Mum's birthday, cinema and phone calls

I've decided to update my blog today because I've got my joint clinic at Hosp A tomorrow and I might have quite a bit to write about that, so that can start a new update.

I've just realised that 2 years ago I was in Florida with my family :D You can read more about it here.

Sun was my mum's birthday. When I woke up she was out, she'd gone for a walk round the village with a friend to deliver some birthday cards as she knows 3 other people with the same birthday as her in the village! :P And then they walked to the garden centre in the next village for a cup of tea. While mum was out Nan phoned up to wish her happy birthday so I had a chat to her on the phone and said we'd try to visit her soon.

When mum got home she finished opening her cards and opened her presents. I gave her Paint Your Wagon on DVD because that's a film she loves and I also bought her the complete collection of Dinnerladies. She was very pleased with them :) My Nan gave her some money and Alf gave her an IOU for a ball of wool. Dad bought her some mini pompoms to add to her knitted creations, a glowstick bracelet and some bubble mixture to blow bubbles with! :P And mum got a shirt from one friend and some chocolates from another friend.

That afternoon I watched a surprisingly good film called No Reservations and the extra features on the DVD. Then Chris and Sophie came round to see mum on her birthday. They bought her a bunch of daffodils and stayed and chatted for a little while.

On Sun eve dad took mum out for a meal in the city. They both had a nice time :) While they were out Alf told me that he's started smoking again :( While mum and dad were out I attempted to make myself a really simple meal - microwavable rice plus a sauce. I didn't realise how strong the sauce was though so added a bit too much to my rice. Whoops :P I watched Simon Cowell Uncut: Piers Morgan's Life Stories which I found very interesting.

While I was surfing the Internet I found a great video on Youtube of Sandra Bullock's acceptance speech for the Razzie she'd won for worst actress in All About Steve. She's so funny, you can watch it here if you're interested. I forgot to listen to the chart so I checked the result on the Internet. I was really pleased to see that Ellie Goulding's debut album Lights was number 1 in the official album chart and had knocked Lady Gaga's album off the top spot! Wow, what an achievement! :D And her single Starry Eyed was still number 4 in the singles chart. I also found some interesting interviews about Alice in Wonderland. If you're interested you can read Tim Burton's interview here, Helena Bonham Carter's interview here and Mia Wasikowska's interview here.

Yesterday would have been the 12th birthday of a girl I met in Hosp B called Alicia. You can read more about her at the end of this blog update.

Yesterday morning I really struggled to get up and felt very sleepy. I felt more tired than usual all day, which is probably at least partly due to my nocturnalism.

I received both of my monthly magazines - Focus and Official Nintendo Magazine (ONM) - in the post yesterday morning. I struggle to read Focus at the moment so have cancelled my subscription but because the direct debit payments were 3 monthly I've had a few issues since I cancelled my subscription. I can read ONM though so have enjoyed reading that yesterday and today :)

Yesterday I found the winners of the Oscars online because I don't have Sky so couldn't watch it on TV. You can see the list of nominees and winners here. I've not seen The Hurt Locker which won lots of awards, the trailers didn't appeal to me at all. I'm glad Sandra Bullock won best actress, I think she's great. I've not seen The Blind Side yet but will go to see it as soon as it's released in UK cinemas later this month. I was glad Mo'Nique won best supporting acting for Precious and that it won best adapted screen play because I thought it was an amazing film. And I think Up deserved to win best original score but although it's a great film I was a bit disappointed that it beat Coraline to win best animation like it also did at the BAFTAs.

Yesterday afternoon I rang A, the odd lady from the village who runs the teenage discussion group. On Fri dad had phoned her to give my apologies for missing the meeting that night and she asked me to phone her back when I felt up to it. So I did. Last Fri her and the other leader B were the only ones at the discussion group, no-one else turned up! So she wants to change the evening from Fri to another night. I said that I could make any night but mentioned that the others might struggle with a different night if they've got homework. So she's going to ask them too. I have a feeling that no matter which evening she changes it too, people will make excuses not to attend :P

Yesterday evening me, Claire, mum and dad went to the cinema to see Alice in Wonderland. We'd pre-booked our tickets but got to the cinema about 20mins early to queue and were quite near the front of the queue. When we were let into the cinema we got a good choice of seats but then more and more people kept coming in and most of the seats were taken. There seemed to be loads of adverts and trailers but we enjoyed watching a 3D Doctor Who trailer and a trailer for Toy Story 3, which I can't wait to see. Then eventually Alice in Wonderland started. It was fantastic, I really couldn't fault it and I want to see it again now :D The story was great, the animation was fantastic, the acting was brilliant and it was very absorbing :) We all really enjoyed it :) Alf has gone to see it tonight with some friends.

Rachy was on her local BBC news yesterday. You can read more about it and see the video here. Please send the link to your friends and family to raise awareness of organ donation. Rachy is such an inspiration. Thanks.

