Soy haddock and peas en papillote with miso glazed potatoes
I’ll start with a quick summary for those who don’t follow on Facebook: yesterday kinda blurred into today, thanks to a bout of biliary colic (gallbladder pain) that started around 10pm last night and just wouldn’t go away.
By 3am, having had maybe two hours of broken sleep, I was curled up sobbing with pain and finally heeded my phone AI’s “gentle suggestion” to call NHS 111. The nice nurse I spoke to was sufficiently concerned that she booked me a taxi, at the NHS’s expense, to carry me over to the hospital.
There, at a still ridiculously early hour, I spoke to a nice doctor who started to mildly rebuke me for not following the dietary advice given to me by my GP, then stopped when she remembered me saying that the GP wasn’t available to speak to me until the end of this month, and I had therefore received no advice. She was quite keen to get me in for surgery asap, but apparently such referrals can only come from GP.
And so, against all logic, I was given some stronger pain relief (good old Oramorph) and sent home to await the GP’s ‘urgent’ attention. Which, from previous experience, won’t be very urgent at all.
I arrived home1 after what felt like a full day, to find mum asleep, as it was still more than an hour before my ‘get mum to church’ alarm was set to go off.
Mum headed off to church, leaving me to sprawl on my bed and read. After a while I got that feeling that someone or something was watching me, and looked up into the gaze of a small dog, who had escaped from next door’s garden through the hole in the fence made by our friendly neighbourhood badgers. I repeatedly told her to go home, but she just gave me that “you’re not the boss of me” look that animals specialise in.
A quick phone call to the neighbours saw her escorted firmly back into her own garden, and the piece of loose board put back over the hole in the fence. Until the next badger comes along, anyway.
The doctor at the hospital told me that, to stop further agonising gallbladder incidents, I should avoid anything with fat or dairy. That necessitated a quick rethink of the week’s meal plan, including tonight’s dinner. This easy fishy dinner contained no fat (except the trace amounts in the ingredients) and, if not wildly exciting, was at least warm and filling.
If you want the recipe, please let me know and I’ll post it tomorrow, when I’m not so dazed by stress, exhaustion, and morphine that my phone’s AI told me to take a break.
When a computer algorithm tells you you need a break, you know you really need a break. 😳
- In a taxi which was driven by someone who grew up in the next road over. Not a major coincidence, except that the driver who took me over to the hospital grew up in the same road, about 20 years earlier. Spooky! ↩︎
Is it pineapple sponge today? 