as I know that Crohn’s can effect the digestive tract anywhere from the mouth to the anus. He didn’t think there was any evidence that it was Crohn’s causing the cough, and he referred me to ENT for investigation.
I was also referred to the Royal Marsden Hospital, which is the UK’s leading cancer centre, to check if the cough was due to anything malignant. I waited a little while to get the result, but it was returned negative.
Meanwhile, I had a CT scan in ENT, and then a further CT scan that found nodules on my thyroid. Many people over 50 have such nodules, but in my case the nodules were growing inwards and pushing against my osephagus and my gullet. This is what was cause the coughing and it was gradually getting worse as they grew.
I was referred to the thyroid team at St. Mary’s Hospital, and after further scans, I was offered an operation to remove the offending part of my thyroid. As i said above this was originally, scheduled for February 2025, but got pushed back. I would have had ot when it was rescheduled for August 2025, but as I unfortuately had a major DVT in May, it was felt that August was too soon afterwards. It is generally felt that at least a six month wait after such an event is prudent, and safer.
So, I was then offered the date of January 16th 2026. I had to go through a number of tests and appointments to determine I would be OK to have the procedure done. Everything was completely and clearly explained to me, and I was a reassured as I could be.
As the day approached, I felt rather apprehensive of course. How much pain would I be in afterwards? What if I had a bad reaction to the annesthetic? It turns out there was no realy reason to worry..
The pre-op care was excellent. The operation went well, and the post operative care has been very good too. Im in a room of just four beds.
It’s relatively quiet, and I have no complaints about the food either. I have to stay in until at least tomorrow for observation, after which, if all goes well, I will be allowed home
This time tomorrow, I could be under the knife. I will certainly be in hospital in any case.
I’ve had this annoying cough for some years now. Lingering coughs should be investigated, of course, and it was.
I had a CT scan, which revealed extra growth around my thyroid. Then I was sent to the Royal Marsden for a PET scan to determine if I had anything malignant, and after a worrying wait, the result was negative.
It seems I have thyroid nodules, which apparently many people over 50 get. Most people aren’t even aware of them, but mine have grown inwards, pressing on my oesophagus and windpipe. This causes me to cough when I sit down after walking, and also after eating.
It doesn’t appear to be getting any worse, but it’s not getting any better, and it can be quite embarrassing when in public. Coughing my guts up for ten minutes in a restaurant, or on public transport, certainly gets disapproving looks and people moving away from me on the bus or train, especially since the Covid-19 pandemic.
Hopefully, the operation to remove these nodules will cure the coughing, which can be quite tiring for me at times, even when on my own.
There are risks, of course. One is that my voice could be affected, and the worst-case scenario is that I could lose my voice altogether. Some would welcome that, methinks.
Today, I can eat and drink normally. I can even have water and black coffee as late as 6 am tomorrow, and it’s fortunate for me that I drink my coffee black these days!
Hopefully, the postoperative recovery won’t be too painful or take too long, and I’ll be back in the swing of things soon.
Perhaps I’ll take up singing if this cough is finally dispelled.
What’s that? You’d rather I lose my voice altogether?
It’s so civilised. Sunday morning, make coffee around 7-8 am. Take it back to bed. Use my iPad to do the grocery shopping at Morrisons. Get up and have breakfast. After breakfast, usually 2-3 hours after placing the order, the groceries arrive. Plenty of time to make dinner, with some of what I’ve ordered. No need to sit in traffic, hauling bags on and off buses, and standing in lines at supermarkets!
I grew these myself in the backyard, and they are delicious. Even my wife, who would almost always choose rice over potatoes, said so. I didn’t say anything at first, but she commented on how good they tasted, and it was only at that point that I told her they were from the garden and not those from the vegetable drawer in the refrigerator.
Now, I’m no gardener. I don’t have that green-fingered luck that some have. Don’t we all know someone who seems to be able to grow anything, almost anywhere, with apparent minimal effort?
I didn’t pay too much attention to the instructions. I picked a patch of earth in my garden that I knew was in decent condition in terms of a reasonable depth of soil, but beyond that, I didn’t do any testing or add anything either.
I followed the planting directions and spaced them out, but other than watering them between planting in late March and starting to harvest them now in late June, I did nothing. Perhaps I would have got more potatoes from each seed I planted. Perhaps bigger potatoes? I don’t know, but I do know that these taste so much better than anything available from supermarkets or greengrocers.
Now, I’ll see how the tomatoes are when they’re ready to pick, and then there’s the broccoli, cabbage, mini corn, red lettuce, and Brussels sprouts in the next few months.
We got up around about eight this morning. I’d already been awake since about 615 and made some coffee and then we had a discussion about breakfast.
