Friday, 28 May 2010
Apologies
Sorry for not updating my blog for a little while, I know this means that I'll have quite a lengthy blog update to do at some point. I seem to have been quite busy and then I've not been feeling up to putting a blog update together. I'm quite stressed about my transition at the mo and I've been feeling a lot more down than usual for no clear reason. Hopefully I'll get back to blogging very soon but I just can't do it at the mo.
Monday, 17 May 2010
My weekend
On Fri I felt a bit more down than usual in the morning but I was ok. I discovered that my slippers were about to fall apart which is frustrating because I've not had them very long. I think that my feet are too wide for them so they've burst the stitches. I definitely need to do a clothes shop soon because all my clothes seem to be falling apart! That morn I had a chat to my parents about my rent and it's been increased slightly but the monthly amount is still manageable out of my benefits money.
That aft me and mum were going to go and see my nan, but I had bad tummy pains again so decided to stay at home while my mum went out. I don't know why my tummy pains have got a lot worse over the last few days. I did miss one dose of Amitriptyline but wouldn't have thought that would cause this. I'm only on a very small dose of Amitriptyline so am going to ask my Hosp A consultant when I see him in a couple of weeks if increasing my dose might help. My next clinic is now just 2 and a half weeks away and I'm still not happy about completing my transition then, so will let the team there know that when I see them. I'm still waiting to hear back from S about my questions relating to Tac bloods.
I was sorry to miss seeing my nan on Fri so hopefully I'll see her at some point this week. My tummy soon felt a bit better so while mum was out I watched a DVD called Jumper which I enjoyed more than I expected.
Then I heard that Ellie Goulding had announced dates for a UK tour in Oct/Nov and would be coming to a seated venue near me. I saw her supporting Little Boots last Oct but didn't know her or her music then so would love to see her again now I know more of her songs. The tickets go on pre-sale on Wed morn so I'm going to try to get some then. I'm waiting to hear from Claire about whether she'll be free to come with me and mum.
On Fri I really struggled with eating my tea. Generally I'm finding eating a bit easier at the mo but sometimes I do really struggle with it. That eve I really enjoyed watching the penultimate episode of Ashes to Ashes with my parents. I can't wait for the final episode on Fri but also really don't want it to end. Before I went to bed that night I listened to Diana Vickers' album, Songs from the Tainted Cherry Tree, and Little Boots' album, Hands. I've been listening to Diana Vickers' album a lot but that was the first time I'd listened to Little Boots' album in a while so I enjoyed that.
I didn't feel too good on Sat but I didn't feel too ill. I really struggled to get up in the morn, I was more tired than usual, my feet ached all day (not the pain I usually get but just lots of aching like I'd done too much walking the previous day, but I hadn't) and I felt quite lightheaded at one point.
Something I struggle with at the moment is wearing clean clothes. They often feel very uncomfortable for an hour or two when I first put them on, especially my jeans. I thought this was just me being weird but I've recently discovered that having oversensitive skin can actually be a symptom of ME. I don't think there's anything I can do about it though. I also find that finding new clothes that are comfortable is very difficult so I'm not looking forward to having to replace all my clothes that are starting to fall apart.
That morn I watched Embarrassing Bodies: Kids on 4OD. I was very excited to receive a text as I thought that meant my mobile was working again, but it wasn't. I had a little look at my DLA forms and I relieved that they don't look too hard to fill out as it's mostly just ticking boxes. Not sure how I fit into their categories though, so I suspect I might end up losing my DLA. I've decided that I'm going to try to get them completed and sent off before my parents and brother head off to Glastonbury in just over a month. I just need to find a time when dad can have a look at them with me.
While I wasn't feeling so good I listened to The Family Jewels by Marina and the Diamonds on my iPod. Then Chris popped round. It was nice to see him and he stayed for tea. He's going to try a different job so he was telling us about that. He currently helps to manage a restaurant that is attached to a hotel and he's always worked in bar work or catering (not actually cooking, but managing). However he's decided to go across to the hotel and work there with administration, finances and working at the reception etc. The pay is the same and it's the same hours though at more sociable times. He's interested to learn more about how the hotel works and it'll look good on his CV too. He's starting a few hotel shifts this week and then increasing them over the next couple of weeks. Hopefully it'll all go well for him. His car's broken again and isn't reparable this time. That's what happens if you buy cars from eBay! Chris also had a fiddle with my phone but had no idea what the problem was. Mum remembered that there is a Nokia repair place nearer than a T-Mobile shop so we thought about taking my phone in to be looked at there.
On Sat eve I enjoyed watching Doctor Who with my family. I thought Sat's episode was really good and very original. After that I watched the music channels for a little while and then a good film on BBC3 called Flightplan. That eve I had tummy ache, which isn't a time I usually have tummy ache. This was just an ache though rather than a pain so I managed to get to sleep ok with it.
On Sun I got up about 2/3 hours earlier than I usually would and with my parents I headed out to the annual carboot sale at my old secondary school. I was quite worried about bumping into people I knew there, but I only saw 2 and managed to avoid them seeing me :P At the carboot sale I picked up a couple of things for Claire (an old Take That annual and a Tardis tin), 3 books (the Script book of Juno because I love the film, the novel Stardust which I hope to read at some point because I recently enjoyed watching the film and a children's book by Malorie Blackman which I used to enjoy reading) and 4 DVDs (Beaches, The Magic Bubble, Down with Love and Aardman Classics). When I met up with my parents at the end mum showed me a Nokia 3310 that she'd picked up to me. I've been using it since then and it's fantastic to be able to phone and text again :D The only thing I miss with using an older phone is the camera, but apart from that it does everything I need and should last me til Chris passes his iPhone onto me at the end of Sept.
I felt a bit odd that afternoon which I think was probably due to getting up much earlier than usual. And I also had more dizzy spells than I had been having for the past week or two. Hopefully my dizziness will clear up completely soon, fingers crossed. When I got home from the carboot sale I was really pleased to hear that Tori had received her transplant call. Since then she's had her transplant and it sounds like she's been making really good progress. I don't know Tori personally but have been following her blog for a while now.
I enjoyed doing a couple of little jigsaws and then sorted through the HDR and deleted some recordings. While I was doing that I rewatched the first part of the first episode of the current series of Doctor Who with mum, watched last week's Friday Night with Jonathan Ross (to see Alexandra Burke being interviewed and Ellie Goulding performing) and watched the music channels for a short while. Then I put out all my tablets for the week and made a note of which ones I was running short of.
On Sun eve I rewatched Mamma Mia with my mum. We quite enjoyed watching it together but I don't think it's as brilliant as everyone seems to say it is - it's so cheesy and some of the songs have no relevance at all to the plot (especially The Winner Takes it All which had me and mum in fits of the giggles much to dad's bemusement!).
Later that eve I felt really down about everything and kept crying. I know it's silly as I've not really got anything to be upset about and I know that my health and my life is much better than lots of people I know, so I shouldn't get upset, but you know how it is sometimes.
To try to cheer myself up after that I decided to try out a new Wii game called Okami which had some really good reviews. It looked great but unfortunately the game requires drawing lines with the Wiimote and my hands aren't steady enough to do that so I can't play the game, which is very disappointing. Before I went to sleep I started listening to the latest ONM podcast.
This morn I helped mum out with some errands around the village. We went to the surgery (to drop off a prescription for me and pick up mum's tabs), the library (for mum to do some cleaning and I picked up a Scoubidou book and a DVD), the post box (to post back one of my rental DVDs), a shop (to buy some croissants, milk etc) and another shop (to buy some bread).
While me and mum had lunch we watched the music channels and part of a stand up comedy programme by Dylan Moran. I was also given a link on Facebook to a letter written by Nick Clegg about ME which you can view here. I was very impressed with it.
This aft I had a bit of a meltdown. I don't really want to go into detail about it but I just got really really upset for no real reason and ended up going back to bed for a few hours. I don't know what's up with me at the mo.
This eve I listened to Ellie Goulding being interviewed on a radio programme which you can listen to here. After tea I ate my final high calorie pudding, yay! :D I'm now going to see how my weight goes without having one high calorie pudding each eve. I'll weigh myself tomorrow and then hopefully when I weigh myself again 2 weeks later my weight won't have dropped. I've just watched the 2nd part of Wormwood Scrubs and the 3rd episode of Bizarre ER. I'm currently watching The Graham Norton Show because Ruth Jones is being interviewed and Katie Melua will be performing The Flood later. I'm never been a Katie Melua fan before, but I do like The Flood. I've just been laughing aloud at them talking about accents, very funny.
LLTGL are currently looking for opinions on their new t-shirt designs so please pop over to their blog here and leave a comment about which design you like the best.
That aft me and mum were going to go and see my nan, but I had bad tummy pains again so decided to stay at home while my mum went out. I don't know why my tummy pains have got a lot worse over the last few days. I did miss one dose of Amitriptyline but wouldn't have thought that would cause this. I'm only on a very small dose of Amitriptyline so am going to ask my Hosp A consultant when I see him in a couple of weeks if increasing my dose might help. My next clinic is now just 2 and a half weeks away and I'm still not happy about completing my transition then, so will let the team there know that when I see them. I'm still waiting to hear back from S about my questions relating to Tac bloods.
I was sorry to miss seeing my nan on Fri so hopefully I'll see her at some point this week. My tummy soon felt a bit better so while mum was out I watched a DVD called Jumper which I enjoyed more than I expected.
Then I heard that Ellie Goulding had announced dates for a UK tour in Oct/Nov and would be coming to a seated venue near me. I saw her supporting Little Boots last Oct but didn't know her or her music then so would love to see her again now I know more of her songs. The tickets go on pre-sale on Wed morn so I'm going to try to get some then. I'm waiting to hear from Claire about whether she'll be free to come with me and mum.
On Fri I really struggled with eating my tea. Generally I'm finding eating a bit easier at the mo but sometimes I do really struggle with it. That eve I really enjoyed watching the penultimate episode of Ashes to Ashes with my parents. I can't wait for the final episode on Fri but also really don't want it to end. Before I went to bed that night I listened to Diana Vickers' album, Songs from the Tainted Cherry Tree, and Little Boots' album, Hands. I've been listening to Diana Vickers' album a lot but that was the first time I'd listened to Little Boots' album in a while so I enjoyed that.
I didn't feel too good on Sat but I didn't feel too ill. I really struggled to get up in the morn, I was more tired than usual, my feet ached all day (not the pain I usually get but just lots of aching like I'd done too much walking the previous day, but I hadn't) and I felt quite lightheaded at one point.
Something I struggle with at the moment is wearing clean clothes. They often feel very uncomfortable for an hour or two when I first put them on, especially my jeans. I thought this was just me being weird but I've recently discovered that having oversensitive skin can actually be a symptom of ME. I don't think there's anything I can do about it though. I also find that finding new clothes that are comfortable is very difficult so I'm not looking forward to having to replace all my clothes that are starting to fall apart.
That morn I watched Embarrassing Bodies: Kids on 4OD. I was very excited to receive a text as I thought that meant my mobile was working again, but it wasn't. I had a little look at my DLA forms and I relieved that they don't look too hard to fill out as it's mostly just ticking boxes. Not sure how I fit into their categories though, so I suspect I might end up losing my DLA. I've decided that I'm going to try to get them completed and sent off before my parents and brother head off to Glastonbury in just over a month. I just need to find a time when dad can have a look at them with me.
While I wasn't feeling so good I listened to The Family Jewels by Marina and the Diamonds on my iPod. Then Chris popped round. It was nice to see him and he stayed for tea. He's going to try a different job so he was telling us about that. He currently helps to manage a restaurant that is attached to a hotel and he's always worked in bar work or catering (not actually cooking, but managing). However he's decided to go across to the hotel and work there with administration, finances and working at the reception etc. The pay is the same and it's the same hours though at more sociable times. He's interested to learn more about how the hotel works and it'll look good on his CV too. He's starting a few hotel shifts this week and then increasing them over the next couple of weeks. Hopefully it'll all go well for him. His car's broken again and isn't reparable this time. That's what happens if you buy cars from eBay! Chris also had a fiddle with my phone but had no idea what the problem was. Mum remembered that there is a Nokia repair place nearer than a T-Mobile shop so we thought about taking my phone in to be looked at there.
