{"id":1178,"date":"2013-12-05T13:33:23","date_gmt":"2013-12-05T12:33:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jordantheheadcase.wordpress.com\/?p=1178"},"modified":"2024-06-01T11:03:30","modified_gmt":"2024-06-01T11:03:30","slug":"er-excuse-me-but-where-did-the-year-just-go","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jordantheheadcase.com\/index.php\/2013\/12\/05\/er-excuse-me-but-where-did-the-year-just-go\/","title":{"rendered":"Er, Excuse Me….But Where Did The Year Just Go?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Sorry I haven’t updated for yonks, but I had forgotten during my nearly-two-year-surgery-break how long a recovery takes!\u00a0 Because I didn’t end up having a massive surgery I thought I’d bounce back quickly but the very unexpected deterioration after having the ICP bolt removed obviously made its impact known.<\/p>\n

\"'Helping'<\/a>
‘Helping’ by sleeping on the decorations.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

I can’t believe it’s December; the year seems to have had a ‘blink-and-you’ll-miss-it’ effect.\u00a0 I’ve had two more trips back to hospital since I left; the first for another pressure adjustment (downwards) and the second one just a check-up to discuss things.\u00a0 The plan is to leave me alone over Christmas and the New Year (hurrah!) and try another adjustment in January.\u00a0 I’m currently on setting eleven; my surgeon thinks I’ll end up somewhere around setting eight.\u00a0 Funnily enough, when I was on setting eight before, between the end of 2009 to 2010, it was the best I had been.\u00a0 That was before two shunt infections decided to have a bit of a party inside me and to royally screw everything up.\u00a0 But that setting eight period – it was indeed good.\u00a0 So fingers crossed I’ll get back to that place but it’s going to take about six months to a year apparently.\u00a0 You can look at that one of two ways; six months to a year of feeling ill, tired, nauseous and frustrated.\u00a0 Or six months to a year before I’m back to my best-ever physical state.\u00a0 Can you guess which viewpoint I’m going to adopt?
\nI had another meeting with Lewis Thorne last week too; I like his working style – he was wearing jeans with very funky Argyle socks pulled over the top and no shoes.\u00a0 A man after my own heart; comfort equals a productive work day.\u00a0 When I’m working from home (which accounts for ninety per cent of the time), I wear slippers and lounge wear.<\/p>\n

\"See?<\/a>
See? I wasn’t kidding.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Stylish of course – I can’t work if I look and feel like a slob (which is never, just for the record!).\u00a0 But the second I come in from a meeting, I strip off my smarter work clothes and get comfy.\u00a0 It’s a bit like a cluttered home reflecting the state of your mind.\u00a0 I’m a bit of a minimalist as I cannot stand<\/em> clutter.\u00a0 I have enough furniture in my home with ‘touches’ to feel homey and cosey.\u00a0 But that’s it!\u00a0 Anyway.\u00a0 Back to Lewis and his socks.\u00a0 We had a good chat about everything and went over the more problematic areas of the shunt donation scheme.\u00a0 Lewis is brilliant at making things seem do-able.\u00a0 I asked him if he thought I was worrying unnecessarily about one particular issue and he said yes.\u00a0 I kind of knew that all along but it’s good to have clarification!\u00a0 We each have our ‘homework’ list of things to get on with and will meet again in January.\u00a0 And I think this time I’ll take my slippers with me.\u00a0 We did have a moment regarding the proposal for the Vietnamse government where we looked at each other with realisation of just how big a task this was going to be.\u00a0 We may be passionate about this but we are also realistic!\u00a0 Just getting hold of the information we need in order to put together the figures for a water-tight proposal to really persuade the health ministry to invest in the treatment of these babies and children is not going to be easy.\u00a0 And of course there is no guarantee that it will work.\u00a0 But nothing ventured, nothing gained.\u00a0 I shall update more when more has happened because at the moment it’s just lots of phone calls, emails, figures and reports which is on the face of it pretty boring!
\nSo it’s December, it’s nearly Christmas, my decorations are nearly done (bought the wrong-size tree lights so need to get the right ones today) and I’m loving the Winter weather, cosy evenings and candles.\u00a0 I’ve decided to do the Photo-A-Day Challenge for December; my friend Jolene does it often and I always think ‘I really must do that sometime’.<\/p>\n

\"Day<\/a>
Day 1: Red.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Then I go to the fridge and see Mr Samandouras’s quote (written on a Post-It) stuck on my fridge; \u2018you know how they say \u201cgood things happen to those who wait\u201d? Rubbish! \u00a0Nothing happens to those who wait! Good things happen only to those who take action.\u2019\u00a0 Having a chronic condition can <\/em>make one more prone to procrastination – well, it is hard sometimes to get all motivated when you actually feel like throwing up – but it’s just a case of frequently referring to quotes like that to keep your mind on the ball.\u00a0 The photo challenge is detailed here<\/a><\/strong> ; you simply take a photo a day based around the one-word description set for that date.\u00a0 Sometimes you have things to hand so it’s quite easy.\u00a0 Sometimes you need to use your imagination a little more.\u00a0 So I started it on December 1st.<\/p>\n

\"Day<\/a>
Day Two: Where I Stood.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

And I’m just finding out how difficult it is to take a photo a day when you have a Burmese cat around who a) always wants to be in shot and b) always wants to be in shot.\u00a0 What I have also found out is that doing it really makes you view the world in a different light.\u00a0 You start to look at your surroundings and try to figure out if they’d work as a photographic composition.<\/p>\n

\"Day<\/a>
Day Three: Silver.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

As you can see, Hoshi insisted on being in shot on the second day.\u00a0 She doesn’t like candle flames so the first day was easy.\u00a0 I’d already removed her three times from that bannister as she was ruining the angles and lines I liked in that shot; in the end I gave up and just let her sit there and scowl at me.\u00a0 I’m yet to upload yesterday’s and today I don’t know what to do; the title is ‘In The Cupboard’; all I have in my cupboard are tins, teabags and a loaf of bread!\u00a0 Thinking cap on.\u00a0 I’m very tempted to let Hoshi have her way with this one and just let her get in the cupboard.\u00a0 But that would be too easy.\u00a0 Shame I don’t have access to a fake plastic skeleton…….<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Sorry I haven’t updated for yonks, but I had forgotten during my nearly-two-year-surgery-break how long a recovery takes!\u00a0 Because I didn’t end up having a massive surgery I thought I’d bounce back quickly but the very unexpected deterioration after having the ICP bolt removed obviously made its impact known. I can’t believe it’s December; the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1180,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[19,26,31,49,56,63,71,111],"class_list":["post-1178","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-just-life","tag-brain","tag-cats","tag-christmas","tag-george-samandouras","tag-health","tag-hydrocephalus","tag-lewis-thorne","tag-vietnam"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/jordantheheadcase.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/12\/december1st-1.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jordantheheadcase.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1178","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jordantheheadcase.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jordantheheadcase.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jordantheheadcase.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jordantheheadcase.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1178"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/jordantheheadcase.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1178\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2304,"href":"https:\/\/jordantheheadcase.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1178\/revisions\/2304"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jordantheheadcase.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1180"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jordantheheadcase.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1178"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jordantheheadcase.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1178"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jordantheheadcase.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1178"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}