Speed bump or roadblock?

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I think this blog should be warts (or in this case lipomas) and all. So far we've been incredibly fortunate to have had a great deal of plain sailing, but it would be totally unrealistic for it to be this way for the entire 14 months that we have off work.  But, spoiler alert, it works out fine, definitely a speed bumb.

For the past many years I have had a generously proportioned lipoma stuck to the side of my rib cage. Quite a long time ago I had it investigated, scanned, examined, and it was deemed to be not problematic, except for the fact that, somewhat unusually, it was under the muscle fascia instead of just under the skin. This meant that it would be harder to remove so the recommendation was to leave it as is. 

Fast forward to a couple of weeks ago and I felt some additional nodules. Given that we were just about to head off to Europe, where I don’t speak the language very well and I don’t know the system, I decided to register as a visiting patient in the local doctor surgery and get it checked out. The doctor's advice was to have an ultrasound and then to get a specialist to look at it. But we were meant to be going to Spain three or four days later, so there were decisions to be made. 

Having decided to go to the doctor it now seemed like the only responsible thing to do would be to follow that advice. We have a whole year off and hopefully this will just be a short interruption. Since we were planning to go with the Paynes to Spain, and the kids have been really excited about going to the beach, we decided that Crystal and the kids would go ahead and I would stay behind in England. Hopefully I would be able to go out and join them for at least some of the time in Spain. We were able to change the flight and the car rental booking easily. 

And so after a whirlwind day of decision making and a busy morning packing up, not to mention a fun party with our friends on Friday night, I took the family to the airport and waved goodbye. I felt that I was heading into the unknown as I didn’t have any appointments booked and it was the beginning of the weekend.  I was resigned to the idea of staying behind, and if I am 100% honest perhaps I was even looking forward to a little bit of freedom and independence, but don’t tell anyone. However, once I had said goodbye at the airport I felt quite lost. Parting with the family precipitated a bump back down to earth after a long period busy with travel and excitement. I felt a sudden loneliness after I-can’t-remember-how-long being surrounded by my family. And no doubt some of the effects of lack of sleep and overindulgence were catching up on me. 

This melancholy was alleviated at least temporarily buy a barnstorming (at least by my current standards) run on Sunday morning with Nick. And then the jockeying of emotions continued as I receive pictures of fun in the sun in Spain, make halting progress with my medical quest here, and oscillate between periods of tedious admin lightened by visits with friends. One of the main upsides of staying behind is that I get to stay with the Gardners in their new (to me) home.  It's been a real pleasure getting to spend some more time with this lovely family.  

I now have an appointment for the ultrasound on Tuesday afternoon and then another unspecified period of staring into the unknown. I did my second group workout session last night with Vince - Tim and Damien came over to Nick's. The benefits of which were promptly undone by dinner, drinks and dessert at the pub and another late night.

Update: I stopped at Damien's for a run on my way to Guildford for the ultrasound.  Quite unexpectedly the ultrasound operator was able to tell me straight away what she was seeing: the orginal lipoma, some more lipoma and some lymph system, which was one of the theories that the family doctor had.  And there was nothing to worry about! I decided based on this that I would see how quickly I could get to Spain...

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