On Sat eve I enjoyed watching Doctor Who with my family. I thought Sat's episode was really good and very original. After that I watched the music channels for a little while and then a good film on BBC3 called Flightplan. That eve I had tummy ache, which isn't a time I usually have tummy ache. This was just an ache though rather than a pain so I managed to get to sleep ok with it.
On Sun I got up about 2/3 hours earlier than I usually would and with my parents I headed out to the annual carboot sale at my old secondary school. I was quite worried about bumping into people I knew there, but I only saw 2 and managed to avoid them seeing me :P At the carboot sale I picked up a couple of things for Claire (an old Take That annual and a Tardis tin), 3 books (the Script book of Juno because I love the film, the novel Stardust which I hope to read at some point because I recently enjoyed watching the film and a children's book by Malorie Blackman which I used to enjoy reading) and 4 DVDs (Beaches, The Magic Bubble, Down with Love and Aardman Classics). When I met up with my parents at the end mum showed me a Nokia 3310 that she'd picked up to me. I've been using it since then and it's fantastic to be able to phone and text again :D The only thing I miss with using an older phone is the camera, but apart from that it does everything I need and should last me til Chris passes his iPhone onto me at the end of Sept.
I felt a bit odd that afternoon which I think was probably due to getting up much earlier than usual. And I also had more dizzy spells than I had been having for the past week or two. Hopefully my dizziness will clear up completely soon, fingers crossed. When I got home from the carboot sale I was really pleased to hear that Tori had received her transplant call. Since then she's had her transplant and it sounds like she's been making really good progress. I don't know Tori personally but have been following her blog for a while now.
I enjoyed doing a couple of little jigsaws and then sorted through the HDR and deleted some recordings. While I was doing that I rewatched the first part of the first episode of the current series of Doctor Who with mum, watched last week's Friday Night with Jonathan Ross (to see Alexandra Burke being interviewed and Ellie Goulding performing) and watched the music channels for a short while. Then I put out all my tablets for the week and made a note of which ones I was running short of.
On Sun eve I rewatched Mamma Mia with my mum. We quite enjoyed watching it together but I don't think it's as brilliant as everyone seems to say it is - it's so cheesy and some of the songs have no relevance at all to the plot (especially The Winner Takes it All which had me and mum in fits of the giggles much to dad's bemusement!).
Later that eve I felt really down about everything and kept crying. I know it's silly as I've not really got anything to be upset about and I know that my health and my life is much better than lots of people I know, so I shouldn't get upset, but you know how it is sometimes.
To try to cheer myself up after that I decided to try out a new Wii game called Okami which had some really good reviews. It looked great but unfortunately the game requires drawing lines with the Wiimote and my hands aren't steady enough to do that so I can't play the game, which is very disappointing. Before I went to sleep I started listening to the latest ONM podcast.
This morn I helped mum out with some errands around the village. We went to the surgery (to drop off a prescription for me and pick up mum's tabs), the library (for mum to do some cleaning and I picked up a Scoubidou book and a DVD), the post box (to post back one of my rental DVDs), a shop (to buy some croissants, milk etc) and another shop (to buy some bread).
While me and mum had lunch we watched the music channels and part of a stand up comedy programme by Dylan Moran. I was also given a link on Facebook to a letter written by Nick Clegg about ME which you can view here. I was very impressed with it.
This aft I had a bit of a meltdown. I don't really want to go into detail about it but I just got really really upset for no real reason and ended up going back to bed for a few hours. I don't know what's up with me at the mo.
This eve I listened to Ellie Goulding being interviewed on a radio programme which you can listen to here. After tea I ate my final high calorie pudding, yay! :D I'm now going to see how my weight goes without having one high calorie pudding each eve. I'll weigh myself tomorrow and then hopefully when I weigh myself again 2 weeks later my weight won't have dropped. I've just watched the 2nd part of Wormwood Scrubs and the 3rd episode of Bizarre ER. I'm currently watching The Graham Norton Show because Ruth Jones is being interviewed and Katie Melua will be performing The Flood later. I'm never been a Katie Melua fan before, but I do like The Flood. I've just been laughing aloud at them talking about accents, very funny.
LLTGL are currently looking for opinions on their new t-shirt designs so please pop over to their blog here and leave a comment about which design you like the best.
Friday, 14 May 2010
A busy few days
My older brother Chris has always been very unreliable. He was going to come round to see us on Tue but then on Tue when I phoned him he said he'd come round the next day instead. He didn't show on Wed either. I'm always surprised when he doesn't turn up, but I really shouldn't be after all this time! :P
On Sun night I had another dizzy spell so I got a GP appt for the following morn :) After looking in my ears, making me move my head and follow his finger etc he told me that I had viral labyrinthitis. I was so relieved to hear that it's nothing to worry about and isn't related to any of my other medical problems, phew! Apparently it occurs when a mild virus affects one of the balance centres which slows the signals down so they're not in sync any more. And that means that when you turn your head you feel dizzy. He was very surprised I'd not looked my symptoms up on the Internet - I'd never do that, I'm sure that would scare me to death! :P There is no cure but medicines can be given for the symptoms if necessary. Sometimes it goes withing 24 hours, sometimes it takes a week or so. But he thought mine was definitely on the way out, so it should go completely soon. I've had a few more dizzy spells since though, so I really hope it disappears soon. My GP also said that sometimes it reoccurs a second time so I've got to keep an eye out for that but if it does, the second time usually isn't as bad as the first. And while I was there we also reviewed all my medications.
On Mon aft me and mum went to see my nan. I took her a copy of The Family Jewels CD by Marina and the Diamonds and taught her how to play that through her laptop :) I also installed a new printer cartridge for her. We then put the music on in the background and me and mum helped my nan sort through all her books. She didn't get rid of many though and wanted to keep loads that me and mum disagreed with her about :P
While I was at my nan's I was disappointed to put my finger through my jeans, they've got a small hole in the back :( I hate shopping for clothes and always struggle to find ones that fit well and are comfortable so I was very happy to find 2 pairs of perfect jeans a year or two ago, but now one pair has a hole. I'm sure I'll put off shopping for some more for as long as I possibly can but I'll have to do it soon. The cuffs of my favourite hooded jacket and poloneck are starting to fall apart too. And while I was at my nan's I discovered holes in the socks I was wearing, but I don't mind about that - socks are easy to buy and I have plenty of pairs.
After we got back from my nan's I sent off an application for a new CEA card (the card that allows a carer into the cinema with me for free because I receive DLA) because they only last a year and my old one is about to expire. I thought I'd have to try to sort out a passport sized photo (I hate having my photo taken) but luckily I found one tucked away, phew!
As you'll probably know from reading my past blog updates there is a fantastic charity called AYME which supports young people with ME and has been invaluable to me since I was diagnosed with ME last Aug, especially the message boards where I can talk to other people who know what I'm going through. A couple of weeks ago a post was put up on the message boards saying they were looking to recruit some new voluntary peer support moderators (PSMs). The PSMs keep the board running smoothly, support users, provide information in response to posts and remove any inappropriate messages etc. Because I'm already very active on the boards I really liked the sound of this but didn't know whether to apply or not because I tend to commit to too much and then can't keep up with everything. But the day before the deadline I decided to go for it. I'll let you know when I hear anything.
On Mon eve I watched Young, Austistic and Stagestruck and the first 2 episodes of the new series of Bizarre ER on TV. I also watched 2 episodes of the second series of Outnumbered from my DVD.
On Tue in the post I received a bank statement and my new phone battery. Unfortunately replacing the battery in my phone hasn't fixed the problems. Although the new battery lasts longer than the previous battery did it still runs down in about a day. And I still can't send or receive texts or phone calls. Grrrr. It's so frustrating not having a working mobile. I tried swapping my SIM with mum's SIM to find out whether the problem was with my SIM or the phone itself. However my SIM worked in mum's phone and mum's SIM worked in my phone, but my SIM doesn't work in my phone - how odd! I think my best bet would be to go into a T-Mobile shop and ask for their advice, but the nearest one is in the city and I don't have any plans to go there at the mo and it's a bit far to ask mum to go just for that. I thought I'd try using an old phone for now so found 2 old Nokia phones in the house. Unfortunately neither of them work so I've put out a request on Facebook asking if any of my friends have a phone I can borrow until I get my phone looked at at a T-Mobile shop. It might be completely broken, but I'm not sure yet if it's going to be fixable or not. And I don't want to buy a new phone because I'm getting Chris' iPhone in Sept so I guess if my phone isn't fixable I can just use an old basic phone til then.
I didn't do much on Tue but did a few odd jobs like going to the local shop for the new Radio Times and sorting the dishwasher and washing out for mum because she was at work. I watched the music channels for a while during the day and a programme I'd recorded the previous night about a prison called Wormwood Scrubs.
I received a reply from my dietician at Hosp A saying that she's happy for me to stop the high calorie puddings :) I'm currently finishing up the ones I've got (I think I'll have my last one on Mon eve) and we'll then see how my weight goes without them. I think I'll be fine without them, but I'll let you know how it goes.
I heard that the page that me and Emma wrote for Transplant Kids has been added to the main website :) You can find it by going to the main TK page here, clicking on 'info' and then clicking on the red box on the right side of the page just before half way down. Or you can go directly to it by clicking here.
After my braces behaving so well for a while I wasn't happy on Tue when I realised that one of the brackets was cutting my lip. I put some wax on the offending bracket overnight to protect my lip and it's been fine since then :)
On Tue eve I watched Children's Hospital and Children's Emergency on TV. I also watched the last 3 episodes of the second series of Outnumbered plus all the extra features from my DVD.
That night I forgot to take my Amitriptyline for the first time. I don't think it makes any difference to my sleeping so wasn't worried there but was a bit fearful of getting more tummy pains the next day. I did get some the yesterday but they didn't last too long and weren't too painful so I think the Amitriptyline has probably built up a bit in my body. When I had those tummy pains I realised they were the first I'd had for a few days :)
Yesterday (Wed) aft I went into town with mum. While I was there I bought Sonic and Sega All-Stars Racing for the Wii (which was released down from £30 to £20 in the GAME sale) and Super Bust-A-Move for the PS2 (which was 99p in Cash Converters).
After that I headed to my physio appt. My physio had a look at my feet and my legs and I had to do some walking for her. She said that she thinks that the pain I'm getting in my heels isn't being caused by a problem with my feet because I'm not flat footed (my GP said I was, but I trust her opinions more in that area) but the muscles down the backs of my legs and feet are tight which could be causing the pain because my feet have to compensate for it when I walk. So I've got some calf stretches to do which should help, fingers crossed. She also gave me some general conditioning exercises to do at least 3 times a week. That'll be a challenge for me because I've never stuck at doing physio exercises before, but I'll give it a try. She suggested I set a goal to try to gradually build up the length of time that I do the exercises for and maybe set a goal to try to gradually work towards about being able to walk for a certain length of time. She wants to hear my goals when I next see her in 5 weeks time. She also told me that a colleague of hers had told her about a local ME clinic so she wondered if I'd heard of it. That's where I was diagnosed so I told her about my experiences with them - they couldn't offer me any more than a diagnosis and one appt with an occupational therapist due to a lack of funding. She suggested I should phone them to ask if they can offer me anything else (that's already on my to-do list) because the physio dept I'm being seen at is mainly for pain.
After my physio appt me and mum went to see my nan and I taught her the basics of how to use her new digital camera. And she insisted on paying for the Wii game I'd just bought because I do so much to help her! I did say that I couldn't accept the money but she wasn't having any of it, hehe.
When we got home I had an email from S (the transplant co-ordinator at Hosp A) saying she's spoken to the phlebotomist I see at Hosp H (my local hosp) for my bloods and that things should work similarly when I'm under Hosp A. However they don't use Tac kits so I'll have to have Tac bloods done with the rest of my bloods too. They'll send me a bloods letter before each clinic so my consultant will have the results by then. Because I have to have Tac bloods done at the hosp I'll have to delay taking my Tac but if I get my bloods done early I shouldn't have to delay it too much and that'll be fine because that's what the rest of their patients have to do. Because Hosp H don't process Tac bloods I'll then have to post that to Hosp A (apparently S is going to provide me with a box to send the sample in) to be processed there.
