I’ve been in and out of hospital many times over my life for a while host of things. Illness, kidney stones, wisdom teeth removal, broken arm to name but a few, but I don’t think I have ever had an operation. They have always been ‘procedures’. I think to qualify as an operation one has to be cut into and, as far as I can remember, they’ve never had to do that.
Today all that changes and I am having an operation. There is a blissful irony that this isn’t at the hospital, it’s at the doctors, and it’s going to be less traumatic and less invasive than most of the procedures I’ve had. This will be due, in the main, to it being a minor operation (very minor in fact, they’re removing a mole) but it doesn’t change the fact that it is classed as an operation.
As far as I know they’re only removing 1 mole, however, I’d like them to remove more if they can. I’m covered in them and there’s about 10 that I’d happily have lopped off. I shall consult with the doctor while I’m there and see what he says. Who knows, I may be in for a whole string of operations over the coming weeks.
Sunday was the only lie in day The Zozo and I had last week. I’m not sure when the next one will be, but it would seem little Nubbin didn’t care about this as they woke up early in the morning wanting to play, which woke The Zozo up, which woke me up.
Still, it was never going to be a massive lie in as we needed to be up and ready for the 4D scan so after a spot of breakfast that’s what we did. On the way there The Zozo had a bottle of lucozade, a drink she hates but one she was recommended to drink to keep Nubbin active. It failed.
It would seem after a fun morning of playing Little Nubin had become tired and so had snuggled up against mummies back and fallen asleep. A position that made it very hard to see Nubbins face. When we finally did wake Nubbin up we then had to contend with arms and feet obscuring the face as Nubbin sucked away on them for comfort.
Despite Nubbin being naughty the sonographer managed to get some good images and we now have a DVD to watch 
On Sunday The Zozo and I are off to get a 4D scan of Nubbin. Unlike the other scans which have been primarily for medical reasons this one is a private procedure so we can get to see Nubbin, get some photos and a DVD and also see a 3D image of them. It should also confirm the sex. I’m rather looking forward to it as it’s been a while since we saw Nubbin last.
So yesterday was… actually, I’m not sure how long it was, not long enough that’s for sure, but anyway, it was a quantity of time spent looking at a screen and nodding. The Zozo and I were in for the 20 week scan where they find if there are any anomalies and also let us know the sex.
Like the 12 week scan it started with fuzzy image on the screen then *BAM*; there’s Nubbin! It always amazes me how active Nubbin is, but we weren’t allowed to enjoy the view for too long as the important business of measuring bits and looking at bits and looking for bits needed to be done. The sonographer worked so fast I had no idea what I was looking at half the time. I’m pretty sure it was the same for The Zozo. “So here’s the femur which I’m going to measure”, smile and nod, “and you can see the kidneys here”, smile and nod. Every now and then it was recognisable and you’d be able to go “it’s Nubbin!”. Apparently all is well and everything measures up, which is good and apparently Nubbin has my nose 
With the formalities out if the way we turned to getting a picture of the scan and finding out what flavour Nubbin was. Sadly you can’t know the flavour so we’ll skip straight to the photos. Unlike the 12 week scan we were at the Cromer hospital rather than the Norfolk and Norwich. We ordered 2 photos at the 12 week scan at £2 a pop which ended up being the same photo twice. Never mind, we had our photo and a spare. At Cromer the photos were £3 so we just got one, after all: have scanner, will duplicate. Armed with our framed picture of Nubbin With My Nose we headed home. It was there that we discovered a nice surprise. Our £3 had purchased us not one, but three different images, all nearly folded in the frame.
Now we know what Nubbin is we’re working out who they are. We have two names shortlisted at the moment, but as with the sex you’re going to have to wait a bit until I can tell you
Nubbin With My Nose
Nubbin doing summersaults
Little Nubbin
Tomorrow is a very exciting day for us. The Zozo and I are going for the 20 week scan and I get to meet Nubbin again. Plus, I’m rather hoping we get to find out what flavour of baby we have.
For me the whole “we’re having a baby” concept is still quite abstract. Apparently this is very normal so I’m not letting it bother me. Seeing Nubbin on the scans makes it less abstract and knowing if they’re a boy or girl will also help. Plus I can then go off and buy a load of things I’ve been hanging fire on and start thinking about names properly
I still not sure if I’d prefer a boy or a girl. It’s probably 49% boy, 51% girl at the moment so I’ll be happy either way. You lot, on the other hand, won’t know until later this year. As not everyone in the family wants to know the sex we’ve decided that no one apart from ourselves will find out. That way there’s little chance of the surprise being ruined for others. This also means that future posts may be a bit vague in areas. You’ll just have to live with it.
