999

Today is the 75th anniversary of the very first 999 call. In those days the Met had just sixteen telephonists or call handlers as they are now called, and fielded 285 calls per day. What made me laugh was that the radio operators of the day signaled the patrol cars by Morse code and each car had it's own Morse operator and machine in the back. The very first call was from a Mr and Mrs Beard of Hampstead. Mr Beard heard a noise outside and went to investigate only to see a man in a suit and trilby running off up the hill. He followed while his wife phoned the police. The man was caught just four minutes later on Primrose Hill. Although the service was introduce on 29th June, it was 1st July before this first call came in. Those were the days.

In other news Murray is through to the third round, two games down, five to go. The game had a sour note to it with his opponent, Karlovic, claiming the judges were biased and called foot faults that were just not happening. Bad loser or does he have a point? Even Murray refused to condemn the claim outright.

The other shock news was the extraordinary encounter between Nadal and Rosol. What a match and what a result! Nadal appeared out of sorts right from the beginning and he also complained about his opponent. In the end though he was simply out played. A bad day for Nadal fans but great news for Murray at least he won't have to face Nadal in the semi's, always assuming he gets that far. I've never been so glad of such a distraction.

So to me, how am I feeling? Yesterday was bad, I didn't eat and I slept badly. The worse bit was telling my family, hearing my mother trying not to cry was the worst. They were all more disappointed than I was. Today I am feeling more resigned than anything else. I knew that my chances were not good so although disappointed I can't say I'm surprised. The combination of my size, age, antibody count and dodgy ticker, which despite the upbeat report is in early stage failure, combined against me and the surgery would be too risky. They said they probably would have gone ahead if the heart factor hadn't come into it even though finding a donor would be tricky.

So what now? Well according to Carl there may be a glimmer of light. Harefield won't do a lung transplant because of my heart, Harefield do not do heart/lung transplants but Papworth do. So they are considering putting me forward to Papworth for a heart/lung instead. My consultants at the Brompton will look at the Harefield decision and if it is just the heart getting in the way they'll approach Papworth for a second opinion. I'm not holding my breath but as they say 'it isn't over till the fat lady sings'. So it is back to more waiting but I've had all the tests so things should be a little quicker than last time.

Andrew is off on his holiday today and he is so excited. He's like a little flea in a bottle and can't sit still. I'm less happy because it means a whole month without him. It is something I'm going to get used to though as he's off again to uni in September. I was bad enough when Laurence left but with both of them gone I've no idea what I'm going to do with myself. For the last twenty four years my thoughts have been on my children. I've done nothing without thinking about how it will effect them, now the only person I will have to consider is Peter. It is going to be very strange.

I'm supposed to be back in work tomorrow but I'm dreading it. My head really isn't in a good place at the moment, despite trying to fool myself that I can cope I keep getting tearful. My philosophy has always been 'just get on with it' and it has helped enormously up to now. My fear is for the sympathetic looks, will I be able to cope with sadness of others when I can barely cope with my own? There are two people I fear most. Both are lovely, kind, wonderful ladies but they are perpetually cheerful and I don't know if I can take being cheered up and advised to 'look on the bright side' especially when there doesn't appear to be one. Do I cope or do I pull a 'sicky' and take a few extra days to get my head around things? For someone who has never taken a sicky in her life it is a tough call and one I'll have to wait until tomorrow to answer.

The weather is crap again so I'm settling myself down on the settee this afternoon to watch Djokovic and Federer do their stuff, you never know there may be another upset.

Next blog in four days.

Decision Day

I can't even think of what to put in blog today. I'm so stressed out. I had a better night's sleep but woke up with a knot as big as a fist in my stomach and I feel sick. Part of me knows it is going to be 'no' while the other half still has hope it will be a 'yes'. My concentration is all to pot and I'm snappy.

Yesterday I tackled a mountain of ironing, cleaned the upstairs and downstairs bathrooms and sorted out the airing cupboard just to keep busy, which of course means I have nothing left to do today. Well I do but I'm not in the mood.

