About this time last year, I wrote this, a review of 2008. I did one for 2007 too, so might as well do one for 2009.

2009 started with some uncertain ill health, that turned out to be gall stones. I had my cholecystectomy in February and have been a reasonably good health ever since. My weight has slowly crept up toward my pre-illness weight, but thankfully still about 5kg down.

There was quite a lot of travel in 2009, starting with a long weekend in Dubai in February for wife’s birthday. Amazing place.

At Easter, we had a long weekend in Cornwall/Devon, giving Herman a mini road trip.

In June we had a much longer road trip; two weeks through France, Luxembourg, Belgium, Italy, Switzerland and Germany, taking in the Alps, Italian Lakes, French Riviera, Black Forest and generally some of the Best Driving Roads in the World.

We were to return to Belgium in August – Antwerp this time for a minibreak, and another chance for Herman to play with the trains.

In September, we left Herman at home and travelled to Turkey for a week and met up with my mother-in-law, sister-in-law and niece, and a very nice time it was too.

We would have gone to Belgium (Brussels) again a couple of weeks ago if it wasn’t for the wrong kind of snow in Calais

Finally, for travel, I took Herman up to Aberdeen for Christmas, visiting my dad and stepmum. A bit of drama on Britain’s roads, but generally OK.

Work wise, this year started out very well, rebuilding business with Nomura and generally things were good.

By the middle of the year, long hours and weekends were ramping up my stress levels and I began to look for an exit strategy. This culminated in a move to Barclays Capital in October, where stress and work levels have dropped to the floor, so much so, that I’m seriously craving challenges for this year.

Family life took a bit of a dent toward the end of the year, and apparently there was a credit crisis too.

So, for 2010, I will try to strike a better balance of work, personal and family life, reverse the weight gain trend and generally stay healthy.

We’ve got a lodger! Only for about a month, but my sister has come to stay.

This will probably mean weight loss for me, as we’ll probably have the same amount of food and drink in the house, but with an extra mouth to feed.

Bonus!

I had a good weekend. I took Friday off (in lieu of daft hours worked previously) and went to visit aFj for hurtling, beer, sausages, catching up, and soup. Yesterday, I went food shopping and bought a lot of chocolate and other bad things.

This is all very therapeutic, but unfortunately, has had an unwanted effect on my waistline.

I’ve been around the 101kg mark for a few weeks now, but this morning have definitely hit 102kg with signs of hitting 102.5. Not good.

So what should I do now? There is still much chocolate loveliness in the house, so maybe I should just eat it all to get out the way?

My gym membership resumes on Wednesday (suspended for a month whilst I was recovering from operation), so that should help.

Right. Decision made. I’m off to consume two packets of chocolate digestives and the rest of the brownies.

I’m feeling thinner already.

In my last post I said that I’m glad that my health problems are over because they tend to be all consuming. Well, even though keyhole surgery is not very invasive, it is still surgery and takes its toll.

I have to take paracetamol every six hours, which means that part way through the night it wears off and I wake up, although increasingly, this is due to back pain from having to sleep in a fixed position. Maybe I can work on an ideal arrangement of pillows or something, but I suspect this won’t be resolved until I can sleep on my side again.

Sitting and standing is a lot easier now. I can now sit on the sofa and get up without help – huge bonus

Food-wise, I can definitely eat things that would previously have knocked me out. It’s a huge relief to be able to eat without fear. However, I’m getting bloated quite easily and will need to check up with the doctor next week about that, but otherwise, feeling much better.

The plan now is to continue to take it easy, go back for a post-op visit with my surgeon on Tuesday and take off the dressings on Friday (stitches should have dissolved).

With any luck I should be able to go back to work by Friday too

After yesterdays procedure, I am now back home, feeling a little fragile, but otherwise ok.

It’s amazing that something that used to hospitalise someone for a week or more and keep them off work for a month, can now be done over night and be back to work after a couple of weeks or less.

All I’ve got to show for my visit is four small holes, and collection of small gall stones in a jar. Better out than in! To celebrate, wife bought me a chocolate croissant, and it was very lovely.

I’d like to observe that the staff and facilities at The Princess Grace were brilliant, although checking out took a little longer that I would have liked.

Now I need to find somewhere comfortable to be.

