Addressing A Marble-Sized Problem

An Unexpected Medical Crisis

One situation the day before necessitated a visit to the Accident & Emergency Department of Manchester Royal Infirmary yesterday morning. A 30-minute walk home from work took the best part of 75 minutes.

I was tired, shuffling my feet, and enduring discomfort and pain in the groin area. At first, I thought it was tissue bruising or chafing until a shower inspection suggested it might be something more serious. It was hard and needed checking out.

First Impressions at A&E

On arrival at A&E, I observed a patient with what appeared to be two cannulations visible beneath the long sleeve on his right arm. He had come outside to smoke. Whilst I am usually baffled by such behaviour, I am coming to understand that the hold smoking addiction has over people, regardless of their health condition, requires extraordinary intervention to overcome.

The triage process included a referral to the Urgent Treatment Centre (UTC), with a waiting time of about 40 minutes. The nurse at reception who registered me for treatment shares the same birthday as I do, though I was polite enough not to ask about her year of birth.

We both agreed that, through the generations, getting separate presents for birthdays between 21 December and Christmas was a rarity, a trauma carried into adulthood. We had a good laugh about it.

Assessment and Referrals

At the UTC, after exchanging introductory pleasantries, I was examined on a gurney. The assessment indicated that I had a swelling, quite possibly an abscess, and I was being referred to the Ambulatory Care Unit (ACU). By this time, my bearings within the labyrinthine corridors of the hospital had been lost, though following the directions proved helpful enough.

At the ACU, the nurse examined the groin area. In all cases, the nurses were female, and I had no qualms about having my privates reviewed in a medical setting. The abscess was still quite solid and showed no indication of producing pus. However, she did attempt to squeeze it to obtain a culture sample. That was exceedingly painful, but needs must.

Afterwards, she took two vials of blood following a second intravenous insertion and wrote a prescription for co-amoxiclav, to be taken three times a day for a week.

Navigating the Hospital Complex

The pharmacy was located in the Manchester Royal Eye Hospital. The best directions I received came from a helpful porter who said, “Go on until all the signs turn yellow and you're at your destination.” After registering my prescription order (free for two reasons: I have been a registered cancer patient within the last five years, and I am over 60), I went to the toilet.

There, I was able to examine the problem more closely. It was the size of a marble, with a bit of hardened tissue extending from the ball of the abscess. This is medically known as the inguinal region or, more specifically, the inguinoscrotal region. Because the abscess sits within this crease, friction and rubbing exacerbate the pain, affecting the way I walk as I try to minimise the discomfort.

Managing the Pain

Even after taking pain medication, the pain was such that I was almost bent over double whilst walking around my flat. I tried a hot compress last night and plan to do so again this morning. However, I have been advised that if this abscess does not clear up within a few days, I should return to A&E to have it incised and drained. This is not a prospect I am looking forward to.

For now, I am indisposed and taking bed rest, having padded the area with some cotton wool.

My visit to A&E, from triage to collecting my prescription, took less than four hours.

A Google NotebookLM AI Audio Overview Discussion of this blog

Beware of insects with moustaches

Water must flow for all

I have written about my obsession with showerheads before, the way I tease the rubberised nipples if it is restricted or no water flow from any of the teats, this usually due to calcification.

Blog - Quite eccentric and borderline crazy

It is not enough to stand under the shower, I look up and if just one of the teats is restricted, it needs to be sorted out. Every teat must be supplying a spray of water at its optimal capacity. In our apartment, I was met with a little extra difficulty, the teasing of the nipples did not work on two of the outlets of the innermost circle of 5.

The overhead shower which is a Hans Grohe product, the company founded in 1901 and is probably a global leader in faucets, showers, and taps with the model ‘Raindance’ of which there are many variants.

A census of the teats

After a few trials, I attempted unpicking the teats with a toothpick to no avail. Eventually, I dismantled the showerhead and found calcified deposits in the feeder assembly that I was able to unpick with a toothpick. On reassembling the showerhead, all the teats began working as intended.

Another thing that had bothered me was finding a simple mathematical formula to calculate the number of teats on a showerhead. There are diverse types, square, circular, rectangular, oblong and so on. This determines how the teats are arranged in the showerhead.

