A busy weekend, Melatonin and maggots!

I seem to have been quite busy since my last blog update :)

On Friday evening Claire came round. I had a mad bedroom tidy beforehand and then we ended up staying downstairs all evening, sods law! We had a lovely time planning our night out at Save Jess-tival on Friday and are both very excited about it :D Doors open at 7pm and we've got unreserved seating, but we probably wont be able to get there til just before it starts at 7.30pm as Claire has to work in the day. A couple of lovely friends will try to save us 2 seats though :) The music and comedy should be great but I'm also looking forward to seeing friends from the transplant community too. I can't remember the last time I went to the hairdressers so have got an appointment for Friday morning at 9am (not my ideal time, but the only time they could fit me in) to have my split ends cut off for Friday :) And I'm also looking forward to seeing The Rise and Fall of Little Voice on Saturday, so fingers crossed I'll be ok after going out the night before.

Claire also popped round on Sunday evening too as she'd been out to a knitting exhibition in London with my Mum during the day. They did make me laugh though when they got on the wrong train at the end of the day in London and ended up miles away, hehe! Dad had to go and collect them and bring them home via the station they set off from to pick Claire's car up.

On Saturday morning we all had our annual flu jabs. I was quite nervous about mine beforehand because I usually feel very faint afterwards, but was fine this time :) Did have an achy arm for a couple of days though.

On Saturday we also went to Tesco where I bought myself some leggings because I wanted to have something other than jeans to wear. I was very surprised that they fit me perfectly because although I'm not that short (I'm 5ft 4), my legs must be abnormally short because trousers are usually way too long for me. My jeans are special short leg ones, but standard leggings fit me fine. I'm hoping to wear them on Friday along with one of the new tops I bought on my shopping trip after my hospital appointment last week so it looks like I'm making a bit of an effort rather than just wearing jeans.

And very excitingly on Friday we also went to the local cinema to see Up 3D. It was fantastic, another Pixar masterpiece :D The story was original, the charaters were well developed and the 3D effect was used subtly, but not too subtly :) And all my family enjoyed it, even Alf! I'd like to go and see it again at the cinema, but if I do I'll try to go at an off peak time because I found all the little children in the cinema on Saturday very annoying constantly running in and out to the toilet!

I didn't make it to the car boot sale on Sunday as Dad went fishing so I didn't have a lift. It's probably good that I didn't go though as I know I would have spent lots of money!

This week I've watched a few DVDs. I watched some Mr Bean episodes from my DVD boxset, but they weren't quite as funny as I remembered them from when I last watched them when I was a lot younger. I also watched a fantastic film called Memoirs of a Geisha. I love the book, so was a bit worried about watching the film because films are often disappointing when based on a book you've read. But the Memoirs of a Geisha film was fantastic and almost as good as the book. It was a bit long for my poor concentration at 2 hours and 20 mins, but that's not a bad length for an adaptation of a 400 page book. I'd highly recommend both the book and the film. And if you watch the film make sure to watch the special features on the DVD as they are a fascinating insight into how the film was made. Mum persuaded me to watch a film called Mermaids with her which starred Cher. It was quite good, but I don't think I'd watch it again. And I also watched a DVD called Knocked Up which was really really funny and much better than I expected :)

On TV I've watched the X Factor of course. I'm happy that Kandy Rain went out, but can't believe that the twins are still in. My favourites are Stacey and Lucie at the moment. I thought Robbie Williams' performance was awful and am wondering like many others are whether he was stoned. Or maybe he was just very very nervous. Alexandra Burke's performance was much better though. It'll be interesting to see which of their singles is number 1 in the chart on Sunday.

I also watched part of a channel 4 music programme (Live at Abbey Road) to see The Killers perform as I think they're great and would love to see them in concert sometime. The Sugababes new song and video (About a Girl) really disappointed me and after Get Sexy and now this I don't think I'm a fan any longer.

David Attenborough's latest programme Life was great as expected and I liked the way it only spent a short amount of time on each animal as that kept my concentration well. I noticed a programme called The Force in the Radio Times earlier in the week and thought it looked like it could be promising if done well. It really surprised me as I thought it was excellently made and really fascinating. I'd highly recommend watching it on 4OD using the link above. Part 2 is on next Tuesday at 9pm on Channel 4 and I'll definitely be watching. It's even made me wonder about working in the police force as I find the idea of putting all the clues together to solve a crime fascinating.

This week I've had a few disagreements over the heating with my parents. They say it's not cold enough to put it on (apart from Friday evening which was an exception), but I'm often freezing so really want the heating on. The last few days I've been slightly warmer though so have coped ok without heating, but I'm hoping we'll be able to put it on soon.

I've been fiddling with my Melatonin dose a bit this week. 5mg wasn't helping my sleep so on Saturday night I took 10mg instead. That worked as I fell asleep very quickly that night, but unfortunately I felt really sleepy (not just my usual tired) all day on Sunday and had no energy at all. I suspected that 10mg was too large a dose, so on Sunday night I took 7.5mg (which I got by chopping a 5mg tablet in half to get the 2.5mg which I took with a 5mg tablet). I fell asleep quite quickly on Sunday night with that dose and was tired but ok on Monday. So I took 7.5mg again on Monday night. Annoyingly on Tuesday morning I just couldn't get out of bed. I woke at 9.30am when my alarm went off as usual, but couldn't get up til 11am, I just didn't have the energy. Tonight I'm going to take 5mg and see if that helps me get off to sleep quickly now the Melatonin seems to have built up in my body, but I don't know what I'm going to do after that as it seems like I need a dose between 5mg and 7.5mg, but can't make that with my 5mg tablets. The tablets do come in smaller doses, but if I wanted more I'd have to buy them because my PCT can't prescribe them, and I dont' want to do that.

