Blapril, Come She Will

It's that time of year again!

Wait, what...?

Goes out. Comes in again.

So, Belghast, creator and patron saint of Blaugust, the annual let's get to it for bloggers, would-bes and once-weres, had this great idea. Here we all are, he thought, sitting at home, staring into space, wondering how to fill the idle hours until the world turns right side up....

... Well, not all of us, maybe. For some, working from home means working harder.

For most of us, though, probably not so much. Also, social contact. Some people are going to miss that. Okay, maybe not as many in this crowd as in others. Still, we all like a chat, right?

So, Bel thought, why not let's have Blaugust in April! What better to keep everyone busy and positive and motivated and cheerful? Also a little bit stressed because every year someone finds posting more than usual a little bit more difficult than they expected but that's the good kind of stress, right?

I have to wonder at the fortuitousness of the timing here. I mean, there are only two months of the year that begin with the letter "A". You can pretty much only have Blaugust and Blapril. Bljune or Blfebruary just don't cut it.

Bloctober, now... that would work. In fact, make it Blogtober and it's actually the best. And omg! Guess what? Blogtober is a thing! Did everyone know that but me? (Actually, I imagine I did know but I forgot. I get that a lot these days).

Getting back to the point (now there's a novelty) Bel has put together a whole raft of conversation starters to give the thing some structure. There's a media kit here that has all the links.

 The sign-up form is here.

Let's take a break. I was going to put a picture of a kitten here because, kittens! Then I thought of this. So appropriate in so many ways.

Just me? Oh well...

This time I decided not to register as a mentor. I was in two minds about it because I really liked the Discord mentor channel last time but it seems like a bit of a con to claim mentor priveliges just to get into the clubhouse. I didn't feel like I contributed much as a mentor last year - or indeed any other year - other than the advice posts I put up here, so I'm just going to participate this time. If I change my mind later maybe Bel will print me up a new nametag if I ask nicely.

April is interesting timing for reasons other than nomenclature. The current situation is that I'm now officially "furloughed", the bizarre etymology chosen for being paid by the government not to go to work. My employer has guaranteed full pay until the end of April (the government is funding to 80% indefinitely) but the situation nationally is due to be reviewed after three weeks anyway so, in theory, we could be back at work around April 12th.

Sure - in fairyland!. I would guess we might be hitting the first of the series of peaks around then with more to come throughout the year. I'd be surprised if we come off lockdown much before the beginning of May and we'll almost certainly have to go back on it at least once. We may all end up back here doing Blaugust under the same conditions.

That's all speculation and fearmongering, though. Lot of that about.

What matters right now is Blapril! If you're reading this and you've never blogged, what are you waiting for? If you used to and you stopped, this is the perfect time to give it another go. And if you're already at it then maybe you'd enjoy stepping up a gear, cranking out a few extra posts, sharing your experiences and generally making your and our world a happier place.

Probably a good time for that.

Strange Days

I know last summer I said I was going to diversify a little here on Inventory Full but I didn't plan on straying into real world politics or giving my opinions on live news stories. I'll leave that to the Gevlons and Tobolds of this world.

It would be strange to carry on as if nothing was going on right now, though, wouldn't it? And after all, many bloggers I follow already have a longstanding tradition of including anecdotes or episodes from their non-gaming life, something I did more than my fair share of last year.

As evidenced by a number of recent posts, plenty of bloggers are now working from home, voluntarily self-isolating or on lockdown, as Wilhelm tells us he is under California's oddly romantic-sounding "shelter at home" policy.

It's notable how fast attitudes have changed. I don't think Naithin will have been at all unusual in thinking that there might have been some level of media hype involved when this thing started rolling. We all know better now or at least I trust we do.

I'm in the unusual position of having had a week's holiday booked that then turned into two, right at the time things really began to move.That's afforded me a certain, peculiar perspective.

When I walked out of work two weeks ago with nothing but leisure time on my mind there was still no real hint of what was coming. The outbreaks in China had been in the news for weeks and the virus was moving around the world but I went to visit my eighty-eight year old mother a couple of days later and we barely even mentioned it as we chatted.