This afternoon Andy Murray will be on court again but if the weather continues as it did yesterday then I'm likely to have heard before he starts to play so he will not provide the desperately needed distraction. Also on court and through to the third round is Brit wild card wonder boy Jamie Ward. The odds are stacked against him but it is not unknown for an unseeded wild card to win the championship, unfortunately being a Brit wild card he'll probably go out today but I look forward to seeing him in years to come.

Fortunately there have been no calls from Indian gentlemen wanting to fix my computer so claiming to have an apple mac may have been the answer to stopping this annoyance.

The weather is muggy which is not helping matters as it is affecting my breathing and making me feel off colour. I'm blaming the weather though it could be that the cold that has been hanging around for ages might finally be traveling south to my chest. I might book myself in for a check over at my GP's tomorrow just to be on the safe side. I haven't had a day off sick since January/February and I am rather keen to keep it that way.

 That'll be a 'no' for transplant then.

Bureaucracy

Well Murray's match was very exciting and for once for all the right reasons. I would say he played better than he has ever done. I felt sorry for Davydenko but he was totally outclassed, and it is not often you can say that about Murray. It is far too early to be optimistic as Murray is in a very tough group and still has six matches to play. Each one will be agony of course and will get tougher. At the moment I'm just grateful I have another day of tennis to watch. Of course for once Murray isn't on his own with three other Brits making their way through to the second round. I'm particularly impressed by James Ward, I think he is definitely one to look out for in the future.

Despite promising sunshine and temperatures as high as 28C I awoke this morning to leaden skies and a slight misting of fine rain on the window. What a pity, I was looking forward to a relaxing read and a doze on the decking this afternoon. Instead I will tackle the mountain that is two weeks worth of ironing. With Andrew no longer at school I was hoping for the ironing to diminish as I no longer had school shirts and trousers to do. Instead there seems to be more than ever. I suspect he has put his whole wardrobe out for washing with a view of not having to do any laundry whilst abroad. In this weather he'll be luck if I get it all dry in time, still I do have the best part of two days in which to try and things might perk up this afternoon.

Like most people claiming tax credits I had my renewal pack last week so today I filled it in and realised I had to notify them of a change of circumstance, Andrew leaving school. I was on the phone for over eleven minutes before I actually got to speak to a real human being, disgraceful! When I did finally get to a human I was asked all sorts of questions that really were not related to Andrew and then I realised he was telling me that because I had higher mobility and higher care DLA I could claim severe disability tax credit. For once the wait was worth it.

Now that I've finally got my blue badge I can tackle yet another mountain of bureaucracy namely the congestion charge. Being disabled and owner of a blue badge I can drive through central London without paying the congestion charge. To do this I need to provide proof of my blue badge, along with identity and a nominal £10 payment. For the last couple of weeks I've been plagued by reminders which I've been unable to respond to because they need a photocopy of my new badge which I didn't have. Now that I have my badge, Andrew is photocopying it as we speak, I notice that I only have to pay the renewal fee if I haven't responded for ninety days after the expiry of my old claim. So why the panic and the waste of money sending reminder after reminder? Don't they read their own rules?

I'm still being plagued by phone calls from scammers wanting to 'fix my computer'. In desperation when the last idiot told me he was from Microsoft I said I only had apple computers, I haven't had a call since. Coincidence, probably but I'd like to think they've finally crossed me off their list. It is irritating that the telephone preference service only stops calls from in this country and nothing can be done about scams from outside the UK. We have now put caller id onto our phones and anything coming up as 'international' just doesn't get answered.

Tomorrow is the big day and I had a terrible night's sleep last night and am expecting an even worse one tonight. I'll be answering every call tomorrow just in case and I wouldn't like to be the scam artist that gets me. Tomorrow I won't be holding back.

