Wellies

Just to let you see how wet it has been last week and yesterday in particular. This is just inside the Stackyard field gate. The fields are flooded again and even parts of the roads were flooded, but fortunately, still passable.

Treading Water

Well, I've been for my treadmill stress test (you can read up on it HERE ) and of course nothing showed up!! I should have read up on the test before I went (and shouldn't have gone when I still had a bit a cold - that's what Janice says anyway). I thought when I had reached 100% of my target heart rate, it was a danger sign. It turns out that is what the test sets out to achieve to get most info from the scans and blood pressure.

The cardiac Nurse in charge of the operation said there was nothing in the readings showed any cause for concern, so I asked her if I needed to start taking the Beta-Blockers again (you have to stop 2-3 days before the test as they affect the true reading). She said she didn't know, but wold try to locate the Consultant dealing with my case. I expected her to return with a Yeah or Neigh, but the Consultant himself turned up!

There were a couple of reasons for this. Firstly, he wanted to run over the results of the test. Basically, although nothing adverse showed up on the scans, there is still a 15% chance that the Bruce protocol test doesn't pick up on every person with narrowing arteries. If we wanted to more certain that there was or wasn't a problem, the hospital could run an angiogram on me, but there is the possibilty of the angiogram actually causing a heart attack or stroke, and given my otherwise good health, he didn't think this was such a good idea. So, in the end ,we decided that the best option was to stop taking the beta blockers and aspirin, and see how I progressed. Neither he nor I are keen to keep taking medication long term "just in case", especially, as he said the angiogram would probably show narrowing arteries regardless of a problem as I was Scottish!

The other reason he came to see me himself was that when the nurse showed him my notes, it reminded him of my case and the difficulty of a definite diagnosis. Another patient had appeared last week, other wise healthy, but with chest pains, and there were similarites between them. The consultant was giving a talk in the afternoon on the dangers of jumping to conclusions, based on limited evidence and the difficulties of diagnosing heart problems, when there are many other illnesses with the same symptoms. I told him I had no objection to my case being used in his talk, and he assured me it would be used anonymously.

A wee bit wet!

It's been raining! We've had quite a lot of rain this week and yesterday it rained all day, the result being quite a lot of flooding in the fields. This is not an unusual occurance, and we have had much worse floods, as far as I know none of the roads are flooded, but I thought you might be interested to see it. The picture above is the field to the left of the house 'side of the house' field, where we have a large pond and often have wild ducks visiting.

You can see that the weather is much improved this morning and I was pleased to catch this reflection in the flood. This is the middle field and the bottom field (where Brian and Bob got caught in the rain!), these fields run down to the River Annan.

This picture is looking back at our fields from the ditch between us and the Bush Farm fields, that's the ditch just behind the strip of green. Our neighbour had just ploughed and reseeded this field, so I don't expect he is very happy that it is completely under water.

Looking down towards the middle and bottom field from Welldale, that's the cottage on the left.

This picture gives you an idea of the extent of the flood, all the low lying ground is covered, that is the Cheese Factory on the horizon to the right of the picture.

I'm not sure if all the grass seed had floated to the top of the field, but something had attracted a huge flock of seagulls to this newly reseeded field.

New College, Oxford

I was in Oxford last week on a course, I thought I'd share some of the delights of staying in an ancient (founded 1379) college. This is the chapel taken from New Buildings where I had my room.

This is the entry to stair 4, my room was one flight up...a spiral staircase!

This was my room from Holywell Street, the first floor window with the fancy carvings.

The view from inside the room.

Fancier on the outside than inside, but spacious and comfortable.

Stained glass in the chapel.

The WW1 war memorial.

Not very good light for this picture but it gives you and idea of what the chapel looked like.