It’s as though the world has woken up after slumbering through the heat wave that was August, emails are pinging in, left, right and centre.

Appointments are suddenly hitting the multiple different health platforms, that multiple different NHS-land centres use. As they do not talk to each other, it is a day’s work trying to unscramble each site, each update and try to remember each password.

The appointments so far are :

Flu- great

~Lung function at Barts = breathing through a tube with a clothes peg, I better train for that.

No appointment with Dipstick . No MRI follow up, No idea not a clue what a total shambles. I write my weekly letter of polite complaint to PALS and nothing happens.

I did manage to get a GP appointment on Monday. A sore throat which had turned into asthmatic wheeze. All I needed was steroids. In the event I was seen by two 4th year medical students. Now, I am all up for training etc. .but I was in a rush, I did know what I needed and they took 45 minutes to decide my tonsils were not infected. Just as well as I actually do not have any tonsils. Eventually they summarised their findings to their supervising GP and prescribed….steroids…. at least I got them.

Wednesday was an early start to get to Luton to see the maxfax surgeon, or rather one of the two surgeons who will be doing the jaw breaker in October., He was—dare I say—suave. (Is that still a word? He complimented my haircut, I actually thought he meant the lady behind me in the corridor with bright red hair, but no he insisted it was me. which was both unexpected and discombobulating. I mean, wtf?.went through all the consents and procedures risks stats and blah blah…

Thursday – London. You may remember almost exactly a year ago I was lying in hospital plugged into mega drugs awaiting surgery after the ‘curious incident of the twig in the knee’. Well on one of those nights in a morphine haze, one of the nurses and I logged onto the Coldplay ticket queue and stayed up all night to get in. Well. We did. I actually forgot all about it, blame the morphine, until this week thinking that perhaps I had bought some scam tickets…but to my surprise…email incoming…Ticketmaster telling me to download my tickets…Wembley. Coldplay. It was incredible, special effects, technology, showmanship sheer overwhelming immersive escape after the intensity of the last couple of weeks.

Jan would have read this blog and sent words of encouragement.

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Planning her funeral is surreal; nothing else compares( Andi quote). I’ve organised many a funeral but this one is proving tough. We are getting the plans together all will be ok.Her playlists would feature Coldplay, yes, but also, Bowie, and Verve and so much more..She’d choose “Clocks” not for the fight in it—the tides, the knees, the refusal to stay down.

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