Crashing Out

Well the four days at work went really quickly and I coped with my first nine hour day in over a year very well, so well I'm trying two next week. I wasn't helped by Andrew though who went to a party on Friday night, returned home forgetting his key and got us out of bed at twenty past five on Saturday morning. Was I impressed? What do you think? Aside from that, and the residue of my cold I felt a lot less tired than before my holiday so obviously the break has done some real good.

It has been a bad weekend for British sportsmen with England crashing out of the Euro and Hamilton crashing out of the Grand Prix. To be fair Hamilton's crash wasn't his fault and the offending driver, Maldinardo, was duly punished but that was not much comfort to Hamilton who has lost the top spot in the drivers championship to Alonso. However we are less than halfway through the season so there is still all to play for.

England lost on penalties, again! I don't watch football but working in a town with a very large Italian population it was difficult to ignore this particular match. Afterwards the disappointed English fans turned on the celebrating Italian fans and there were some nasty clashes. I can't help feeling that if it had been the other way around the Italian fans would have accepted defeat more graciously and quietly gone home. And to be honest the anger should be directed at the over paid numpties on the field, their the ones that couldn't kick a ball straight.

This morning we went out shopping early so I could be back in time to watch another great English hope crash out of a major tournament. Yes it is Wimbledon fortnight and what is it doing, raining. At the time of typing Nadal has only just arrived back on court after yet another rain break. As center court now has a roof I really don't understand why we are still getting rain stops. So I'm waiting for Andy Murray to step onto center court and lose. He already has his excuses lined up, a back back apparently, so I'm not expecting much, which is probably a good thing.  It seems the organisers cannot decide whether to put the roof up or not, from a tennis fan point of view just put the thing up and get on with it otherwise we might still be watching in August.

My blue badge arrived in the post today, with an apology. It seems going to complain in person and not over a phone had a positive effect and the 'five days to process' rule was magically reduce to two days. I don't care, my new badge is here one day before my old badge expires. Close but thankfully in time.

Regular readers of this blog will know that Thursday is an important day for me. It is the day I find out whether I'm back on the transplant list. I've managed not to think of it over my days in work, the benefits of being rushed off your feet, but the thought hit me like a train this morning. Call me fickle but I now don't want to know. If I don't know there is still hope. I'm swinging between being positive that it will be a 'yes' to sheer panic that they will say no. The worst scenario for me would be to be told they need more tests, they can't do that to me can they? Watch this space!

Blue Badge Blues

Well it is the last day of my holiday and true to form it is raining, brilliant! My only consolation is that the four days I'm in work are also predicted to be pretty dreadful. To be honest I don't mind going back to work as it will make the weekend go quicker and I find weekends always drag when you are waiting for news.

Of course I couldn't finish my holiday without a bit of drama.

With only five days to go before my blue badge expires I'd still heard nothing, I don't even know if I'm going to get one so, deciding not to wait until my badge actually expires, I rang Central Bedfordshire Council for an update and thank goodness I did. It transpires that my badge cannot be issued because there are no photos enclosed. Now I know that is not true because I paper clipped them to the form, which I handed in myself not wishing to trust the postal service. That aside, this little set back could be quickly over come as the machine issued five copies of the passport photo so I still have three spare. Well it would have been easy to overcome IF they had bothered to tell me. 'We're sending a letter out tonight' said the drippy woman on the phone who plainly couldn't care less. I asked to speak to her supervisor and after quite a long hold spoke to a man who was more sympathetic and did admit that it was unreasonable to be requesting replacement photos five days before my old badge ran out. Especially, he acknowledged, as they noticed the missing photos several weeks ago (I'd handed my application in mid May). So a compromise was reached, I drive all the way to Bedford to hand in another set of photo's and he'd rush my badge through for me. Deal done I hopped in the car with the wild hope that they might even prepare the badge while I was waiting. Not so, apparently 'rushing' a badge through takes at least five working days as they are no longer made on the premises but exported to different company licensed to issue the new secure badges. So this year I'm going to have at least a three day period when I won't have my badge. I know it doesn't sound like long to wait and it isn't but it's just one more irritation and inconvenience to deal with. All I can say is thank goodness I don't have any London hospital visits next week or I'd really be stuck. I've actually given up asking 'why me' now because it always is me.

