Fitting

I failed to do myself justice yesterday...I forgot to say I turned up a pair of jeans as well. The idea was I'd go out this morning wearing them but ask me again about that this afternoon, ha ha! I give thanks for finding a suitably constructed pair to comfortably cover the Heath Robinson contraception that is a nephrostomy drainage system. As far as I know all the other ostomies are designed to sit as compactly as possible against the body and to contain what they're collecting in a sealed environment. Not so the nephrostomy. It is dangling arrangement of tubes and wires that of different sizes with cumbersome connections like small space stations that have to be covered with dressings to protect your skin from gouges. The set up you leave hospital with is composed of parts from different bodily drainage systems and you have to tape up the join to *try* and keep it leakproof but I've managed to get hold of a purpose built kit now which is a vast improvement. It's never particularly comfortable or user friendly though as you have to try and keep it all supported and untangled all of the time because it's attached internally to very delicate organ. Having said all this, there are advantages in by-passing the ruins of my own original internal system so I am grateful for those!

I'm also grateful to Bill Bryon for telling me that the word 'comfortable' was used only in the sense console-able until (pause to look it up) the latter part of the eighteenth century. This seems very fitting to me as I derive considerable consolation from physical ease... I think most of us do now we are lucky enough to have access to so much more of it than our ancestors and for those for whom the comfort of friendly physical contact with other beings is a rarity it is a poor but plausible substitute to have furnishings and clothes that seem to hug or stroke you.

I'm also grateful for my bed. Not the sheets and duvets and stuff this time but the very pretty cream and brass colored frame. I was just lying here admiring the fan shell shapes where the uprights at the head and foot meet the curve of the bit between the posts. We often spend a long time choosing this or that thing for our home and then after a while we get used to it and forget to notice all the things that made us go - Yes, that's the one! - in the first place. This one is very light looking which is especially good in a small bedroom as the one I had when I bought this bed was bigger. Although I've bought mattresses and futons and sofa beds in the past and a number of things for Bob to sleep in or on as he grew, this was the only the second 'real' bed I'd ever bought for myself...the first, a single boxy wooden affair with drawers is my 'sofa' in my living
room. I'm grateful for that too and may move to it later even if I don't make it to the great outdoors.