When we returned from France on Monday 20th May Maggi felt worse. This blog tells what happened from then until Friday 5th of July when Maggi left the house for an evening out so she made an appointment with the Pinn Medical centre.or the first time in a long time.
21st May – 26th May
The day after we turned from France Maggi made an appointment with Pinn medical centre and received an appointment the same day. The doctor arranged for a series of blood tests immediately, because of Maggi’s history of lymphoma. The next day she went to see Kay and redeem a credit note in Amersham. On the way back she had a call from the doctor to arrange for further tests and now she began to feel unwell. The blood tests became more alarming and by Friday Maggi felt even worse. By the Sunday morning her condition deteriorated and she called Northwick Park Haematology Department, managed to get through and they said we can see you if you appear at A&E.
I drove Maggi to the hospital and dropped her off at the accident department and then parked the car off-site. By the time I called her again she had disappeared behind the scenes. She told me not to bother to come back for awhile so I took myself off for a walk. By the time I came back she had been admitted to Drake Ward as an in-patient. This surprised and shocked me. I returned home to pick up some essentials for her stay, nightie, soap, and a few cosmetics etc.
26th May – 13th June in Hospital
Maggi stayed in hospital for 2 weeks and 5 days coming out on Thursday 13 th June. During that time she started off at in a bed inn a bay with three other patients and then moved to her own room. When she moved to a room of her own her condition had become much worse. She couldn’t keep awake while I arrived. They gave her antibiotics to calm a fever, while at the same time she had oxygen. I visited every day for a couple of hours and if she had other visitors on the day, which she mostly did she was drained. I was worried.
Friends were exceedingly helpful with to me and Maggi. Matt and Helen invited me over for a meal. Sean and Sheila dropped over a meal and I went round to Ray and Jane for a meal.
During all this time in hospital Maggi received numerous tests all of which proved negative. Once the fever had died down I began to notice a slight improvement and this marginal change happened everyday. Walking the few yards to the loo still left her exhausted.
The doctors then moved her back to a bed in a bay on Monday 10th as they needed the room for a severally ill patient. On the Wednesday they declared that she must leave the hospital and they would organise a pet scan as soon as possible to try and eliminate a diagnosis of a lymphoma relapse.
On the Thursday afternoon I picked her up from the hospital and brought her home and straight to bed.
I felt relief that some of my worst fears had not come to pass and I now thought that she would get slowly better and perhaps we would never know what had caused this awful condition.
13th June – 23rd June, My role changes to carer and shopper.
These days were dominated by supplying Maggi with food drink and caring for her. Many trips up and down the stairs with a tray, rubbing ointment into her back, washing and general housework. In the early period I spent a lot of time up and come down stairs. Maggi couldn’t do much more than walk to the bathroom and back, she needed help getting in and out of the bath, hard work for both of us in different ways. On Thursday Maggi managed to rise, dress and come down stairs. I think the imminent arrival of Alex and family stimulated her to make more effort to be downstairs and around the kids.
On Friday 21st Alex and family arrived from Seattle. I picked them up from Heathrow and brought them back. When I arrived back Maggi had laid the table with all the bits I had bought from the shops. We didn’t see much of Alex etc as they shot off to a Taylor Swift concert at Wembley for the evening after a brief time in bed trying to catch up with a bit of sleep.
The next day they all left again and went west to the Cotswold Estate of Jimmy Whale and his wife. On Sunday they moved on to the christening of Alice’s second child in London. Alex then headed to east London for work and Greg appeared in the evening with Sadie and Carrie. In the afternoon Helen and Matt had appeared for a couple of hours to see how Maggi fared. They had just been blessed by the recent birth of a grandson by Ollie and wife.
24th June – 29th June, Family comes and goes.
On Monday morning the engineer from Tesla arrived to service the car on site. A very pleasant chap called Alek did his job which took about 30 minutes. I realised that we didn’t actually need a service and all we needed was a part replacing so that we could use the Tesla fast chargers when we eventually drive down to La Colle. Greg took Sadie and Carrie off to Watford to play at Puttshack and watch a film. We prepared the evening meal. Tuesday Greg and the girls left to go and see their grandma in Bromley and we had a couple of days of peace.
