Oh dear, I seem to be the number one Google hit for people searching “secret life of dogging”. There are going to be some seriously disappointed deviants out there.
Say I’m your number one
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Living in the love of the common pervert
You know, you write a perfectly innocent post about enjoying long walks in the local woods with your canine companion, then your blog gets some Google traffic from people searching for “Secret life of doggers” after Channel 4 show a documentary of the same title.
People are clearly perverts. I’m outraged that my fine and morally fibrous musings should attract such attention.
Dogging
I’m not at all sure of the etiquette, but if it means you pick people up for sex while walking your dog, then I’ve got no hope; not with my furry little companion. He’d probably try to have sex with whomever caught my fancy… and then empty his anal glands on their trousers. I assume that people who are up for that sort of activity might be acceptable of all sorts of eventuality, but I’m certain that that would be a step too far.
Arrested development
Somewhere between the ages of 18 months and 42 years, a vital developmental switch just didn’t turn on for me. This “you’re a girl, so you should like pink, wear dresses and play with dolls” thing was never activated in me. It must be a recessive gene or something, but when my sister was messing about with Girl’s World and worrying about makeup and shit, I just didn’t get it. My schoolfriends had dolls and I was utterly bewildered by their fascination in these bits of plastic that were quite frankly weird and often scary.
I was confused: why would anybody play with a doll that was supposed to be a baby, which by definition is crap and useless, when you could play with Eagle-eyed Action Man and throw him from the top of the stairs and watch his parachute open. There was Lego: you could MAKE stuff! There was paper and coloured pencils and pens and you could DRAW stuff. What the hell could you do with a doll that mimicked a baby? Oh, of course, you could pretend to be its mum, because we all recognised that our mums had the best lives going: household budgeting; meal planning; childcare; cooking; cleaning; more cleaning; educating; pastoral duties; ad infinitum. Jeez – who in their right mind would want to be a mum?
So no, I never wanted that, ever.
Something strange has happened to me over the past year though: I’ve really grown to like the Barbie cartoons and films. They’re really good. At last, at the age of 42 and a bit, I have discovered the magic of Barbie!
Of course, I can thank my niece for this, and my iPad. When the little one stays over, she creeps into my bed the following morning. This morning I woke at 9am to find her next to me.
“Can we play on the iPad now please?”
“Yeah, sure, here you go. What do you want to do with it?”
“Can we have a look at YouTube for Barbie?”
“Absolutely!”
And so, I had an extra two hours of snoozing, all thanks to Barbie.
Praise.
To do
I have a to do list. My life is one big maƱana, but I need to get my act together. It’s easier to do stuff that’s obviously manageable, so here goes:
I need sleep. All this inconsequential sex in woodland car parks has wiped me out.
Something under the bed is drooling
Maybe I’m changing my opinions about Easter. I’ve been off work for three days and there’s still one more of the break to go. During this time, nothing special has happened, but it’s been lovely. Each day, me and the Little Dog have embarked on epic treks of completely familiar territory, taking in the spring sunshine, yet chilled by the persistent winter.
The past three days have seen us both set off on our usual walk down the local woods, taking the former canal path along the disused and barely recognisable canal that runs alongside the river as it makes its way towards the big city. Watching him explode like a shot from a gun as soon as I remove his lead brings the deepest joy. Seeing his lopsided running reignites my suspicions that he was the last one left in the litter for a reason. He’s not the sharpest tool in the box, but he loves to run… and sniff… and play with other dogs, irrespective of whether they’re bearing their teeth and growling at him to back off.
The woodland that we go to is part of a country park that has grown out of industrial wasteland. Emerging from the undergrowth and hidden by trees, remains the brickwork and other telltale signs of the coal mining heritage in the area. The former canal is a graveyard to a few barges that have died with it, just the skeletons of their bows persist, poking up from their leafy tombs. The whole area now hides that the lives of over thirty souls were lost to mining accidents.
As a child, and as an adult, I read C S Lewis’s Chronicles of Narnia and his description of how Caer Paravel became an unrecognisable ruin, where nature had reclaimed the man made structures, and it reflects on how this area has been reclaimed in such a short space of time.
Given its chance, nature will always triumph.
The children in the playground are probably oblivious to the history of the place, and good for them: they’re there to play and burn off energy. Families enjoy walks around the man-made lake and feeding the waterfowl at the jetty. Anglers spend entire days camped out there, doing whatever it is they do (smoking skunk is my educated guess). We dog-walkers are introduced to each other through the enthusiasm of our canine companions.
