On the case

I stayed in all morning, awaiting the arrival of the promised Open Reach telecoms engineer but once more nobody came. I reported this to TalkTalk, and eventually was given another appointment, this  Thursday. When I was out walking, later in the day, I saw a team of six Open Reach workers at the corner of Rectory and Romilly roads, about 150 metres from the main telecoms cabinet for our sector. One was digging a hole and five were watching. I told TalkTalk about this, but they didn't seem to get the real-life joke, and responding by stating that the infrastructure work had no impact on my connectivity failure - as if I didn't know. It's got to be the line outside our property which is behaving badly, as all else has been eliminated, except being unable to log into the router software. 

I took an afternoon appointment with Dr Benjamin the third doctor in our GP practice team whom I haven't seen for a few years. I thought it might be good to have a physical examination by a male doctor for a change. He had a letter on his desk from the UHW surgical team responding to a GP letter on my behalf seeking to prioritise surgery. It explained what I already knew about the delay in processing scan results. But it shows the GP team are on my case. Indeed, he promised to write again, saying my affliction was slowly worsening. 

Last weekend's swab test results confirmed the presence of a low level infection, and he gave me a week's course of a different antibiotic, which I believe may be designed to tackle what sister in law Ann describes as 'deep tissue infection' which may not show up in blood tests until it breaks out of its confinement. As my blood pressure has gone up somewhat worryingly of late, symptomatic of the immune system doing battle as much as additional stress from the discomfort and uncertainty, he also doubled the dose of the newest hypertension medication add-on I've been given. I could be far worse, if I wasn't fit and active and not confined to bed, so I must be grateful, as well a patient, and feel confident others are working on my behalf.