A star is born

This is magic:

www.youtube.com/watch

I passed.....................

My Geology exam!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Not a spectacular pass, but a pass nontheless!

I am now officially just over a third of the way yo my degree


Just had to tell someone!

"The Itch"

Well.... I had been warned about it! Everyone who's phoned or spoken to me in the past few weeks has asked if I have a knitting needle to hand for 'The itch'. Considering the leg has been encased in various casts for the last few weeks, I think I'm lucky to escaped for so long, but this week, it hit!

I'm relying on my trusty ruler to do the biz, and am slapping in moisturiser down my leg as far as my fingers will reach...... but I have small hands so that isn't far................... as I'm assuming it's the now VERY dry skin.......... evident by the accumulating skin flakes that are finding their way out of the cast, that is causing 'The Itch'

I have thought of trying a nozzle on the end of the hoover to try and clear them out and hopefully reduce the irritation, and I've tried anti-histamines........... not that they help much in the itch department, but they do help give a good night's sleep :)


Any suggestions gratefully recieved!

Update

Had a visit to the fracture clinic on Tuesday. They took off the old back slab and I at last had a chance to see what had been done in theatre.... a nice wound down each side over the ankle. They took out the clips ( which was a singularly unpleasant and painful procedure) and was then assessed by the orthopaedic registrar who decided I would need another backslab as it's was still too swollen to put on the proper cast. "Sit with your foot up above you waist" he says indicating a level roughly parallel to my chin! Anyway, back next week to be reassessed. The only pain is coming from the wound sites which feel red raw in the cast. I know they're well protected as I supervised the padding myself ( one of the perks of having been an orthopaedic nurse in my youth!), but boy does it hurt!

What a prat!

I've been absent from here for a few days as I tumbled out of my patio door on Friday en route to hang out the washing and ended up in a heap on the ground after tripping up on the door step! I knew immidiately it was broken, not because it hurt... it didn't really, but because when I moved my leg.... gingerly to try and sit up, I could see the ankle was not attached to the rest of the leg by the way it sort of wobbled! At this point, I though help might be quite a good idea so yelled out a couple of times, but found every time I lifted my head more than a few inches off the ground, I thought I would pass out! Apparently no-one locally was gardening so realised there was nothing for it, but to try and get back into the house to a phone. It was the longest few meters of my life! Fortunately, I had a phone on charge just inside the door, so half in and half out of the house dialled 999. The ambulance crew were terrific, and managed to splint the leg and get me onboard, again with the minimum of pain.

So... the upshot of it all......................... I managed to break the end couple of inches off both the tib and fib ( now pinned and plated together), dislocated my ankle ( manipulated back), and tore ligaments and tendons ( repaired), and was in hospital 4 days. ( Booted out yesterday.)

At the moment I have on a backslab plaster, but when the stitches are removed in about 10 days, they'll put on the 'proper' plaster which I'll keep on for a further 4-6 weeks.


I feel such a prat.

A sad day!

One of the really great things about the OU is the kit they send to help with the courses you're studying. The excitement when this massive box was delivered way back in February, unpacking it, and discovering it was a mini lab......... polarising microscope, sets of slides, rock and fossil samples.

But now this particular part of the course is over, the exam sat, and today it all has to go back so someone else gets to use it next year. I'll be really sorry to see it go........ anyone got a polarising microscope looking for a new home?

Ooids!

It really comes to something when you get so excited about the arrival of a couple of rock samples in the post, but today my sample of oolitic cleveland ironstone and oolitic gloucestershire limestone arrived.... the limestone is the one in the picture... pretty isn't it? What you can't see though without a hand lens are the ooids which make up virtually the entire rock.

Ooids: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ooids