Rite of passage

Our first day back in Epsom saw another rite of passage, a procedure called an angiogram (heart flavoured), for which see reference 1. A procedure about which I had got a bit windy, but in the event they got me there and got me through it without much fuss at all, give or take a bit of back-friendly wriggling to get me from the procedure bed to the recovery bed afterwards. A credit to all concerned.

For most of the half day I was there, I was able to admire the view snapped above. Rollator by my right hand side, off-snap below. Quite apart from its help in getting me in and getting me out, it was handy that I had taken my own chair, as they were not provided and I did not want to be lying down for too long. My two tethers were plenty long enough to allow this modest amount of movement.

Refreshment in the form of sandwich, teas and biscuits. Pitched just about right.

Four buttons from obscure parts of the body were left over as souvenirs, two of which were snapped above, before I came across the other two. The buttons, together with my wristband, should provide excellent props for playing hospitals with the granddaughters, both of whom seem to be very keen on that sort of thing. Not into proper activities like building Duplo towers any more at all. Things were different a couple of years ago, as can be seen at reference 2.

A person-to-person handover to BH - they did not go quite so far as to ask her to sign a receipt - and home to mince, rice, carrots and more runner beans. Runner beans from Morocco from Sainsbury's - which tasted much more like real runner beans than those I had bought from the butcher in Manor Green Road and noticed at reference 3. 

Followed by bread pudding and a few plums. English plums from Waitrose, adequate rather than good.

All in all, a tiring but satisfactory day. A small scar in my right wrist, maybe 3mm long, to show for it.

PS 1: dazzled by previous procedures, I did not read the notes provided properly and got the idea that the small pipe pushed into one of one's arteries carried a small camera at its tip. This was quite wrong: the pipe carried dye not camera, and the image came from an X-ray machine outside. Presumably the dye disperses very quickly and needs to be dispensed very near the site to be imaged. This error probably contributed to aforementioned windiness. 

PS 2: much has been written about the brain needing to use prior expectations to inform its analysis of incoming data. Is that blur in the bushes a brightly coloured bird or a discarded sweet wrapper? One result of which being that the subjective image can flip, more or less instantly, from one to the other. In the present case, prior expectations blinded me to incoming data, despite it being clear enough on the page. At least with hindsight.

References

Reference 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angiography. 

Reference 2: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2021/12/towers-of-duplo.html.

Reference 3: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2024/08/fake-181.html.

Reference 4: http://pumpkinstrokemarrow.blogspot.com/2012/03/following-post-of-16th-february-i-can.html. A previous rite, complete with clerical error in the file name.