On Tuesday morning I weighed myself and found I'd put on 0.6kg this week :D So I'm now at 50kg which is my target weight, but my dietician wants me to put on another 2kg before coming off feeds. I'm currently on 6 nights a week of feed, so think that my dietician might suggest dropping it down to 5 nights now I've hit 50kg. Hopefully I'll hear from her soon as I emailed her after I weighed myself.

My current enteral feed pump needs servicing soon, so I heard from the company which provide it a little while ago saying that they needed to collect it, so a man came out to pick it up on Friday. However he didn't have a replacement with him, so I couldn't give him my only pump as I needed it! He was very grumpy. I've contacted the company again and they are now sending out someone to collect my pump on Thursday and I should also get a new one sent out the same day but in a separate delivery. Fingers crossed.

The Royal Mail postal strikes aren't meant to start til next week, but I think something has been up with the post this week as it seems to have been delayed a bit. The turnaround of my rental DVDs seems to be taking ages. Usually if I send them back one day, they'll be received the next day and new ones will be sent out which I'll receive the following day, so 2 days later I'll get new DVDs. But I sent 2 DVDs back last Thursday and still haven't received new ones. Hopefully they'll be with me within the next few days. But all the Christmas presents I ordered last week have arrived ok :) For some reason I received a new debit card in the post a few days ago, but my current one doesn't expire for a year! How odd. I hate making phone calls, but think I'll have to ring my bank up to check this out.

I think I mentioned on my last blog update that I'd sent R another parcel to cheer her up in hospital. I heard from her on Monday saying she'd received the parcel and really liked it. And if all goes to plan she'll be discharged from hospital early next week :) K is doing really really well and came off the ventilator on Sunday. After being awake for just 10 mins she was asking for food, lol. Hopefully she'll be transferred back to her local hospital soon. It's amazing how well she's doing now after being so critically ill just a week ago :D

Dad's car had its MOT this week and needed a couple of hundreds pounds of work doing on it to get it through the MOT. Now Dad is going to try to get Mum's car sorted out ASAP. Also this week Chris' car has broken! It's the same problem as he had a short while ago, I don't know anything about cars, but I think the head gaskett has broken or something like that. It sounds expensive to repair. And despite it looking like they're going to need to spend a lot of money on Chris' car, Chris and Sophie are still planning to get a pair of Degu soon!

Next Thursday I have an orthodontist appointment to get the wires on my braces changed. I'd thought that I'd get a lift into the city with my dad on his way into work that day, but Dad has changed his plans and is going away fishing next week instead. Although the orthodontist is only 25 miles away, getting there on the (3) buses would take around 2.5 hours, so I really don't want to do that. Chris' car is broken, but I'm going to ask Sophie if she will be able to give me a lift on Thursday. Fingers crossed. Otherwise I think I'll have to try to rearrange it but I don't know how long it'd be til they could fit me in again.

Mum is considering going away with Dad next week, so if that's the case me and Alf will be home on our own for 3 nights! Mum and Dad have never gone away like that before I've never been well enough. Mum's not made a decision yet, but I don't know how I feel about the idea. I know I'll be lonely if Mum goes too because we are very close and get on really well and also I probably won't go out while she's away, so won't see anyone apart from Alf. And then of course there's the what if something happens with my health or my medical supplies etc. But it's quite exciting too as I know for most people my age staying at home on their own is something normal, but I've never done it before and it would help my independence if I knew I could do it. Will let you know what Mum decides to do.

Today me and Mum were sitting on the bench out the front and mum pointed out something crawling across the drive. She thought it was a caterpillar, but on closer inspection I realised it was a maggot! Yuk! Then we saw there were loads and loads crawling across the drive. Dad has a friend who shoots rabbits, so he often brings a couple round for us to eat. Last week he brought us some pigeons which we had in a meal. Dad wrapped the remains up really well and put them in the outside bin. That bin was where the maggots were coming from today. They were climbing out of the bin, falling off the top onto the drive and then crawling across the drive to the lawn. There must have been nearly 100 of them out of the bin and I dread to think how many were in the bin. Yuk! Dad was out at work at this point and we rang him to ask for advice but he wasn't very helpful, think he was busy. Mum found a spray can of wasp/ant/fly killer, but it didn't harm the maggots at all! So we poured boiling water over the ones on the drive (but didn't dare open the bin) to kill them as we didn't know what else to do. When dad came home his solution was to pour bleach into the bin. I think he'll be more careful when disposing of animal remains in the future!

There was an interesting issue in the news this week about a development in the understanding of what causes ME. You can read an article about in on the BBC news website here and one about it on The Independent website here. I think that it sounds positive, but the study was only done on 101 ME patients, so it needs to be studied more widely before conclusions are drawn from it. It sounds like a step in the right direction for better understanding ME though.

I've just seen the time and so am heading to bed now. There'll be another blog post coming soon with details of how to ask me anything, so keep an eye out for that. And of course I'll report back on how Save Jess-tival and The Rise and Fall of Little Voice go. Take care everyone. Xxx