A fairly painless visit to the Charing Cross Hospital yesterday, got seen on time and was in and out in 15 minutes, of which five was me trying to undo the knots that had evolved in my shoelaces.
The consultant – very composed and urbane, with an exceedingly expensive suit – taped an electrode to my lower leg and then produced something that looked like the clippers used in shearing sheep, except instead of blades they had two stubby metal pins. These he pushed into my leg and then pressed a button on some contraption by the couch. A series of electric shocks ran down my leg from clippers to foot on the good leg, but on the dodgy leg they only went as far as the numb patch and disappeared.
For good measure, he moved the clippers around a bit – the probable place where the trouble's happening is in an area covered by all but the most ephemeral underwear, and since I am not one for wearing diaphanous nothings in the nether regions there was the usual performance that ensues when uptight Englishness meets inconvenient underwear. This was lightened by the consultant's choice of phrasing, which led to the most appalling exchange with my mother later in the day:
Me: So then he said to me 'I'm afraid I'm going to have to stimulate your groin now'.
Mum: Ooh – you should have told him, 'I'll come here again'.
Me: I hadn't come once yet.
At which point
Jollity aside, the upshot of the tests seems to be that a trapped nerve is, as suspected, the most probable explanation and either a small op or some steroid injections will deal with it. I prefer the former.
Phoned Sarah when I got out of the hospital – she laughed at the idea of the electric charges and asked if my batteries were now topped up. She's still having the chemotherapy, having a bit of a tough time of it at the moment – they've added an extra session, and some of the non-chemo drugs gave her chest pains a while back and she had to be rushed to hospital. Apparently this is a known side effect, so no-one was particularly worried, but it still wasn't fun. She's being incredibly brave and is mostly in good spirits, but it's starting to get her down a bit now.
In other non health-related stuff, I'm heading into the City tomorrow in search of a mobile internet card for the laptop and then meeting up with the Royal Mail folks for lunch, which should be fun. Wagamamas, of course. Also, it will be conveniently timed to meet up with
And, an era has ended. Webmonkey, the source of all knowledge for anyone who wants to understand anything about building for the web, is closing after eight years. Thanks to the divine Jenny Miller for this link to a post mortem examination.
That's all, folks.