Healing leg

I KNOW THESE aren't exactly my legs pictured, but mine are as clean as this woman's jeans are white and tight fitting.

The abscess on the right leg is going down nicely. No longer does the calf look like a red bowling pin with an erupting volcano upon it. It looks mildly pink with a post-eruption Mount Saint Helens (minus flattened pine trees for miles around...)

I'm feeling much better in some ways. But of course I'm still depressed, so I'm really enjoying that. Drinking lots of hot cups of tea in front of morning television, dreading going outside and pigging out on Mr Kiplings mixed fruit selection cakes and vanilla ice cream...

I really miss not having internet at home (thank you, cable-nibbling goblin) and I miss y'all. Sorry to make everyone worry. (What's new.) I really am better...

... BUT I have a medical question. This is serious and real:

Does anybody know what it means if you have splitting migraine-style headaches for weeks on end, accompanied by severe double vision and one of your eyes becomes mis-aligned, so instead of looking directly at me, it's looking down and to the right. While the other eye functions as normal.

This isn't my problem, but a 65 year old friend of mine has it and I keep telling her to go to the doctor, not to waste her time at Opticians (the optician she did see deserves to be shot). As far as I know she STILL hasn't been to her doctor or to Moorfields Eye Hospital, which is quite easy to get too from here (remember I had to go a few months ago when I had a smut in my eye all night and all the next morning and it just would not wash out...)

I have tried not to mention things like "brain tumour", but I'm dead worried about her. And she's one of these people who the more she worries the LESS she's likely actually to go in and get it looked at (who does that remind you of?)

Answers please! I'm dead worried...

Off to the Doctor's...

I'M OFF to the doctor's in a moment (and dreading it). But I have to go...

The abscess on my other leg (did I mention that one?) exploded with the help of a pair of sterilized nail scissors. Strawberry milkshake pus blobbering out. In the middle was a snotty green "eye". Now it's just running with a bit of fluid and closed over. It doesn't hurt nearly as bad as it did when it was full to bursting...

... ukh. I know I might sometimes give the impression that I love pus and abscesses, but I don't. What I love about them is squeezing them dry and cleaning them out. I don't like pus at all. Especially blocked-drain-stenching dribbles ~ as were running out of my left leg.

My left leg has healed very well after I "accidentally" picked the old scab #2 off, which had repeatedly been stuck back down (by me). Then I'd have a good peer into the pustulating catacombs of near-death that lay beneath... I noticed it always had a drop of something that looked like snot on the reverse side, which I was assuming was necessary in order to get the thing to re-stick to my leg. The scab really reeked of rotten chicken fillets that have been a week too long in the fridge...

Then I realized the focus of the infection might actually BE on this scab, so I got rid of it and ... TADAAA! Thank you God. It has eventually sealed and dried over and no longer stinks bad and is getting smaller. So I'm on the road to recovery.

My back is also better. I can walk more than 10 paces without having to rest on a garden wall or street railings. When I found myself in places with nothing to lean upon I was utterly helpless and stuck. I wasn't so much in terrible pain as the utter exhaustion of my muscles pulled all out of shape...

I'm gonna have to run, else I get terminated again, but thanks for all your good wishes. I would have gone hospital if it had got really bad, but I started feeling better and am clearly over the worst.

(Found the picture online, my wounds are a bit like those ...)

I'm "back"

BUT I STILL HAVEN'T GOT THE POWER CABLE. I've not been well enough to go anywhere. I can barely walk the length of my own road. It hurts to do anything. I feel 105. I take rests on neighbours' garden walls with their moggie circling my legs and purring. I don't know what I've done but I've done my back in and I feel like an old pensioner. One of these days I'm going to drop and not be able to get up... that day is closer and closer. On a brighter note that wound on my leg is healing, having pussed up every pair of jeans I own. I cannot cover it as it's impossible to remove any kind of dressing without ripping it open. Blood and pus and the reek of dead flesh are everywhere. I am exhausted. The only good thing is I lost my appetite, which is saving money on food. I have a dr's appointment on Monday. Hopefully I will make it out alive again..(!) Akh! I've got to do, else I will get terminated yet again...

