It is remiss of me to go so long without blogging here but as you’ll read below, quite a lot has been happening in life, so here’s an update on quite a few things….
Health
On 23 April I took a day off work as I had a hospital appointment, right in the middle of the day. My Doctor had referred me because my kidneys appeared to be working rather poorly and this would go some way to explain why my tiredness was increasing. Next I knew I was admitted to hospital urgently as I had an enlarged prostate causing urinary retention. The urine had backed up to my kidneys, hence the problem. I was in hospital for 5 days which took me by surprise!
While I was in hospital I had a catheter fitted and I’ve had it ever since. I can tell you this is not good, there was no choice and it has solved the immediate problem.
Since April I have been on a waiting list for an operation and more recently the hospital has suddenly woken up to me with one scan leading to another, various other appointments and hopefully the operation will take place before too long. I had thought it was going to be a kind of key hole surgery but it turns out there’s a bit more to it and is defined as being “major surgery”. Gulp. This is all new to me.
Cycling and running
All this prostate business has had an impact on cycling. With a tube inside me, running through the ‘saddle contact’ area, it is absolute agony trying to cycle. The first time I tried, with my Brooks B17 leather saddle, I realised it was uncomfortable so I tried cycling with hardly any weight resting on the saddle. While this worked to a point over a short distance, it soon became too tender and then far to painful.
A few days later I tried my daughter’s MTB which has a kind of cut-away centre ridge in the hope that might solve the problem. Not so, also jolly painful.
So for the time being my bike has very soft tyres and is collecting dust in the garage. I am seriously disappointed as we’ve had the most glorious summer. Seems rather ironic.
Even running has proved to be rather difficult. In order to solve the problem of what to do with the urine drainage bag strapped to my leg, my consultant said it was okay to disconnect it for up to 30 minutes and fit some kind of a tap to the catheter. In fact he encouraged me to do this as he recognises the immense benefits from running. While there was some discomfort with the actual tube coming out of me and this was tolerable, it was the constant jostling of the end of the tube inside me which caused quite a lot of bleeding. The knock-on effect was an infection and a couple of blockages, plus losing blood is never a good idea.
Retirement from work
To cut a long story short, in April I decided to retire from work. We had known since the start of the year that we could do this. Through needing to work through my three month notice period, it wasn’t until very recently I was able to walk out from the Council for the very last time. That was on 26 July and so far it has seemed like annual leave and half expect to be heading back to work on Monday.
To alleviate the ‘work’ mindset, I have put all my smart shirts and trousers into the attic, so I don’t see them hanging in the wardrobe. Also I’ve bought some more clothes, plus I’ll get some more in the end-of-summer sales. We have been for a walk most days and have done a number of things together.
A good number of friends have said how relaxed and well I look nowadays, so this retirement step must be suiting me. Quite a few folk have asked me how old I am, thinking I might be a bit young to retire. I suppose I am and we can just about afford it, providing everything goes roughly to plan for the next 40 years (when I’ll be 96). I need to stress we haven’t had a windfall or have become overnight millionaires through some other means; we are just ordinary people, average in many ways, who have simply done a little planning, had a little advice, been sensible with money and found we are in the position of being able to do this.
Family update
We have two daughters, both young adults. Our eldest, Becky, is engaged and will marry in August 2019; naturally we are delighted. She’s heading back for her final year in Exeter reading Maths. She’s just returned from a holiday in South Africa and we have enjoyed having her home for the last few days.
Our youngest, Hannah, is a trainee sailing instructor in Wales. I paid her a visit as soon as I had retired and we went up Mt Snowdon (see photo above) on what must have been the windiest day ever! The extremely cold, wet weather certainly came as a shock as it was in the middle of our heat wave.
Blogging
I decided to start off a new blog back in April – Maturing Well to focus things a little more generally. At the time of writing it is leaning towards me talking about personal finances and the case for early retirement. In time this will broaden out. I have found the blog has been unexpectedly listed in the Top 20 UK Retirement blogs.
This blog has been neglected, mostly through the demands of work. I do hope I can revitalise things fairly soon, starting with this post. At this point I need to remind myself of some of the benefits:
- Blogging can lead to a creative mindset, which is very positive in our outlook
- It makes me disciplined
- An opportunity to reflect on life
- I love the interaction I get from blog readers. At its peak I had a number of email discussions on the go at any single point, plus requests for me to write elsewhere and requests from upcoming writers hoping to be published on my blog
- I have enjoyed receiving samples for reviews; clothing, food and so on. Evaluating products is an interesting area which brings out my diplomatic skills from time to time
- Blogs are like on-line diaries or journals; they’re nice to look back on through the years
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