I chatted to my parents about this over tea and I was a bit concerned that S hadn't thought this through, so I emailed her with some questions about my Tac bloods that eve. If I've got to post the Tac to Hosp A why can't I take the blood via a fingerprick at home? I've got loads of lancets (finger prickers) so will only need the bottles. I need to find out how much blood they need too. If I can do it that way I won't have to delay taking my Tac. If taking Tac is delayed the levels in the blood drop and that creates more rejection risks. The doctors make out that delaying Tac for a few hours to take bloods isn't risky, but I've never done that (because I've always done my bloods at home via a fingerprick) and I've also never had rejection (98% of all small bowel transplant rejections do in the first 2 years after transplant). I suspect there may be a link there so don't want to start delaying Tac doses if it can be avoided. I also need to check that Hosp H have the right Tac bottles because when I ran out of the ones that Hosp B gave me I asked for one at Hosp H but they didn't have them. Maybe Hosp B and Hosp A use different Tac bottles. I also need to know how S is going to get the box for posting the Tac to me because I'll need that before the clinic. Hopefully S will reply soon.
I've been wanting to speak to my parents about all my other transition concerns for a while because my transition date (7th June) is getting closer and I'm really not happy about it. I asked to be told how things would work when I was completely under Hosp A but I've not been given as much info as I'd like and I'd like to be able to spot and then act on potential problems now, rather than when they actually occur. And the team at Hosp A (with the exception of the dietican) haven't proven themselves at being good at communicating with me either. Hopefully I'll be able to talk to my parents about it at the weekend.
Alf is trying to get stronger and beef himself up because he's really skinny. His favourite method of doing this is by standing at the bottom of the stairs, grabbing the landing floor and pulling himself up. I know this probably doesn't make much sense, it's hard to describe :P The other day Alf ordered himself something from Amazon that you attach to a doorway and then it gives you a bar that you can do chin-up type things on. Again this probably makes no sense, but it looks like this. It arrived in the post yesterday and he's really pleased with it.
Yesterday eve I watched the first episode of Junior Apprentice, Embarrassing Bodies: Kids, Lord Sugar being interviewed on Fri Night with Jonathan Ross and Autistic Driving School. Unfortunately our Internet was playing up so watching Embarrassing Bodies (a 45min programme) online took me 90mins and watching Autistic Driving School (a 60min programme) also took me 90mins!
Today (Thur) I went into town and my tummy pains were very bad. Luckily they eased off in time for me to go into Barnardo's to do an hour of volunteering. I'm trying to stick at it but it's so boring and monotonous. Mum popped in to see me during my hour of volunteering today because she was trying to avoid being spotted by someone she knew on the high street :P She'd not seen me volunteering before and couldn't believe how dull what I was doing was! There was only the grumpy lady from last week in and she didn't talk to me. Mum told me later that she hadn't been busy with customers, she'd just been sitting in the front of the shop reading her book - so she could have talked to me! So I just stood and hung clothes up for an hour. I really don't know what to do now, I don't enjoy it but feel like I'm doing something worthwhile and it's good to have something to do outside the house, so I feel like I ought to stick at it. I don't know if I can though.
When I'd finished volunteering I met mum in a cafe where we had drinks. I then bought some presents for a friend who's birthday is at the end of May and I bought myself a few packets of my favourite biscuits from M&S ;)
This eve I made a start on planning the organ donation talk I'm going to give to a group of Claire's students next Wed. I've not done much work on it yet but know have a rough outline so that's a good start :)
I also spoke to my friend Het on FB chat. She lives out of the nearest city in another direction so we don't see each other very often (it can only usually happen if I'm feeling up to going into the city and she's got a free day, which isn't very often!) but her study leave is starting soon (she's in year 12 at sixth form), so she's got some free time and wants to come round and see me. She's got a moped so is going to drive here and she's happy to do that even though the journey will take her about 45mins. It's really lovely to hear from someone (apart from Claire or Lizzy) who wants to see me and doesn't need me to do all the chasing and planning to make it happen :) She's going to be in touch again in a couple of weeks once she's got some exams out the way, so hopefully we'll be able to choose a day then.
I had fun trying out Sonic & Sega All-Stars Racing but found it quite tiring. And I enjoyed watching the latest episode of Outnumbered on TV.
While I've been writing this up I've listened to Diana Vickers' album, Songs From The Tainted Cherry Tree, on Spotify and am now listening to Pixie Lott's Album, Turn It Up, on iTunes. I found an interesting interview with Diana Vickers on the Internet which you can read here. I also found this interesting video on the Internet that goes behind the scenes of Ellie Goulding's latest music video.
I found out on the Internet that Selfridges in London have allowed 10 music artists to design a window display about one of their songs or albums. Marina did one based on I Am Not A Robot, so I had a look at the photos of that on the Internet. You can see more about the window displays including photos here.
I'm sorry this has ended up so long, I didn't expect it to be. I probably ought to try to write less but I find that so hard! :P My blog is now completely up to date for the first time in over a month :D
On Sun night I had another dizzy spell so I got a GP appt for the following morn :) After looking in my ears, making me move my head and follow his finger etc he told me that I had viral labyrinthitis. I was so relieved to hear that it's nothing to worry about and isn't related to any of my other medical problems, phew! Apparently it occurs when a mild virus affects one of the balance centres which slows the signals down so they're not in sync any more. And that means that when you turn your head you feel dizzy. He was very surprised I'd not looked my symptoms up on the Internet - I'd never do that, I'm sure that would scare me to death! :P There is no cure but medicines can be given for the symptoms if necessary. Sometimes it goes withing 24 hours, sometimes it takes a week or so. But he thought mine was definitely on the way out, so it should go completely soon. I've had a few more dizzy spells since though, so I really hope it disappears soon. My GP also said that sometimes it reoccurs a second time so I've got to keep an eye out for that but if it does, the second time usually isn't as bad as the first. And while I was there we also reviewed all my medications.
On Mon aft me and mum went to see my nan. I took her a copy of The Family Jewels CD by Marina and the Diamonds and taught her how to play that through her laptop :) I also installed a new printer cartridge for her. We then put the music on in the background and me and mum helped my nan sort through all her books. She didn't get rid of many though and wanted to keep loads that me and mum disagreed with her about :P
While I was at my nan's I was disappointed to put my finger through my jeans, they've got a small hole in the back :( I hate shopping for clothes and always struggle to find ones that fit well and are comfortable so I was very happy to find 2 pairs of perfect jeans a year or two ago, but now one pair has a hole. I'm sure I'll put off shopping for some more for as long as I possibly can but I'll have to do it soon. The cuffs of my favourite hooded jacket and poloneck are starting to fall apart too. And while I was at my nan's I discovered holes in the socks I was wearing, but I don't mind about that - socks are easy to buy and I have plenty of pairs.
After we got back from my nan's I sent off an application for a new CEA card (the card that allows a carer into the cinema with me for free because I receive DLA) because they only last a year and my old one is about to expire. I thought I'd have to try to sort out a passport sized photo (I hate having my photo taken) but luckily I found one tucked away, phew!
As you'll probably know from reading my past blog updates there is a fantastic charity called AYME which supports young people with ME and has been invaluable to me since I was diagnosed with ME last Aug, especially the message boards where I can talk to other people who know what I'm going through. A couple of weeks ago a post was put up on the message boards saying they were looking to recruit some new voluntary peer support moderators (PSMs). The PSMs keep the board running smoothly, support users, provide information in response to posts and remove any inappropriate messages etc. Because I'm already very active on the boards I really liked the sound of this but didn't know whether to apply or not because I tend to commit to too much and then can't keep up with everything. But the day before the deadline I decided to go for it. I'll let you know when I hear anything.
On Mon eve I watched Young, Austistic and Stagestruck and the first 2 episodes of the new series of Bizarre ER on TV. I also watched 2 episodes of the second series of Outnumbered from my DVD.
On Tue in the post I received a bank statement and my new phone battery. Unfortunately replacing the battery in my phone hasn't fixed the problems. Although the new battery lasts longer than the previous battery did it still runs down in about a day. And I still can't send or receive texts or phone calls. Grrrr. It's so frustrating not having a working mobile. I tried swapping my SIM with mum's SIM to find out whether the problem was with my SIM or the phone itself. However my SIM worked in mum's phone and mum's SIM worked in my phone, but my SIM doesn't work in my phone - how odd! I think my best bet would be to go into a T-Mobile shop and ask for their advice, but the nearest one is in the city and I don't have any plans to go there at the mo and it's a bit far to ask mum to go just for that. I thought I'd try using an old phone for now so found 2 old Nokia phones in the house. Unfortunately neither of them work so I've put out a request on Facebook asking if any of my friends have a phone I can borrow until I get my phone looked at at a T-Mobile shop. It might be completely broken, but I'm not sure yet if it's going to be fixable or not. And I don't want to buy a new phone because I'm getting Chris' iPhone in Sept so I guess if my phone isn't fixable I can just use an old basic phone til then.
I didn't do much on Tue but did a few odd jobs like going to the local shop for the new Radio Times and sorting the dishwasher and washing out for mum because she was at work. I watched the music channels for a while during the day and a programme I'd recorded the previous night about a prison called Wormwood Scrubs.
I received a reply from my dietician at Hosp A saying that she's happy for me to stop the high calorie puddings :) I'm currently finishing up the ones I've got (I think I'll have my last one on Mon eve) and we'll then see how my weight goes without them. I think I'll be fine without them, but I'll let you know how it goes.
I heard that the page that me and Emma wrote for Transplant Kids has been added to the main website :) You can find it by going to the main TK page here, clicking on 'info' and then clicking on the red box on the right side of the page just before half way down. Or you can go directly to it by clicking here.
After my braces behaving so well for a while I wasn't happy on Tue when I realised that one of the brackets was cutting my lip. I put some wax on the offending bracket overnight to protect my lip and it's been fine since then :)
On Tue eve I watched Children's Hospital and Children's Emergency on TV. I also watched the last 3 episodes of the second series of Outnumbered plus all the extra features from my DVD.
That night I forgot to take my Amitriptyline for the first time. I don't think it makes any difference to my sleeping so wasn't worried there but was a bit fearful of getting more tummy pains the next day. I did get some the yesterday but they didn't last too long and weren't too painful so I think the Amitriptyline has probably built up a bit in my body. When I had those tummy pains I realised they were the first I'd had for a few days :)
Yesterday (Wed) aft I went into town with mum. While I was there I bought Sonic and Sega All-Stars Racing for the Wii (which was released down from £30 to £20 in the GAME sale) and Super Bust-A-Move for the PS2 (which was 99p in Cash Converters).
After that I headed to my physio appt. My physio had a look at my feet and my legs and I had to do some walking for her. She said that she thinks that the pain I'm getting in my heels isn't being caused by a problem with my feet because I'm not flat footed (my GP said I was, but I trust her opinions more in that area) but the muscles down the backs of my legs and feet are tight which could be causing the pain because my feet have to compensate for it when I walk. So I've got some calf stretches to do which should help, fingers crossed. She also gave me some general conditioning exercises to do at least 3 times a week. That'll be a challenge for me because I've never stuck at doing physio exercises before, but I'll give it a try. She suggested I set a goal to try to gradually build up the length of time that I do the exercises for and maybe set a goal to try to gradually work towards about being able to walk for a certain length of time. She wants to hear my goals when I next see her in 5 weeks time. She also told me that a colleague of hers had told her about a local ME clinic so she wondered if I'd heard of it. That's where I was diagnosed so I told her about my experiences with them - they couldn't offer me any more than a diagnosis and one appt with an occupational therapist due to a lack of funding. She suggested I should phone them to ask if they can offer me anything else (that's already on my to-do list) because the physio dept I'm being seen at is mainly for pain.
After my physio appt me and mum went to see my nan and I taught her the basics of how to use her new digital camera. And she insisted on paying for the Wii game I'd just bought because I do so much to help her! I did say that I couldn't accept the money but she wasn't having any of it, hehe.
When we got home I had an email from S (the transplant co-ordinator at Hosp A) saying she's spoken to the phlebotomist I see at Hosp H (my local hosp) for my bloods and that things should work similarly when I'm under Hosp A. However they don't use Tac kits so I'll have to have Tac bloods done with the rest of my bloods too. They'll send me a bloods letter before each clinic so my consultant will have the results by then. Because I have to have Tac bloods done at the hosp I'll have to delay taking my Tac but if I get my bloods done early I shouldn't have to delay it too much and that'll be fine because that's what the rest of their patients have to do. Because Hosp H don't process Tac bloods I'll then have to post that to Hosp A (apparently S is going to provide me with a box to send the sample in) to be processed there.