Just a couple of weeks later she's in isolation. It's Mothers' Day in the U.K. and normally I'd be visiting but this year the flowers got delivered and left on the doorstep and we kept our contact to a phone call. It's likely to be three months before we meet face to face. If that soon.

I was due to start back to work today but yesterday I had an email from my manager querying whether I would be self-isolating. She'd just received detailed guidelines on the vulnerable groups and she thought I might be in one of them.

I'm pretty sure I'm not. It was quite reassuring to find none of them applied to me at all but there was one gray area: I had chemotherapy last year. One of the effects of chemo is the depression of the immune system and anyone undergoing it or who's had it recently absolutely should not set foot outside the house at the moment.

I was warned strongly last year, long before Covid-19 was on anyone's radar, that even getting a cold could be dangerous. I took a lot of care to avoid that. I wore a facemask for a while and avoided anywhere with people.

The advice I received at the time, though, made it quite clear that within a month or two of completing the course my immune system should have returned to normal. I should be fine now, getting on for six months later.

The text of the advice, however, is not entirely clear. I went into work this morning to discuss it and the upshot is that I'm back at home, typing this instead of standing in an empty shop staring into space. I'm self-certificating myself for a few days while my manager seeks clarity from our HR department over whether or not they believe I should be working.

By the time that's sorted out, with any luck the shop will have closed anyway. As I walked through the almost-deserted city center the difference from a couple of weeks ago was almost surreal. All the coffee shops, restaurants, cafes and pubs were closed as expected but so were the majority of shops of all kinds.

The government here hasn't quite yet gone as far as a full lockdown but many people think one's coming and soon. If it doesn't, we may have to close anway through sheer lack of people to keep the shop open. We always run close to the wire on staffing levels anyway - this could push us over the edge.

Our MD, however, is apparently very keen we should stay open. He's making a case for bookshops as an essential service, something that sounds as likely to convince the authorities as Gamestop's similar argument did in California.

Until government decrees otherwise, though, it looks as though our doors will stay open. If they do, I am expecting to have to go in eventually. At that point the choice is going to come down to whether I want to keep my job, which I'd quite like to do, or whether I consider my life to be sufficiently at risk that I have to quit.

[EDIT - And as I wake up this morning and check our website I see that by the end of the day the company I work for, like most other retailers in the UK, will have closed its doors to the public "until further notice" . Better late etc.]

That's probably overly dramatic. My feeling is that most of us are going to get Corvid-19 at some stage no matter how hard we try to avoid it. And most of us will recover. The trick is for not too many of us to get it all at once, so those who need it can get the care they require.

I'm expecting this to last months not weeks and I don't believe many countries are going to be able to survive or even sustain a lockdown with no obvious end in sight. What that means for day-to-day life for most of us is difficult to imagine.

This is going to be a long, strange year and things could get a lot stranger yet. The world will be different after all this is over. I just hope everyone reading this is there to see how different.

I'm Still Standing

Okay, dammit, I give up. This is a medical blog. Also, I am out of the prediction business. Not making any more pronouncements about how my health is or isn't going to affect the blog, just going to report the facts, such as they are.

And they have been quite dramatic. On Wednesday I posted to say "I feel orders of magnitude better" and at 8 am on Thursday morning I was en route to hospital in an ambulance with all the sirens going.

Cutting to the chase, I'd had a pulmonary embolism. I could barely breathe, couldn't even stand up. Had to be carried down the stairs by the paramedics.

Spent most of the day having all kinds of tests until a CT Scan confirmed a very large blood clot in my lungs, which was exactly what the paramedic told me she thought it might be when I was in the ambulance.

From there we moved to various flushing processes and blood thinners, which had little effect. In the evening I was asked whether I wanted to go for the "Clot Buster" that had been mentioned numerous times during the day.

It can have some pretty impressive negative consequences, death not the least of them, but then so could not taking it. I said yes straight away, they gave it to me and a couple of hours later my breathing was close to normal and my heart was no longer about to explode.

