Break a leg

It has been a very pleasant and relaxing day.  The Sage has spent much of it on the phone, giving sale results to sellers, commission-bid buyers and friends.  Weeza stayed overnight, with Zerlina next door with her cousins, and we all had a late breakfast together.  Mid-morning, Phil arrived on his bike - he'd gone down to Ipswich last night to meet up with friends from where he used to work, and stayed overnight with one of them about 20 miles from here.  They all went off about noon, little z already rubbing her eyes and looking sleepy, as did Barry Bear who was snuggling up to her.

I slept myself this afternoon.  It was lovely.  I stretched out on the sofa in the sunshine and napped for twenty minutes or so.  I'd have slept longer, but the phone rang.  I'd phoned a friend of mine earlier on, in fact.  I'd heard yesterday, from mutual friends, that she is in hospital.  When I saw her a couple of weeks ago, she was waiting for an x-ray.  She'd been to the doctor because she was in pain and could hardly walk.  He thought it was a groin strain and she waited for it to get better, then went to a physiotherapist who thought it wasn't a strain and thought it might be an arthritic hip.  The pain can come on very suddenly.  She went back to the doctor - she could hardly walk, and not without a stick - and he booked the x-ray, although he still didn't think it was arthritis.  It took a fortnight for her to get it, and the morning after, her doctor rang her.  "I'm sending an ambulance," he said.  "You've been walking around with a broken hip!" She has no idea how she did it, though she does remember stumbling and turning her ankle - still, quite a shock to find that something so trivial can result in a broken bone and a replacement hip.  Unfortunately, she then developed a blood clot and now is on Warfarin and not allowed out of hospital until they're sure she's over that.  She lives alone since her husband died, so will have to go to a convalescent home until she can look after herself.

She was in high good humour when I phoned, and told me all this without a hint of self-pity.  The final straw, she chuckled, was when she developed an itch on her leg and they said she has shingles to boot.  "I'm being fed calcium tablets for my bones - I've never had such marvellously strong nails!" she told me.  I said I'll call in and see her on Monday.

I've been remembering a couple of occasions when dogs of ours got grass seeds behind their eyes.  In each case, a long rye grass seed head vanished completely, and was only discovered when it started to poke out again.  They were much bigger and jagged foreign bodies, and yet seemed to do the dog no harm at all.  My contact lens hasn't reappeared, but is certainly still there as I can feel it, but my eye isn't red or inflamed.  If it doesn't come out by Monday morning, I'll go to the optician.  I expect it will, though.  I mean, it hasn't anywhere else to go.  Unless I blow my nose, of course.