Sad and Scary Sunday

Thank you so much to evfurrybody who wished me good luck and crossed their paws for my neurologist's appointment. I was very touched. Here is the story.

Well off we went in Pinky's car to the Neurological Department on Sunday, at what was sparrow fart for us (9 a.m.). We are NOT morning people. Pinky is better than I am, but neither of us are at our best before midday. I've been unsteady on my feet for some time but Sunday...! Well, I could barely walk! I think it was a combination of too little sleep and nerves.

Anyway, the blurb that came with the appointment letter warned that there is restricted-time parking near the hospital and we might be there a long time, so my lovely cousin H, who lives about ten minutes away from the hospital, had offered to let us park at her house and drive us the rest of the way. Her car is a 4x4, which she needs to get to where her horse is stabled at the end of a rough unpaved road and you would have laughed out loud to see me getting into it in my wobbly state (the car that is, not the stable)!

After growing roots in the waiting room, Pinky had just gone off to get us some coffee when I was called. It was okay though, the nurse said he could come in with the coffee when he got back! They obviously recognise people's need for coffee there!

The neurologist turned out to be very nice. He asked me a lot questions which taxed my memory no end and he tested my reflexes. The worst thing was having to stand upright with my feet together and my eyes shut! I nearly went tits up but managed to stay roughly vertical, hee hee!

After this he told me that the "blobs" could be due to a number of causes (all of which sound rather scary but some more than others) and that he would send me an appointment to come back and have another scan or scans and a lumbar puncture! He said that I may have heard that lumbar punctures are painful but not to be scared. People who have suffered pain during the procedure have usually had it carried out by a doctor who doesn't do them very often, but here they do them every day and are very experienced so the procedure is usually painless.

My cousin picked us up and as it was a lovely, sunny day we sat in her garden with coffee and biscuits (cookies).

The first thing I did on getting home was to turn on the computer and go straight to Daisy's blog to cheer myself up with her Sunday Comic, only to find the news about darling Pixie...

In other news, the only shares I have are in guess what, HBOS. I'm not really a shares sort of person, but they were kind of a "bonus" to Leeds investors when the Halifax (now HBOS since it merged with the Bank of Scotland) took over the Leeds. There was no option to have this "bonus" put into one's savings account as a cash deposit and through inertia I've never done anything with the shares! I really can't understand why all these banks in the U.S., U.K. and other countries were stupid enough to grant mortgages to people who wouldn't be able to pay. One would have thought they would have at least done some sort of investigation into people's ability to pay. But what would I know, I'm just a dumb old broad, haha! Anyway, it seems that HBOS is to merge with, or be taken over by, Lloyds TSB, which will make them the biggest bank in the U.K.