Saturday 5 September 2009

Oh what a week!!

Last Saturday I didnt feel very well, so I stayed in, did nothing, ate pain killers and hibernated.

On Sunday, we had been invited to our old next door neighbours new house. Douglas didnt feel very well, but we went anyway. It was lovely to see Matt, Katy, toddler Eliza and baby Agnes, who was born about a month before they moved. It was also lovely to see their very calm friendly ginger cat Milo.

Douglas felt more poorly, and didnt go to work Tuesday or Wednesday, which of course was very worrying. Had he still been feeling awful on Thursday, I would have thrown him at the hospital, but luckily he was well enough to go to work. Phew!!

Meanwhile, my Boss had given me an interesting, and time consuming admin task .. printing out thousands of letters to remind customers to renew their waste carriers licences! Had this been just a single paged letter the task would have been an easy one, but with the application form and various other documents to put in, it took longer.

I started off printing each type of document that had go into the pack separatley ... letter, application form, two help documents, a charges sheet and a transfer note had to go in, the ones with multiple pages were stapled, the others not. This was very time consuming and rather boring!

By Thursday, with suggestions from all sorts of people in the office, we had streamlined the process considerably.. we abandoned the staples, and printed off all ten sheets of the "pack" at one together, so all we had to do was bung a pack with a letter, and let the envelope stuffer machine do the rest!!

I was kept busy moving between 3 printers, keeping them busy, and filled with paper, liasing with various people and departments and taking stuff to the post room ready to send out. It was exhausting but very enjoyable!!

On Friday morning, 4.30am, Douglas woke me and mumbled something about not being able to feel half his face which was very weird! When I turned the light on, I could see that the left side of his face and his lips had swollen very badly! It was very difficult to understand him, and also pretty scary.

Douglas, on waking and feeling so strange had felt his arm and leg, made sure they moved and felt normal just in case it was a Stroke.. I'm so glad to say that it wasnt!!

We got up, hoping that if we waited, the swelling would just prove itself to be Odema (water staying in the tissue of his face) and that it would go down when he was upright and not lying on his face.

5.30am.. face still very swollen so we called his work GP advice service who said go to A&E!!

We stuffed a quick breakfast down, went to A&E at our normal hospital. We got seen by the Triage Nurse pretty quickly who fed D a piriton (antihistamine). We waited in the almost empty waiting room for about an hour until the Dr saw us.

I took this unbecoming picture of the poor boy whilst we were waiting to be seen. He has given me permission to put it on the blog!

Mr Rubber Lips Man!





The Dr told Douglas that it was just an allergic reaction to something (we dont know what) and that it would go down in time.

By now the time was 9.30am. I had called work and let them know what was going on, and Douglas had mumbled to his work place too. The swelling was going down a little, but it was still quite pronounced!

I drove D to his work, as he wanted to see if there was anyting non verbal he could do, but 5 mins later he had been ejected as I had predicted. Working in a call centre and not being able to talk properly is never a good combination.

D then drove me to work, and then went home... goodness knows how I survived the rest of Friday because I was exhausted from the week and the very early start!

Im very glad to say that Ds face has now gone back to normal, and hes feeling fine :-)

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