2025, Week 17 journal.

In week 17 of 2025, I went to the health clinic a couple of times to have my leg dressed and was told I had high blood pressure as well. I will have to have it monitored over the next few weeks. 

Monday 21st April.

I slept very well last night. When I woke up, I slowly got up and got myself a coffee. I sat at my computer and did the Wordle puzzle. After checking for messages, I collected the bags of rubbish I had for the different bins and went out on my disability scooter.

I dropped two bags of rubbish in the regular trash bin and another in the plastic recycling bin before dropping a dressing gown from one of my trips into the clothes recycling bin. I then went to see if anyone was at Cafe Prensa in Los Narejos to have a chat and a coffee. When I got there, there was no one there, so I went to Martin's house to deliver a leg from the sofa I had given him last week. There was no one at home there either, so I went to The Corner Bar and sat with some friends there and ordered myself a coffee. We sat chatting for a while, and Martin and Aria arrived and sat with me.

I moved to Pizzeria La Sombre and ordered a beer, and was joined by Martin and Aria. A short time later, Dave, Sean and Jez joined us. We sat talking for a couple of hours, and when we left, I went to Harry's bar on Rio Nalon. I sat in the sun outside the bar, had a beer and watched the world go by for half an hour before going back to my apartment.

When I got home, I made myself a couple of chicken rolls, ate them and sat in my armchair watching TV. It wasn't long before I fell asleep, and I slept for a couple of hours before waking up and watching TV again until I went to bed at around 10 pm.

Tuesday 22nd April.

I woke up early today and had a couple of coffees while I did the Wordle puzzle, sitting at my computer. I was working on my website when Martin messaged me, and I walked to the Buena Vista restaurant to meet him for breakfast. I had two coffees and a tostado while we sat talking, and when he left just after 10 am, I went home.

At about 11:45, I got on my disability scooter and went to Pizzeria la Sombre to meet Martin and Dave for a chat. We sat talking for a couple of hours before I headed towards Rio Nalon, and Martin took Aria home. In Rio Nalon, I stopped at the new cafe at the bottom of the strip, where I saw some people I knew. I had a beer and a chat with them, and as I sat with them, my friend Andy stopped for a chat.

When I left the cafe, I went to Harry's bar for a beer before going to Rocos bar for a beer while I waited for the Chinese takeaway to open this evening. At 6 pm, I left Roccos and went to the Hong Kong Chinese takeaway. I got myself a meal for two and took it home. When I got home, I separated the Chinese meals. I ate half tonight and saved half for tomorrow to save me from having to cook tomorrow.

Tonight I worked on my website till around midnight, trying to do as much of the redesign work as I could before going to bed. I noticed that my laptop didn't seem to be charging, so I plugged it in before I went to bed to check if it charged overnight.

Wednesday, 23rd April.

When I woke up this morning, my leg felt a lot better, and I was in less pain. I got myself a coffee and sat at my computer to do the Wordle puzzle. After doing the puzzle, I worked on my website for a couple of hours before meeting my neighbour Liz, who was going to give me a lift to the health clinic to have my leg redressed.

The nurse seemed to have forgotten she had anyone to see today, and I had to wait for around half an hour for her to turn up, but when she did, I was seen straight away. She removed both the dressings from my ankle and cleaned the wounds. The one on the exterior of the ankle is still very painful, and I winced and flinched in pain a couple of times as she cleaned the wounds. When she had finished, she made me an appointment to have it done again on Friday. I must say that I am happier to come here to have it dressed than to go to the private clinic. The nurse here seems to take more care and be more knowledgeable than the different nurses I have seen at the private clinic.

Liz offered to take me shopping, but I was happy to go home to rest up for a little while before doing anything else. This afternoon I worked on my website. Tonight I watched the Arsenal vs Crystal Palace game on TV. It finished with a 2-2 score. Arsenal led twice but didn't look very good. Both teams seemed to be happy to draw the game and not to lose any players with injuries before their next games. Crystal Palace have an FA Cup semi-final on Saturday, and Arsenal have a Champions League semi-final next week against PSG.

