woolymonkey | State of the Monkeys

Back from the doctor. Spider definitely has a urinary infection and probably has had it for weeks, but it was masked by the gastric thing. He's on antibiotics with instructions to take it very easy until the end of the weekend, so will only be popping into school intermittently for the bits that really matter--English GCSE assessments and guitar lessons.

By the way, how cool is it that his first English GCSE assessment is a Barak Obama speech? He has to explain the ways Obama engages with his audience.

In the meantime, my translation has progressed, um... not at all. Unless you count watching the nurse take blood from Spidermonkey as background research. She did better than a lot of the nurses in the study because she labelled containers and disposed of sharps correctly. But she didn't invert the samples at all, let alone the correct number of times. Neither did any of the nurses in the study. Has anyone ever seen a nurse invert a blood sample? Clearly it doesn't matter very much.

I'm not in any way complaining about the nurse, mind. She is completely wonderful! Because Spider is 14, he's supposed to go to the phlebotomy clinic at the hospital to have blood taken. (Take an number, wait for 4 hours, do not leave to buy a snack...) She bravely agreed to do him anyway since he's bigger, more sensible, and has easier veins than a lot of adult patients. So we had an extra 15 mins at the surgery rather than spending the rest of the useful day in Addenbrookes. Thank you, Maureen!