I greet this time of year with much happiness. The lighter evenings afford daily visits to my favourite dogging venue. The Little Dog gets to exercise properly and return to his optimal weight, whereas I never do. He’s a little out of condition at the moment, the awful weather and dark evenings have provided little opportunity for proper exercise. But the past few days seem to have worn him out, judging from the snoring coming from under the bed.
I’ve not changed my opinions about Easter, nor have I changed my opinions about having a four day weekend; I’ve just learned to make the most of it.
Change
So, it’s tonight that the clocks go forward, not last Saturday as I’d assumed last week. Even if I had changed my clocks last week, well, I wouldn’t have, because they all change themselves these days. Gone is the time when you had to run around on those Sunday mornings in October and March and move the hands or digits of your time pieces manually; everything does itself.
This country has no traditions left.
I recall once a couple of years ago when I was on holiday. It was the last night of our holiday in France, the clocks were going forward, we had to set the alarm to be picked up by the airport transfer people at 7am… and we were in France. If you set the alarm on your phone before the clocks changed, would it wake you at the right time? If it woke you at the wrong time, would it be too early or too late? And would the time on your phone change automatically if you weren’t on your home network?
I have never been so confused in all my life.
Actually, that’s no entirely correct. There was a time in Rome when me and my sister visited a restaurant with this splendid buffet and we couldn’t grasp whether we could just pay for a buffet dinner, and if so, whether we were allowed to go back to keep filling our plates. In the end, I made her keep watch to warn me of angry waiting staff while I went back for seconds. The artichokes were just too good not to go back for more.
But apart from if you actually have to get up to be somewhere, the change to BST or back to GMT shouldn’t really have much of an impact. I wake when the little dog’s bladder tells me it’s time to.
It’s Easter Day tomorrow. Big deal. I have always hated Easter, it was always so solemn when I was growing up. “So we’re celebrating somebody getting hideously murdered? What’s so great about that?”
“But he rose from the dead two days later!”
“What? Are you out of your minds?”
The run up at school was OK; we did the making Easter chicks out of pom poms with pipe cleaner legs, oh, and paper daffodils out of toilet roll tubes. Then they let us off school and the telly was full of really morbid shit and church stuff. There weren’t Easter egg hunts in those days, we just stayed off school for a fortnight being bored. Because that’s what kids did back then in school holidays, they were allowed to get bored.
After my auntie died when I was twelve, Easter had an added dimension of misery as we were taken to the crematorium where we had to stand and look at half-dead rose bushes in the garden of remembrance. Don’t get me wrong, I loved my auntie so much and losing her caused an awful lot of pain, but she wasn’t there in that rose garden – even I knew that. People who are gone are gone, why not just cherish their memory? Because bloody Easter tells us that people who are gone aren’t gone. Why? Why can’t people just be allowed to not exist in any form other than the sweetest of memories? Why do people hold on to this bizarre notion that they have to live on in an afterlife… for all eternity, which is for as long as is imaginable, only multiplied by infinity… time that you have to share with all the tosspots and wankers who’ve ever walked the earth, yet have been “saved”. Why would anybody want that? It’s just fucking ridiculous.
Anyway, then we’d come back from the misery of the crematorium and be made to watch Jesus of Nazareth – again, and The Greatest Story Ever Told – again, and a Bond film.
So as a child, Easter = misery & boredom. Then as I grew older, it meant misery, boredom and stress of exam revision. Now it means a couple of days off work and hot cross buns, so I’m finally enjoying it, all these years on.
Some might say that the original Pagan festival is more appropriate to celebrate: rebirth, spring, fertility, whatever. Why not celebrate and enjoy the world as it comes to life after the cold of winter? Because it’s still fucking winter, that’s why.
I shall celebrate my time off work with my family, the little dog, crap telly and a bit of booze.
Now, what time is it? It’s 11.52am, but this time tomorrow, it’ll be 12.52am. Oh good grief.
I can’t get my head round it, but flux capacitors at the ready, we’re heading off in time.
Electric smite orchestra
This is nice: the little dog has decided to cuddle up next to me in bed instead of sleeping on my knees. Oh, hang on, he’s now doing his “I need to spin round twelve times clockwise and five anticlockwise before I can curl up” thing. Happy, Little Man? Yes? Good. Then I shall continue.