I spent Friday and Saturday in hospital, feeling increasingly better and they finally sent me home this afternoon with yet another basketful of drugs (blood thinners plus antibiotics because I also have a chest infection). I am making no predictions this time!

Looking back at the care I received, throughout the entire process it was exemplary. The ambulance must have been with us in barely five minutes and it was first class care from beginning to end. It was my first ever ambulance ride, too - shame I wasn't in a fit state to appreciate it but I guess people generally aren't! The NHS may have its problems but I'll take it over any of the other options, that's for sure.

That said, I do feel I've had my share for a while. I'll be quite happy to let someone else use the resources for a bit. But, as I said, I'm out of the prediction business.

I'll take everyone's best wishes as read and thank you for them now. Wouldn't want compassion fatigue to set in. Who knows how much more of this there is to come?

Back on point, while I was in hospital with time to think, I had a couple of ideas about the blog, which I may or may not implement for Blaugust. I am still hoping to participate to a significant degree although I think my so-called mentoring role is going to be purely notional this year.

If change does come to Inventory Full it will be experimental and not necessarily long-lasting, let alone permanent. Might not even happen at all.

We shall see what happens, which, not at all co-incidentally, is now my official position on everything!

When You Get Out Of The Hospital

It's been a bit quiet around here for the last week or so, which usually means I've been away on holiday. I was indeed lounging around, doing not very much, but I was doing it in a large hospital, not some pensión in the back of beyond.

As I briefly mentioned earlier in the year I had an investigative procedure that turned out to be positive and last week I went into hospital to have 30cm of my upper bowel removed. Everything went well - the surgeon's report described the operation as "uneventful", which is, I guess, exactly what you'd want your surgeon to say.

There was an interesting moment a couple of days into recovery, when they thought I might have had a heart attack. I was surprised to discover you can have one without noticing. It was a false alarm, fortunately, and I was judged well enough yesterday to come home.

If my ongoing recovery goes to plan, I probably have a month, maybe a month and a half,  before I go back to work. Then, all being well, I really will be on holiday for two weeks in June!

When I go on holiday I usually take a complete break and avoid looking at any blogs or gaming news but in hospital I was often looking for something to keep me amused and entertained so last week I read everything as normal. The hospital wifi, which I was piggybacking (they hadn't bothered to password it) didn't permit any kind of uploading or downloading so I wasn't able to reply to any of the interesting posts.

It's probably a bit late to start now. If you posted something in the last week, just imagine my reply. I would almost certainly have said exactly what you think I would. I usually do.

Since I'm supposed to be taking it easy and not overdoing things I should have plenty of time for blogging and also for trying some new MMORPGs. If I can find any.

That's about all I have to say on the matter except to do the thing everyone always does after they've had some potentially life-threatening condition diagnosed and (hopefully!) averted.

I really had no inkling I was seriously ill. I felt fine. I had some minor pains but they were occasional and familiar. There's no way I'd have gone to a doctor about them. It was just good luck that I dinged 60 in real life last November and because I'm fortunate enough to live in a country with a National Health Service one of my rewards for leveling up was a free test kit for bowel cancer.

Even then, I might easily have ignored it but because I tend towards Lawful Neutral I went along with what I was being asked to do, even though it ended up taking three goes and six weeks to get a definitive result. As a result, the operation I ended up needing has been smaller and less impactful than it would have been had I waited until symptoms appeared, always assuming that by that stage it would have been operable at all.

In countries with socialized health care there are generally a lot of free checks you can get. Medicine is all about proactivity these days. I don't really know how it works it countries that base healthcare on insurance but I imagine insurers would generally prefer to pay less earlier than more later so there are presumably options there, too.

Without getting all political about it, I'd just say that whatever checks you can have, you should have. If they offer them, take them. If you have to ask, then ask. Yes, it's annoying. We all have better things to do with our time than take an afternoon out to go to some clinic and have holes poked in us. Until we don't.

When I'm fit again I need to take my own advice and follow up a couple of other, less urgent, flags that popped up in some other precautionary testing I got free with my 60th birthday. For now, though, I'm going to sit back, drink tea and play games.

Normal service will be resumed shortly.