We got ready and got dressed and went out but not before I noticed that my leg was rather swollen and my right ankle, but we went out anyway.
My leg did feel rather sore as we were riding on the bus to Richmond. We went to Hagan coffee which is a new place on Hill Street and the coffee was good. They were very friendly staff and it was very pleasant coffee too and after that we walked down to Cocotte for brunch.
We had never been there before and we found the food was very nice and the total bill came to £55 which I guess these days is not too unreasonable. I had a ham cheese and mushroom omelette. Kathy had chicken and waffles and we had some Mac cheese to share between us and it went down very nicely and we had two of their freshly made juices which were really delicious.
We decided to come home as it was a bit cloudy and chilly and my leg was acting up. I didn’t really feel like walking around too much and so we came home and then I called 111 to see what I should do about my leg because it’s swollen from the foot ankle and the leg all the way up to my thigh. I waited a couple of hours or so and I did get a call back from a medical professional who suggested I should go to West Middlesex Hospital and get it checked.
At the time of writing which is 4:15 in the afternoon I’m laying here willing it to go away on its own and hoping it’s gone down a bit and I’m laying down in bed not because I feel unwell because I’m trying to keep the darn thing raised up.
I went downstairs and I watched some YouTube videos and Kathy made some dinner and I had a couple of cups of green tea and about 730pm, I was feeling quite tired so I took myself off to bed and I rapidly fell asleep.
I recently decided to link my old CD/DVD writer to my Mac. It’s been languishing in the spare room for a long time. I didn’t have many CDs anymore. When I moved almost a quarter century ago, I disposed of most of my CD collection as it was too troublesome and expensive to ship. When I moved again, another ten years later, I took the collection I had built up to Goodwill, as it was too costly to bother shipping most of them. The few I kept, I didn’t play much, as I had ripped all the previous library to mp3 files on a hard drive before disposal.
I had purchased an external Apple CD/DVD writer to use with my original Mac Mini, which I got in 2014. Very occasionally, I’d put on a music CD. As for DVDs, I had never really bought very many at all and was down to perhaps one or two. We had gotten broadband with a decent bandwidth, and so, like many, we streamed music and video for the most part. I’m not a huge video watcher, in any case.
I recently got a high-res audio player: an Atell & Kern SR35. It was an open-box deal, so I got it for an excellent price. Around that time, we bought a new TV, and I went for a new home cinema system to go with it.
A voice in my head (I often get those) told me to get a Blu-Ray DVD player, too. It was a somewhat illogical choice considering, as I mentioned above, I only had one or two DVDs.
Around this time, I missed the bus while going home from work one afternoon. The next one was flagged up as arriving in about twelve minutes. It was rather cold out that day, so I went into the charity shop by the bus stop.
They had a section selling used CDs, DVDs and Vinyl. The prices were crazy low. I got a half dozen CDs and a couple of DVDs for a pound each. I took them home and played them. The Charity shop has become a habit, and I’m now building up a decent collection of CDs and DVDs again. Mostly older stuff and some UK TV box sets that either my wife or I will enjoy; I have bought a couple of brand new CDs online and a couple of Blu-Ray DVDs, too.
Now, to get back to the beginning, I want to be able to play CDs on the Mac, too. I have a reasonably passable Bose 2+1 system connected to it. That original Apple CD device is as dead as a dodo.
I researched, which led me to buy a machine from OWC. It reads and writes CDs, DVDs, and M-Discs.
This is where it got interesting. I had never heard of M-Discs. Now, I won’t go into the technicalities of the format much here, but apparently, the dyes used in regular media are organic and will break down over time. On the other hand, M-Discs use inorganic dyes and are reckoned to last a thousand years or more. As I drink so much coffee, I will be immortal (coffee increases your lifespan). I’ll let you know how that works, but only if you drink as much coffee as I do. Look me up around 3025. Of course, in reality, there will be a bunch of M-Discs lying about with nothing to read them on. By then, we’ll probably wear a headset that feeds directly into our brains and transports us to a live concert without going anywhere.
I digress. I have bought a pack of large M-Discs. The largest size is currently 100GB, which is enormous compared to a few years ago but relatively small. My aforementioned Hi-Res music player has a micro SD card that’s 500GB, and it will take up to 1TB cards. That’s a lot of music, even at enhanced bit rates. Oh, and yes, I’ve nearly filled it up already. I’ve not added up how many hours of music I have in my pocket. Remember, it’s not streaming, so I can listen anywhere.
Back to the M-Discs. I haven’t used any of these M-Discs yet, but I think I will possibly use them for archiving photos. They’re not really a backup solution, as like regular CD/DVD discs, they’re WORM (Write Once, Read Many). I have the rolling backup solution already with Lightroom Cloud, and Backblaze continuously backs up my entire system, including my external 16TB USB drive.
