Sunday In London

Good morning from London!  It is nice to be out of the hospital and in my own space.  I am in a one-bedroom flat on York Street, one-half block from Gloucester Street, and one and one-half blocks from Baker Street.  (Does anyone remember Sherlock Holmes' address?  I'll go see him.)  I'm about five blocks from Grosvenor Square and the American Embassy.  All in all, a very civilized part of London.

As Cindy has said, my latest little adventure started last Sunday.  I used to think medevac meant getting on a helicopter and being rushed somewhere, but for our purposes medevac is a program more than an event.  So after our post medical officer contacted our regional medical office in Vienna, they decided to send me to the European medical office in London.  I flew to London and took the train downtown, then a taxi to the embassy.  Then a taxi to Wellington South hospital (wouldn't you know it, an HCA-International hospital).

The hospital is indeed an international place.  My doctor was born in Lebanon and grew up in London and did his training in Boston.  My first contact was with a young lady from Bulgaria, then the head nurse on the floor from Mauritius, and then people from Poland, Guyana, and other places.  I thought I'd finally found someone from the English Isles, but she turned out to be from Australia.  As it turned out, there was only one lady on my floor from England during all six days I was in the hospital, all shifts.

The only reason I was in the hospital for six days is because I have to have eyedrops four times a day and had no one else to give them.   By Friday afternoon, though, I was ready to leave, so when the embassy nurse called to say they had this flat available, I took it.  I can put the drops in, although I'm sure it's not the prettiest picture.  I can't see the tip of the bottles with my eye, so I pull my eyelid up and feel the end of the bottle on that finger and the drops drop.  Eventually I can feel one hit the eyeball, sometimes on the first try!  I told the nurse that the bottles may have to be refilled much sooner than normal.  

I do have to lay on my right side about three-quarters of the time as long as the gas bubble in my eye is big enough to exert pressure on the retina.  Probably by my appointment Friday it will no longer be big enough and I won't have to do that any more.  However, it will still be big enough to prevent flying and the resulting exploding eyeball.  So I'm stuck here for that reason, unless the embassy will approve rail travel.  I could take the train to Brindisi or Bari, Italy, and then take the ferry across to Durres, Albania, about 30 miles from Tirana.  We'll see.

Dr. Zambarakji said the hospital confirmed I was following his 50-minutes per hour laying on my side routine too explicitly.  He told me he puts that in his instructions because he has some people who only stay positioned ten minutes an hour.  But in my case, after nearly 30 hours on my side, the right side of my head was filling up with fluid, so he told me to take walks in between the positioning.  So for the last three days I've taken little afternoon walks.

The first day I walked up to the tube station at St. John's Wood, then around the neighborhood.  On my way I passed the house where Sir Thomas Beecham lived for almost 40 years, in a large but modest looking white stucco house.  He of course was one of the musical icons of my youth.  I always liked his LSO recordings, except for the weird Messiah recording he did in the late 50s or early 60s.  Always wondered what got into him on that one.  Of course there's always the possibility he was right and everyone else was wrong.  At any rate, I ended my walk across the street from the hospital at St. John's Wood park.

St. John's Wood Church occupies a corner of the park.  The park was partly the graveyard for the parish, and there are still several tombstones visible.  Many flowers in bloom, from camellias, iris, tulips, and primroses.  

For my second day's walk I went look for Sir Thomas's house so I could take a picture, but I couldn't find it.  I browsed some shops on St. John's Wood High Street and took some pictures in the park.

Yesterday I went walking along  Baker Street until I found a small grocery store, where I bought a few little packages of prepared food.  Prepared dishes from the grocery store are something I usually turn my nose up at, but I was very glad to see them.  I evidently am staying in a yuppie area, because the store was thronged with 30-somethings buying the exact same thing.  They may have been buying so they could munch along while watching the Chelsea-Manchester United Premier League futbol match on TV, something which everyone I came in contact with Saturday morning was planning to do, from the hospital staff to the driver who brought me here to people talking about it at the store.  Chelsea won, by the way, 2-1.

While I was at the embassy Monday I got a call on my cellphone from a lady in Tirana asking if I could do some editing work.  I had spent two days editing a proposal for an NGO Terre des hommes, which was interesting.  That gentleman gave my name to the UNICEF lady who called.  I hope I'll be able to do some of that work while we're there.  It consists essentially of taking something written in English by a non-native speaking person, and making sure it is in good English at the end.  Thierry, the French head of Tdh, had very good command of English.  Mostly I changed some grammar and syntax so it sounds natural.  Other people in the office weren't quite as proficient, so sometimes I'd have to ask them what it was they were trying to say, and then we'd settle on the meaning and I'd write it.  It was interesting work.

London is not an inexpensive place to live, especially for those of us using dollars to buy pounds.  The rate hit $2 for one pound this week, although it dropped at week's end to about $1.96.  All exchange rates here are at or near all time highs in terms of dollars to whatever.  In the three weeks we've been in Albania the lek has gone from 85 to one dollar to 77/dollar.   Euro hit $1.60 per euro last week.  As a result, I've been seeing in the London papers a lot of ads for vacations in the U.S. for the summer.  So maybe there will be a lot of Europeans visiting the U.S.  As for the other way around, if you're planning a trip to Europe, don't not come because of the exchange rate -- it's only going to get worse.

And on that happy note, I'll close this rather long and rambling post.  I've read all the gmail emails to Cindy and myself, and thank all of you for your prayers and concern.  I am recuperating much more quickly this time than last, probably for a few reasons.  One, the surgery was much shorter.  The anesthesiologist told me that English surgeries were shorter than American ones (he trained in the U.S. also).  When I told him that the one at Hopkins had a resident involved, he laughed and said that would make it last twice as long -- a lot of talking and pointing.  Maybe that explains the 3 1/2 hours versus the 1 hour, but in fairness to Hopkins, they had a lot more to do.

In one of life's little coincidences, the anesthesiologist spent two years in Seattle (my hometown) at Harborview Hospital, so we had a nice chat about Seattle.  And the American nurse at the embassy is from Olympia.  When I told her I had lived in Shelton for three years, she asked "what on earth did you do there?"

Anyway, I'm sort of like Tchaicovsky -- I just can't figure out how to end this thing, so I'll just abruptly close.

Love y'all.