OMG. It's been 4 months. Do you think I can just blitz them before tea-time? Well we can give it a try.
By May I was swimming a lot. My injuries were persisting. I was trying to get out on the bike but I hate the road cycling.
Here I go again - the end of the story is I am fine...but anyway, I got a couple of letters through inviting me in for a breast screening, and the first one went in the bin and the 2nd one I thought I better go. I think I knew it was goint to stir things up even though I had had no worries or problems since the drama of November 2020 and breast-gate.
I went along for my screening to an ugly old caravan out in the car park at the Jewel. It wasn't a nice experience but then it's not meant to be. I got recalled in, which I also kind of knew I would be. Not that it didn't scare the pants off me because it did - of course it did. They were concerned that my lump was bigger and they biopsied it again. Another week's wait and I went back in and the biopsy was fine but they wanted to take the lump out anyway.
Let's have my photographs from May and June to break up the story to the Tune of 'The Longevity Prayer' by Lama Gyurme and Jean-Philippe Rykiel.
At first I thought "oh well go on then take it out and then you can leave me alone" but then I began to realise what that would entail. They only do it with a general anaesthetic, apparently, so there was that. (Not keen!) Then apparently Covid has been a very bad mix with general anaesthetic, so as they said reassuringly on the paperwork "if you have Covid while you have general anaesthetic you have a greatly increased chance of dying." Oh thanks for that. So I began to query whether they really needed to touch it at all which left me in a queasy no-man's-land of "we don't know". It could be a fibroadenoma as they'd thought, or it could be another thing called a Phyllodes tumour which isn't cancer but it can grow. Or sometimes a phyllodes tumour can be cancerous. I think. Well you get benign or malignant ones. Whatever the stewing fuck anyway - my conclusion was "alright go ahead and do it and I'll try to survive the general anaesthetic"
Then I got Covid. Then I got better. Let's do a time-line. I tried to explain it but it was too complicated.
13th June - I had Covid for a week
20th June - got back in the swim
1st July - I was isolating again for an operation on the 14th and I had an assessment appointment where I told them I'd had Covid but nobody twigged but then
8th July I got a call to say it would need to be post-poned because I'd had Covid so then it was going to be on 2nd August. Did I bother going back to the pool? I can't remember.
16th July or so I was supposed to be back in deep cover, or isolaton or whatever
2nd August...snuff day.
Thank goodness for the hummingbird hawk-moth. I'll explain in a minute, but here are July's photos, mostly of walking around in Holyrood Park since I couldn't run still and now I couldn't swim because of Covid and then isolating. All to the Tune of 'Happy When It Rains' by The Jesus and Mary Chain. Just to be clear, I actually don't like it when it rains, but I do like the tune and it was the right length.
So the Hummingbird Hawk-moth...Peter said "There's been a sighting of a hummingbird hawk-moth at the Valerian, just under Samson's Ribs. Do you want to go and try to see it?". He described it as a shitty little grey cigar shaped moth. Apparently it was apt to turn up at about 3.30pm.
Yeah, why not...so we went up and looked for it. I had a sore leg but could just about do the 4 miles round trip without making myself worse and we got hooked by the challenge. We started going every day to look for it.
I can't remember the time-line of it but eventually it did put in an appearance but we weren't quite prepared for just how damn fast it was going to be.
The next time we saw it, we were prepared and I made a video...
Anyway, mean-time, surprisingly, the walking seemed to be improving my legs in a way that nothing else had, so I was making it a really regular thing to get out and walk about round Arthur's Seat, and taking a camera made it more fun.
So all of that was quite good. The only thing was the drumroll of my approaching operation and hoping they weren't going to snuff me on the operating table. Our endowment policies for our mortgage were due to mature just a few days after and then our mortgage was due to be paid. The thing is I'd been dealing with it all and I was the one who had access to our mortgage on-line and so if they were to snuff me, Peter would have to act very fast in order to get the insurance before it expired 3 days later. I tried to explain all this to him but he gave it the undivided attention he gives much of my chat. He said he heard me but later I found it all on the other side of his chair where it had spilled out of his other ear. Fuck's sake.
I promised myself I wouldn't spin this all out. Well maybe just a wee bit. So on the day of the operation I had to be there and fasted for 7.30 am. This was so I'd be in time for my...1pm operation. There was some controversy because the anaesthetist didn't think enough time had been left since my Covid. He told me this as I sat on the bed in a gown and surgical stockings. Then he went away to discuss it with the team, but nobody ever came back to speak to me about it and I didn't have the heart to ask.
Finally things started moving and I was in the tiny little operating theatre with a good 5 folk packed in and the surgeon, who had the charm surgeons are famous for all over the world, had a big syringe of white snuffing sauce stuck in my hand. "YOU WILL GO TO SLEEP NOW" he announced and did something, which maybe didn't work because a beat or two later he said "YOU WILL GO TO SLEEP NOW" and this time I did.
Let's have some pictures and a musical interlude. All of August to Charlie Mingus's "Moanin'"
Well you've guessed right. I didn't die. And I recovered pretty quickly after a night or two of not going to sleep. And they biopsied the whole thing and the upshot of it, which I just heard the other day, was that it was benign and they're not exactly sure if it was a fibroadenoma or a phyllodes tumour, so I'll get another scan in 6 months. They also gave me the go ahead to swim again if I want, and maybe I will soon.
And in the last few weeks I've been managing a few wee runs culminating in an actual parkrun the other day at Holyrood. Also we paid off our mortgage AND the endowment policy was just shy of enough, which was great because 2008 and all that had knocked it well off track.
It's a classic Holyrood ending. Haha. I'm off for my tea.
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