So far, I’ve only touched on the longevity of optical media. I started to wonder about it, but my interest was further sparked by finding a box with some optical media (CD and DVD) in the depths of the spare room. Haven’t we all got a spare room/garage/attic where stuff will be forgotten for years? I got the box out and went through the media.
I found a CD I had written around twenty years ago, full of mp3 files. It’s several dozen tracks of pop hits from 1976. Played through without stopping, the CD would run for around eight hours. I made many of these back then for use in the car. There was no Apple Paly or streaming music as such back then, and as I had purchased a new audio unit for the car I had at the time that would play mp3 format files from CD, it was a great option to have hours of uninterrupted music while on a road trip.
I no longer have a car and rarely get a rental to make such trips, so those days are gone. However, I still need a portable solution for travelling on public transport or walking, which I can satisfy by combining the Hi-Res player and my iPhone.
I parted company with most of those mp3-format CDs as Internet bandwidth increased, along with the quality of streaming. Why would I want to play MP3s when I have Apple Lossless?
Anyway, I put the twenty-year-old CD into the Blu-Ray player connected to the hi-fi, and it played with no issues at all—no errors, skipping, or missed tracks. My wife and I had a lovely evening listening to almost fifty-year-old pop tunes from our youth with a couple of glasses of wine while lounging in bean bags in the living room. Getting out of a bean bag at the end of the evening is another story entirely.
So, dear reader, if you’ve not gone to sleep by now, or I haven’t bored you to death with my ramblings, I can tell you that a home-written CD lasts at least twenty years if stored securely in a jewel case. All the CDs I purchased in the late ‘80s are long gone, so I can’t check those, but I understand that commercially written media is more robust and should last a lot longer than those written at home. Someone, please correct me if I’m wrong.
Perhaps this week, I’ll finally get around to archiving some of my photographs to one of these M-Discs. Keep drinking the coffee, and see you in 3025!
Much like everything else, websites do need a little housekeeping every so often. Making sure databases are up-to-date, that the site is working as it should, that links are good, and of course, that’s aside from writing content.
Today I’ve been through this site, and done a little tidying up. This site is based on WordPress, and I’ve made sure the templates are all up to date, along with the plug-ins that I have added. This helps minimise security risks.
On the subject of plugins it’s a good idea to assess the use of them periodically too. No point is wasting space and potential safety of the site by having plugins that are no longer in use.
Today, I’ve added one to help me promote my postings beyond the website itself onto a few social media platforms.
One day, my fame might be spread far and wide, and I’ll be able to retire to somewhere permanently sunny and warm. Hey! We live in hope!
We all procrastinate. Well, OK, my mate Alex doesn’t. He is super-disciplined and does everything straight away, if possible.
Me? Well, I never think there are enough hours in the day. I get up, work interminable hours on a typical work day, and usually return home. Once I get home, I wash, change, and make dinner. After dinner, my wife and I exchange details of our daily events, chill for a short while with some music or video (mostly YouTube), and then head to bed to do it all over again.
I do spend a little time keeping a journal, in which I simply make a concise record of my day’s events.
I like to photograph on days off, typically on weekends (mostly the street kind). Then again, there’s the housework and various DIY jobs around the house. There’s not much time left to sit down and write much.
Today, I didn’t feel too well and had a mostly sleepless night, so I called out work, and that has given me time to sit here quietly at my desk and write this. I’ve also got a bunch of photographic post-processing tasks to do and some other websites to update and maintain. Perhaps when I eventually retire, I’ll find more time to write!
I mentioned last week that I was considering buying a turntable to connect to the new Home Theatre System, so that I could get my vinyl collection out of hibernation. It’s been several years since I played any of it. I think the last time would have been back when we were in Gillingham and that was 2004, so it’s over twenty years!
There are very many turntables out there for various price points, but I didn’t want to go too crazy right now, so I opted for an Audio-Technica LP140XP. It’s a DJ deck, which I’m not going to be suing it as, but I was keen to get a direct drive turntable, as they’re more durable, and no worry about belt replacements at any time. I am quite happy with it, although I will probably upgrade the supplied cartridge to something like an Ortofon 2M Red in the future.
I’ve been sorting through my old albums. I have several crates of 45s in the garage loft, which I haven’t got out as yet, although I will do at some point.
I am planning to get some new storage for these albums, but right now, they’re still in cardboard boxes.
I’m not going to go completely analog, as I have some CDs left, even after the big clearout I had when moving back to the UK several years ago. I also pay for streaming services, which I fully intend to keep subscribed to.
Anyway, for now, at least, I’m having fun rediscovering many old albums that I had forgotten about down the years.
