Coronary Care (2)

So, for those who would like a little more detail around those hard facts in the previous post, some human biology. If you were not paying attention on that day in school where they did respiration and circulation you will need the following fun facts to help you understand my condition.

Lungs are MEANT to be air-filled sacs Ooh, you knew that?. The 'skin' of them (lining) is allowed to be moist or wet but it is intended that the big air-pipes coming in at the top, branch into the two lungs, then branch and branch and branch ever finer like the tiny twig-leaves of a tree or some bizarre rubber mould for a cauliflower head. All these tiny sub-branches and fine fine ends are still air-filled tubes in a healthy lung. When you breathe in the ribs and diaphragm drag this 'sponge' out bigger in all directions, and air rushes in  to all the tiny pockets, nooks and crannies.

The heart is a fist sized, 4 chamber pump made of muscle. The two top chambers (auricles) are there to collect blood from round the body and then fire great charges of blood into the meaty bottom chambers (ventricles), stretching them like a very tough balloons. At the end of this 'whoosh' of blood, the auricle finishes its 'stroke', the blood flow stops and a one-way valve slams shut. This keeps the blood in the ventricle till its turn to 'fire', when the contraction fires all that blood into the main round-the-body artery (aorta) through another valve (aortic valve). The one-way valve to which I referred, between auricle and ventricle is called the mitral valve.

So, what has gone wrong here?

My lungs became temporarily NOT air-filled. Instead they quietly built a pool of thick, sticky "phlegm" which crept up on me, just feeling like " a bit wheezy". I am (was) a great one for avoiding the doctors and the medical people so I did not take myself off to the GP, being convinced that it was just man-flu and I'd recover. Then on June 17th, it all shut down. I'd been doing some fairly hard work in the morning, moving cattle-muck but I have no reason to think that had anything to do with this. Three hours later, that evening, I was suddenly unable to do anything - walk more than 30 yds,  lift a tin of dog food, get the kettle on. I was banjaxed. When I tried I would quickly be stopped by lack of breath, my breath trying to come in great, wheezy, crackly gasps and my airways feeling like rough cardboard tubes. I could no more fill my lungs down to the diaphragm with "deep breath" than fly to the moon. Clearly a problem.

My heart, we have found in the course of all this medical investigation, has a slight pro-lapse of the mitral valve. That big one-way valve I mentioned? In one place on the rim of it, part of the edge 'farts' back into the auricle like a whoopie-cushion. It's not a disaster, it may have been there years, and it may have no relevance to this pneumonia but such leaks can make the flow of blood and liquids round the body much less efficient, so might have helped the build up of fluid on my lungs and my swollen ankles. This goes into the category of "noted". If work is needed then it may well be replacement of the mitral valve with a mechanical bit, but for now the team are going with the fluid reduction solution. THEN they will worry about hearts.

That's it for this one.

"Book Learning"

Book Learning. Grand as far as it goes. We are madly trying to absorb as much information as we can on the 2014 projects - bees and pigs - and have read our little socks off on books, magazines, websites and leaflets. We have talked to as many people as we could persuade to give us advice and we have, as you know, joined a 'club' and been to one bee-based meeting. We probably 'know' way more than it is healthy to know for 2 people neither of whom has ever opened a beehive and lifted out a bee frame to examine the contents, or been closer to bees than idly spotting them on the garden flowers ("Oooh! I think THAT one is a honey bee!") or had anything to do with pigs other than helping to run 2 porkers down the ramp from trailer to slaughterhouse (about 5 seconds!).

You can't beat a turf fire for visual effect.

No. We are now hungry for hands-on, practical experience and 'monkey-do' learning. We want the bee training sessions to start, and especially the apiary based practical ones. I want to try myself out in the middle of a wary, loud-humming, cloud of potential stinging insects to know that I can be as cool, calm, relaxed, gentle and slow moving as I am with rabbits, sheep, geese and chickens. I want to know that I can be sufficiently careful that I do not risk 'rolling' bees between the close spaced bee frames (which annoys them) or squashing any between hive sections when reassembling the boxes. I want to know that I can move among pigs and bond with them, come to understand them without being nervous of them - they are big, strong and heavy, potentially dangerous animals when full grown, which need treating with respect. I expect I will be OK on both counts; I generally am. We are currently looking out for a pig rearing/keeping course aimed at small holders. Tipperary in April looks favourite so far.

Meanwhile, one of our favourite annual celebrations came around, Burns Night, our chance to eat haggis with a clear conscience and, this time, to have some guests to supper, Carolyn and Charlotte of the mini-horses, plus K-Dub and little Henry (2 in February). Being lamb-rearers, of course, this is not some kind of commercial, mass produced haggis boiled in a plastic (or gut if you're lucky) sleeve. It is the home made version constructed by Liz from our own lamb products; this year some breast meat, heart, liver and 'lights', plus, of course, oatmeal, onion and spices. 'Lights' for the uninitiated, is lung tissue; we managed to persuade butcher Ignatius G that we really did want a lung (just one) to try out just this recipe. Liz bakes the whole in a casserole dish.

Fair fa' your honest, sonsie face..... haggis.

For a starter we diverged a bit away from Scottish fare with a favourite salad - leaves, pomegranate bits, goats cheese, pickled sweet red peppers and toasted pinenuts. The haggis came, of course, with neeps and tatties and an onion gravy. Dessert was a bit 'fusion food'. Liz crossed cranachan with pavlova (why not?) and came up with a pavlova with a meringue base, a good layer of cream, then blackberry coulis and berries, topped with toasted rolled oats.

Cranachan x Pavlova

We have, inevitably, a mountain of this food left over even though everybody bar Henry piled in with gusto and did it justice. H was a little excited at his first evening visit to 'Matt and Dizzy's' house and was not in the mood for settling down to eat this unfamiliar food but he was still a pleasure to entertain and he enjoyed himself. "Dizzy" (sorry, I mean Liz) has since been on the internet talking to chums who also have left over haggis and mashed spuds, and someone has come up with the very promising idea of haggis and potato 'pasties' which have GOT to be worth a try. We have very little 'neep' left so some of our lovely fresh sprouts may get thinly sliced and added to the pastie filling.

We had lit the fires at both ends of the house, so we had a lovely turf fire going in the living room as well as the range in the dining room. We do not usually have real turf in the house as we'd only use it on the open fire, which we don't light very often; it does not go very well in the range. However, I had taken some eggs round to neighbour Una and she was trying to pay me money for them. I asked instead if I might have some of the lovely long dry turfs she has in her shed; they look very picturesque in the log basket and would burn nicely on our fire for our guests when we adjourned through to the comfortable chairs. We didn't go very late. The visitors were mindful of the need to get little Henry to bed by 9:30-ish but, more importantly, K-Dub was due a very early (04:30) start as he's off to the Bavaria mountains on a motor bike, to be part of the annual "Elephant Rally", camping.

http://www.bvdm.de/index.php?id=47&lang=3

Rooster 'Mr Buff' shelters in the goose house. 

We take our hats off to you, buddy, rather you than me. The weather is not looking particularly promising, it is snowy and windy in Bavaria at present, but he has a good ex-military tent and a sleeping bag which is good to minus 30 degrees C and, anyway, hey! He's a ruffty tuffty biker. I used to enjoy my 2CV camps but they were generally in the summer and I had the car around me when I was driving to and from. K-Dub is on a bike in just his leathers and helmet through the night to Dublin, then all across Wales and England to the Channel Tunnel, then all across mainland Europe to his snowy forest 'home' and all his biker mates. Safe journey, K-Dub. Look after yourself.