It shouldn’t, but it gives me some satisfaction when his anus touches the pillow on which my ex used to rest her head. Juvenile, I know, but I wish that woman a thousand curses and an eternity of smelling nothing but dog anuses – ones whose glands need clearing. Then again, with the one she chose to betray me with, she probably has that anyway.
Oh, how I wish I could strike them down with a might as powerful as Krakatoa, so they feel their impending doom: the heat; the choking fumes; the fear; then, poof! vaporised and sent packing back into universe as nothing but disparate molecules and sub-atomic particles. Gone.
Be gone, all of you who just fucking piss me off. Yes you there, Asda! You’ve doubled the price of cans of Pepsi just like that. BOOM! Consider yourself smited. Off you fucking well pop. And you, Bolton Council. You increased my council tax this year, and what better services will I get? Oh, you’re reducing my bin collections to once a fortnight. Just what services do people who pay council tax actually get? Seems they mainly exist for those who don’t contribute at all. Suffer my wrath, wastrels, and take those bastards from Salford with you. Mister, “I can’t be arsed queuing, so I’ll cut you up”, or Miss “Lane markings and box junctions, they don’t matter”? You clearly don’t give a crap about your fellow humans, society, or little furry animals, so you’re all going to get skewered on my huge human kebab and spit roasted. You can cry and plead and beg, but you will suffer!
Why does it have to be this way? Why do some people have such inconsideration for others? I’d like to think it’s down to plain stupidity because then there’d be no malice in their actions. But it’s not like that, some people are genuinely, consciously utter twats. They might not do anything that’s against the law, but surely there must be some sort of correctional intervention for those in our midst who are just cocks?
I’m tired of this world I live in. Perhaps it’s the extended winter that’s bringing me and everyone else down. Even without sunshine and warmth, nothing can take away the longer days that are coming and maybe a little less darkness will make things all better, until autumn at least.
Until the chill winds from the east turn around, I am reliant on my electric blanket for bedtime warmth. Until others start showing more consideration, I shall sit here, wishing for the power of the almighty and planning what to do with it.
Be good to yourself
After lamenting another late Friday night, and suffering the consequences for most of today, here I am in bed. The promise of a decent night’s sleep is facilitated further by it being clean bedding Saturday. Aaaaaaaand relax.
Today has been a trial and I’ve been met with a number of challenges that are so much more difficult when you only have one pair of hands:
What is it with parents that they have to bombard you with queries as soon as you set foot inside their house?
“Tina, can you have a look at this, what does it mean?”
“Just a sec, my nose is dripping, let me get a tissue.”
“Oh fine, don’t help then!”
It’s the curse of the smartphone: Mother has discovered Google. She was trying to look up a particular hotel in Riccione, near my dad’s family. I found the hotel’s website, but it was all in Italian, so I had to pass it onto Dad to translate, but his translation skills only go so far against a backdrop of poor eyesight and technological blindness. And then they started shouting at each other.
They all shout in my family. They’re all mental.
This gift horse has halitosis
It’s nice to be thanked for the work I do; just an e-mail from an academic is lovely. I don’t need any more than this since I’m not doing people any special favours just by doing my job. I rarely go out of my way to get things done; I just get things done (eventually). I even get paid for what I do, so it’s always a little bit embarrassing when somebody drops by with a treat for me, but welcome all the same and I’m always grateful when it happens.
On returning from work after my period of leave and those few days off sick, there was a bag waiting for me under my desk. It contained a bottle of wine, which I brought home yesterday and put in the fridge. I’d had a look at it before putting it away and it seemed to have a few suspicious-looking floaters in it and when I opened it earlier, the cap unscrewed with worrying ease. Yes, it had already been opened a LONG time before being passed onto me and yes, what was unleashed from the opening was like a thousand years’ worth of curses from the fiery depths of hell.
Despite washing it down the sink with lots of very hot water, my kitchen now smells of stink bombs. There’ll be news headlines tomorrow of a chemical spillage into the Irwell that has caused the deaths of thousands of fish. Apologies, it was me.
I feel so appreciated, but in many ways I’m glad. I didn’t need another booze-fuelled late night and a Sunday fight against torpor.
My own worst enemy
At 6.30pm, I was ready to get into my pyjamas and come to bed. It’s now 1.20am and I’ve finally achieved duvet.