I have mostly encountered the circular arrangement with concentric circles with a quintuple setting in the innermost circle radiating out to 6 or 7 concentric circles. On the basic count, there were 5 on the innermost circle, then 10 on the next and 15 on the following.

A formula is reused

This would suggest an arithmetic or mathematical series. So, if there were 3 concentric circles based on multiples of 5 teats in each concentric circle, the total number of teats would be 5 + 10 + 15 = 30.

What makes this interesting is the cumulative number of teats and the series developing. On the 1^st circle it is 5 or 5 * 1, for the second it is 15 or 5 * 3 and on the third, it is 30 or 5 * 6. I well-known series of 1, 3, 6, 10, 15, 21, 28 … is forming in the process. This, I have learnt is the triangular number sequence.

The detail from the link about suggests a formula of n(n + 1)/2. This would deal the determining the number of teats for regular concentric circles where each consecutive circle is a multiple in the natural sequence of the innermost circle. The series in the paragraph above would suffice for where the innermost circle has one teat and the next concentric circle has 3 using the triangular number sequence.

Hansgrohe Raindance showerhead

All numbers matter

The showerhead in the picture has m = 5 teats on the innermost circle with n = 6 concentric circles. For which I now have the formula m * n(n + 1)/2 and whilst the formula can be decomposed further, it is neater to keep it this way. I would then have 5 * 6(6 +1)/2 = 5 * 6 * 7 / 2 = 105 teats.

On the referenced blog where the rainfall showerhead at the Royal York Hotel had 7 concentric circles with 5 being the multiple, the applied formula would result in 5 * 7 * 8 /2 = 140 teats.

With my showerhead conundrum solved, I will happily bother my head with something obscure and productively silly as finding out if there are really any insects with moustaches in Cape Town, this showerhead mystery already fits the bill.

 Courtesy of the William Kentridge exhibition at Zeitz MOCAA, Cape Town.

Quite eccentric and borderline crazy

Traits on the strange

There is a trait I can find so useful and at the same time quite debilitating, beyond seeing, I have a tendency to observe to the point of obsession, my senses are somewhat attuned to a low-spectrum autistic level that I could combine pedantry with facetiousness without thinking of how burdensomely boring or silly it might appear to others.

On the other side of this, I might see things in a particular way, either rightly or wrongly and fail to persuaded of another perspective, which sometimes means I will rather keep my counsel than give an opinion. The worst part of this trait is when I am quick to react to things I should have been slow at deciding on and slow to react to things I should have been quicker to react to.

I embrace this all as part of my humanity, the successes and the regrets whilst trying as much as I can to improve myself.

Noticing the errors in notices

On my visit to Yorkshire two weekends ago, we stopped over in Leeds before spending the night in York, I saw things I could not ignore. I have a penchant for reading notices, plaques, signs, instructions and much else.

Not that I read to find fault, but where there is fault and you will find a lot of that on my blogs because I rarely proofread my drafts before posting and only get to correct errors in grammar and construction much later, but where I find fault, as I was saying, I cannot seem to ignore them.

In the Leeds Corn Exchange, I found the toilets in the basement just as my bladder was indicating it needed emptying. Having done the business and washing my hands, I was drying my hands when I looked up and saw the notice that seemed to start off well. [Wikipedia]

The Oxford comma and after that it all went downhill from there, normally hyphenated words missing the hyphen, American spelling, phonetical spelling, personalisation and number agreement errors. Three sentences on a notice and these many problems?

Assemble on Assembly Street

The Leeds Corn Exchange is a magnificent Victoria building, we were quite taken by the ornate design of the ceiling and obviously, for modern times there are health and safety regulations to adhere to. [LCE Website]

On the landing of the upper floor, having been through some of the shops, not too far from the vintage camera store, there was a Fire Action notice which anyone should take seriously in the event of a fire. Somehow, this notice looked funny and almost like a joke because the assembly point if we were to evacuate the building was Assembly Street.

On first reading, one would really have thought they got it wrong, however, there really is an Assembly Street in Leeds and don’t mess about if you are caught in an emergency just because the designated assembly point looks unusually funny or strange. I also hate to report that stranger things and crimes have happened on that street too. A woman was raped there in June. [Yorkshire Evening Post]

Teasing shower nipples

Now, onto one of the more bizarre traits I have. The bathroom of our not-so-well-appointed room at the Royal York Hotel had what you might call a rainfall showerhead.