I chatted to my parents about this over tea and I was a bit concerned that S hadn't thought this through, so I emailed her with some questions about my Tac bloods that eve. If I've got to post the Tac to Hosp A why can't I take the blood via a fingerprick at home? I've got loads of lancets (finger prickers) so will only need the bottles. I need to find out how much blood they need too. If I can do it that way I won't have to delay taking my Tac. If taking Tac is delayed the levels in the blood drop and that creates more rejection risks. The doctors make out that delaying Tac for a few hours to take bloods isn't risky, but I've never done that (because I've always done my bloods at home via a fingerprick) and I've also never had rejection (98% of all small bowel transplant rejections do in the first 2 years after transplant). I suspect there may be a link there so don't want to start delaying Tac doses if it can be avoided. I also need to check that Hosp H have the right Tac bottles because when I ran out of the ones that Hosp B gave me I asked for one at Hosp H but they didn't have them. Maybe Hosp B and Hosp A use different Tac bottles. I also need to know how S is going to get the box for posting the Tac to me because I'll need that before the clinic. Hopefully S will reply soon.
I've been wanting to speak to my parents about all my other transition concerns for a while because my transition date (7th June) is getting closer and I'm really not happy about it. I asked to be told how things would work when I was completely under Hosp A but I've not been given as much info as I'd like and I'd like to be able to spot and then act on potential problems now, rather than when they actually occur. And the team at Hosp A (with the exception of the dietican) haven't proven themselves at being good at communicating with me either. Hopefully I'll be able to talk to my parents about it at the weekend.
Alf is trying to get stronger and beef himself up because he's really skinny. His favourite method of doing this is by standing at the bottom of the stairs, grabbing the landing floor and pulling himself up. I know this probably doesn't make much sense, it's hard to describe :P The other day Alf ordered himself something from Amazon that you attach to a doorway and then it gives you a bar that you can do chin-up type things on. Again this probably makes no sense, but it looks like this. It arrived in the post yesterday and he's really pleased with it.
Yesterday eve I watched the first episode of Junior Apprentice, Embarrassing Bodies: Kids, Lord Sugar being interviewed on Fri Night with Jonathan Ross and Autistic Driving School. Unfortunately our Internet was playing up so watching Embarrassing Bodies (a 45min programme) online took me 90mins and watching Autistic Driving School (a 60min programme) also took me 90mins!
Today (Thur) I went into town and my tummy pains were very bad. Luckily they eased off in time for me to go into Barnardo's to do an hour of volunteering. I'm trying to stick at it but it's so boring and monotonous. Mum popped in to see me during my hour of volunteering today because she was trying to avoid being spotted by someone she knew on the high street :P She'd not seen me volunteering before and couldn't believe how dull what I was doing was! There was only the grumpy lady from last week in and she didn't talk to me. Mum told me later that she hadn't been busy with customers, she'd just been sitting in the front of the shop reading her book - so she could have talked to me! So I just stood and hung clothes up for an hour. I really don't know what to do now, I don't enjoy it but feel like I'm doing something worthwhile and it's good to have something to do outside the house, so I feel like I ought to stick at it. I don't know if I can though.
When I'd finished volunteering I met mum in a cafe where we had drinks. I then bought some presents for a friend who's birthday is at the end of May and I bought myself a few packets of my favourite biscuits from M&S ;)
This eve I made a start on planning the organ donation talk I'm going to give to a group of Claire's students next Wed. I've not done much work on it yet but know have a rough outline so that's a good start :)
I also spoke to my friend Het on FB chat. She lives out of the nearest city in another direction so we don't see each other very often (it can only usually happen if I'm feeling up to going into the city and she's got a free day, which isn't very often!) but her study leave is starting soon (she's in year 12 at sixth form), so she's got some free time and wants to come round and see me. She's got a moped so is going to drive here and she's happy to do that even though the journey will take her about 45mins. It's really lovely to hear from someone (apart from Claire or Lizzy) who wants to see me and doesn't need me to do all the chasing and planning to make it happen :) She's going to be in touch again in a couple of weeks once she's got some exams out the way, so hopefully we'll be able to choose a day then.
I had fun trying out Sonic & Sega All-Stars Racing but found it quite tiring. And I enjoyed watching the latest episode of Outnumbered on TV.
While I've been writing this up I've listened to Diana Vickers' album, Songs From The Tainted Cherry Tree, on Spotify and am now listening to Pixie Lott's Album, Turn It Up, on iTunes. I found an interesting interview with Diana Vickers on the Internet which you can read here. I also found this interesting video on the Internet that goes behind the scenes of Ellie Goulding's latest music video.
I found out on the Internet that Selfridges in London have allowed 10 music artists to design a window display about one of their songs or albums. Marina did one based on I Am Not A Robot, so I had a look at the photos of that on the Internet. You can see more about the window displays including photos here.
I'm sorry this has ended up so long, I didn't expect it to be. I probably ought to try to write less but I find that so hard! :P My blog is now completely up to date for the first time in over a month :D
Tuesday, 11 May 2010
M.E. Awareness Week 8th - 16th May 2010
This week (8th - 16th May 2010) is ME Awareness Week and tomorrow (12th May) is ME Awareness Day. Little is known about ME - no-one knows what causes it and there is no cure. However there are techniques such as pacing, graded exercise therapy and cognitive behavioural therapy which can help some people to manage their ME. Many people don't understand about ME which leads to lots of prejudice against those of us which suffer from it (250,000 people in the UK alone). Please help to spread the word this week by putting something on your blog, Twitter or Facebook page. Thanks.
ME affects all sufferers differently - they have different symptoms and different severities of those symptoms. You can see a scale of ME severity here. I'm lucky that I only suffer from mild ME, but lots of people suffer very severely and have to spend time lying flat in bed in silence and in the dark and have to be fed by tube. A girl I've met through AYME called Vikki made this video about severe ME so please have a look.
I'm sure you know how ME affects me from reading my blog, so I thought I'd give you some links to videos made by people I know who have ME where they talk about ME affects them. People have different symptoms and I know I'm lucky not to be affected by some of the most disabling ones such as constant severe pain and muscle weakness causing difficulty walking. You can see Daisy's video here and Chlay's video here. You might need to turn the volume on your computer up to hear some of these videos.
To find out more about ME there are some medical information sheets on AYME here and this video is really informative. I've printed out this sheet to give to some of my friends to help them understand how ME affects me, but some people prefer to explain how ME affects them using The Spoon Theory. The Spoon Theory was originally written to explain Lupus but it works well to explain ME too. I was pointed to this on the Internet which was written by an ME sufferer to help explain ME to non-sufferers.
AYME is a charity which has been a huge support to me since I was diagnosed with ME last summer. It supports young people under the age of 26 who suffer from ME and provides a supportive forum, bimonthly magazines and special services for those severely affected by ME.
I know I've included lots of links to things to watch and read in this blog entry. Please take the time to watch the videos and read the documents to better understand how disabling ME can be and help to raise awareness of it. Thanks.
Monday, 10 May 2010
Getting up to date with April - part 9 (music and mum's knitting)
In the weeks since my last update I've been enjoying listening to lots of music and reading and watching interviews with some of my favourite artists. When a song name is a hyperlink, clicking on it will let you watch the video for the song on Youtube.
Marina and the Diamonds has had a lot of publicity recently to promote her latest single. I read an interview with her in a local magazine and saw her being interviewed and/or performing on Loose Women, Live from Channel 5 and BBC Breakfast (which you can see here). I thought she was fantastic performing 2 songs on Later with Jools Holland. Unfortunately the programme isn't available on iPlayer any more but you can see the video of her performing I Am Not A Robot on her blog here. She was also on Radio 1's Live Lounge where she was interviewed and performed one of her own songs (I Am Not A Robot) plus a cover (Starstrukk by 3Oh!3), which you can listen to here. I Am Not A Robot was released a couple of weeks ago and despite all the work she did promoting it it didn't chart very well in the Official UK Top 40 - it only reached number 26 the first week and then fell to number 33 this week :( I've really enjoyed listening to her album, The Family Jewels, on repeat lots more and am very happy that I managed to get tickets to see her in concert in Oct (which I blogged about here).
Diana Vickers has also been doing a lot of interviews and TV appearances recently promote the release of her debut single and debut album. I read an interview with her in a local magazine and saw her on GMTV, Something for the Weekend, Live from Channel 5 and a T4 programme. She was also on Radio 1's Live Lounge where she was interviewed and performed one of her own singles (Once) plus a cover (Just Say Yes by Snow Patrol), which you can listen to here. Hew debut single Once charted at number one in Official UK Top 40 the week it was released. It's really catchy and will get stuck in your head. Her debut album, Songs from the Tainted Cherry Tree, is out now and made number one in Official UK Album chart yesterday. She put her album up on her MySpace page the week before it was released so I enjoyed listening to it there and now it's released I can listen to it on Spotify. It took a few listens but I love it now. I'll buy the album at some point when it's dropped in price a bit so I can put it on my iPod but for now I'm happy listening to it on my laptop through Spotify. I was faced with a bit of a dilemma when I discovered that Diana would be performing at a venue in my local city tonight. I'd love to see her live but this concert was standing only and I know I'd be in a lot of pain if I attended a standing concert. So I was sensible and decided not to go. I'm hoping she'll do some seated concerts in the future, fingers crossed.
Mika's latest single, Kick Ass (from the film with the same title), was released about a week ago. Unfortunately it didn't chart within the Official UK Top 40 :( I've listened to Mika's music a lot recently as it works well to cheer me up when I'm feeling down :) Unfortunately I still don't seem to have learnt that listening to Mika late at night isn't a good idea because it make me go hyper, hehe :P
I've also enjoyed listened to Ellie Goulding's album, Lights. I'd not listened to it for a little while, but then I heard Under The Sheets when I was in HMV last week and it reminded me how much I like Ellie Goulding's music. I saw her interviewed and performing on a C4 programme called 5.19 a few days ago promoting her new single Guns and Horses, which hasn't been released yet.
Me and mum listen to the radio a lot and tend to alternate between Heart, Radio 2 and Radio 1 to avoid adverts, boring talking bits and songs we don't like. Mum enjoyed dancing to the radio the other day when Never Forget You by the Noisettes was played as it brought back memories of seeing them in concert :) I've been hearing a song called I Need You Now by Lady Antebellum on the radio a lot recently and I think it sounds just like Taylor Swift.
Some new videos I've seen on the music channels over the last few weeks are Turn It Up by Pixie Lott (which I love), All Night Long by Alexandra Burke (which I quite like, but I hate the rapping), Umbrella Beach by by Owl City (which is growing on me), Bittersweet by Sophie Ellis Bextor (which I don't mind), On Your Head by Tiffany Page (we saw her supporting the Noisettes and although her new song is catchy I'm not very keen on her) and Hearts Don't Lie by Gabriella Cilmi (I loved her first album, but don't like her new change of direction although On A Mission was catchy). I also heard JLS' next single The Club Is Alive on Radio 1 this morning although there isn't a video for it yet. I don't mind the singles that JLS have released so far, but don't like their latest one after the first listen.
I thought you might like to see some of my mum's latest knitting creations :)
A knitted string bag
An Adipose from Doctor Who
A handpuppet
(My mum helps out with organising shoeboxes filled with toys to go to children in war-torn countries each year at Christmas. They don't allow stuffed toys to be included unless they have a special mark on them to prove they're safe, so mum can't knit stuffed toys for the boxes. She thought she'd try to knit hand puppets instead as they don't include any stuffing.)
A very cute cat made from simple knitted shapes
A very cute tortoise for me (you can see how tiny it is in Alf's hand)
A turtle for Alf
Mum modelling her knitted moustache for my nan!
My blog is now pretty much up-to-date :) I've not blogged about today yet but I'll do another update shortly when I've got a couple of days to write about. And tomorrow I'm hoping to do a blog about ME Awareness Week 2010.
Marina and the Diamonds has had a lot of publicity recently to promote her latest single. I read an interview with her in a local magazine and saw her being interviewed and/or performing on Loose Women, Live from Channel 5 and BBC Breakfast (which you can see here). I thought she was fantastic performing 2 songs on Later with Jools Holland. Unfortunately the programme isn't available on iPlayer any more but you can see the video of her performing I Am Not A Robot on her blog here. She was also on Radio 1's Live Lounge where she was interviewed and performed one of her own songs (I Am Not A Robot) plus a cover (Starstrukk by 3Oh!3), which you can listen to here. I Am Not A Robot was released a couple of weeks ago and despite all the work she did promoting it it didn't chart very well in the Official UK Top 40 - it only reached number 26 the first week and then fell to number 33 this week :( I've really enjoyed listening to her album, The Family Jewels, on repeat lots more and am very happy that I managed to get tickets to see her in concert in Oct (which I blogged about here).