Why do I do this? Throughout the day, my body can barely function because of fatigue, yet each weekend, the opportunity for restorative sleep is shunned in favour of crap on the TV.
Perhaps it’s because I know that I can lay about until gone lunchtime. I have no plans of a weekend; nothing to get up for other than chores. No company to keep, other than that of the little dog and maybe my parents. I am my own person, answerable to nobody, with nobody to judge me or care what I do with my time.
Being single has so many advantages and I actually like it, but I’m coming round to the notion of being part of a we again. There are things that are missing like having somebody to send share the most banal thoughts with, conversation, laugh until you’re sick with, somebody to cook with or for – not to mention intimacy or even love.
When you have a huge part of your being ripped out of you, you feel like the only thing that can fill that hole would be the same shape as the person who left it, or indeed the person who left it. But it heals over and you grow back to fill the space, at least in part. I’ve come to realise that I’m never really fulfilled, that there’s always something missing unless I’m with somebody. Everybody deserves somebody special, everybody should be part of a we. If only to have somebody to bring us coffee – or to make coffee for – of a weekend morning.
Fucking hell, I’m the most awesome person I know! Who in their right mind wouldn’t want to be with me?
Could it be the weather?
Spring has sprung, according to the calendar, yet it snows and the temperatures struggle to get above freezing. What on earth is going on? I have stuff to do to beautify my yard and borders and we’re still suffering winter weather.
There must be a department of weather somewhere within government. The environment agency must surely be working with the MoD to develop a methodology for weather control. Just what the hell am I paying my taxes for?
Everybody talks about the weather, but nobody does a bloody thing about it. It’s a national outrage. Yet people whinney about a bit of horse meat in their burgers! This country has got its priorities all wrong.
Sleep, finally
As the wind batters around outdoors, I shall finally lay my head down and dissolve into a long awaited slumber. But as I do so, the thing on my mind will be, why on earth didn’t I buy those hot cross buns when I was in the supermarket last night?
Moans, groans, bones, stones
I’ve taken to my bed. Well, that’s not strictly true; I’ve simply come to bed early, as I’ve been promising myself for the past week. I’d love to take myself to my bed with an attack of the vapours, but that’s the sort of thing that people do to get attention. The only person who’d notice is the little dog and he wouldn’t let me get away with it.
Oh do be a darling and pass me my fan. I’m far too weak to reach it and clutch my pearls at the same time. And darling? I seem to have run out of gaspers, be a dear and bring me some. If I’m feeling a little better tomorrow, I might be able to sit in my chair by the window: I have so many letters to write to mama and dearest Fanny, but I can barely muster the strength to hold a pen. I fear I may die in this room.
I need a Mrs Danvers to tend to my every need. Or maybe I just need some early nights. I have been feeling somewhat wrecked since my brief hospital stay. And so very achy. The pains in my long bones are reminiscent of growing pains and my other joints are aching too. Woe is me. WOE is me. All I can say is that if this is what it feels like after just one dose of that drug they gave me, I hope I never have to have a full course of chemotherapy. Still, it did the job, so I shouldn’t complain.
Equinox
It’s the spring equinox. Or something like that. The clocks go forward at the weekend and the evenings will be getting lighter. And so with it, the world stretches into a sleepy wakefulness and shakes off the wintry cobwebs. Unfortunately, the world seems to be hitting the snooze button a few more times and it’s not quite ready to welcome in the spring, but it will come and with it there will be colour and freshness and warmth.
I await that first day of feeling the warming sun on my face with such anticipation. Until then though, I shall remain here in my bed, in my head at least.
My family… and continued hopes that I was adopted
Families are odd things. I’m not an anthropologist or a biologist with even a basic knowledge of which species stick together as families past adolescence, but we humans tend to. We maintain contact and loyalty to, and responsibility for those whom we share the closest matches of genetic code.
Genetics dictates that we shouldn’t reproduce with those whose genomes are closely matched with ours. And this is a good thing. Yet we are glued to those in our family units from birth until the various branches of the family tree die off an leave us.
Some families aren’t that close. Offspring move on and maintain little contact with siblings and parents. For some, this seems the only way to survive adulthood, but it’s more akin to budding off of yeast than the reproductive methods of higher organisms.
Like them or not, our families are our reference point. They’re where it all started, they helped to form us into who we are now. For better or worse.
