A month to forget!

March the 10th 2011 It all started with a dog walk, and Obi had the runs and he had poo all down his lovely long curly tail. I had another heart attack and spent 9 days in a cardiac ward in the Princess Alexandra hospital in Harlow. All the family rallied around, I have never felt so much love and care even my own sister came from Brighton and stayed for 2 weeks to see me get all right, during my time in Hospital I was missing home so much, a hospital can and is a lonely place when your alone and away from your familiar surroundings.

But after my initial scare and all the tests and investigations were done, I found that on the 10th day I was aloud to come home and to take it so easy, not to over do it well that’s what the doctor told me, little did I know what was in store for me in the coming months Spring, Summer, Autumn and the beginning of winter well December. On the first day I got back the heating was playing up it was cold, and my sister in the green room was complaining that the room was so bloody cold and being north facing it can get a bit chilly.

I said I would bleed the radiator for her and get rid of the air inside the pipe, there was no air and the little screw that holds the water at bay popped out on the 3rd attempt, we could not stop the water from pumping out of the pipe, we had to keep our finger firmly on the pipe thank god it was not too hot.

Fox made a frantic call to Nicky our sister in Harlow who knows everyone including Plumbers, and one was dispatched right away Paul was knocking on our door with in 30mins he fixed the pipe with a new screw, which was loose fitting and still dripped till my little brother Glen stepped in and fixed it proper with something he and Fox got from B&Q.

Up until then the central heating and hot water worked fine but there was something different about it now the damn thing was getting colder and colder and the hot water was slowly getting colder and colder as each day progressed then one day it did not work at all.

I was only out of Hospital 2 weeks when it died on us, a few times before I rested the timer and switches and it would start working again not really understanding that was going on in the pipes was far worse than I would have expected.

We invited Paul to come and have a look, we well I was thinking that maybe there was a massive air bubble inside the pipes and it was blocking the hot water from moving, how wrong I was. It took several attempts to get Paul to come to the house but for various reasons he had let us down, and we dismayed you see in order to have a bath we would boil up a kettle and use our good expensive pots to fill the bath, I tried to clean them every so often but because I had just got out of the hospital, I found the cleaning so difficult, and I was in pain a lot of the time till my doc put me on really powerful pain killers Tramadol. In time the Lime scale got so bad at times big flakes would come out of the pot and into the bath, I ended up using the sieve, I use for mashed potato to collect the filthy deposits from the pots and kettle. In our house we are both Nurses, well I’m an ex nurse but one thing we have always done is bath every day, its like a ritual washing away the days vibrations of what we would come into contact as the day or nights wore on.

When I worked in London my speciality was to spot the person who was so close to taking there own life, the person so close to ending it, grabbing them from that dark place we can at times find ourselves, most of the time I would be very good and spot it and deal with it, other times I would be too late.

I remember once standing in a patients toilet, who had just slit his writs, he died, sitting there mute and silent the life drawn from his eyes, my back against the door cause of the other patients wanting to see his dead body pushing against the door, the staff took a fair amount of time to empty the corridor so that the police could come and see and the ambulance crew to take the young man away for his last ride from the hospital, as I left the small cubicle I noticed I was ankle deep in blood. Hence why most nurses was daily always just before bed, the bath roasting hot, as if to sweat the emotions of the day back out, but now I was down to 3 baths a week less than half of what I feel comfortable with.

It takes nearly a month for Paul to arrive and give us the verdict and what he tells us leaves us in shock, its not air but a sludge clogging the pipes, and some of the pipes are in such a bad state that they will have to be repaired and what the pipes needs is an acid wash possibly a lot of it, and out fire in the front room should be condemned and scrapped. And really we should put a new boiler in which was going to cost us nearly £5000, we said we think about this, our savings would just about cover it and had to think our car the Suzuki wagon would need an MOT in a few weeks, we decide to battle on and just fill the bath from pots and since the summer was coming in we would not need any heat, so the day of the MOT comes and the wagon goes to Bumbles for its yearly health check, he tells us to bury it and claim the insurance! Now we have a dilemma we can afford the boiler but a car is so badly needed as well, we decide to get a new car, which takes all the Money a Mercedes A class, a fancy car for Fox and why not we always had crappy cars except for the wagon which was expensive but we got 5 years out of it.

So we start to save all over again but for some reason we just cant make any savings something comes up, our washing machine screws up and we have to get a new one, a Hoover, which is such a good washer, which cost us £600 but least it will last a very long time, there is the twat that smacked the side of the Merc, that cost even more money, our saving just keep dwindling and as time progresses when we hit the 1000 mark something comes along to swallows it up, bills mostly over priced utility bills phones etc.

The weather is starting to change summer is giving way to Autumn, although the weather is not so bad, but the mornings are getting terribly cold and the night time, we start to use hot water bottles, and my blood is so thin I get even colder and I am starting to get chest infections almost every week as well as Fox having to deal with the increasing, demands on driving me to the doctors for antibiotics, we decide early November that we will ask Paul if he can patch it up at least till we can afford a new boiler, this starts a dialog that will take almost a month till they arrive.

Mid November the weather in the mornings are so cold for me, I find it difficult to get out of bed, but I drag my arse out cause of the medication I take has to be done at a particular time, I can’t face cereal, as the cold milk is too much to take I take digestives with my meds not nice but better than nothing. Like an early Yule present the plumbing engineers arrive at the door, they take a whole day to fix the plumbing out, the sludge was as they said is thick and like black oil, the smell of rust is very evident and I watch it slowly slip down the sink, as they rotate the water in they system tackling the problem from both sides the central water system ones in one direction what they do is clean the pipes from both directions the acid dissolving the lumps in to bite size chucks.

It takes a whole day to fix the plumbing out all the crap is out and the radiators are heating up, the water from the tap is piping hot, I burn my hand and feel glad of it, just the sheer feel of warmth on my skin feels so nice, I wash all the cups I used during the day as I made the plumbers tea as the day wore on. So nice to rinse cups in warm water once again, my bath that evening was a full on bubble affair, next job get the whirlpool installed, we been dragging that big bugger around half the UK.