Jumped the Gun....

...and ordered a book before I read the reviews! 

This book, Mona's Eyes, by the promos, immediately caught my interest as it tells the story of a young girl in danger of losing her eyesight forever whose grandfather takes her every Wednesday afternoon for 52 weeks  (in Paris!) to see a great work of art.  

I never had the opportunity to study art history and so thought that in the context of a wonderful story, I would learn all about 52 different famous works of art! It was the context of an engaging story that grabbed me - I could go and read a dry text book anytime, but this sounded like a much more enjoyable way to digest all that information. 

Well, after it arrived today, I checked out some reviews by readers, not reviews by those trying to sell the book. From what I could gather, there were more negative reviews than positive. The main criticism seemed to be that the story itself seemed to be merely a vehicle for an art historian to write a book about art history and the character of the young girl was not written in a way to make her believable; it was as if the grandfather was talking to a very articulate adult, not a young child. 

Whatever.... I will tackle it for myself and come to my own conclusions, and in the meantime, I just might learn a lot about art! 

Today was my Myocardial Perfusion Scan at the local hospital - a nuclear imaging test in two parts to assess how well blood is flowing to my heart at rest and also under stress. A radioactive tracer is injected into the bloodstream and pictures are taken during rest, and for me, rather than running on a treadmill, to create stress for the heart, I was injected with a drug to stress the heart and then with a tracer again in Part 2 for more pictures. The whole procedure took about 4 hours. So, now all I have to do is wait for the results (!) and hope that further tests will not be necessary. Fingers crossed!  I have already had two angiograms over the years and am not keen to have another!  

I was quite drained by the time I got home - no caffeine for 24 hours, no food or drink for the 3 hours before. By noon I had a caffeine withdrawal headache and chose to sip coffee and take a nap for the afternoon. Zzzz