Two Wednesdays...

Somehow, we managed to write blog posts simultaneously this evening - each without realising that the other was already writing. So, after a couple of days of no blog posts, tonight you get a double dose (you lucky things) and get to read about the same day from two different perspectives. Don't get used to it though, there are no plans to make it a permanent feature (is that a sigh of relief I hear?).

Stuart's day: 'Wednesday'

At 9pm last night it all became clear as to why I had kept losing my temper during the day. Come 9.30pm, I was in bed after shovelling my dinner down as quickly as I could so that I could hide out from a thyroid crash that I didn't see coming.

Twelve hours later, I dragged myself out of bed. I didn't really want to move but my back couldn't take any more of our mattress.

I'd planned to go to Lanciole today but there was no way that was going to happen in my current state, so I tried to resign myself to doing very little - easier said than done. The fact is that when I feel like this I can do very little, but I tend to get horribly frustrated by not being able to do anything, which only serves to darken my mood - it's a vicious cycle - so I'm making it my mission to be able to switch off from my to-do list whenever I feel like this. It will take time, but I'll get the hang of it... I hope, as I've no doubt I'm unbearable for my poor wife to be around when I'm slamming around the place getting more and more angry with EVERYTHING.

It was gone 10am once I'd had breakfast and was feeling like I'd mastered the art of  'whatever' and had got my book at the ready for an afternoon in front of the fire. First, though, I decided to take Reggie out for a walk - I didn't feel like it, but I knew that I'd be feeling even less up to it later in the day. Helen was at a point in her work where she could pause and come with me - or so she said, I suspect she was somewhat worried that I might have thrown the puppy in the river and come home alone had she not been there to supervise, such is the shortness of my fuse right now.

We had a good hour's walk, did some whistle training by the river, and in the square Reggie introduced himself to a couple of dogs, initially by growling and barking but as soon as he got close enough to sniff he was fine. Progress, I think!

We thought we'd try sitting down for our first coffee with him and took a table outside Bar Poulter in the square. Most of the time Reggie just sat there, but he did have a good bark a two passing dogs, I'm sure he just wanted to say hello.

Helen had suggested earlier that I try and see the doctor today as it was one of his days in the village surgery. When she first suggested it, I rebutted the idea immediately - my brain was feeling about as agile as a gymnast in diving boots and the thought of trying to talk in another tongue seemed impossible.

By the time we'd had a walk and coffee though, I took up Helen's offer of coming with me to the doctor's, and we dropped Reggie home just before 1pm, which is when the surgery opened.

When we walked in, there was only one other person waiting - great news, shouldn't be there long, I thought. After about half an hour, and still nobody had come out of the consulting room, it dawned on me that there must be no one in the room, not even the doctor.

While we waited, I amused myself with my medical notes. I'm not sure the read was worth the £35 I had to pay for them all, but I learned that at one point during my first year on the planet I was, and I quote, "a bag of nerves". It also seems that I have suffered with tonsillitis very often and from a very young age, that I am an ex-smoker(!?!), and that I had my tonsils out in 1980! I've no idea where the smoking thing came from (I have never been a smoker), and I definitely didn't remember having my tonsils out at five years of age - I'd have remembered the ice cream, surely?! 

Further on in the notes, I found a letter addressed to a Stephen Smith (born in 1947) who lived at 8 Green Acres Road and who seems to have had his tonsils removed in 1980! How this got onto my records, I'll never understand.

Anyway, time ticked on and the doctor finally strolled in at 2.15pm - only an hour and fifteen minutes late!! I'm not sure if this kind of tardiness is normal in the health service here, but we'll find out soon enough.

On the upside, the doctor was a very nice man, spoke a smattering of English (which helped when our Italian fell down), and I walked away with a piece of paper to take to somewhere in Pescia tomorrow for a blood test to check my thyroxine levels (which are without doubt out of line at the moment).

By the time we'd finished at the doctor's, it was 2.45pm and Remigio, the carpenter, was due at 3pm to measure up for the new windows. So we hopped into the car and... it wouldn't start! I tried it again, nothing. I tried again, nothing. I tried it one last time before we resigned ourselves to walking home up the hill and it just kicked into life. I had only been thinking this morning how we'd had no trouble with starting it since Enrico looked at it. I hope it was just a one-off, although I'm sure my hopes are in vain and this 'feature' of the car will crop up again at some point in these posts.

We got home, cleaned out Reggie's cage as he'd wee'd on his mattress while we were out - he'd been in there for too long, courtesy of Dr Conforti.

Just as we were putting Reggie's cage back together, Remigio arrived and spent half an hour measuring up windows, taking a deposit from us, and leaving with the promise of windows towards the end of January. We finally got to eat our lunch at around 3pm.

Helen then took a whiny Reggie along the drive for a walk and then went back to work briefly while I sat on the sofa to write this post. Reggie fell asleep next to me for about ten minutes until he heard a truck way down in the valley beeping its horn and got up to bark at the door. He wouldn't relent, so I let him outside to get it out of his system. Upon returning indoors he promptly went for a wee on the floor... It seems I have about as much control over my temper at the moment as Reggie does over his bladder. He's now in his crate and I'm about to retire upstairs where I can't upset anyone else.

