And then I’ll tell you some more about me...

Because blogging is an inherently narcissistic activity, I realise that what follows is a slightly ridiculous statement.... but I do feel as though this blog has been a bit self-indulgent over the last few days. Although I write here mostly for my own entertainment, I do always try to bear a potential audience in mind. I deliberately do not blog about everything that happens in my life. Not all of it is very interesting, for starters: my job takes up 40-odd hours of my life every week, but I choose not to write about it very much here because it's basically dull.... it's dull for me to write about, and it would certainly be dull to read.

There are also some things I don't blog about because I don't really want to talk about them here. Some of these things are personal things: about my relationship with C, about my family, about my friends.... Perhaps this means that I come across as something of a closed book. I hope not. I try to be as open as possible and I like to think that reading this blog gives you a decent insight into the kind of person that I am. If you were to meet me, I hope that you'd feel that what you see here is what you get.

With that in mind, it's been a slightly strange experience for me to be writing up and publishing all those long posts about our trip to Ecuador. It's not that I think that it's not interesting per se, it's just that I can't help but feel that it's probably just a bit much for the passing reader. Too. Much. Detail. A summary post and a link to the photos would probably have been more than enough.

Well, I thought about it. In the end, I decided that I wanted a record of the things that we did and the places that we visited. I hope that it's interesting for you to read, but it's there because it gives me pleasure to write about the things that we did... it's helping to soften the blow of being back at work.

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And if that isn't enough about me already.... I went back to hospital this afternoon for another MRI scan of my brain and cervical spinal cord. My last scan was in August 2005, so it's probably long overdue we had another look inside Brian to see what he's been up to - especially as I have possibly been experiencing some new symptoms. Last time, I got to take a CD with me (and duly took a specially made -- and extremely mournful -- compilation). This time around, although I was armed with a homemade Smiths compilation and "Central Reservation" by Beth Orton, I didn't get asked if I had brought a CD with me. I was, however, offered a choice of:
"Classical, Pop, Norah Jones"
What a choice. Like any sane person, I opted for the latter. It seemed the safest choice under the circumstances as most classical music makes me break out in a sweat, and "pop" is so wide a category as to run a dreadful risk of being trapped listening to some awful shite for an hour. So I picked Norah Jones, and very soothing it was too. Music for dinner parties? Pah! Music for MRI scans, I say.

I'll probably get the results in the next couple of weeks. I have to keep reminding myself that a good result for me would be for the neurologist to tell me that nothing much has changed since 2005.... it would be good, but it would also be slightly depressing. It's the not knowing that is the hardest about the WTs. It's the not knowing what they are, if they will get any better or if I am on the long, slow slide into something else. A positive diagnosis would put my mind to rest in some ways, but it's not something I should be in any hurry for.

I tried fishing with the ladies who were operating the machinery to see if they could give me a heads-up on whether or not things had changed in there (they had my old scans as a reference).... but I got nothing out of them at all. Annoyingly, when I was in the tube, they left the little microphone they use to check that you are okay switched on and I heard a tantalising snippet of a conversation about "white spots", which is exactly what we do don't want to see lots of in the scan. But that was all I heard! Were there lots of them on the screen or were they just looking at the one that we know is already there? I suppose I'll find out in a couple of weeks.

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In other medical news, my dad was taken back into hospital with severe abdominal pain on Sunday morning. As we were supposed to be having Sunday lunch with my parents on the way back from Oxford, we were able to pop into the hospital and say hello. Hospitals aren't happy places in general, and it's really not very nice seeing your father on morphine, lying on a trolley and attached to a drip in a side room in accident & emergency.

The good news is that he was discharged from hospital on Monday and is now back at home and feeling fine. They think that the pain was caused by a twisted gut that has managed to unravel itself. Apparently rummaging around in your alimentary canal and surgically removing a major organ can cause all kinds of disruption down there.

Let's hope that's all it was and that it never comes back, eh?

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So. A nice long post that isn't about Ecuador at all but is still basically all about me.

I'm sure you've got problems too.

Ever thought of starting a blog?