Newest thoughts →

May 2024

My surgeon was really pleased with my progress. He hadn't expected me to be doing so well given previous muscle wastage. One leg is slightly shorter than the other but otherwise going good!

For a serious conversation about how we fund OA monographs, I wrote a paper several years ago now with several eminent members of the academic library community that shows that it would take less than 1% of QR, but that library budgets alone can't cut it. https://doi.org/10.1629/uksg.392

Can't say more yet, but I've been the recipient of a really unexpected kindness this morning and it's brightened up my week/month/year considerably.

We have an anti-harassment training programme at work and it's very good on race and sex discrimination. However, it's really lacking in teaching people about disability. Relegated to "other protected characteristics". But disability is really complex and people need training.

I'd love to be at a small festival in Devon this weekend - on my birthday - where most of my favourite musical artists are playing. As usual, I am not well enough to attend as I can't stand for any length of time and, more importantly, because I need dialysis. Perhaps one day.

My hair has regrown since hospital and it's really patchy on top, which is why I usually shave it. Mrs Eve has said I look like "some kind of fluffy alien neonate".

Kasa's security on android is quite good, but you can't change the email on an account, so if you've forgotten the password and don't have access to the email, you're stuffed. But they've also turned off the backup flag so you can't migrate settings from one phone to another 😩🤦

Monday is shaping up to be pretty brutal. It's my return to work after surgery (tiring enough on its own) but I also need to get up at 4.30am to do dialysis, so that the blood tests get to the lab on time.

NICE's process for evaluating Evusheld 2 is SLOW. Like 2025 slow. It's really depressing. But we've just got to keep the pressure up.

The SUPERNOVA trial result is as good a milestone as any to remind us that there are immunocompromised people, myself included, still living under near-lockdown/shielding conditions, 4 years after Covid struck. This drug could give us freedom again.

Did you know that there are immunocompromised patients who STILL have infections from the original variant of Covid in 2019/2020? People with conditions like mine just really struggle to clear the virus.

Great. Trying to do a delay repay for cancelled tickets as @Se_Railway "couldn't find the driver" and I missed my hospital appointment. They won't let me claim back the second ticket I bought for my wheelchair pusher because they say I am claiming for 2 journeys at the same time.

I think it's quite discriminatory in the first place that you have to buy 2 tickets if you're in a wheelchair, but then making the refund a pain when the train is cancelled is just the icing on the cake.

Finished Demon Copperhead today. A pretty darn bleak portrait of contemporary rural America. Thought the Uriah Heep character, "U-Haul", was among the best done.

Watching bad TV as part of recovery and "Our Welsh Chapel Dream" is some of the slowest television ever. Episode 1: they get rid of some pigeon poop. Episode 2: they wait for planning permission.

Yesterday, I walked 2.14km and cycled for 10 minutes on the exercise bike. Coupled with physio sessions, this was way too much and my muscles ache to high heavens. Can barely walk at all today. Doh.

Also starting to feel excited that my book publication date is drawing near. OA version will be available from @stanfordpress and print available from all usual bookshops.

I really pushed the recovery walking yesterday, at 0.7km, and now feel very sore today. The price of progress, I guess. The physioterrorist is definitely of the no-pain, no-gain school.

It's another day of recovery here. I think that I perhaps feel brighter than I have done since the surgery - the constant fatigue feels like it might be lifting, thank heavens.

I've got one goal for today - to walk just a bit further to a specific landmark corner near our house. At the same time, if I don't make it, that's OK, too, though it will be a disappointment. But you can't bank on linear progress with this "relearning to walk" business.

I made it!

We have some collared doves in the garden and the magpies look ready to prey on the chicks. One has fallen out the nest and is learning to fly. Mrs Eve is up against the window shouting flying advice and getting ready to ward off any magpies.

I learned recently that there's a "sport" called "power slap" where two competitors take it in turns to slap the other in the face until they pass out. Unbelievable.

For the first time ever I've had bad pressure alarms on my arterial line during dialysis. Most worrying. I've resolved by flushing and then reversing the lines, which seems to have fixed the problem.

I did it! A fortnight ago I couldn't walk. Today my physiotherapist got me on the exercise bike. It's an upright posture so as not to flex the hip past 90, but incredible progress.

There are many "life lotteries" to which we are all subject. I have had quite bad luck in the lottery of health but always remember that I am incredibly fortunate to have been born at a time and in a country that provides me with treatment without bankrupting me. #perspective

One of the things I anticipated poorly with recovery from total hip replacement was the fatigue. The physio totally exhausts me and I need to sleep. Apparently this lasts 6 weeks and I must remember that it's major surgery.

I take my hat off to the "blood runners" - motorbike-based ex-service (eg ambulance drivers) personnel who volunteer to collect blood from home dialysis patients, among other things. Really improves my life being able to do monthly bloods at home.