Letter from Espargal: 1 May 2015

This past week, like the week before it, began (or ended, if you insist) with labours in the park. I reckon that we have now cleared much of the scrub away from about half the area concerned. With luck the boys will be back this weekend to carry on. The park is looking a great deal more park-like for their efforts.

I take the canine stragglers around it morning and evening, a walking stick in one hand and a light hoe-like implement in the other. With this I whack out the undesired pricklies and nasties that flourish. As often as not, the orphans worm their way under the fence to join us.

Monday (Wed & Fri) brought acupuncture sessions. In the course of these I have made the acquaintance of Dick, an 80-year old fellow sufferer with similar symptoms to mine.

Like me, he is concerned about whether he will be fit enough to enjoy a long-planned trip. He is hoping to go on a Baltic cruise in June; I to visit my brother in South Africa in July.

He confided that he had been impressed by a neurosurgeon at Gambelas hospital near Faro, a woman who had come highly recommended by his GP (who happens to be our GP too).

THE FISHMONGER AND THE CATS

Coincidentally, Jodi the physio, after chatting to the local doctor, had recommended the same surgeon. I was able to book an appointment with her and was heartened (for the first time) by what she had to say after checking my scans.

In short, I am due to have an injection into the spine under CT guidance this coming Wednesday with the possibility of a future foraminotomy should this prove necessary. The difference of opinion among consultants has been quite scary.

Enough of these matters.

Tuesday Natasha came to clean. In the course of this, she wiped down the computer keyboard on my desk. Unbeknown to her (and to me), although the screensaver was up, there was an open (although invisible) spreadsheet file on the computer.

I returned to find some of the fields with changes including strikethough characters and missing columns. It eventually occurred to me that those columns had simply been hidden and merely needed to be unhidden.

It took another 30 minutes to discover the keyboard shortcuts necessary to undo other changes.

While Natasha was at work we dined at the Hamburgo with friends, I standing at the bar as usual - until a glass of wine took exception to my medication (or vice versa) and I thought it wiser to join the usual suspects in the car.

No harm done other than to my reputation.

We returned from physio late afternoon to find Armenio Palmeira, a farming neighbour much my age, grafting almond trees in our field.

This he had promised to do several months earlier when he guided us in cutting off limbs with a view to prompting new growth. On to these hardy trees he is grafting several plum and peach varieties, sometimes two or three on to the same tree.

Equally generously, he has given us three fig cuttings and, when two of these looked poorly (in spite of our efforts to nourish them), he replaced them with healthy new saplings that he dug in himself.

FIG BRANCHES GROWING FROM AN OLIVE TREE

As he suffers from knee and back problems and recently had a hip mended, these are no small favours. It is hard to know how to repay them.

Twice we have enjoyed the company of UK friends, Mike and Lyn Mackrill, who date back to our early Quinta days. They are staying at one of Fintan's villas at the bottom of the village.

After treating them to a good barking at the gate, the dogs were pleased to indicate that it was just for effect and to welcome them in. The beasts have surprisingly long memories.

Wednesday Prickles was severely out of sorts. Indications of his indisposition came in the early hours when he vomited on the sheet beside Barbara's head. More throwings up followed.

Post acupuncture and a lunchtime meeting with May's nephew, Ken, down from Edinburgh, we took Pricks to the vet. Barbara feared that a bone she had given him (a rare event) had got stuck. And so x-rays indicated.

The vet gave us prescriptions for laxatives and stomach protection products with which to dose our little dog in the hope of clearing the blockage.

Thursday: In spite of the syrupy laxative that we managed to squirt down Pricks's throat and all over his muzzle, he failed to deliver the goods. So we phoned the vet, aware that the surgery would be closed the following day for a public holiday.

Bring him back at 15.00 for an enema, said the vet. We did. The vet declined my offer of assistance. It's a dirty business, he informed us as he took our little dog inside. I needed no persuading.

Fifteen minutes later he came rushing out again with Pricks on a lead. It was to no purpose. All Pricks wanted to do was lie down in the sun.

A second enema proved no more fruitful. Much against our instinct we agreed to leave Pricks behind at the surgery. He hadn't eaten anything and the vet said he would put him on a drip.

At 19.00 we got news that we might fetch Pricks for the night. But unless he brought forth, he had to be delivered back to the surgery at 09.00 the next day.

So we fetched our constipated little dog. Any hopes that he might clear his obstructed bowels overnight were dashed the following morning.

Friday: We arrived at the surgery in good time with Pricks motionless on his cushion behind the passenger seat on the floor. I feared that surgery was imminent. Pricks feared that he was going to be handed over once again to the vet, a prospect he didn't fancy. (Nor would I after consecutive enemas.) Barbara carried him inside. I waited in the car.

Twenty minutes later the pair of them reappeared. A new x-ray showed that the blockage had both shrunk and moved. A third enema did the trick. Out came the remains of the bone and a good deal more. That was joy. There's no relief like a good bowel movement after a tough couple of days.