Diana Vickers has also been doing a lot of interviews and TV appearances recently promote the release of her debut single and debut album. I read an interview with her in a local magazine and saw her on GMTV, Something for the Weekend, Live from Channel 5 and a T4 programme. She was also on Radio 1's Live Lounge where she was interviewed and performed one of her own singles (Once) plus a cover (Just Say Yes by Snow Patrol), which you can listen to here. Hew debut single Once charted at number one in Official UK Top 40 the week it was released. It's really catchy and will get stuck in your head. Her debut album, Songs from the Tainted Cherry Tree, is out now and made number one in Official UK Album chart yesterday. She put her album up on her MySpace page the week before it was released so I enjoyed listening to it there and now it's released I can listen to it on Spotify. It took a few listens but I love it now. I'll buy the album at some point when it's dropped in price a bit so I can put it on my iPod but for now I'm happy listening to it on my laptop through Spotify. I was faced with a bit of a dilemma when I discovered that Diana would be performing at a venue in my local city tonight. I'd love to see her live but this concert was standing only and I know I'd be in a lot of pain if I attended a standing concert. So I was sensible and decided not to go. I'm hoping she'll do some seated concerts in the future, fingers crossed.
Mika's latest single, Kick Ass (from the film with the same title), was released about a week ago. Unfortunately it didn't chart within the Official UK Top 40 :( I've listened to Mika's music a lot recently as it works well to cheer me up when I'm feeling down :) Unfortunately I still don't seem to have learnt that listening to Mika late at night isn't a good idea because it make me go hyper, hehe :P
I've also enjoyed listened to Ellie Goulding's album, Lights. I'd not listened to it for a little while, but then I heard Under The Sheets when I was in HMV last week and it reminded me how much I like Ellie Goulding's music. I saw her interviewed and performing on a C4 programme called 5.19 a few days ago promoting her new single Guns and Horses, which hasn't been released yet.
Me and mum listen to the radio a lot and tend to alternate between Heart, Radio 2 and Radio 1 to avoid adverts, boring talking bits and songs we don't like. Mum enjoyed dancing to the radio the other day when Never Forget You by the Noisettes was played as it brought back memories of seeing them in concert :) I've been hearing a song called I Need You Now by Lady Antebellum on the radio a lot recently and I think it sounds just like Taylor Swift.
Some new videos I've seen on the music channels over the last few weeks are Turn It Up by Pixie Lott (which I love), All Night Long by Alexandra Burke (which I quite like, but I hate the rapping), Umbrella Beach by by Owl City (which is growing on me), Bittersweet by Sophie Ellis Bextor (which I don't mind), On Your Head by Tiffany Page (we saw her supporting the Noisettes and although her new song is catchy I'm not very keen on her) and Hearts Don't Lie by Gabriella Cilmi (I loved her first album, but don't like her new change of direction although On A Mission was catchy). I also heard JLS' next single The Club Is Alive on Radio 1 this morning although there isn't a video for it yet. I don't mind the singles that JLS have released so far, but don't like their latest one after the first listen.
I thought you might like to see some of my mum's latest knitting creations :)
An entrelac cushion for my uncle and aunt's 45th (Sapphire) wedding anniversary
A knitted string bag
An Adipose from Doctor Who
A handpuppet
(My mum helps out with organising shoeboxes filled with toys to go to children in war-torn countries each year at Christmas. They don't allow stuffed toys to be included unless they have a special mark on them to prove they're safe, so mum can't knit stuffed toys for the boxes. She thought she'd try to knit hand puppets instead as they don't include any stuffing.)
A very cute cat made from simple knitted shapes
A very cute tortoise for me (you can see how tiny it is in Alf's hand)
A turtle for Alf
Mum modelling her knitted moustache for my nan!
My blog is now pretty much up-to-date :) I've not blogged about today yet but I'll do another update shortly when I've got a couple of days to write about. And tomorrow I'm hoping to do a blog about ME Awareness Week 2010.
My weekend, health and Rachy
On Fri morn I felt quite depressed at all the election stuff. I'm not going to talk much about it here because I'm sure you're all fed up with politics now, but I was disappointed that Lib Dems did so badly and that the Tories got the most votes. I'm also concerned about what a coalition will mean especially if it ends up being between the Lib Dems and the Tories because they have such contrasting views.
That morn me and mum went out to see my nan though and that really cheered me up :) The first thing she asked me was whether I'd got my iPod with me because she was really keen to listen to some more music. I let her listen to Blue Eyes by Mika which she enjoyed but she said she preferred Marina and the Diamonds, so I let her listen to I Am Not A Robot. She loved that and was tapping her feet and singing along :) Next time I visit her I'm going to take her a copy of Marina's album and teach her how to play it through her DVD player or laptop. Mum and dad have also told me that she's just bought herself a new digital camera so I've got to teach her how to use that. I suspect it'll be a long job because she'll want to know what every button and every function do! :P
My copy of the latest issue to the Official Nintendo Magazine had arrived in the post that morn so I just relaxed and read that in the aft.
On Fri I received the email from S at Hosp A that she'd promised me before the end of the week and I'm not very happy. She basically said that they do things similarly to Hosp B but told me that I'll need to have my Tac blood taken at clinic because they don't use Tac kits. Then she confirmed the dates of the next clinic and said she'd see me there. That was the entire content of the email I'd waited 6 weeks for! The plan for these 3 months was for me to become happier about communication with the team and for me to find out how things will work when I'm under Hosp A. Neither of those things have happened - I've discovered that being told a reply will take one week can turn into 6 weeks and I still have no idea at all how they do things at Hosp A. Aaarrrggghhh! I'm really worried about this transition as I still have no confidence in the Hosp A team. I don't think they'll be any better with communication once Hosp B are out of the picture and that worries me. And I don't want to find out how they do things when they need to do them and then discovering the problems, I want to know in advance so stuff can be sorted out.
On Fri eve Claire came round for tea and we had a nice time together playing a card game called Ligretto, chatting and playing on my Wii :)
Yesterday (Sat) I had a pyjama day and can't think of much interesting to report about it :P I finalised an information page for Transplant Kids with Emma and enjoyed watching Doctor Who, rewatching Ashes to Ashes from the previous night and rewatching episode 6 of the second series of Outnumbered. I also watched a funny film called Zombieland. I don't usually watch horror films but this was a horror comedy and I was surprised at how much I enjoyed it.
I've had a lazy day again today (Sun) because I've been very tired. I enjoyed playing on New Super Mario Bros Wii for a little while and watching a film called Stardust. Lizzy recommended Stardust to me a little while ago but I kept putting off renting it because I don't usually enjoy fantasy films. But Tesco DVD rental sent it out to me so I tried it and was surprised at how much I enjoyed it. Today I also watched 2 episodes from series 2 of Outnumbered with my parents.
This evening I noticed that I'm running short on high calorie puddings so will need to give another prescription in at the surgery soon to get some more. But I thought before I do that I'd email my dieticians and ask them if I can stop having the high calorie puddings now because my weight is doing so well. I sent that email tonight so hope for positive replies within the next couple of days, fingers crossed. The high calorie puddings are the best high calorie supplements I've come across, but they're still not very pleasant and I can think of other foods I'd much rather eat instead.
I'm having serious problems with my mobile phone at the moment, grrr. I don't know if the 2 problems are connected or separate. The battery isn't fully charging and won't hold its charge so it's running down within less than 12 hours at the moment (compared to the week or longer that it used to hold it's charge for) which is really frustrating. The obvious solution to that would be to buy another battery and I've found that they're very cheap on eBay. But I've done some enquiring and it seems that the battery running down so quickly might be because the phone is having to work extra hard to get signal as the other problem I'm having at the moment is having no signal in places I'd usually have full signal. My phone only needs to last til the end of Sept and has never had any problems before so I didn't know what to do. I phoned Chris this eve and he said that he thought the signal problems might be because the battery level is often low, so he suggested buying a new battery and seeing if that helps. So I ordered one from eBay tonight. Hopefully that'll arrive soon and fix the signal problem as well as the battery problem, fingers crossed.
This weekend my parents have been getting some of the Glastonbury stuff out to start preparing (Glastonbury is at the end of June). It's usually just dad and Alf that go so they've only got 2 sleeping mats, 2 sleeping bags etc, but mum is going with them this year (I'm staying at home in the warm and dry!) so they're having to sort out what mum needs to buy. They ordered her a sleeping mat and sleeping bag today online. When mum was trying out dad's sleeping bag the other day dad zipped it right up so she completely disappeared inside! I wish I'd had my camera handy! Mum has never slept in a sleeping bag before so that'll be a new experience for her. When she was trying out dad's she discovered it was too narrow for her to lie comfortably in (she sleeps in a weird position that's hard to explain in words), so dad ordered her a wider one. Mum has also ordered a clever gadget called a Shewee.
I've not got many plans for this week at the moment. Tomorrow (Mon) I'm going to visit my nan with mum to help her sort through her books and hopefully get rid of some. My nan isn't very good at getting rid of things though :P And my only other plan for this week is a physio appt on Wed aft.
Since I did the last blog post about my health as part of my big blog update I've though of a few more things to post about. My dizziness completely disappeared from last Sat eve to Tue eve which was fantastic. It then came back again but wasn't nearly as bad as before and I was only getting maybe one very brief and mild dizzy spell each day, which was a relief. However tonight while I've been sitting at my laptop I've been feeling quite dizzy despite sitting still, so I think I might try to make a GP appt tomorrow to get this checked out.
I sometimes go through spells of getting coldsores and have had a couple over the last few weeks. Sometimes they occur when I'm run down but I don't think my health is worse than usual at the moment. I thought the first one might have been caused by being out in the sun but the second one came in the gloomy weather so I don't know. They can be so sore and annoying though. Fingers crossed I won't get any more for a while.
I have been very nocturnal recently, which is annoying but I'm just trying to learn to live with it now. Going to sleep at about 4am the other night meant I probably didn't get enough sleep though.
My dad has recently self diagnosed himself with plantar fasciitis (the foot problem I have) in one of his feet. He wouldn't stop moaning about it when he first decided that was what it was - typical men! But he read on the Internet that stretching could cure it (my GP told me there was no cure) and now he's been stretching he says it's a lot better. At least he's stopped moaning so much now.
As I've mentioned before, my dad has recently started enjoying swimming and goes most days now. However we suspect he might be a bit allergic to some aspect of it because he always comes back sniffing and sneezing! Dad mentioned a few weeks ago that now he's achieved his goal of swimming 1 mile in a swimming pool he wants to try it in open water! I've not heard anything about that recently though so I suspect he might have had second thoughts.
My dad had a go at me the other day because he thought it was lazy of me not to be making my sandwiches at lunch time and asking mum to make them for me instead. After some upset I managed to explain to my parents that I don't like eating at the moment (although I have better days and worse days with that) and so I also don't like having anything more to do with food than I have to. Dad had no idea about the little things I often do around the house to help mum out during the day (emptying and stacking the dishwasher, pegging out and getting washing in, putting washing in the airing cupboard and getting it out and putting it away, going round to the local shop when we run out of things...) so when me and mum told him about that I think it made him see that I'm not being lazy. It was agreed that mum would continue making my sandwiches for me when she's in and I'll keep helping her out around the house.
Rachy has been in the media again a few times recently, she seems to be making really good progress at the moment and even wrote a blog post just over a week ago which you can read here! You can read an article from her local newspaper here, an article from the BBC news website here and you can even hear her talking on BBC Radio Manchester here! The radio programme will only be available to listen to online til Thur morn, so please have a listen before then. Rachy's bit is at 2hrs and 51mins through.
My blog is almost completely up to date now. I just want to write a little bit about what music I've been listening to and share some photos of mum's recent knitting photos with you. I was going to put the photos up tonight, but they're not on my laptop at the mo so I'll have to get them from the family computer tomorrow. I'm also going to do a post in the next few days about ME Awareness Week 2010 which is running from the 8th to the 16th May.
