djm4_lj

It appears that I probably do have some nerve damage to the nerves that supply the underside of my left thumb, but probably nowhere else. From what I was told it sounds as though this is fairly usual for someone with my sort of injury/operation, and that it's probably not all that serious in the long term. I've been told to flex my fingers on my left hand as much as I can; at the moment the outer three are pretty much fully mobile, the index finger harder and more painful to flex, and the thumb barely moveable at all. Again, there doesn't seem to be any suggestion that this is unexpected or worrying per se, but it is clearly susceptible of improvement and continuing to try to move the fingers is the best way to do this.

ETA: oh, and they changed the cast. Which means that for the first time since the accident I got to see the full gory bruised mess that is the underside of my left wrist, now (since the operation) with added lengthwise scar of several centimetres and stitching. Yowch!

Longer update ... later, when I'm not woozy, but the main points are:

* Was given a general at around 9am. Came round somewhere around 12:20pm. Remember nothing between those times.
* My left radius is now plated together near the wrist and in the correct position. Operation was a success, basically.
* My arm will be in a cast for the next six weeks (at least).
* Appointment at 10am on Tuesday at the fracture clinic, when I'll learn more.
* This (currently) hurts a lot more than last week, but I have painkillers for that, so all is basically well.

Thanks for the lovely comments and good wishes on the previous post. I don't have the energy to reply to each one individually right now, but they mean a lot to me. I appear to be generally capable of getting up and doing stuff around the house from time to time, but need plenty of rest. I think the getting up to do the occasional thing is good, as it keeps me chirpy This is entirely as expected, and probably the way of things for the next few days.

( Picture from which icon is taken )


aegidian is cooking pasta with pesto for lunch, and is a hero of the revolution.

In other news, 'Martin from CMS' can fuck off, whoever he is. Waking me up and getting me struggling out of bed to be cold-called about recovering bank charges is annoying enough, without doing it in an accent and speech pattern that meant that I picked up up the phone to hear: 'Hello my name is Martin from CMS how are you going to die?'

Edited to add: although the reason you all know it's still me here despite the bang on the head is that I'm now feeling a bit guilty at directing ire at a call centre worker. He is no doubt working all hours god sends for shit wages, and is in a job where he'd really be financially hammered (and possibly sacked) if he lost the use of oe of his hands for a month or so. Hell, my work even give me BUPA. Privilege; I have it.

Sir Menzies Campbell, the former Liberal Democrat leader, suggested that Mr Blair may not have been so politically successful had the relationship between his beliefs and his actions in office been better known.

"The public might have been less willing to give him the triumph of three consecutive general election victories if they'd known the extent to which ethical values would overshadow pragmatism," Sir Menzies said.

Yes, Ming, do please spare us from politicians with ethical values.

There are many things one could say about Tony Blair's religious beliefs, (such as 'hang on - this is news?' and 'the press made Cherie out to be far battier than this and they survived' for starters) but suggesting he should have been more of a pragmatist and implying that religious people are more guided by ethics than atheists... what is he thinking?

"There will often be as much interpretation of what a politician is saying, as there is coverage of them actually saying it."

Tony Blair, talking disapprovingly about the news.

Obviously, if you're a control-freak like Tony Blair, you would think that's a bad thing. Personally, I want our news media to interpret what our politicians say, rather than just slavishly reporting that they've said it. And many different points of view, and different information sources? Yes please!

In other news:

Paddy Ashdown continues to talk sense on Iraq, and foreign intervention in general.

Bisexual Underground tonight.

Kurt Vonnegut, author of Slaughterhouse Five, has died at the age of 84. So it goes.

When Douglas Adams died, I noted that he was a writer whose very writing sparked ideas and thoughts in my brain, and that now he was dead, there were thoughts I'd never think, insights I'd never have. Well, Kurt Vonnegut was a writer who inspired Douglas Adams. The world is horribly poorer without him.

I've actually only read four Kurt Vonnegut books, something I hereby resolve to change as soon as possible. When I was 18, I read Player Piano, principally because I knew Vonnegut had inspired Adams. I wasn't ready for it. I thought it was very good in its way, but needed more robots to be 'proper' SF. I was a badly-read idiot. I didn't appreciate how rare it was for an author to write SF that stood up well as a book in any other genre. I know better now, though I'm still learning.

A couple of years ago, booklectic indirectly encouraged me to read Sirens of Titan. I loved it. Anyone who saw me at booklectic's birthday party this year may remember that I was dressed in hoops of tinsel with various pictures of London throughout the ages. This was my vain attempt to re-create a chrono-synclastic infudibulum from the book.

Knowing that I'd liked Sirens of Titan, booklectic lent me Slaughterhouse Five. In this, Kurt Vonnegut describes his personal experience as being a prisoner of war in Dresden when we carpet-bombed it. Fascinatingly, he does it in an SF story involving time travel along one's own personal timeline. A lesser author could have ended up trivialising the experience, but in Vonnegut's hands it ends up being a seminal example of what SF should be doing all the damn time.

And then, last month, I bought A Man Without a Country: A Memoir of Life in George W. Bush's America, because I needed a book to push my Amazon order into the free delivery zone. This is a series of essays on how fucked up America and much of the Western world is, basically, but it's also steeped in wit and humanity. He also urges writers never to use semi-colons, so I've consciously left them out of this post. Now that was tough.

From the_xtina and kightp:

The negative consequences of bariatric surgery, and why people who've had it tend not to talk about them. In fact, it's an interesting blog generally.

"A quarter of England adults are obese, costing £3.7bn a year. It causes more harm than smoking, alcohol or poverty."

It's not that I don't believe the BBC news site - as it happens, I don't, but that's not quite the point - it's that I don't think a bald statement like that should sit there uncriticised. At the very least, I'd like the journalist to expand a little on how they're quantifying 'harm'. I'd also like to know whether they're using 'obese' as defiend by BMI, and if so, are they simply assuming that 'obese' means 'serious health risk'? Thing is, that's actully highly controversial, as anyone writing in this area should know.

Obesity does not cause more harm than lazy journalism, but then very little does.

From BBC News:

World 'backs Lebanon offensive'

Israel says diplomats' decision not to call for a halt to its Lebanon offensive at a Middle East summit has given it the green light to continue.

"We received yesterday at the Rome conference permission from the world... to continue the operation," Justice Minister Haim Ramon said.

...

He said that in order to prevent casualties amongst Israeli soldiers battling Hezbollah militants in southern Lebanon, villages should be flattened by the Israeli air force [my italics] before ground troops move in.

He added that Israel had given the civilians of southern Lebanon ample time to quit the area and therefore anyone still remaining there can be considered Hezbollah supporters.

"All those now in south Lebanon are terrorists who are related in some way to Hezbollah," Mr Ramon said.

I'm not sure I feel up to commenting, except that I'm currently rather unhappy at sharing a planet with Haim Ramon.

I shouldn't be this excited, I know, but for a devotee of eighties BBC drama like me, the news that they're releasing Bird Of Prey on DVD makes me a very happy person indeed.

I wonder how it's aged. Some of the computer jargon will look very dated, obviously, and the 'computer graphics' and Dave Greenslade electronic soundtrack likewise fix it at over twenty years ago. But I remember the dialogue and performances as being top-drawer, Carole Nimmons as Anne Jay was one of my early 'strong dark-haired women' crushes, and I'll watch Richard Griffiths in anything.