I checked my laptop, and it hadn´t charged overnight, but it hadn't, so I went on the PC Components website and arranged for it to be repaired under the extended warranty I had bought. I was surprised to discover I bought the laptop nearly two years ago, and was glad I had bought the extended warranty so I could get it repaired. I went to bed as soon as I had arranged for it to be returned.

Thursday, 24th April.

I woke up early today and got a coffee while I did the Wordle puzzle. I had some porridge with a banana for breakfast, and had a second coffee. I had a delivery from Amazon arriving at some time today, and I couldn't go out.

I worked on my website all day and finally had a breakthrough when I realised that a lot of the errors that I was seeing on my website were not real. Because I had been continually running an error check on the website but not updating the sitemap, the report was showing errors from the old sitemap that I hadn't yet overwritten. I made more changes and then created a new site map before running and rechecking the error report. This time, the majority of the errors had disappeared, and I was able to concentrate on the real errors.

The delivery from Amazon arrived about midday. It was a tablecloth for the dining table in my dining room, and it fitted and looked good. After it arrived and I had put it on the table, I did some more tidying around the apartment and took some rubbish to the bins. On the way back, I got the box for the laptop out of the garage cupboard and packed it up to send off tomorrow. I spent the rest of the day working on finishing the last remaining errors on my website and went to bed around 10 pm.

Friday, 25th April.

I woke up around 7:30 am, got up, got a coffee and some porridge and sat at my computer to check my messages. I had a second coffee and then did the Wordle puzzle before setting off on my disability scooter to take my laptop to the Euronics store.

I arrived at Euronics just before it opened and waited for a couple of minutes for it to open at 10 am. Once it opened, I was quickly able to drop off my laptop so that it could be taken back to PC Components for repair.

When I left, I was too early for my appointment to have my leg redressed, so I stopped off for a coffee on the way. I slowly drank my coffee and set off towards the health clinic. As I set off, I saw my friend Lisa on her bike and stopped for a quick chat. Like so many other people, she thought I had blocked her on Farcebook because she couldn't see me anymore or even message me. I had to explain that Farcebook had banned me for telling someone that the drugs I was taking in the hospital were helping with the pain I was in. I gave her my phone number again and then continued to the health clinic.

I had to wait for a short time before I saw the nurse in the health centre. When I did see her, she cleaned the wounds on my legs and redressed them. She confirmed that the wound on the inside of my ankle was muscular and that the more painful wound on the exterior of my ankle was a ligament wound, and that was why it was more painful. She also took my blood pressure and told me that it was high again. She asked if they had said anything in the hospital, and I told her that they had given me a tablet for high blood pressure one day, but nothing since. She consulted with the doctor in the next room and made me take one tablet to swallow and place another one under my tongue. She then made me wait outside for 40 minutes to give the pills time to take effect, and then she retook my blood pressure. It had gone down, but she wrote me a prescription to pick up some tablets at the pharmacy on my way home. She made me a new appointment for Monday when she would redress my leg and recheck my blood pressure.

I left the health centre and went to the pharmacy. I picked up the tablets and confirmed that I had to take half of one tablet with breakfast tomorrow and Sunday. Once I had the tablets, I went home. My quick little trip out this morning had kept me out for nearly three hours, but at least I felt that I was getting somewhere.

I could see no reason for my high blood pressure today, and the only thing I had consumed was my coffee before going out. I checked online to see if coffee could cause high blood pressure and found that the two double coffees and the large one on the way to the clinic, a total of around six shots of coffee, could have been the reason for the high blood pressure. I didn't realise coffee could cause high blood pressure, and I will be more careful about how many I have first thing in the morning from now on.

This afternoon and evening, I did some more work on my website. The errors seemed to be becoming fewer as I worked my way through them, but the photo albums were taking more time to fix than I had hoped, but they will look better.

