Sorry, sorry. Every time I resolve to blog more often, something happens to prevent me. This time …. acute gastritis. My stomach has been misbehaving for a while, but I’ve put it down to the various horrors of the menopause. This time, though, a couple of handfuls of peanuts led to a sleepless night and my growing conviction that I was about to die of appendicitis. This was partly, I admit, because a friend’s husband had a recent brush with mortality after his appendix burst in spectacularly horrible fashion. It was partly, also, because I was in complete agony and the pain was on the Right Hand Side! As anyone with a glancing interest in hypochondria knows, pain on the right = appendicitis. So off we went to A & E.
Casualty departments in London are always more exciting than you want them to be, and the one at Lewisham was no exception. We were the only people who were even vaguely sober (apart from the doctor and nurse). But of course everyone was brilliant when we were seen. Appendicitis was rapidly discounted as my abdomen wasn’t rigid, though the pain was in the right place. Eventually, after a battery of tests, we were told it was acute gastritis.
I’ve got pills, I’ve got painkillers and, after trawling the internet, I now have a range of alternative stuff to take too, including Slippery Elm which was one of my grandmother’s great favourites and tastes just as repellent now as it did then. There’s a list of things I can’t eat as long as the longest arm in the world, and a list of things I can eat with bananas on it. Oh, and porridge. Sometimes.
So bear with me, gentle reader. Sometimes I can’t sit up to type, sometimes I can’t lie down to rest. Gastritis seems to be a mysterious beast. On the other hand, after all the lovely NHS’s tests, I know there’s absolutely nothing wrong with my heart, blood pressure, kidneys and, of course, my little old appendix.
