After yesterday's walk I
was rather tired. I could have done with a decent sleep; it was
something of a shame that "Furry Face TM"
decided to have a barking fit shortly before 2am. I didn't really
get any decent sleep after I'd settled him down.
I got up shortly before
6am, pootled with general tidying for a bit and then watched "Extras"
over brekkie. In today's episode Daniel Raddecliffe and Warwick
Davies were parodying themselves. I can't understand how I've missed
this series in the past; it's really good.
As I came out to my car I
saw that over the weekend a bird had pooped all over it. I am no
ornithological expert, but judging by the quantity of bird dung I
would estimate that the guilty avian was either a pterodactyl or an
ostrich; nothing smaller could generate so much dung.
And so to work. Until
recently people have been parking rather randomly in the car park;
since I've started sax practice at lunch time there has been a
noticeable shift in people's parking habits. A lot of people like to
have their lunch in their cars and clearly want a bit of peace and
quiet at lunch time. Today everyone had parked at one end away from
my usual parking space. It was rather obvious that no one wanted to
park near where I practice.
As for today's sax
practice... I made a start on a new tune "When the Saints Go
Marching In". I think its fair to say the Saints weren't
going marching anywhere today. Despite my having (mostly)
figured out the B-flat I still have a lot of work to do on that tune
before any saints could be described as "marching"
rather than "mincing".
I left work early to go
to the sleep clinic. Bearing in mind I've been hoping to go to a
sleep clinic for years it is just possible was expecting too much
from the place. I arrived to find (arguably) the fattest man
on the planet asking the assembled throng if he looked fat. He'd
been told that his insomnia was due to the fact that he was as fat
as twenty-eight other people put together, but he was adamant that he
could not possibly possibly be overweight because in his youth he had
once played a game of squash.
Much of this assembled
throng was the entourage of a village idiot (I never did work
out which village he was from); all of whom wanted to see a
specialist. They didn't seem to be bothered which specialist; they
asked after several.
And overseeing the entire
clinic was a small vaguely oriental-looking elderly woman in a
nurse's costume (I hesitate to say "uniform") who
quite frankly didn't speak English.
I slept until I was
called (only ten minute later than planned) to be given the
standard old spiel about not drinking coffeee before bedtime, losing
weight, drinking Horlicks, blah-de-blah. I told the so-called expert
that I had had all this drivel till the cows came home, and we were
several years past the basics. I expounded my two theories; sleep
apnoea or nasal polyps. One requires medical equipment; the other
surgery. The specialist suddenly realised that he wan't dealing with
the usual kind of person his clinic attracted; and intimated that if
he told people to b*gger off and have a glass of warm milk, then he
never sees nintey per cent of them again.
He then tried to fob me
off with a "blood test for thyroid"; but when I told
him what I do for a living (blood tests for thyroid) he sat up
and started to take notice.
I asked what last week's
sleep tests had shown; regular readers of this drivel may recall I
had two very uncomfortable nights last week strapped up to an
oximeter all night long. The specialist told me that the results of
those tests will make a very good starting point for a diagnosis and
a possible cure for the insomnia, and that he will write to me when he
gets the results of those tests in six weeks time.
I politely asked why
there had been a delay with the results of the oximeter tests. The
specialist gave an embarrassed cough. Can you beleive it; there had
been no delay. These tests take a couple of months to come back. So I
took a deep breath and resisted the temptation to suggest that maybe
it was not the best use of limited NHS resources for me to be having
this appointment if we all knew that the test results would not be
ready for some weeks.
The specialist is going
to write to me when the test results are through. I shall wait
patiently; after all I've been waiting for years; what's another
couple of months of sleepless nights...
No comments:
Post a Comment