I wish I known about this yesterday because I could have saved myself a trip. Bedford and the Great River Ouse was my first port of call on my photographic trip. I wanted to see if I could photograph some cygnets but when I got there I saw plenty of adult swans but no cygnets so came away disappointed. I did take some photos but I don't regard them as good or interesting enough to enter into an exhibition. I then went on to Great Barford as I've seen some lovely barges and boats there over the years and thought something colourful would be just the ticket. Again no such luck the river was completely devoid of any watercraft. I thought about going on to Leighton Buzzard and the canal but unfortunately by now I was getting tired and the weather was closing in so I called it a day. I plan another trip next week, providing the weather improves, I'm hopeful and haven't yet put the camera back in the cupboard.

The raspberry ice cream was a huge hit with Peter and Andrew but not so much with me. I hate limes, loath them, even the smell makes my stomach turn. One of the ingredients in the ice cream was lime juice. Now as there was so little lime and so many raspberries I didn't think there would be a problem and when I tasted the mixture, before it started to freeze, all I got was raspberries. However three hours later I could not believe how strong the lime actually was and although I ate some it wasn't that long before I developed a queasy tum. I will make it again but next time I'll use lemon juice.

So what to do with my last day of holiday? Well I have a punnet to strawberries and a pot of cream in the fridge with my name on them so I think I'll go and practice for Wimbledon.

Wait, wait, wait, sorry to add this after publishing but I really must comment on this.

Unfunny comedian jimmy Carr has apologised for his 'terrible error of judgement' concerning his tax affairs. It is quite obvious that the only thing he regrets is being found out.

The next blog will be in four days.

Good News Travels Slowly

The home made vanilla ice cream was delicious so I'm being a bit more adventurous today and attempting raspberry. We ate the entire batch yesterday so I'm expecting the same to happen today, good job I'm trying to put on weight and not take it off.

Talking of putting on weight I've reached the heady heights of  seven stone nine pounds, the heaviest I've been in a year. Maybe all this sitting around at home has been a good thing after all. If I can keep the weight then that is another box ticked for transplant.

I was cheered this morning by receiving the written report on my Right Heart Catheter. Right at the bottom, after all the medical jargon, half of which I don't understand, is one lovely little sentence. 'In summary, Mrs Roberts has severe pulmonary arterial hypertension, no residual aortopulmonary window and the outcome of the discussion was that she would benefit from a lung transplant.' Big sigh of relief, they found nothing that would prevent me from having the transplant which is very encouraging. Of course I can't count my chickens yet as there may be something else that could put a spanner in the works but for now I'm feeling a lot happier than I did after my phone call on Monday.

Well my camera batteries are charged and, although it isn't as sunny as it was yesterday, I'm going out this afternoon to snap a few frames. I need to get out for three reasons, 1. it will make the 28th come quicker. 2. I haven't been able to get out except for shopping during the whole of my break. And 3. I've been invited to take part in an exhibition in London in September, which is very exciting. Of course from the minute I was asked to contribute it has pored down, typical. The exhibition is on behalf of the PHA and Royal Brompton PH service so naturally I really want to do something for them as they've done so much for me. With a bit of luck I'll get a couple of great shots today, if I do I'll post them here so you can take a look.

With only six days to go I still haven't received my new blue badge, which is a little worrying. I'm not planning a trip into any of the big towns over the next week where the badge is worth it's weight in gold but I'd still like the security of having the thing before the old one actually runs out. In theory, because I get the maximum DLA for mobility, it should be an automatic renewal but as with everything else more checks are being made on eligibility which means everything takes longer. If nothing has arrived by Monday then I'll have to ring them and give them a bit of a hurry up.