Greg rang on the Wednesday evening to ask if they could return on Thursday instead of the agreed Friday as Sue was returning to Yorkshire and so he and the girls came back to us on the Thursday. Alex deigned to make an appearance on Friday afternoon and the two of us went for a walk to Eastcote House. We talked about a number of things especially Maggi’s health and also about how I had managed to loose weight. Perhaps her extra weight had spurred her on to talking about the subject.
In the early evening we all adjourned to the local pizza joint The Social Dough Company, not great service but the pizzas passed. Fortunately I didn’t suffer from any indigestion in the evening. Then in the evening around 9 Adam arrived. We had bought pizzas for his family and so I didn’t have much clearing up to do. Alex and Greg left to spend the night in a local hotel and the rest spent the night in the house, six children and two adults.
In the morning about 6 Adam rose to head to La Colle with his crew. Even I got up to see them off. Then, just after lunch I ferried Alex and family to Heathrow for them to catch a plane to Nice.
1st – 5th July Maggi getting better all the time
On Monday 1st July I drove over to Ricky to pick up Steve Weiman who is not that healthy. His doctor had diagnosed long covid back in March because he had trouble breathing while walking. After 10 weeks he decided to have a second opinion and visited a lung specialist who immediately told him that he had a heart problem. The heart man he saw next thought it probable that he had a leaky valve. As he hadn’t got out much in the last few weeks I offered to drive him to the Artichoke in Croxley for a break and a chat. As usual his company raises a few laughs and we can talk about Arsenal without inference from any one else.
On Wednesday I drove Maggi to Northwick Park for a consultation with the haematological doctor following the recent pet scan. Unfortunately she refused to concede that Maggi’s health issues might still be a result of the return of the lymphoma. This meant another biopsy on one of her lymph glands but at an undecided date in the future. Maggi’s persistence however meant that this was soon arranged for Thursday 11th.
On the other days of the week I went for my usual walks and tried to set up a web site on my Synology NAS. I consistently failed to achieve my objective other than producing a site that was not secure, which doesn’t meet my requirements.
A big step forward in Maggi’s return to normality when Maggi and I dined with Steve, Chin, Jane and Garry at Miller and Carter in the evening. Susie Gandy had already popped in to see Maggi in the afternoon so this turned out to be a big day. Watching Maggi at the dinner table you would never guess she had been ill or that that she wasn’t in good health. While Maggi performed well I couldn’t say the same about the food provided. Most of us had steak and mine was tough.
6th & 7th July
Mel came over late morning and met up with Maggi in central Pinner. The second time she had walked into the village (another good sign of recovery). In the meantime I took the train to Northwood for a haircut and received a scalping. The usual girl cut my hair but she removed far too much in front of my eyes. I said nothing but sat and watched.
I came back and had lunch with Mel, who exuded liveliness. After lunch I worked on my web site and the two of them got on like a house on fire. In the evening we watched England make it through to the semi-finals of the Euros where they will meet Denmark. A great Goal by Saka ensured England secured a draw in normal time and then scored every penalty in the shoot out.
The next day started with a visit from Biddy and Geoff. They had stayed at their daughter, Victoria’s, place after a family get together. They arrived at 10 for a hearty breakfast with eggs bacon, croissants, orange juice and coffee, the largest breakfast I’ve had since my last walking trip with the lads. As usual they are very easy company. Even though we don’t see them that often It always seems easy chatting with them. Geoff told us of the story of his visit to Bob Bickerstaff and how he had told Bob his non-communication saddened him.
The Briggs left at 12:30 and then Vikki, Martin and Ava arrived at 2:30 for lunch. We had a pleasant time around the table and then watching tennis between the chatting. A busy weekend in the end continuing Maggi’s recovery.