Helen's day: 'Under the influence'

Today (and indeed yesterday) has been heavily influenced by the fact that poor Stuart seems to be experiencing some form of poorly thyroid relapse/episode. I can't pretend to be able to imagine what it feels like for him to be so utterly exhausted that the simple task of putting one foot in front of the other is a monumental effort, and anything that involves complex thought is an epic struggle. But you might remember the photograph I posted yesterday of the weather we witnessed on Monday - I get the impression that it's very much like living under (and being entirely surrounded by) some very dark, very heavy clouds:

To an outsider, this is what living with a malfunctioning thyroid appears to feel like.

Stuart took himself off to bed at 9.30pm last night, leaving Reggie and me (and later, once Reggie was safely in his cage, Florence and me) to watch a DVD downstairs with the sound turned down so as not to disturb him.

Reggie tried couple of half-hearted barks at 6am this morning, so I leapt out of bed and ran downstairs to take him outside for a toilet trip in the dark before his vocalising woke the whole house up. I went back to bed afterwards, but didn't sleep at all, just lay there wondering what today would bring for Stuart's well-being and mood, and trying to work out how best to manage the process of feeding and watering all the animals while making the least amount of noise possible.

I eventually got out of bed at 7am, took Reggie outside for a toilet trip and then, rather than taking him straight in for his breakfast as usual, I took him for a walk up the drive. In fact, I took him for a run up the drive. He is sometimes (actually, make that often) incredibly reluctant to walk up the drive. It seems to simply be a case of him preferring to stick around the house and garden where he knows there are lots of things that interest him, and sometimes he will literally sit down and go on strike, not budging. However, I have discovered that if I run a little, he soon wants to join in, and the two of us can run happily all the way to the end of the drive, Reggie holding the loose part of his lead in his mouth. So, after a run up and down the drive and a brief play in the garden while I opened up the goose house, I took him indoors for his breakfast.

I went upstairs to get showered at about 8.30am, and there was no sign of Stuart stirring from his sleep, so I left him to it and came downstairs for some breakfast and to reacquaint myself with the outside world, having finally got some internet service back again.

Stuart made it downstairs at about 9.30am. He did not look or sound good. If anything, he seemed worse than yesterday, even after 12 hours in bed. He decided that there was no way he would be feeling up to taking Reggie out for a walk by this evening, so suggested we do it in the morning. I agreed and so the three of us piled into the car and drove to Pescia. We parked up near to Chris and Sue's house, then walked down to the river where we put Reggie on Donatella's 50m lead (he didn't wander anywhere near that distance away from us, but it was nice to see him exploring from the safety of a lead but without the constant tugging on it). After that, we did some recall training with the whistles, meaning that Reggie did a lot more running, and finally, we walked through the main square and even sat down for a coffee with him at the outdoor seating area at Bar Poulter. He was largely very good while we drank our coffees, although a couple of passing dogs caused a bit of commotion as he strained at the lead and barked at them.

By the time we'd got back to the car, it was getting on for 12.30pm. Since Stuart has just registered for Italian health care, and registered with a doctor last week, I thought it would be a good idea for him to visit the doctor today. The doctor he is registered with makes a visit three times a week to a small 'surgery' (actually just a waiting room and a single consulting room) a couple of doors down from the post office and Amanda's alimentari in Pietrabuona. His hours on a Wednesday are 1pm to 3.30pm, so once we'd dropped Reggie back off at the house and picked up Stuart's paperwork, we turned straight around and went back to the doctor's.

We must have reached the 'surgery' at about 12.50pm. There was one other chap in the waiting room - that was a good sign, we thought, as we'd be next in line. Well, we sat in the waiting room (which was unimaginably hot, with some sort of heating system churning out hot air) and we waited. And we waited. And we waited. Finally, just as I'd made a trip to the car to check what time it was (we were expecting the carpenter at the house at 3pm), the doctor appeared - it was 2.15pm.

After the other chap had been in and come out again, the doctor welcomed us into his office and Stuart explained that he needed a blood test for his hypothyroidism. The doctor - who had a smattering of English, which was helpful - wrote him out a form to take along for a blood test in Pescia tomorrow, took his blood pressure (and advised him to cut down on salt!) and sent us on our way. It seems that once we have the results of the blood test Stuart can go back to the doctor and he will interpret them accordingly. Let's hope the results don't take long to process.

So after our epic wait and short consultation, we headed home, getting back to the house at about 2.45pm. Remigio, the carpenter, arrived bang on time and measured all the window frames and the front door. We have decided to go ahead and get all the windows replaced, as well as the front door, both in an attempt to increase the insulation of the house (the current windows are not only poorly fitted, but are also only single-glazed) and to increase security. After Remigio had finished measuring up, therefore, Stuart wrote him a cheque for the deposit and he was on his way, with the promise of the windows being ready for fitting in late January/early February.

By the time all that was done, lunch was WAY overdue, so we had a quick couple of pieces of bread and cheese, before I walked Reggie up the drive another time. By this point, Stuart seemed to have run out of what tiny amount of energy and patience he'd had earlier in the day, so I thought it prudent for me to take Reggie out for another run up the drive and a brief play in the garden. It was then a half-hour of work for me (I pretty much decided that work was a lost cause today) before attempting to coax Lucca into the house while there was still some light in the sky, making sure Florence was safely indoors, then trying to herd the more obstinate than usual geese into their house for the night. I don't know what got into them today, but we had three 'just pretending' attempts at getting them into their house - where they slowly waddle their way in, but before I can get the hatch down, they've turned around and charged back out again. They pretty much do this every night, but tonight they seemed to go through the whole charade more times than usual.

And there you have it - a day heavily influenced by a malfunctioning thyroid.