In the news it is the strange case of Julian Assange. If you have been living under a rock for the last year you might well have missed all the fuss so a quick recap. Assange is the founder of Wikileaks and is a thorn in the side of the authorities of a lot of countries because he keeps leaking diplomatic secrets. The American's in particular don't like him and have made several attempts to get hold of him for various national security violations. In an unexpected twist the Swedish authorities put in a request for extradition on the grounds of rape and sexual assault. Although details haven't been released they must have put up a convincing case because extradition was granted. Since then Assange has been on bail while several appeals go through. Yesterday in a surprise move Assange rocked up at the Ecuadorian embassy claiming asylum. The Ecuadorians are considering his case and in the meantime if Assange sets one foot out of the embassy he will be arrested for breaking his bail.

What makes this case interesting is all the conspiracy theories floating around. The main theory is this, Assange is an Australian who has set up residence in the UK for whatever reason, probably because it is more central for his business interests. Despite what everyone thinks it isn't that easy for the US to extradite someone from the UK for the sort of crimes Assange is being accused of, especially as it is rather difficult to prove he's actually done anything wrong himself. For whatever reason it is thought to be easier for the US to extradite from Sweden. So someone has cooked up a charge of rape and sexual assault to get Assange extradited to Sweden on a more serious charge that the UK courts can't ignore. Once he's there the USA will request extradition knowing they are more likely to be successful. I have no idea if any of this is true or not but it is an interesting theory and not one that can be totally dismissed as fantasy. I also don't know what the relationship between the US and Ecuador is like but I'm willing to bet for Assange to be seeking asylum there I'd say extradition is near impossible. It is going to be interesting to see how all this eventually gets resolved. I think Assange will end up in jail, the only question is where?

Just got back from the trip out. Not as successful as I hoped, no cygnets. Did get some photo's though which I will share once I've uploaded them to my computer and vetted them.

We All Scream For Ice Cream

Well I got the expected call from Harefield and am really not much further on. The bad news is I'm still waiting for a decision, there is no meeting again this week. The good news is that I'm the first case up for the meeting on the 28th June and will be called that afternoon with an answer. So another ten days of waiting and nail biting and swinging between desperately hoping they'll say yes while at the same time dreading it. Honestly I've been through so many different emotions over the last few weeks I'm exhausted.

To pass some of the time we blitzed Milton Keynes shopping center this afternoon and returned with new shoes for Peter, various holiday stuff for Andrew and a roll of surgical tape for me, last of the big spenders or what. Yesterday we bought an ice cream maker so we popped into Tesco on the way home and got lots of ingredients with which to make said ice cream. Andrew cannot eat commercial ice cream as it has lots of added whey powder, which he's allergic too. Making my own will be fun (I hope) and I know exactly what is in it so should be safe for him. I've bought stuff to make a plain vanilla as a first run. Raspberry frozen yoghurt and orange and mango sorbet will follow tomorrow provided the first one is a success. If it is not then I'll just eat the fruit and yoghurt as they are, no big deal. At the very least it will give me something to do and if it works out I can get down to some serious experimentation to keep my mind off everything else.

It has been a nice day, not too hot but sunny most of the time. I hope it is the same tomorrow as I'm now itching to get out and do some photography. I've only got two days of my holiday left and apart from shopping haven't left the house yet. Not my fault, it is very difficult getting any motivation when it is bucketing down.

Andrew has already declared himself bored even though his exams only finished yesterday. So he spent yesterday afternoon weeding (decimating) my herb garden. The only things left standing are my sage, rosemary and marjoram, everything else has gone. He meant well but I could weep at the loss of my thyme, which he thought was clover. Luckily herbs are pretty resilient and I'm hoping they will recover given time. If not a swift trip to the garden center will fix things and what I've lost is not expensive. Tomorrow I've got him clearing up the patio which has been left scattered with earth and leaves. He of course is also counting down the days, but for his holiday so he has taken my request in good heart as 'anything to make the time go quicker' seems to be his current motto.

Well I'm off to give the ice cream maker a go, I'll let you know how it turned out tomorrow.