Yesterday evening a friend gave me a link to watch a programme on iPlayer that talked about organ donation. You can see it here and organ donation is the first issue that they discuss. It certainly made me think, I'd never really stopped to consider the condition of donated organs before as I'd just assumed that doctors would make that decision.

When I was chatting to a friend on Facebook last night he mentioned that he likes music by an Australian singer called Lenka who I'd never heard of. So I had a listen to some of her music including The Show and Trouble is a Friend on Spotify and thought it was quite good, if a bit repetitive.

This morning I weighed myself and found that I'd lost a bit of weight. I'm not too worried because I'm still at a healthy weight, but I emailed my dietician to let her know. I am puzzled though because I ate almost the same this last week as I did the previous week, but the previous week I gained 0.8kg whereas this week I lost 0.8kg! Weird. My dietician replied this evening and said not to worry too much about small fluctuations in my weight. I only need to worry if it continually decreases. My weight this morning was 52.1kg and my target weight is 52kg so that's fine. She's happy for me now to weigh myself fornightly rather than weekly. And my dietician also apologised again for not being able to attend tomorrow's clinic, but she's completely happy with my weight and eating at the moment.

In the post this morning I received my copy of Holly C's Give and Let Live photography book. It looks fantastic, well done Holly :D You can find out more about it by clicking on Holly's name to visit her photography blog. And I received the new DS game I bought - Yoshi's Island DS. I've played on that a bit today and I like it :) This morning I also popped round to the local shop to buy the new Radio Times.

When I saw my Pathways to Work advisor last time we discussed me trying to volunteering in a local charity shop. I expressed my concerns about the unpredictability of my health meaning I might have to cancel at short notice sometimes and said that I didn't know how charity shops would be about that. So my advisor suggested that we both phoned some local charity shops and asked. We made a list of all the ones in that town and said she'd phone them. We also made a list of all the charity shops in another local town and she asked me to phone them. There were 7 charity shops on my list to start with, but one has closed down and another I decided I didn't want to work in, so that left 5. I was dreading phoning them as I'm not very comfortable using the phone, so kept putting it off. I decided yesterday that I'd do it today but wasn't sure if I'd be brave enough. Silly I know but I do have real difficulty making phone calls. But I went for it.

The first charity shop I phoned was a cancer research one and when I enquired about volunteering they said that they currently had over 50 volunteers so were well covered. The next shop I phoned was Barnardo's which is a bit smaller. I spoke to a lovely woman and explained the restrictions with my health. She suggested that I could volunteer sorting stuff out in the back rather than serving customers out the front and that way when I feel up to it I could phone in and see if they have anything they need sorting rather than trying to work a regular shift once a week. My mum is going into that town on Fri so will pick me up an application form then. I'm not going to bother ringing the remaining 3 charity shops. I'm quite looking forward to trying some volunteering :)

I then received an unexpected phone call today from my consultant from Hosp B in advance of tomorrow's clinic. He asked me if I was happy for my transition to be completed tomorrow and for my care to be completely handed over from Hosp B to Hosp A. My response was definitely not! I can't believe he even thought that I was ready for that and was happy to let me go already. It was only 6 months ago he told me he wasn't happy for me to complete the transition yet and we've not had any developments since then that I know of, so hearing that today was completely unexpected and really shocked me. On the phone I briefly listed the reasons why I'm not confident to complete my transition yet. He said that was fine and I wont be made to complete the transition until I'm confident with it. He said we can discuss my concerns further tomorrow and see if we can come up with some ways for me to improve my confidence in the transition. I'd trust Hosp B with my life but haven't really seen enough of Hosp A yet to be able to trust them and have confidence in them. My dad was really shocked too that I'd been asked to complete the transition tomorrow, he completely agrees with my decision not to and said he wouldn't be happy for me to. Dad is hoping to be able to get time off work to attend tomorrow's clinic with me and mum which I'm very happy about. We wont know for certain whether he will be able to come or not til tomorrow morning though. I'm quite nervous about tomorrow for a few reasons. But I'll be assertive and explain why I'm not ready to complete my transition yet. I've also got a list of things I want to discuss and the other major one is my tummy pains because I want some answers and treatment for them now they've been causing me so much trouble for over 18 months.

This afternoon I also received a phone call from the physio department at Hosp H. I've been given an appt to see a physio one-to-one towards the end of next month. Hopefully I'll find that helpful.

I've been watching the music channels quite a bit this afternoon. I love Shakira's new single, Gypsy, but wasn't very keen on the video. This afternoon I've had the theme tune to Alice in Wonderland, which is called Alice and is sung by Avril Lavigne, in my head. Songs seem to get stuck in my head very easily - all of yesterday I had Once by Diana Vickers stuck in my head (you can see the video if you scroll down this page).

This evening me and mum watched the 3rd episode of Married Single Other together which we recorded last night when we were out. Our hard disc recorder has been playing up and annoying me for the last few days, grrr! I started watching the first episode of Wonders of the Solar System with my parents but got bored of it very quickly :P At the moment I'm watching One Born Every Minute.