I had to take my dad shopping this afternoon. I had to take my shopping to the worst possible place on earth: Farnworth. To Asda in Farnworth, to Lidl in Farnworth, to Tesco in Farnworth. My sense of duty to my family meant that I had to spend time in a place that I consider an inbred-ridden hell on earth with a dad who glares and shouts his way through life. He shouted at people crossing the road, the price of Fanta. He shouts to ask a question.
Still, I love him. He’s the one I used to follow around as a child, we were inseparable. He’s the one who used to come and wake me up at 6am when we were on holiday in Italy and we’d walk to the beach together in our matching flip flops and hats; we’d go to the bakery and store to bring back provisions for breakfast (focaccia over here is awful, by the way). He came to find me when I got lost on the beach. He’s the one who is quiet, observant and it’s him who knows when I’m “not right” without me having to say a word. He is kind, generous and gentle, with a huge heart, but a fierce temper.
My mum adores him, and he her. It’s a beautiful thing, their devotion to each other. They fall apart without one another. When they are together, they bicker and shout, but each night, my dad carries my mum’s handbag up the stairs to their bedroom.
I have been observing my folks for over forty years, wondering why they are together, how they stay together, what with my dad’s grumpiness, my mum’s pessimism. All the arguments and toil, my dad’s moods, us lot to contend with. I guess, they’re just soulmates. They love each other beyond doubt and always will.
They screw you up, your mum and dad?
Only if you let them.
Only when I laugh… or move… or breathe
Saturday: the bad beginning
Saturday started much the same as any other: late waking; feeling tired, as per; wanting to get up and about and not waste the day. Feeling rougher than usual, I just blamed it on the excesses of my week off – too many late nights, a bit too much booze – and dragged myself into Bolton.
As I mingled with the other zombies, my head was empty, dull and dizzy. Autopilot took over and I spent Ā£100 before I realised it, inhaled a hotdog and made my way to Sainsbury’s to spend even more. Indigestion was kicking in, but I ignored it as usual.
I prepared my dinner and sat down to eat while watching Bridesmaids. And then the pain really started. Radiating from my stomach, up into my left shoulder and down my left arm. It was just stomach ache, but it was bad enough for me not to be able to laugh at the pooing scene in the film.
Needing help, I called my sister and asked for omeprazole, but when I went to collect it, she insisted on taking me to A&E “I think you’re having a heart attack”.
“It’s just stomach ache”
But she won and I ended up being wired up to an ECG machine, having tube after tube of blood taken for tests, chest x-rays and stomach palpations.
Now, here’s a thing: always dress as if you might get murdered. I hadn’t shaved my legs for a week (electrodes for the ECG also go on your legs), my underwear wasn’t my best, but worst of all, I was in such pain when I left home that I couldn’t bend down to fasten my shoelaces so I’d just slipped my Crocs on. Yes, Crocs, in Casualty, in Salford, on a Saturday night. I fitted in quite well.
My ECG was fine, my blood tests seemed ok, but at 3am, it was decided that I should stay in overnight so the tests could be repeated the following morning. I was happy with this because the pains had now radiated across my chest, I was experiencing a tightness there and it was difficult to breathe in. I was wheeled to the assessment unit and settled down for the night.
Sunday: a nasty surprise
I didn’t sleep: my stomach and chest were killing me; the lady opposite me was snoring; the one next to me was saying her Sunday prayers; and the one across from me was whimpering all night, needing help from the nursing staff.
After and hour’s sleep, I was woken again for more blood to be taken and for more questions and prodding from a rather lovely doctor. The repeated tests showed I was fine, I hadn’t had a heart attack, just a little bit of gastritis. The consultant said he’d write me up for some omeprazole and I could go. He wandered off, then came back. “Your calcium level is three!” He seemed startled. “I can’t let you go, we’ll have to wash you out and bring it down before you can go.”
Crestfallen, I lay in my bed as the drip went up, the chilled fluid flowing into the back of my right hand. Just one thing came to mind: how am I going to wipe my bum? If only they were euthanising me.
Things weren’t all bad though, the staff were brilliant, lovely, respectful, humorous and the food was great. I’d be able to cope. I told myself a number of things: It’s only one night, it’ll be fine. Mum and Dad are looking after Rocky, I have my phone and the 3G signal is good here. My bed neighbour was a little confused and deaf, but she’s fine and the lady across from me has quietened down at last. Oh fuck, she’s died!