A NEW COSTUME DRAMA hit our screens tonight. Downtown Abbey on ITV. In common with the BBC's dreary, bourgeois Larkrise to Candleford, it's an original, not based on any classic novel.* But it's quite good. A modern Upstairs Downstairs. And it stars Dame Maggie Smith. If you're reading this on foreign shores, keep a look out for it. If you like historical drama, you'll probably like this. I think historical is the only stuff produced for British TV that's in the same league as the best American telly.

My one gripe with the genre is its tendency to reinterpret the past in the light of modern (politically correct) outlooks. For example the master of the house objects to a war-wounded servant being referred to as a cripple. "I hate that word." But in those days that was the expression; nothing condescending or insulting was meant by it. Here's the trailer. Perhaps someone'll load a longer extract to Youtube by next week ...

*that statement isn't quite true: according to the BBC's website, Lark Rise is based on Flora Thompson's memoir of her Oxfordshire childhood...



THE WOUND ON MY LEG is less manky since I stopped covering it up and have been cleaning it with alcoholic ("pre-injection") swabs every few hours. It isn't oozing chocolate sauce, just a hint of strawberry. It still smells like a drain, just not as strong. My wound and I are off to hospital tomorrow to see what the emergency doctors think of it...

I hope y'all had a cheery weekend. What are you doing next week? I'm making a start cleaning my life up in a literal sense. My house is a mess. I have that festering sore on my leg. Not a clean stitch to wear. I have to wash my jeans as they've absorbed pus down the leg. So I'm starting by laundering my clothes so I can skulk into casualty (that's the ER to you Americans) looking at least vaguely respectable. Then I'll get the wound seen to and hopefully dressed. Then I can set about cleaning my house. It was cleaning my house that set it off last time, with things knocking into it making it bleed. It's been itching lately. Itching is a good sign with these things; in my experience it tends to mean they're healing.

Broadband is back!

I HAVE A NEW SIM CARD firmly taped into the dongle from which a naughty goblin stole it (yes ~ when I was fast asleep. My life is nothing if not bizarre). I searched EVERYWHERE for the missing card and no sign. The only way it can have possibly left my house is by getting stuck to the sole of my boots and trodden out (highly unlikely; I checked the tread and it's not of SIM-card-grabbing proportions) or getting stuck on my bum, falling off in the loo and getting flushed away (my own pet theory). Or God took it to stop me wasting time on the internet (which is quite possible, in my opinion). Or a goblin sneaked in and stole it (my second favourite theory, though I actually believe in God more than goblins). So there we go.

NO BIG NEWS from when I last was "properly" online all those weeks ago ~ EXCEPT I have a horrible old wound on my leg, which is at least 6 weeks old and hurts and just will not heal. The fact that I "might" have accidentally picked at it constantly for the last fortnight after it started itching probably hasn't helped. It was oozing red gunge, so I thought I would "irrigate" it ~ ie wash it out with home-made saline (freshly boiled and cooled water + table salt). This only made the scab soft enough to partly fall off, and now it's oozing chocolate milkshake coloured gunge that reeks (mildly as running sores go, but still disgusting) ~ of rubbish bins. It's only about 1.5"/4cm diametre, tiny as necrotic ulcers go. But I'm worried it might turn into one.

I don't know what to do. I am fed up of being lectured and patronized by doctors about my druggie proclivities.

I covered it in toilet paper taped down with clean newspaper. Think about it, a newpaper fresh off the press is as untouched by human hands as anything else I can think of. 6 hours later I couldn't resist having a good look. Loads of gunge had seeped into the toilet paper ~ and it had dried enough to rip the edge off the scab. Ach!

Now it's covered losely in taped-on (clean) newspaper. Then again it is the 10p Daily Star ~ what's possibly clean about that?? This has stopped the scab getting constantly rubbed off when I walk, which was getting increasingly painful. But the newspaper doesn't stick to the wound. Which will hopefully heal now. Have I done the right thing?

Ach, I must go. Kippers under grill. Hope y'all are well, see yaz!

PS: perhaps I should have maggot therapy