Early mornings

We rose early to drive to Southampton General Hospital and we arrived on time for radiotherapy at 9.00 a.m. but they were “checking my records”. I think they were just unprepared so I went in at 10.00 a.m. The staff are very nice but have no concept about punctuality. Then I had my blood taken. I was number 79 but the digital counter seemed stuck on 72. Then they did four patients which obviously was too much for them. So everything stopped for 20 minutes and Raymond went to look. They were admiring one of the doctor’s shoes but after some intervention from Raymond, were kind enough to take my blood.

We then had a long gap as I was not due to see Dr M until 3.00 p.m. so we had a little lunch and went to Waitrose to buy some pheasants for Saturday. When we returned to the hospital we were still 45 minutes early but decided to go to the Private Patients Oncology Suite as we thought we would just sit and wait. Dr M. was there and said we should come in straight away. He also said that if we ever had to come in for other treatment we could always ring him and he would make time to see us.

Dr M. is a breath of fresh air. He works very hard but is truly efficient and he was very surprised, if not shocked, that it had taken so long for radiotherapy to contact me and commence treatment. He said that the neck growth had doubled in size since he last saw me.

Raymond has finished his witness statement which is going to be typed up by the solicitor’s secretary so we shall have another early start tomorrow. Goodness only knows what she thought of the additions to my statement which I emailed to her yesterday. I was honestly not sure what was required to be added to my own statement and what was meant to be inserted into Raymond’s but shall we say my tone was a little acerbic. I hope then we shall be shot of them except that no doubt we shall have to brave Southampton once more to sign them.

I have just really started thinking about Christmas and putting up some decorations. I haven’t been able to turn my mind to it until now but now the parcels are wrapped and I have just put marzipan on the Christmas cake so we are on our way. Furthermore, we have a really good few days with the family to look forward to.