A stationary ceiling fixture that apparently rains on you with controls on the wall for flow rate and temperature. However, this also had rubber teats extending from the metal surface that was supposed to distribute the rain shower evenly.

Yet, as with many shower heads with rubber teats, I cannot help but look at the flow and in that identify which teats are not working or distributing water out of alignment with the general flow because of blockages, usually limescale.

Then I pinch those shower head teats which seems to free them of blockages until all the teats were working. I somehow cannot stand the sight of the water flowing out of the teat out of alignment without doing something to fix it.

You can call that finicky or pernickety, but I end up with a good rain shower and it also shows that no matter who well things seem to be cleaned up, some things are just not up the standard expected. In this case, the showerhead, and to someone with my kind of fixation, well …

The psychology of the wash

A bath or a shower

When I owned my own place, it is strange that the decision to buy my apartment could have hinged on the bathroom having a bathtub instead of the installed shower unit.

There were times during the negotiation process where that was a niggling thought at the back of my mind, the place became a stronghold, a refuge, a kind of security from the things that ravaged my life and worth many years later. I spent ten and a half wonderful years there before I sold up.

The shower was a special place, the feeling of water cascading down my body, the temperature of the water set to just about bearable, but very comfortable, the floor of the bathroom heated such that the cold of winter was barely noticeable.

The wash for something

Indeed, there was something about the wash; I could adjust the showerhead to deliver the spray as a soft rain through to a pulsing massaging hosing down.

The quest for cleanliness also offered a cubicle of meditation, but there were times when I spent much longer in the shower as if I could get rid of a dirty thought or a feeling of a grimy existence not cleansable with the shower gels scented for seaward ambience and greenish blue hues.

We all have a predilection for some sort of wash, especially we of African descent, whilst those of other cultures might have concoctions to drink and possibly ointments or powders to rub on our skins to provide protection, fortify us for the formidable or empower us from some nondescript daring-do, we have the wash.

The ritual of the soap

I have prayed over waters and bathed in the strangest places, using soaps that would not pass the science of reasonableness to be applied to the skin.

Yet, the soaps, black or any other colour purported to grant powers for the favour from all mankind or defence from the dark arts are well sought for by the many who publicly appear rational but privately can be found in grottos ministered to by shamanic priests, fetishists or witch doctors.

The wash is not limited to these events, Christianity talks of the wash too, the washing away of sins as much as it pertains to baptism as a sign of faith, the Mohammedans perform the wash of ablutions before their prayers as a sign of purification before approaching their deity in submission and supplication.

Ritual purification is a function of many belief systems as Hindus will wash in the River Ganges, and the River Jordan has significance to both Judaism and Christianity.

The wash is deeper than the skin

For the holiday, the wash is in a swimming pool or at sea, we have an affinity for water caressing our bodies with or without particular reason – we cannot deny that regardless of who we are, the wash is critical for our presentation and thereby it determines how we are accepted.

We find that the whole context of clean and being clean is defined by the wash, the health of the body, the mind and the spirit might we be affected by the wash too even though the water only really touches the body, but the effect is much deeper than what we see or feel.

Thought Picnic: A Nebuchadnezzar of Champagne Showers

Showers in a closet

Sometimes, the things that fascinate me are quite silly to others but we are all eccentric in our own little ways.

As I stood under the shower this morning adjusting the temperature of the water to just about bearable heat to offer a somewhat sensational feel as I cooked my flesh to medium-rare edibility, I noticed that the shower head had some labels.

Set to pour

I found that normally, I stood under the rain setting and once when I had a wet shave, I adjusted the shower head to the jet setting without thinking anything to it – the higher pressure current allowing for my shaving stick to be cleaned easily.

The massage setting was easy on the body but I did wonder what the champagne setting meant – not that I expected to be soaked in Dom Pérignon but it was worth checking.

So, I twisted the shower head to the champagne setting and the depressurised flow was as if the water was aerated, much easier on the skin; lazy, languid and effortless – there are times when a shower should be soothing with the rich texture of good champagne.

NB: A Nebuchadnezzar in wine measures is the equivalent of 15 litres or 20 standard wine bottles.