I tried the sofa in the lounge – very comfortable to sit, but quite painful if I want to get back up again. Bed is ok, but boring. So far, I found most comfort sitting in my Aeron chair. If my employer splashed out on these I could probably go back to work!

Anyways, glad this is all over, as poor health has a habit of consuming all of your thoughts.

One final note. Being 102kg makes my merely ‘overweight’ according the stupid BMI rating. For about 9 years I had been ‘obese’.

Today I’m off to hospital to have my gall bladder removed, a procedure I still have trouble pronouncing (and spelling): laparoscopic cholecystectomy.

Anyways, it should be a quick and straightforward operation and I’ll be home again tomorrow, then a week or two rest (yay!)

Since this all started, at the beginning of December last year, I’ve lost a lot of weight (net 12.5kg as of today). I had hoped that I would break into double digits by this time, but didn’t quite make it as I’m now only 102kg. I suppose that’s not too bad, but after my op, I’ll be able to eat and drink normally again, so I fear it won’t go down any further.

On the other hand, I’ve become used to eating healthily, not quite so much and drinking even less, so maybe it’ll stick.

On the third hand, I could murder a kebab, a large piece of cow, several cakes and anything with pastry.

Time will tell.

Yesterday I went to visit the surgeon who’s going to do my cholecystectomy.

It was a bit of a mini adventure as I thought he was at 71 Harley St, London. Upon arrival I was somewhat confused by the name on the door being United Arab Emirates Embassy.

Undeterred, I went in and enquired but was informed by a couple of polite, but insistent gentlemen that this was an Embassy and perhaps I should try next door.

I did this, where I was confronted by a slightly confused woman who claimed (rightly) that this was 69 Harley St and that perhaps I had the wrong place.

Clearly, asking for directions was not working, so I reverted to checking the appointment in my iPhone.

Ah. Not only did it say 78 Harley St, but also had a convenient map showing where it was and where I was (and a helpful purple line showing how to get there).

Fortunately, 78 turned out to be correct.  It had a really nice reception area and splendid coffee.

Usefully, the surgeon confirmed my other consultant’s diagnosis, explained the procedure and why it needed to be done and suggested I contact his secretary to sort out a time.

This I did when I got home, but work commitments and a short planned holiday prevent me from having it done in the next 2 – 3 weeks, so will sort something out later in Feb.

On a side note, I’m now 103.5 kg. This is down from 116.5 kg at beginning of December. Weight loss is slowing, but still happening. Hopefully I’ll break into two digits by the time of my operation, but I fear that once I can eat properly again, it’ll probably go back up.

I was back to the Wellington hospital today for an upper endoscopy examination.  A number of people have told me that this is particularly unpleasant, and lo, it was. 

Good news is, there was nothing apparently wrong with my stomach and surrounding bits so my problem is almost certainly contained to the gall bladder as indicated by previous tests.

Given I’ve had a number of very painful of episodes, my consultant is recommending a key-hole cholecystectomy (removal of gall bladder). Shouldn’t be a problem – it’s non-essential.

Will be nice to get this over and done now so I can get back on to normal food again!

My MacPro has been getting very noisy and a little unstable recently.

It’s an early (2006) model with a mere 4 Xenon cores of just 2.66ghz but still jolly splendid.

I’ve tracked the problem down to the graphics card, and with a bit of research there seems to be a common problem with ATI Radeon X1900 overheating and causing visual problems and even lock ups.

Right on cue, the fan is now ramping up – clearly typing this sentence is highly graphically intensive !

So I think a new graphics card is in order.

The easy option is the Nvidia Geforce 8800GT from Apple – pricy compared to the Windows PC version and not quite state of the art, but has a good power/performance/price profile and considerably better than the ATI.

The alternative is to force the case fans to go faster permanently to help in cooling and probably wear my noise cancelling headphones all the time too.

Went to the very pleasant Wellington Hospital today to get an ultrascan done; something my mother- and sister-in-law recommended on day one, back in November.

I have gall stones.

So well done to my GP for misdiagnosing and not even considering letting anyone else have an opinion.

Right, not sure what happens next but it almost certainly involves a bit of surgery.

I’m quite pleased really. Better to know what the problem is and get it fixed than spend months or years fannying about trying this diet/drug or that.