I fed my tiredness with sleep until 9am this morning when I was roused by Helen urging me to get up to go and collect my blood results. So after breakfast I took Reggie with me into town to give him a walk while I collected the blood test results, and to give Helen some long overdue peace and quiet for an hour.
After collecting the results from the misericordia (volunteer ambulance service in case you weren't paying attention last week), I collected Reggie from the car and took him for a lengthy walk around town and along the river before towelling him dry (it was a wet morning) and taking him back home.
Once back home, Reggie and I joined Helen in the office for a little over an hour and I managed finally to finish my Christmas shopping. By the time I'd done that, it was time to head down the road to the village surgery to see the doctor. This time, we both went prepared. I went with my e-reader in hand (I've just started reading a book called 'Gironimo' about a 40-something guy wanting to ride the route of the 1914 Giro d'Italia - by far the worst ever bike race in history - and do it on a bike from the same era - that's over 3,500km on wooden wheels!), as well as my medical records and blood test results, while Helen brought some work to do. With all of this morning's activities, we hadn't yet lit the fire in the house, so it was still quite chilly - as a result, we were both quite looking forward to what we we now knew would be an hour's wait in a very warm room! 'Every cloud...' as they say.
We were the first in the waiting room again, which meant we would be the first to be seen. It seems like if we get there for 1pm, we pretty much get the number one spot (there was once one chap ahead of us at that time but on both the other occasions we've been the first). I've no idea how long the waiting time would work out if we didn't arrive until later on and just joined whatever queue there was, but for now, I made the most of the hour's reading time.
So doctor arrived at 2.15pm and waved us into his room, where he put on his white coat then sat at his desk and looked through the two A4 pages of blood test results. We held our breaths until he started making some encouraging noises and declared everything to be good except for a high LDL cholesterol reading (but not so high that it can't be sorted with a change in diet - it seems after all the cooking for the helpers our reverting to lazy meals of bread and chunks of cheese has taken its toll). With the exception of that, and the (now improving) tiredness and bad moods, he gave me a clean bill of health. So it seems as if I've succumbed to a dose of depression, probably courtesy of my hypothyroidism (or perhaps more likely that, combined with all the stresses and demands - both physical and mental - of the last seven months). The doctor had started me on a course of mild anti-depressants last week, and as of Sat/Sun they seemed to have started working - and yesterday and today have been the best two days (by a country mile) I've had in the last two-and-a-bit weeks. So it seems I'm over the worst of it, and the doctor has suggested I take the medication for a month longer. If this is what 'mild' depression is like, the thought of full-on heavy depression is a scary prospect to say the least.
We got home at about 2.45pm and had a late lunch then I started the fire roaring while Helen went back to the office.
After darkness had fallen and the geese had been put to bed, we resisted the strong urge to lock the door and sit in front of the fire, and instead headed to the supermarket to do the food shopping that we'd put off yesterday.
The supermarket was relatively quiet, so it wasn't too arduous a task and once we'd got home and unpacked, I started writing the blog with the dog curled up next to me on the sofa - but not before a couple of 'time-outs' in his crate for trying to chase Florence. Florence has shown increasing interest in joining us in the living room over the last couple of evenings - it's really frustrating not being Dr Doolittle. I'm sure that if I could 'talk to the animals', all I would need to say to Florence and Lucca is 'don't run off, Reggie just wants to say hello' - we're fairly confident that's all it is, having seen how he behaves around other dogs and cats he sees out on his walks. It would also be good to be able to tell Reggie that if he just kept his mouth shut and approached them slowly, the cats might not run away (although of course, his idea of playing doesn't involve simply sitting still looking at each other, and I don't think the cats would be very accepting of his rough-and-tumble type of play). So for now, we have to just keep a close eye on things and find some comfort in the very small improvements that seem to be being made - we are desperately looking forward to the day (hoping there will be one!) when we can remove all of the dog/cat segregation devices in the house and have all of our furry friends cohabiting happily together. Life would be so much easier and more relaxing if all three of them could get along (we'd settle for them simply tolerating each other!).
I also had a busy Skype session or three whilst typing out this blog post - I've never been so popular and it was nice to see friendly faces from the island we used to call 'home'.
First, my friend Granville (a.k.a. Paul) called to check in with us before he jumps in his car with wife Marie and dog Nero and heads in our direction for the Christmas week. We haven't seen them since our surprise leaving party in late April, and not only will Helen and I be spending our first Christmas together this year (in 12 years!), but we'll also have the good company of Paul, Marie and Nero. We can't wait for them to arrive.
After that, our good friend Ben rang us - he'd tried calling at the weekend, but we had been out at the Phillipses for the evening. He was just running bath time for his little girls at home, so I got to say 'hi' to Isabel and a now very talkative Erin (the last time we saw the girls, Erin wasn't even talking!), which was really nice.
Last but not least, I got to chat with Mom, who's been a busy little traveller of late, so it was good to catch up with her too.
Once all of my Skype calls were over, we finally got to sit down to a meal of vegetable fajitas and enjoy the warmth of our roaring log fire.
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