My folks dropped in for a visit. “Do you need anything bringing? We can ask Alan to drop some things round later if you do.”
“No, it’s fine, honestly, they’ll let me out by tomorrow lunchtime. Anna brought some things this morning so I can have a wash and do my teeth. I’m fine.”
And then I got my period. This was turning into a challenging day, but things were made easier by the staff… and hospital toast.
Monday: carry on nurse
You wake up early when you’re in hospital. They come and do things to you at 6am, put things in your ear, light up your finger and make your arm explode. On Monday, however, I was woken by a strange, baleful humming coming from the right of me. My bed neighbour was stood up out of her bed, holding on the table. She’d completely transformed from the person she’d been just a few hours previously, poor woman.
Don’t get involved, you’re out of here in a few hours. The consultant confirmed this to me on his round, “We just need to get your blood results back to make sure they’ve dropped and then you can go home.”
I waited for a few hours before I asked my nurse if she could take the cannula out of my hand. “Better not just yet”, she smiled at me. What was that supposed to mean? Bored of sitting in the bedside chair, a snooze seemed appropriate so I got back into bed. And as if by magic, the doctor appeared, smiling.
“Hiya, your heart tests are absolutely fine, so you should be able to go home…” I beamed a smile “… hang on… but your calcium levels have actually gone up, you’re going to have to stay in. There’s some medication we can give you and we’ll put a couple more litres of fluid through your drip, but you’ll have to stay another night.”
Nooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!!!!!!!! I can’t go another moment trying to wipe my bum left-handed. I can’t stay here, I’m fine! The soup is delish though…
And so another day had to be endured. Another day in which I’d perfected the institutionalised, slipper and gown, drip stand shuffle. This time though, I was becoming upset for the amazing standing woman and her poor, desperate family; for the lady opposite me who was inexplicably poorly; by the new woman across from me who refused to heed medical advice and who DIDN’T FLUSH THE FUCKING TOILET. It was getting to the stage where I wanted to staple her oxygen mask to her face. “You being poorly is unfortunate and of course you should be treated with the best possible therapies, but you not doing as you’re told is prolonging your illness, wasting these people’s time and costing money!”
Then my medication kicked in and I dozed off. Sleep was never unbroken and I woke, pondering things like, why are all the really fit nurses looking after the other bays? It dawned on me: the Crocs had been noted in my records and I’d been labelled a potential perve risk. The last thing a busy hospital unit needs is a Benny Hill chase scenario.
Tuesday: the ersatz ending
I woke feeling fuzzy headed, the ward was calm. My bed neighbour was sat up in her bed, looking alert. “Morning!” she said, as if the previous day simply hadn’t happened. We had our usual triple repeat conversation and I felt so glad that she was back.
The doctors came. If my calcium hadn’t gone down enough, they were going to admit me. This was getting ridiculous.
As the morning progressed, I started to feel groggy, but I put it down to lack of fresh air. I slumped in my chair waiting for more bad news when the lovely Jose gave me a thumbs up and said “They’ve come down!”. The next thing I knew, I was being turfed out.
Adios! Adieu! Ciao! I’m off!
Into a taxi I hopped, off to my folks’ to be reunited with my little boy and to spend the evening convalescing. Showered and refreshed, I lay on the sofa and started aching, shivering, sweating. Now, if I wasn’t savvy, I wouldn’t have taken note of and looked up the drug they’d pumped into me to find out that it commonly causes flu-like symptoms and I’d have been straight back into hospital, thinking I was dying. So, Mr Doctor, nil point on that one.
I spent the night feeling like I was dying, woke up drenched in sweat and aching like a bastard, but at least I didn’t have somebody poking something into my ear or making my arm explode. At least I could go to the toilet and I could wash my hands properly without fear of pulling a cannula out. And at last, my body was my own again.
Wednesday: we’ve only just begun
It’s far from over. There is still no confirmed diagnosis for my condition, and I left the hospital with very high calcium levels. I still feel weak, groggy and achy, but the sweats have stopped. My tummy is still a bit tender, but now I have antacids and I can steal omeprazole from my sister.
There are some things that I can do for myself too: cut down on fatty food; cut out the booze; stay away from the chillies; lay off the ibuprofen; get some exercise.
As far as hospital stays go, mine was fine and I was treated so well, but even if they do have the best homemade soup in the world, I’d rather not try it again.
The Snoring Dog 