5 years ago today I quit smoking. I remember it very well. I’d been reading Alan Carrs “The Only Way To Stop Smoking” which, despite being fantastically annoying to read, did seem to work. I was walking back from a hospital appointment in London and decided “I don’t need to do this any more”. Now you hear stories of people just deciding they would stop smoking and do so and, up until then, I found the stories fantastically annoying. Prior to this I’d tried to quit some 4 billion times and would often manage no more than a few hours. There’s no way it was going to be as easy as just deciding not to do it any more… except it was.
That one act was the first step in making some pretty big changes in my life, changes which culminated 2 years and one day later when I was called into a meeting room and informed that I needed to go home, get paid for doing nothing for 2 and a half months then get 10 months pay in one go, almost tax free. Redundancy for me was a happy time. It’s when I met The Zozo, which lead to the final big change in my life… leaving London, getting married and starting a family… and I can pin it all down to putting out a freshly lit fag on Cromwell road, just before lunch 5 years ago.
I never ceases to amaze me how Monday never seems to run out of ideas to be spiteful. You’d think yesterday would have been fine with the old stalwart of “Good morning, welcome to a 5 day week!”, especially given it’s been a while since I’ve had to cope with one of those. Too easy apparently. No, yesterday decided that, instead of going to work, we’d love to spend the day in hospital worrying about our unborn child.
After many hours of being poked, prodded, scanned, stabbed in the arm with various needles and examined using something that looks like it contravened the Geneva Convention it was declared that both The Zozo were fit and healthy, that there was nothing to worry about and that we were being discharged back into the care of our midwife. Phew! It would appear Nubbin is taking after me by being awkward and scaring everyone :S
So one of the things on our Life Plan, once we got married, was to start a family. Not something I thought I’d be doing, but things change. Once we were married it was a sort of conceptual “yeah, we’re trying for kids” which, after a few months morphed into The Zozo telling me she was pregnant. Again, still fairly conceptual for me, except The Zozo was having even worse nights sleep and suffer from awful morning all night sickness. Now it was “yeah, Zo is pregnant”. Last week we went for the first scan and all of a sudden it wasn’t conceptual any more. There, on a screen in front of us was our child. And not some indistinct blob either. No, Nubbin1 was there for all to see, moving about, almost as if they were waving at us. It’s still not really sunk in, but in less than 6 months I’m going to be a dad. Scary biscuits. In the mean time, world: meet nubbin.
Our baby at 13 weeks
1Nubbin, as a name, came about from The Zozo reading about her new child when she first discovered she was pregnant. The book said something along the lines of “Your child is the size of a nubbin” and the name stuck.
The outcome of yesterday’s hospital appointment was they needed to do more tests to see if there is any medication I should be on to prevent gout and future kidney stones.
One of these tests is a 24 hour urine test. This involves me collecting all my urine in a large 1 gallon container over a period of 24hours and returning it to the hospital.
Most people, apparently, perform the test on Sunday, returning the sample on Monday as this avoids unpleasantness like having a container of your urine under the desk at work for the day. This is most likely going to be the tactic I employ, although it does rather depend on The Zozos day off.
It does beg the question: How many gallons of piss does the path lab get on an average Monday?
So this morning I got the train to work, collected the car from the work and drove to the hospital. It’s the school holidays. The roads are empty, the journey uneventful… until I got to the Carpark. There there was a queue. Of the two outpatients carparks one was blocked off (and full by the looks of it) and there were 7 cars waiting to get into the other. A lady in a high visibility jacket was getting cars to stack at the entrance nicely. Once I joined the queue, however, my fears of not being able to get a space were allayed. There were lots of spaces in this carpark. There was obviously just a glut of people arriving…
…or not. After a few minutes the lady in the high visibility jacket went to go see why none of the cars were moving. The reason was simple. There, right by the entrance, was a family getting into a car to leave. Not wanting to pick one of the millions of other spaces the person at the head of the queue was waiting for them to leave.
The family leaving had a frail person in a wheelchair. It was, understandably, taking them time to pack up and get ready. Meanwhile we waited with The Idiot blocking us. Even with the lady waving them on and tapping on the window to get them to move they resolutely stayed put. Meanwhile the queue grew larger.
Finally, after 5 minutes, with a queue of 30 or so cars behind us the blockage was cleared and we were able to stream into the carpark. I was able to park in my choice of bays a scant 10 seconds further walk than the one the moron had held everyone up for and the queue had drained by the time I’d walked back to the entrance.
So, Mr Moron with the numberplate ‘I KOL’, you, sir, are an idiot of the highest order.