While I've been writing this up I've put Mika's music on :D I'm not sure why I've not learnt yet that that isn't sensible at this time of night because it makes me go hyper :P
That morn me and mum went out to see my nan though and that really cheered me up :) The first thing she asked me was whether I'd got my iPod with me because she was really keen to listen to some more music. I let her listen to Blue Eyes by Mika which she enjoyed but she said she preferred Marina and the Diamonds, so I let her listen to I Am Not A Robot. She loved that and was tapping her feet and singing along :) Next time I visit her I'm going to take her a copy of Marina's album and teach her how to play it through her DVD player or laptop. Mum and dad have also told me that she's just bought herself a new digital camera so I've got to teach her how to use that. I suspect it'll be a long job because she'll want to know what every button and every function do! :P
My copy of the latest issue to the Official Nintendo Magazine had arrived in the post that morn so I just relaxed and read that in the aft.
On Fri I received the email from S at Hosp A that she'd promised me before the end of the week and I'm not very happy. She basically said that they do things similarly to Hosp B but told me that I'll need to have my Tac blood taken at clinic because they don't use Tac kits. Then she confirmed the dates of the next clinic and said she'd see me there. That was the entire content of the email I'd waited 6 weeks for! The plan for these 3 months was for me to become happier about communication with the team and for me to find out how things will work when I'm under Hosp A. Neither of those things have happened - I've discovered that being told a reply will take one week can turn into 6 weeks and I still have no idea at all how they do things at Hosp A. Aaarrrggghhh! I'm really worried about this transition as I still have no confidence in the Hosp A team. I don't think they'll be any better with communication once Hosp B are out of the picture and that worries me. And I don't want to find out how they do things when they need to do them and then discovering the problems, I want to know in advance so stuff can be sorted out.
On Fri eve Claire came round for tea and we had a nice time together playing a card game called Ligretto, chatting and playing on my Wii :)
Yesterday (Sat) I had a pyjama day and can't think of much interesting to report about it :P I finalised an information page for Transplant Kids with Emma and enjoyed watching Doctor Who, rewatching Ashes to Ashes from the previous night and rewatching episode 6 of the second series of Outnumbered. I also watched a funny film called Zombieland. I don't usually watch horror films but this was a horror comedy and I was surprised at how much I enjoyed it.
I've had a lazy day again today (Sun) because I've been very tired. I enjoyed playing on New Super Mario Bros Wii for a little while and watching a film called Stardust. Lizzy recommended Stardust to me a little while ago but I kept putting off renting it because I don't usually enjoy fantasy films. But Tesco DVD rental sent it out to me so I tried it and was surprised at how much I enjoyed it. Today I also watched 2 episodes from series 2 of Outnumbered with my parents.
This evening I noticed that I'm running short on high calorie puddings so will need to give another prescription in at the surgery soon to get some more. But I thought before I do that I'd email my dieticians and ask them if I can stop having the high calorie puddings now because my weight is doing so well. I sent that email tonight so hope for positive replies within the next couple of days, fingers crossed. The high calorie puddings are the best high calorie supplements I've come across, but they're still not very pleasant and I can think of other foods I'd much rather eat instead.
I'm having serious problems with my mobile phone at the moment, grrr. I don't know if the 2 problems are connected or separate. The battery isn't fully charging and won't hold its charge so it's running down within less than 12 hours at the moment (compared to the week or longer that it used to hold it's charge for) which is really frustrating. The obvious solution to that would be to buy another battery and I've found that they're very cheap on eBay. But I've done some enquiring and it seems that the battery running down so quickly might be because the phone is having to work extra hard to get signal as the other problem I'm having at the moment is having no signal in places I'd usually have full signal. My phone only needs to last til the end of Sept and has never had any problems before so I didn't know what to do. I phoned Chris this eve and he said that he thought the signal problems might be because the battery level is often low, so he suggested buying a new battery and seeing if that helps. So I ordered one from eBay tonight. Hopefully that'll arrive soon and fix the signal problem as well as the battery problem, fingers crossed.
This weekend my parents have been getting some of the Glastonbury stuff out to start preparing (Glastonbury is at the end of June). It's usually just dad and Alf that go so they've only got 2 sleeping mats, 2 sleeping bags etc, but mum is going with them this year (I'm staying at home in the warm and dry!) so they're having to sort out what mum needs to buy. They ordered her a sleeping mat and sleeping bag today online. When mum was trying out dad's sleeping bag the other day dad zipped it right up so she completely disappeared inside! I wish I'd had my camera handy! Mum has never slept in a sleeping bag before so that'll be a new experience for her. When she was trying out dad's she discovered it was too narrow for her to lie comfortably in (she sleeps in a weird position that's hard to explain in words), so dad ordered her a wider one. Mum has also ordered a clever gadget called a Shewee.
I've not got many plans for this week at the moment. Tomorrow (Mon) I'm going to visit my nan with mum to help her sort through her books and hopefully get rid of some. My nan isn't very good at getting rid of things though :P And my only other plan for this week is a physio appt on Wed aft.
Since I did the last blog post about my health as part of my big blog update I've though of a few more things to post about. My dizziness completely disappeared from last Sat eve to Tue eve which was fantastic. It then came back again but wasn't nearly as bad as before and I was only getting maybe one very brief and mild dizzy spell each day, which was a relief. However tonight while I've been sitting at my laptop I've been feeling quite dizzy despite sitting still, so I think I might try to make a GP appt tomorrow to get this checked out.
I sometimes go through spells of getting coldsores and have had a couple over the last few weeks. Sometimes they occur when I'm run down but I don't think my health is worse than usual at the moment. I thought the first one might have been caused by being out in the sun but the second one came in the gloomy weather so I don't know. They can be so sore and annoying though. Fingers crossed I won't get any more for a while.
I have been very nocturnal recently, which is annoying but I'm just trying to learn to live with it now. Going to sleep at about 4am the other night meant I probably didn't get enough sleep though.
My dad has recently self diagnosed himself with plantar fasciitis (the foot problem I have) in one of his feet. He wouldn't stop moaning about it when he first decided that was what it was - typical men! But he read on the Internet that stretching could cure it (my GP told me there was no cure) and now he's been stretching he says it's a lot better. At least he's stopped moaning so much now.
As I've mentioned before, my dad has recently started enjoying swimming and goes most days now. However we suspect he might be a bit allergic to some aspect of it because he always comes back sniffing and sneezing! Dad mentioned a few weeks ago that now he's achieved his goal of swimming 1 mile in a swimming pool he wants to try it in open water! I've not heard anything about that recently though so I suspect he might have had second thoughts.
My dad had a go at me the other day because he thought it was lazy of me not to be making my sandwiches at lunch time and asking mum to make them for me instead. After some upset I managed to explain to my parents that I don't like eating at the moment (although I have better days and worse days with that) and so I also don't like having anything more to do with food than I have to. Dad had no idea about the little things I often do around the house to help mum out during the day (emptying and stacking the dishwasher, pegging out and getting washing in, putting washing in the airing cupboard and getting it out and putting it away, going round to the local shop when we run out of things...) so when me and mum told him about that I think it made him see that I'm not being lazy. It was agreed that mum would continue making my sandwiches for me when she's in and I'll keep helping her out around the house.
Rachy has been in the media again a few times recently, she seems to be making really good progress at the moment and even wrote a blog post just over a week ago which you can read here! You can read an article from her local newspaper here, an article from the BBC news website here and you can even hear her talking on BBC Radio Manchester here! The radio programme will only be available to listen to online til Thur morn, so please have a listen before then. Rachy's bit is at 2hrs and 51mins through.
My blog is almost completely up to date now. I just want to write a little bit about what music I've been listening to and share some photos of mum's recent knitting photos with you. I was going to put the photos up tonight, but they're not on my laptop at the mo so I'll have to get them from the family computer tomorrow. I'm also going to do a post in the next few days about ME Awareness Week 2010 which is running from the 8th to the 16th May.
While I've been writing this up I've put Mika's music on :D I'm not sure why I've not learnt yet that that isn't sensible at this time of night because it makes me go hyper :P
Saturday, 8 May 2010
Getting up to date with April - part 8 (TV, DVDs and games)
Due to me not updating my blog for so long I've watched quite a lot on TV since my last update:
~ The first 3 eps of an interesting C4 programme called Young, Autistic and Stagestruck
~ 3 eps of Embarrassing Bodies
~ 2 eps of the Graham Norton show
~ Eps 2 and 3 of the great BBC series called GOS which visited a different department of GOSH each week. GOSH is what I've previously referred to as Hosp G, my old hosp. In ep 2 which was set in ITU they featured a surgeon called Mr Kiely who has operated on me in the past. And in that same episode I got annoyed at a doctor saying how dangerous hickman lines (tubes going into the heart to deliver artificial nutrition, I used to have one for me TPN) are. There are risks with them but they're not that dangerous! And ep 3 which was set in the renal department taught me a lot.
~ 4 eps of Dr Who - I like Matt Smith much more than I expected but I do miss David Tennant.
~ 3 eps of Outnumbered - I love Outnumbered :D
~ Parts of the news and election coverage
~ A BBC programme about preventable health problems in children called Spoilt Rotten?
~ 4 eps of Ashes to Ashes - I'm really enjoying watching this series and can't wait to see what happens in the final 2 eps.
~ A channel 4 documentary called America's Medicated Kids
~ The end of an episode from Gavin and Stacey series 3 that I caught as I was channel flicking.
~ 3 eps of Children's Hospital
~ An interesting BBC documentary called The Autistic Me - One Year On
~ 1 ep of Hospital Heroes - I wasn't very impressed with it though (it was too dramatic and repetitive) so didn't watch any more eps.
~ Mary Queen of Charity Shops revisited
~ Greatest Cities of the World with Griff Rhys Jones: Sydney - This was very interesting because rather than looking at Sydney from a tourist's perspective instead he looked at how life is for the people who live there.
~ Half an ep of Five Daughters - I didn't find it very gripping so decided against watching the rest of the series
~ The end of a documentary called The World's Fattest Families and Me with Mark Dolan
~ The first ep of a new BBC medical prog called Children's Emergency
~ Separate Lives: Tonight - This followed the story of conjoined twins and I found it very interesting but it was an ITV prog and throughout it I kept thinking that BBC would have done it better. At one point the parents got very upset when their sons were going into theatre and that made my mum upset because she could remember my dad getting very upset on one of the occasions when I had to go to theatre for a big operation when I was younger.
~ Miscellaneous bits on the music channels
On DVD I finished watching the first series of the Catherine Tate Show, rewatched series one and two of Jam and Jerusalem and rewatched episodes 1 to 4 of the first series of Outnumbered.
I've watched quite a few films over the last few weeks:
~ A Bug's Life - I love Pixar films but hadn't watched this for several years so enjoyed rewatching it.
~ Pay it Forward - An interesting premise for a film. Not amazing, but not bad. I was very surprised by the ending.
~ Jumpin' Jack Flash - I loved this film, it's really funny and Whoopi Goldberg is great.
~ My Brother Tom - Very thought provoking and quite odd.
~ Speed - I can't believe I'd never seen this Sandra Bullock film before, it's very good.
~ 50 First Dates - Funny romcom.
~ Orphan - Very good horror film and not too scary although it did scare me. I loved the twist as I was nowhere near to guessing it.
~ Julie and Julia - Very interesting and well made. Mum really enjoyed it. Maybe a bit too long though.
~ An Education - What a great film, Carey Mulligan is a brilliant actress. Watched this with my mum and Claire and we all loved it.
~ Shakespeare In Love - Better than I expected, but not really my kind of film - it was mum's idea to watch it.
~ The Hangover - I saw this in the cinema last year so enjoyed rewatching it with my parents. We all found it hilarious, great for a laugh.
~ Zombieland - Funny and engaging but there was a bit too much blood for my liking in some parts.
I've watched a few videos on the Internet since my last update, most of which were about Outnumbered. I saw the cast being interviewed on Jonathan Ross, the children and one of the writers being interviewed on the One Show and the footage of them winning 3 British comedy awards on Youtube. A friend gave me a link to a very funny French and Saunders' Madonna Parody on Youtube which you can see here.
Sorry if I'm repeating myself (my memory isn't very good at the moment so I can't remember whether I've already said this or not) but I've recently found a great price comparison website for DVDs which helps me to find the best prices for any DVDs I want to buy online. You can see the website here, you might find it useful too.
