I got called by the hospital and they gave me an update on the lump removed from the mouth. It was thankfully nothing serious, but recommended I keep an eye on it in case it came back (there is always a risk of that)
Tag Archives: Hospital
Twitter, TFL and Dilbert
It’s been a while so here’s a few updates in the meantime
It’s coming up to a year since I moved house and only now have the pile of construction rubbish been moved from outside my old flat. Dumping of rubbish by the neighbours in the adjoining block of flats into the garage is still happening.
Conservatives lost control of the area to Labour but I’m seeing absolutely no change
We went through a period of very cold weather (-6degC) and this was costing us £10-£15 per day in gas usage.
Moving onto other updates. As posted previously, I went into hospital to remove a lump from my mouth. I’ll soon get a follow up call from the doctor to check how I’m doing. Stitches took about 10 days to dissolve. I just have a small white patch there now where the lump was removed and the doctor cauterised the wound.
Twitter has descended into a real s**thole since Elon took over. First killing all third-party clients and then indicating it may start charging for API usage.
The third-party client purge I can tolerate — it was originally started during the Jack era, but charging for API usage, or even limiting tweets per day is not something many people will accept.
I started working on stripping out twitter functionality from my TFL updates bot and that’s near enough done now. It now tweets (or should that be toots) into a Mastodon account at https://mastodon.xyz/users/updatesbf
RSS feed functionality should still work, but it is not enabled yet, until I can get Keda to work.
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Operation
Today, I went to hospital to be operated on — something I haven’t had done for over 35 years.
The operation was, quote, “An excisional biopsy” of a lump in my mouth – a lump I have been carry for several years.
The lump has been growing very slowly and I am now biting it more frequently than before, causing a lot of pain.
My dentist referred me into the Maxillofacial department of my local hospital.
I visited there last week to get a preliminary examination. The doctors there agreed it could be removed and scheduled me into a biopsy today.
I’d be lying if I didn’t say I was a bit nervous. Nonetheless, the doctors helped reassure me and the operation started. They offered me a pair of sunglasses to go over my own glasses as the light from the operating theatre’s light is very bright. I chose to use them.
Settling in, the process started with three anaesthetic injections. I felt the first two and they didn’t feel bad. The third one hurt, and the fourth one was tolerable.
Couple of minutes later, the doctor poked around inside the mouth to check if the anaesthetic had taken effect (I didn’t feel anything). They started stuffing gauze in my mouth, and it felt a bit like one of those prisoner scenes in the movies when they did that.
The nurse kept my lip open while the doctor operated on it. I felt nothing at all. This was so weird, I could see them doing stuff, but they were out of my field of vision and I had no idea what was going on down there.
I started to see blood on the gauze. LOTS of it. They swapped out gauze a few times and then I started seeing small thin wafts of smoke coming from there. However, still no pain.
The doctor then started stitching me up. They used 3 stitches and still felt nothing.
I asked for a mirror at the end of the operation to see how bad it was. I had a puffy upper lip on one side and normal on the other. Expected though.
The doctor ran through some after care instructions. I’m supposed to be on a soft diet for 3 days, no hot food or drink for 24 hours, no smoking, vaping or alcohol for at least 3 days, no strenuous exercise for 3 days, no spitting or rinsing the mouth for 24 hours, salt water rinse after meals from 24 hours onwards, and painkiller use when needed to help reduce pain and swelling.
It’s been around 5 hours since the operation and I’m feeling rumblings of pain. Not intense, but I suspect the anaesthetic might be beginning to wear off.
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Updates
It’s been a long time since I posted on here — my last post (before today’s posts) was July 17 when I had to self isolate. A lot has happened since then, so this post will be a bit of an update list
I had to take my dad into hospital for a prostrate operation (this was planned before I had to self-isolate) — he already had a PCR test and was cleared. My LFT was also clear, but I still had to self isolate. This was before the self-isolation changes happened. The operation was successful, but he needed to be held a few more days to see an ENT specialist due to them finding lumps in his throat. The concern was that they might be cancerous, but turns out it was just irritation so they gave him some Gaviscon to take after means and soothe the throat. Both my dad and I are prone to post-meal throat irritation so it might mean I might be subject to the same thing later in life.
I got a ticket after driving my dad to the hospital for taking a left turn when I was not supposed do, due to badly signposted roads. My appeal was rejected on the grounds I had paid the ticket. This is how the council screws you over — if you pay the fine to avoid the 100% charge, they will claim that admits guilt. If you don’t, they delay the response until after the 2-week window so you then have to pay the 100% charge.
I finally decided to upgrade my phone and went for a OnePlus 9 Pro. The phone is classed as a “Phablet” and much bigger than the Samsung Galaxy S5 I have been using for years:
The case on the left is for the OnePlus, the case on the right for my S5
I had problems activating the new SIM and eventually Three had to send me a new one, and soon after I got that new one, I got a message saying Three were going to be doing works on the mast in my area and ever since then I have had horrendously bad speeds at home. By bad, I mean speeds of < 1Mbps and even down to 0.2Mbps. Using 3G band sometimes helps, but only marginally.
I’ve taken my complaint up to the Ombudsman but Three are still refusing to do anything about it — even charging me to leave contract early.
I’ve been with Three many years but I will not be recommending them going forward. I will be checking other providers when my contract expires.
We’ve started to go back to the office. My team is doing three days a week in the office, and you pick which three days as long as there are a max of 8 people in the office (due to some office reorganisation, we only have 8 seats for the entire team).
Surprisingly many people have left jobs during and post lockdown (some might have been nudged due to the lockdown, and not just in my office, but generally.)
I won a Twitter completion by Curve for a swag bag. Just had to tweet them three images of their different adverts — all of which showed up on the same station, so that wasn’t too difficult.
Then we had the annoying as heck “Panic at the Pumps” causing shortages.
This video from my dashcam shows the queue of traffic. This is the queue leading into the Alperton Sainsbury’s. I was there at around 5am and it took me 30 minutes to clear the queue even with less people in the queue. This queue will probably take 90 minutes to clear, assuming the fuel was not gone by the time they got to the front of the queue
This video, also from my dashcam shows the queues that built up outside the petrol stations — this Esso I actually went into at 4:30am that morning and they were not open, even though there were staff in the shop (so maybe they were waiting for delivery?)
You’ll get people tooting impatiently and even people cutting the queue and then blocking the lane for the people behind (they must be luxury car drivers)
My house purchase has progressed and we have moved on and are now ready to exchange. However, one of the two sellers is unable to complete his purchase (he’s part of a chain and needs to complete his purchase before he can complete the sale on the current house).
Finally, I got a letter from Principia Law who are the ones trying to claim money back from the drunk driver who wrecked my previous car.
They want me to release my bank records for the period of time I had the hire car. But everyone I have discussed this with seems confused as to why this is required since the accident is a “no-fault” claim on my part, so they should not even need my bank details.
I asked them to call me today to discuss this. I may also speak to the office legal team for their thoughts.
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Rip-off Britain
Went to my local hospital for a blood test and found these. Over-inflated prices: 80p for a bag of crisps, £1.00 for a can of soft drink, £1.50 for a bottle, £1.50 for a vending machine cup of coffee…
Blender Fox 
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