MRI dismay

On the way to her morning study group, Clare dropped me off at Llandough Hospital at a quarter to ten this morning for a MRI pelvic scan. At half ten I was escorted to a mobile scanner unit located in the yard outside the Orthopaedic Unit, and subjected to five scans over the period of an hour. The last time I had this procedure was when I was about to shed a kidney stone, at New Year in 2009. Then I had to undress completely and leave outside any metallic objects. This time I wasn't required to undress, just uncover my pelvis to make room for a device which fitted over the area to be scanned, possibly to focus the magnetic field that generates the resonance images. 

The scanner made five passes. Three with the machine making one frequency noise, then two more in a slightly different position at another. I think the second two were directed at my liver and right kidney to probe the anomalous signals registered by last week's ultrasound. I asked the scanner operator how long it would take for the report to reach the surgical team who had commissioned the scan and was disappointed to hear him say four or five weeks. Not much urgency there, I thought. I must ask my GP to chase it up. A long wait isn't improving things and may be taking its toll on me.

I walked out of the hospital an hour later and within a few minutes boarded a 95 bus. This dropped me at the end of Lansdown Road in Canton, a fifteen minute walk home. It conveniently offered an opportunity to do some shopping and then cook lunch in time for Clare's arrival. The inflammation today was worse than usual and I had to rest and recover after lunch. Then I wrote to my GP and took the letter around to the surgery, to get some exercise. Then, another evening in front of the telly with unseen episodes of NCIS and Bull. Rather too much of Michael Weatherly for one evening to be honest.

Winter watching

The week slips by quickly, or so it seems when daylight hours are this short. At least it provides an excuse for some catch-up telly.  At last, time to catch up on the Channel Four Walter Presents Scandi-crime series 'Dicte - Crime Reporter', series two. Its key characters are interesting and flawed people, working on harrowingly difficult cases, and trying to make personal relationships and family life work in mid-life and mid-career. It contains some funny true to life scenes of conflict in relationships. It reflects how much a professionally successful person owes to the understanding and support of family and friends. It can be comic in an un-contrived way, without being a comedy show. It's what I regard as excellent drama, like Inspector Montalbano.

Monday afternoon I had a session with Kay our osteomyologist, for a treatment on my back and also for a helpful conversation about managing the consequences of old injuries revealing themselves in ageing musculature, as these have un-noticed creeping effect on the alignment of bones, if they aren't checked and worked on regularly. Staying fit to function normally, let alone for athletic pursuits at this time of life takes time, just like getting up in the morning seems to take longer than ever.

Anyway, it was helpful and constructive, and encourages me to carry on using the special shaped neck pillow Clare gave me to try out over the weekend. Much of the problem I've had with disturbed sleep over these past few months has concerned getting and keeping neck and shoulders comfortable and relaxed during sleep. To awake from a couple of nights sleep almost free of stiffness and pain is a like a gift from heaven, not that it makes that much difference to getting started and active.

Tuesday, a week later than last year, I drafted our annual Christmas newsletter, and gave it to Clare to error check. It required two attempts to get rid of the flaws found, and there'll be another look at it with fresh eyes tomorrow, just to be sure.

This morning, I walked to Llandaff North for my dental check-up, in just thirty five minutes. Apart from needing the exercise, traffic congestion on routes through Llandaff make it difficult to predict a journey time. It can be ten minutes to cover two miles, or it can be half an hour. Traffic conditions can change unexpectedly.

It is bothersome that with the housing developments taking place to the West and North of Cardiff, no road improvements are planned, or even seem practicable through such a densely populated suburban area. Expanded rail services on the Taff Vale line will help to improve things, but there's still a missing link in the network from Llandaff North, which would facilitate a circular 'Metro' style rail route around the city, with connections from it to the suburbs. Infrastructure which our Victorian forebears created was sadly mutilated post-war, and will cost a lot to restore.

The dental visit was brief, and I caught a bus back home. Last summer's filling has cracked and needs replacement. Fortunately it's under a year's guarantee. So all I have to do is arrive by 9.20am, and that's a challenge either by car or on foot at that time of day.

In the evening I wrote a sermon for Sunday, then found the Channel Five TV catch-up app and was able to watch another episode of 'Bull', the first of which I saw last night. This is a courtroom drama series featuring Michael Weatherly, who until last year played one of the key regular characters in Five USA's NCIS. In this, his own series he plays a an expert psychologist who acts as a behavioural consultant to lawyers, helping them to plan their argument strategy to appeal to juries, on the basis of profiling jurors. Apparently, it has some basis in American legal praxis, but whether it's that hi-tech in the real world, I wonder. Weatherly certainly looks bullish, bulky, not as slick and stylish as his alter ego Tony Di Nozzo. This is the second series, apparently. Is he still growing into the part? The plot lines were a little too compressed and clever-clever for dramatic impact, leaving this viewer puzzled, and just a little underwhelmed.