Yesterday went more or less according to plan, except that the double cream (Tesco) I was using to make spreadable butter simply refused to churn and give up its buttermilk. Only the second time I've had that happen in all the years I've been making our own butter. Panicking slightly because we need more butter for later today, I 'phoned Sue who was out doing some shopping in Ongar Sainsbury and got her to buy some more cream. I used the rest of the Tesco stuff to make "hard" butter and that seemed to work OK but it was unusually soft and squishy at room temperature - would barely hold its shape. I just hope it'll be OK at fridge temperature, or else I'll have to throw that out and start again. Anyway, I used Sainsbury cream to make spreadable, which worked perfectly well. Then made some tuna mayo to go into rolls for lunch,when we expect to have friends visiting (two adults, two 9-yr old heterozygous twins).
Otherwise we had more-or-less the expected lazy day at home, although I still managed my activity target with a version of the short Admiral's Park walk. The oedema is better, yesterday's strange pain in my right foot was still there in the morning but faded quickly. The Pill Organisation Thing is done for next week, as are Cleaning the Cat Drinking Fountain and Paying the Weekly Bills. The main things I have outstanding are doing the new job for a Myeloma UK Panel, and returning a defective keyboard to Amazon.
There was an item on one of Sue's many fly-on-the-wall hospital TV programmes about life in an A&E (Accident and Emergency) department. A woman with myeloma turned up with new acute leg pain. Lying flat, she could only raise either leg an inch or two (I remember that!)
The obvious possibility to my mind was spinal cord compression caused by myeloma-related vertebral fractures, and the treatment would be some form of kyphoplasty to stabilise that area of spine with cement. However, an MRI showed no cord compression or change from established myeloma lesions etc.. She was sent home with, as far as we saw, not even any pain relief. The strange thing is that with an established myeloma diagnosis she must have been in the care of a haematologist and must have had a nursing team with an established contact person but there seemed to be no attempt to contact them - and it seems unlikely that they would have supported discharge without wanting at least some direct contact with the patient, the A&E staff, or both. Perhaps it happened but just didn't get through the editing process. If so, just another lesson in not taking these programmes at face value!