I think I've said previously on my blog how my parents have a good comfortable pair of headphones with a long cable. Me and Alf both use the headphones but we're struggling to share them as we both want to use them in the evenings so we can watch TV/films/play computer games while our parents are in bed. I think I should get to use the headphones because Alf can still play his computer games and watch his films without headphones without disturbing my parents if he turns the volume down a bit. But even with my TV on the lowest volume I can hear it on it still disturbs my parents through the wall. And I can't plug my earphones into my TV and sit on my sofa and use them because the cable is too short but Alf could easily use his earphones for listening to his computer. Anyway this makes no difference and we still have to share them. To get round this problem I bought some headphones from Amazon for myself because Alf has no money so there's no way he'll be able to buy himself a pair. However I didn't find the headphones comfortable so have sent them back. Now we're back to the same position of struggling to share our parents headphones again. I'm not very good at adapting to new things so would prefer to stick with the headphones that I know are comfortable for me. I've tried to track down another pair of them but they're not being made any more and I can't find a second hand pair on eBay or anything like that :(
I've not played on my PS2 much since my last update but I did try the race mode on Frogger with dad. He was rubbish - I won 10 nil! I received a new Wii game called Boom Blox Bash Party in the post after ordering it from Amazon. I've tried that out against dad but he's much better at it than me because it's physics based. The day after we played for about an hour together we both had Wiinjuries - a sore right arm from the throwing action required in the game. I've continued to play on New Super Mario Bros Wii a lot, both with Claire and on my own, and was very happy to complete the main game :D However there are still extra things to unlock so me and Claire are still enjoying playing on it.
I've also enjoyed doing some crosswords with mum recently :)
~ The first 3 eps of an interesting C4 programme called Young, Autistic and Stagestruck
~ 3 eps of Embarrassing Bodies
~ 2 eps of the Graham Norton show
~ Eps 2 and 3 of the great BBC series called GOS which visited a different department of GOSH each week. GOSH is what I've previously referred to as Hosp G, my old hosp. In ep 2 which was set in ITU they featured a surgeon called Mr Kiely who has operated on me in the past. And in that same episode I got annoyed at a doctor saying how dangerous hickman lines (tubes going into the heart to deliver artificial nutrition, I used to have one for me TPN) are. There are risks with them but they're not that dangerous! And ep 3 which was set in the renal department taught me a lot.
~ 4 eps of Dr Who - I like Matt Smith much more than I expected but I do miss David Tennant.
~ 3 eps of Outnumbered - I love Outnumbered :D
~ Parts of the news and election coverage
~ A BBC programme about preventable health problems in children called Spoilt Rotten?
~ 4 eps of Ashes to Ashes - I'm really enjoying watching this series and can't wait to see what happens in the final 2 eps.
~ A channel 4 documentary called America's Medicated Kids
~ The end of an episode from Gavin and Stacey series 3 that I caught as I was channel flicking.
~ 3 eps of Children's Hospital
~ An interesting BBC documentary called The Autistic Me - One Year On
~ 1 ep of Hospital Heroes - I wasn't very impressed with it though (it was too dramatic and repetitive) so didn't watch any more eps.
~ Mary Queen of Charity Shops revisited
~ Greatest Cities of the World with Griff Rhys Jones: Sydney - This was very interesting because rather than looking at Sydney from a tourist's perspective instead he looked at how life is for the people who live there.
~ Half an ep of Five Daughters - I didn't find it very gripping so decided against watching the rest of the series
~ The end of a documentary called The World's Fattest Families and Me with Mark Dolan
~ The first ep of a new BBC medical prog called Children's Emergency
~ Separate Lives: Tonight - This followed the story of conjoined twins and I found it very interesting but it was an ITV prog and throughout it I kept thinking that BBC would have done it better. At one point the parents got very upset when their sons were going into theatre and that made my mum upset because she could remember my dad getting very upset on one of the occasions when I had to go to theatre for a big operation when I was younger.
~ Miscellaneous bits on the music channels
On DVD I finished watching the first series of the Catherine Tate Show, rewatched series one and two of Jam and Jerusalem and rewatched episodes 1 to 4 of the first series of Outnumbered.
I've watched quite a few films over the last few weeks:
~ A Bug's Life - I love Pixar films but hadn't watched this for several years so enjoyed rewatching it.
~ Pay it Forward - An interesting premise for a film. Not amazing, but not bad. I was very surprised by the ending.
~ Jumpin' Jack Flash - I loved this film, it's really funny and Whoopi Goldberg is great.
~ My Brother Tom - Very thought provoking and quite odd.
~ Speed - I can't believe I'd never seen this Sandra Bullock film before, it's very good.
~ 50 First Dates - Funny romcom.
~ Orphan - Very good horror film and not too scary although it did scare me. I loved the twist as I was nowhere near to guessing it.
~ Julie and Julia - Very interesting and well made. Mum really enjoyed it. Maybe a bit too long though.
~ An Education - What a great film, Carey Mulligan is a brilliant actress. Watched this with my mum and Claire and we all loved it.
~ Shakespeare In Love - Better than I expected, but not really my kind of film - it was mum's idea to watch it.
~ The Hangover - I saw this in the cinema last year so enjoyed rewatching it with my parents. We all found it hilarious, great for a laugh.
~ Zombieland - Funny and engaging but there was a bit too much blood for my liking in some parts.
I've watched a few videos on the Internet since my last update, most of which were about Outnumbered. I saw the cast being interviewed on Jonathan Ross, the children and one of the writers being interviewed on the One Show and the footage of them winning 3 British comedy awards on Youtube. A friend gave me a link to a very funny French and Saunders' Madonna Parody on Youtube which you can see here.
Sorry if I'm repeating myself (my memory isn't very good at the moment so I can't remember whether I've already said this or not) but I've recently found a great price comparison website for DVDs which helps me to find the best prices for any DVDs I want to buy online. You can see the website here, you might find it useful too.
I think I've said previously on my blog how my parents have a good comfortable pair of headphones with a long cable. Me and Alf both use the headphones but we're struggling to share them as we both want to use them in the evenings so we can watch TV/films/play computer games while our parents are in bed. I think I should get to use the headphones because Alf can still play his computer games and watch his films without headphones without disturbing my parents if he turns the volume down a bit. But even with my TV on the lowest volume I can hear it on it still disturbs my parents through the wall. And I can't plug my earphones into my TV and sit on my sofa and use them because the cable is too short but Alf could easily use his earphones for listening to his computer. Anyway this makes no difference and we still have to share them. To get round this problem I bought some headphones from Amazon for myself because Alf has no money so there's no way he'll be able to buy himself a pair. However I didn't find the headphones comfortable so have sent them back. Now we're back to the same position of struggling to share our parents headphones again. I'm not very good at adapting to new things so would prefer to stick with the headphones that I know are comfortable for me. I've tried to track down another pair of them but they're not being made any more and I can't find a second hand pair on eBay or anything like that :(
I've not played on my PS2 much since my last update but I did try the race mode on Frogger with dad. He was rubbish - I won 10 nil! I received a new Wii game called Boom Blox Bash Party in the post after ordering it from Amazon. I've tried that out against dad but he's much better at it than me because it's physics based. The day after we played for about an hour together we both had Wiinjuries - a sore right arm from the throwing action required in the game. I've continued to play on New Super Mario Bros Wii a lot, both with Claire and on my own, and was very happy to complete the main game :D However there are still extra things to unlock so me and Claire are still enjoying playing on it.
I've also enjoyed doing some crosswords with mum recently :)
Thursday, 6 May 2010
Getting up to date with April - part 7 (more day to day stuff)
I decided on Tue 20th that I would let myself buy some more DVD boxsets if my total spending (not including rent, Tesco DVD rental and magazine subscription - my regular monthly payments) in April didn't exceed an amount that I set then based on what I'd spent so far during April. I thought that I'd let myself buy some DVD boxsets to take my spending that month up to the amount I set, but I ended up spending only £5 less than that amount which wasn't enough for a DVD boxset that I wanted. However I had had some unexpected outgoings towards the end of April including Alf choosing to cash his birthday IOU for an iPod charger so I decided to allow myself to spend a bit more than £5 on a DVD. I struggled to choose between Gavin and Stacey series 2 and 3 or Outnumbered series 2 and very nearly bought them all at once. But on Sun 2nd I decided on Outnumbered and ordered it that night. I'll get the Gavin and Stacey DVDs at another point, maybe at the end of this month/start of next month if I don't spend too much this month (I might aim to spend less than last month).
Mon 3rd May was Bank Holiday Mon so there were some local carboot sales on that me and my parents decided to have a look at. First we went to a one off carboot sale in a pub carpark in a neighbouring village. There I bought a DVD called In America DVD for 50p, 7 DVDs that had been free with newspapers for a total of £1 and 15 CD cases for £1. It was very chilly while we were looking round and there were some light showers too so I left my parents still looking round and went back to sit in the car round the corner to warm up. While I was sitting in the car another shower started up which got quite heavy and then it started hailing. I was very smug sitting all warm and dry in the car. Dad sensibly found some shelter in the pub car park til the hail eased but mum decided to run back to the car in it. She got soaked!
We then went back home and dropped dad off because he'd decided the weather wasn't good enough to go to another carboot sale. Mum changed out of her wet clothes, we both wrapped up a bit warmer and then we headed out to the carboot sale we usually go to. There were not as many stalls there as there usually is and the DVDs were all £2 each rather than £1 each so I didn't buy anything. Mum picked up a few things though including a weird thing that moos like a cow! On the way home we called in to visit nan briefly and give her back her mobile phone that we'd sorted out for her. The phone in her new flat wasn't going to be reconnected til Wed so it was important that she could use her mobile til then.
On Tue 4th May I weighed myself like I'm now doing fortnightly. It was also my monthly weight to email my dieticians with. My weight was 54.3kg - so up 0.6kg on the previous fortnight and up a total of 1kg in a month. Both my dieticians were very impressed and are happy for me to keep weighing myself and contacting them monthly. I never thought I'd say this, but I don't really want to put any more weight on now. If my weight is up again next month then I'm going to ask my dieticians if I can stop my high calorie puddings because I don't really like them.
That morn I walked to the post office and the local shop and also walked round to the surgery to drop in a prescription for me. That aft I had to return to the local shop when mum discovered that she'd run out of washing liquid for the washing machine. When mum got back from work at the library she showed me her first knitting needle injury - somehow a knitting needle had attacked her leg through her bag and her jeans and had left a visible scratch. Her leg is fine now though.
That evening I went to another meeting of the teenage discussion group in the village. V wasn't there so it was just A and B who lead it, me, K and M. The discussion on Tue eve was very religious - yawn! We did have some interesting discussion, but I'm not sure how we got onto talking about whether knitting is divine or not?!?! Although I'm a very private person about my health I don't mind mentioning it when it's my choice and in my control, so I brought it into the conversation because I felt it was relevant. I started off by saying "I don't know how much you know [because I didn't know if K or M knew anything about my medical history] but I had a transplant a few years ago" I know A knows about it all because she knows my mum and I assumed A had told B everything. So I was really surprised when B said that she didn't know that! We had an interesting discussion about politics at the end. K isn't 18 until the summer so can't vote yet, but the rest of us could. Me, A and B all said that we would be voting Lib Dems and proceeded to discuss all the parties. M kept very quiet. He's very posh, privately educated and quite stuck up so I assumed his quietness was because he's a Conservative supporter! They were all talking about the different politicians they've had coming to their doors to try to swing their votes, but we've not had any of them this year which is probably because we've got a Lib Dems sign in our garden :)
Yesterday (Wed 5th May) I emailed S (the transplant co-ordinator at Hosp A) again because it was 6 weeks since she'd promised me an email and I'd still not heard anything. In this email I just asked if she could please reply to my email from March 22nd as she said she would in her email dated March 23rd. She replied very quickly saying that she'd not forgotten me but she'd been off work for a while. I've been promised a full reply by the end of the week so hopefully I will get that. Only 5 weeks to go til my transition is due to be completed and I'm still no happier about it, eek! I wish S had just dropped me a quick email letting me know that it would be a while til she managed a full reply. Replying 5 weeks later than promised isn't really fair on me - I'm supposed to be learning to trust this team!