This afternoon and evening, I seemed to be quite cold, so I tucked myself up under a blanket to keep warm. Feeling warm and cosy and watching repeats on TV helped me fall asleep, and I slept on and off for a few hours. When I woke, I surfed the Internet and discovered a few more social sharing websites that I could use. I logged on to a few of them and set up accounts at Mastodon and Minds. I pottered about on them using my phone and went to bed around 11 pm.

Saturday 26th April.

I woke up around 7 am today but didn't get up until around 8 am. After yesterday's minor scare at the health clinic, being told my blood pressure was high, I decided to forgo my two double coffees as soon as I got up this morning and made a pot of Thai Ginger Oolong Tea. It is not my favourite tea, and when I have finished the leaves, I will get something nicer.

I took my Omeprazole tablet and half of a blood pressure tablet (as prescribed) and had a cooked breakfast. After breakfast, I put on the dishwasher and set a load of washing running in the washing machine. I had run out of the iced tea drink that I like, so I jumped on my disability scooter and went to Economy Cash to get some more. It didn't take me long, but it was lovely to get outside in the sun for a while.

When I got home, I went onto my balcony, which looked much better now that I had tidied it, and I managed to get the water fountain running again. I love the noise it makes and find it very relaxing. I then took the plants that were on the table off it and then took the table apart. I put the parts of the table in my hall to store in my garage cupboard later. I moved the fountain to a different position and hung the solar power panel on the wall so that the pump would run and the fountain would work. I then moved some of my plants around before putting my reclining deckchair out on the patio and testing it out.

The chair on the balcony was very comfortable.  When I finish cleaning everything up and putting the plants where I want them, I will spend a lot of time on the balcony reading my Kindle. This afternoon and evening, I continued the changes to my website and put many of the photo albums into modules, which will allow me to show them in different ways on different parts of the website.

Sunday 27th April.

I woke up around 8 am and got myself a drink. I didn't have coffee again. I took the blood pressure tablet and omeprazole tablet before having porridge with walnuts, blueberries and honey for breakfast. I watered all the plants on my balcony and then sat down at my computer to work on my website.

At around 11:30, I stopped the computer work and took a break. I didn't really stop, I just changed jobs. I moved the glass tabletop, which I had taken apart yesterday, down to the cupboard in the garage and sorted through some of the cardboard boxes that I had stored there. Many of them are for things that I no longer have and can throw away.

I rested for a while until around 1:30 pm and then went back to the garage and sorted through the boxes I had taken out of my garage earlier. I separated all the cardboard, plastic and polystyrene into different boxes and placed them out of the way in my parking spot in the garage. I will take all the different piles of rubbish to the different recycling bins and rubbish bins on Monday and Tuesday next week.

When I had finished working on the rubbish in the garage, I went to the Buen Sabor takeaway meal shop and got myself two meals, one for lunch and one to have this evening. When I got home, I ate the chicken and chips in mushroom sauce, which was very nice. I spent the afternoon sleeping and watching football matches on TV.

I watched the Lyon Ladies team play the  Arsenal Ladies team in the Champions League semi-final. Arsenal won the game 1-4, winning the two-legged semifinal 3-5, going through to the final. I just hoped the Arsenal men would do as well in their two-legged semifinal against PSG next week.

While I watched TV this evening, I wondered why my legs had been worse recently and wondered about my shortness of breath. The only thing I could think of was that I stopped taking Omega Oil tablets about 6 months ago. I wondered if they perhaps had been helping me, but I hadn't noticed. I looked up the benefits of taking the Omega 3 fish oil tablets online and found that they helped with blood circulation and blood pressure. As my recent breathlessness may have something to do with stopping taking them, I went online and found a good brand on Amazon and ordered a six-month supply of them, which will arrive on Tuesday.

Tonight I watched some TV before going to bed at around 10:30 pm.