Saturday 29 May 2021

29/05/21 Public Gardens and Blood Tests

Went to Braintree and Bocking Public Gardens this morning. It's a smallish place but with a lot of variety (also plenty of benches and bins). Once around isn't enough of a walk, twice tround makes it better...












This photo is of "The Stumpery" - a habitat designed for insects, bugs,  fungi, etc.. Right up my street as a biologist!





















After that, a light lunch (cheese biscuits, no sausage rolls) and then the Tesco delivery and online backgammon as every weekday, plus a few little jobs about the place and a trip to the GP surgery to pick up a prescription for my blood thinner (Rivaroxaban). It's strange how you can start of with all the different pills together on the calendar but somehow they all drift apart so instead of doing just one prescription every month (or four weeks) you end up having to do two or three different ones. It may have something to do with entropy.

No more bowel issues, fortunately. Tonight I'll re-introduce the senna and maybe a Fybogel, depending on how things go. And I'll definitely move dex mornings to Monday and Tuesday which will keep them as far away from boules days as possible.

N ow for the good news. Somehow - possibly because last Friday was Sue's birthday - I forgot to request the usual email of the last blood test results. But I remembered today and I now have them.

Paraproteins still at "No paraproteins detected" and Free Light Chains are OK - Lambda is a little low and the ratio is a little high, but neither worse than I've had before and they usually come back into normal ranges next time. Otherwise, all is good under the circumstances. In the immune system department (which I'm paying particular attention to since that positive COVID antibody test result) all is normal except for lymphocytes being a little low. The three immunoglobulins are below normal, but I think that is to be expected. Pleasingly, haemoglobin is back in normal territory although red cells are a little low. Platelets below normal, but no more so than usual. Everything else, including liver and kidney functions (which may well play a bigger part further down the line)  are all good. And the COVID swab came back negative, of course. I've now had eleven "professional" antigen swab tests, plus six (I think) self-administered ones, as well as the one antibody test. Probably not a record, but certainly enough.

So I'm happy again. Until next time..


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