Yesterday morning I got up at 8.45am (which is very early for me) because I'd heard the previous day that the presale for Marina and the Diamonds' Oct/Nov tour would start on the Wed. However it didn't say a time, so I got up so I could be at my laptop by 9am in case they went on sale then. I kept refreshing my email page because the link would be sent to me in an email and the email eventually came through at 12.30pm - I'd been sitting there all that time! And as you'll have seen from this blog post, I got tickets!! :D
In the afternoon me and mum popped round to see my nan because although we'd returned her mobile phone on Mon we'd forgotten to return the charger too! I helped my nan sort out a few things on her computer while we were there. And on the way we called in at the local garden centre where mum bought some geraniums for the garden. I tried to persuade her to buy the red ones but she chose some pink ones instead.
Yesterday I discovered that my phone was playing up as although I could receive phone calls and texts I couldn't make them, it kept saying there was a connection error. I phoned my older brother Chris who knows about these kind of things and left a message on his answer machine asking for help. Also my phone alarmed low battery even though I'd charged it recently so that made me wonder if there was a problem with the battery too. The battery has seemed fine since though, so maybe it was just a one off thing.
Dad pointed out to me that there was a double page article in the local paper about ME so I found that to have a read. The article started off well but then went on to say how this sufferer had been cured by something called the Lightning Process and had then gone on to train as a teacher of the Lightning Process. There isn't a cure for ME although there are lots of people offering expensive cures that have no scientific evidence behind them. The Lightning Process is one of the most well known and some people are apparently miraculously cured by it although it sounds very doubtful to me. It costs a lot of money and there are lots of criticisms of it and no scientific proof that it works. So I thought it was a shame that the article in the local paper was so much about what a great cure the Lightning Process is. However, there was one small paragraph about criticisms of it, so at least they were acknowledged.
Today I got up early (9am) and me and mum headed into the city. We drove to the Park & Ride on the outskirts of the city (dropping Alf off in a local town on the way through) and then got a bus into the city centre. I enjoyed listening to Marina and the Diamonds on my iPod on the bus journey. Me and mum went on a long walk out of the city centre along a road with a few charity shops on. I bought 2 cheap books in one charity shop - one was a children's book that I used to like and one was a quick read. We stopped for drinks and then wandered back into town although we did have to ask for directions on the way! We walked for about an hour and a quarter in total then, which I was quite impressed with. When we got back into the city centre we met up with mum's friend for lunch in a cafe. I had a baked potato and we all chatted together. On the way out of the shop I picked up a local magazine because it had an interview with Diana Vickers in it. My tummy pains were bad while we were out :(
Me and mum then split up so she could go to her wool shop and I wandered round the shops but didn't buy anything. When me and mum split up I decided I'd better check to see if my phone was working and to my surprise it was :) So I'm not sure what the problem had been - maybe a network problem. I received a lovely text from Lizzy saying thanks for Mia's presents :) When I'd finished wandering round the shops I wanted to look in I still had a bit of time before I was due to meet up with mum so I found the films section in Waterstones and sat on a comfy sofa reading a book about Pixar animation :) Me and mum met back up, had drinks and some shortbread in a cafe (mum knocked our table which resulted in my glass of milk spilling over my jeans, whoops!) and went into a couple of shops (including M&S for some biscuits for me).
We then headed back to our car on the Park & Ride bus and then mum drove to Tesco on the edge of a local town where she had agreed to pick Alf up. Me and mum did a little Tesco shop while waiting for Alf. I was very pleased that I managed to resist buying Diana Vickers' album. It's on Spotify so I can listen to it for now without having the CD, so I decided to wait til the CD drops in price to buy it and be able to put it onto my iPod.
We dropped Alf off at home and went to our local Polling Station to vote. I saw the start of the BBC's election coverage and hope that the exit poll isn't representative of the actual results. The exit poll was created by asking random voters across the country who they'd voted for. And it suggested that we'll have a hung parliament with Conservatives getting the most seats, followed by Labour. It also suggested that Lib Dems will actually lose some seats. I'm supporting Lib Dems so I hope they do better than that. I do suspect that the Conservatives will win though :( I'm not watching the election coverage on TV tonight, I'll just check how the seats are going on the Internet before I go to bed and hear the final result when I get up tomorrow morn.
When we got home I saw my morning tablets out in the kitchen. I'd got up too early to take them this morn so put them out ready to take before we left the house. But I'd forgotten. Whoops! Think that's the first time I've ever done that. I took my Tac as soon as I got in plus the tabs that I only take in the morn and then tonight I took the tablets that I take twice a day minus my Tac. I think that should be ok as sometimes people have to delay taking their Tac if they're having a Tac blood test done at the hosp.
When we got home I also saw my post. Outnumbered series 2 on DVD arrived, so I'm really looking forward to watching that :) Unfortunately there was also something else waiting for me in the post. I opened it to discover my DLA renewal forms - arrrrgggghhh! The last time I applied for DLA was just after my transplant so lots of things have changed since then - my health problems related to my transplant have reduced but I've developed ME. Unfortunately people who have ME struggle to get DLA. I've got a few months to fill the forms out and dad said he'll help me with them, but I am still worried about it. I found the ESA forms hard, this is going to be even harder.
That's now my day to day updates completed but I'm going to do a couple more updates about other bits and pieces before my blog is completely up to date. It's definitely nearly there now though :)
Mon 3rd May was Bank Holiday Mon so there were some local carboot sales on that me and my parents decided to have a look at. First we went to a one off carboot sale in a pub carpark in a neighbouring village. There I bought a DVD called In America DVD for 50p, 7 DVDs that had been free with newspapers for a total of £1 and 15 CD cases for £1. It was very chilly while we were looking round and there were some light showers too so I left my parents still looking round and went back to sit in the car round the corner to warm up. While I was sitting in the car another shower started up which got quite heavy and then it started hailing. I was very smug sitting all warm and dry in the car. Dad sensibly found some shelter in the pub car park til the hail eased but mum decided to run back to the car in it. She got soaked!
We then went back home and dropped dad off because he'd decided the weather wasn't good enough to go to another carboot sale. Mum changed out of her wet clothes, we both wrapped up a bit warmer and then we headed out to the carboot sale we usually go to. There were not as many stalls there as there usually is and the DVDs were all £2 each rather than £1 each so I didn't buy anything. Mum picked up a few things though including a weird thing that moos like a cow! On the way home we called in to visit nan briefly and give her back her mobile phone that we'd sorted out for her. The phone in her new flat wasn't going to be reconnected til Wed so it was important that she could use her mobile til then.
On Tue 4th May I weighed myself like I'm now doing fortnightly. It was also my monthly weight to email my dieticians with. My weight was 54.3kg - so up 0.6kg on the previous fortnight and up a total of 1kg in a month. Both my dieticians were very impressed and are happy for me to keep weighing myself and contacting them monthly. I never thought I'd say this, but I don't really want to put any more weight on now. If my weight is up again next month then I'm going to ask my dieticians if I can stop my high calorie puddings because I don't really like them.
That morn I walked to the post office and the local shop and also walked round to the surgery to drop in a prescription for me. That aft I had to return to the local shop when mum discovered that she'd run out of washing liquid for the washing machine. When mum got back from work at the library she showed me her first knitting needle injury - somehow a knitting needle had attacked her leg through her bag and her jeans and had left a visible scratch. Her leg is fine now though.
That evening I went to another meeting of the teenage discussion group in the village. V wasn't there so it was just A and B who lead it, me, K and M. The discussion on Tue eve was very religious - yawn! We did have some interesting discussion, but I'm not sure how we got onto talking about whether knitting is divine or not?!?! Although I'm a very private person about my health I don't mind mentioning it when it's my choice and in my control, so I brought it into the conversation because I felt it was relevant. I started off by saying "I don't know how much you know [because I didn't know if K or M knew anything about my medical history] but I had a transplant a few years ago" I know A knows about it all because she knows my mum and I assumed A had told B everything. So I was really surprised when B said that she didn't know that! We had an interesting discussion about politics at the end. K isn't 18 until the summer so can't vote yet, but the rest of us could. Me, A and B all said that we would be voting Lib Dems and proceeded to discuss all the parties. M kept very quiet. He's very posh, privately educated and quite stuck up so I assumed his quietness was because he's a Conservative supporter! They were all talking about the different politicians they've had coming to their doors to try to swing their votes, but we've not had any of them this year which is probably because we've got a Lib Dems sign in our garden :)
Yesterday (Wed 5th May) I emailed S (the transplant co-ordinator at Hosp A) again because it was 6 weeks since she'd promised me an email and I'd still not heard anything. In this email I just asked if she could please reply to my email from March 22nd as she said she would in her email dated March 23rd. She replied very quickly saying that she'd not forgotten me but she'd been off work for a while. I've been promised a full reply by the end of the week so hopefully I will get that. Only 5 weeks to go til my transition is due to be completed and I'm still no happier about it, eek! I wish S had just dropped me a quick email letting me know that it would be a while til she managed a full reply. Replying 5 weeks later than promised isn't really fair on me - I'm supposed to be learning to trust this team!
Yesterday morning I got up at 8.45am (which is very early for me) because I'd heard the previous day that the presale for Marina and the Diamonds' Oct/Nov tour would start on the Wed. However it didn't say a time, so I got up so I could be at my laptop by 9am in case they went on sale then. I kept refreshing my email page because the link would be sent to me in an email and the email eventually came through at 12.30pm - I'd been sitting there all that time! And as you'll have seen from this blog post, I got tickets!! :D
In the afternoon me and mum popped round to see my nan because although we'd returned her mobile phone on Mon we'd forgotten to return the charger too! I helped my nan sort out a few things on her computer while we were there. And on the way we called in at the local garden centre where mum bought some geraniums for the garden. I tried to persuade her to buy the red ones but she chose some pink ones instead.
Yesterday I discovered that my phone was playing up as although I could receive phone calls and texts I couldn't make them, it kept saying there was a connection error. I phoned my older brother Chris who knows about these kind of things and left a message on his answer machine asking for help. Also my phone alarmed low battery even though I'd charged it recently so that made me wonder if there was a problem with the battery too. The battery has seemed fine since though, so maybe it was just a one off thing.
Dad pointed out to me that there was a double page article in the local paper about ME so I found that to have a read. The article started off well but then went on to say how this sufferer had been cured by something called the Lightning Process and had then gone on to train as a teacher of the Lightning Process. There isn't a cure for ME although there are lots of people offering expensive cures that have no scientific evidence behind them. The Lightning Process is one of the most well known and some people are apparently miraculously cured by it although it sounds very doubtful to me. It costs a lot of money and there are lots of criticisms of it and no scientific proof that it works. So I thought it was a shame that the article in the local paper was so much about what a great cure the Lightning Process is. However, there was one small paragraph about criticisms of it, so at least they were acknowledged.
Today I got up early (9am) and me and mum headed into the city. We drove to the Park & Ride on the outskirts of the city (dropping Alf off in a local town on the way through) and then got a bus into the city centre. I enjoyed listening to Marina and the Diamonds on my iPod on the bus journey. Me and mum went on a long walk out of the city centre along a road with a few charity shops on. I bought 2 cheap books in one charity shop - one was a children's book that I used to like and one was a quick read. We stopped for drinks and then wandered back into town although we did have to ask for directions on the way! We walked for about an hour and a quarter in total then, which I was quite impressed with. When we got back into the city centre we met up with mum's friend for lunch in a cafe. I had a baked potato and we all chatted together. On the way out of the shop I picked up a local magazine because it had an interview with Diana Vickers in it. My tummy pains were bad while we were out :(
Me and mum then split up so she could go to her wool shop and I wandered round the shops but didn't buy anything. When me and mum split up I decided I'd better check to see if my phone was working and to my surprise it was :) So I'm not sure what the problem had been - maybe a network problem. I received a lovely text from Lizzy saying thanks for Mia's presents :) When I'd finished wandering round the shops I wanted to look in I still had a bit of time before I was due to meet up with mum so I found the films section in Waterstones and sat on a comfy sofa reading a book about Pixar animation :) Me and mum met back up, had drinks and some shortbread in a cafe (mum knocked our table which resulted in my glass of milk spilling over my jeans, whoops!) and went into a couple of shops (including M&S for some biscuits for me).
We then headed back to our car on the Park & Ride bus and then mum drove to Tesco on the edge of a local town where she had agreed to pick Alf up. Me and mum did a little Tesco shop while waiting for Alf. I was very pleased that I managed to resist buying Diana Vickers' album. It's on Spotify so I can listen to it for now without having the CD, so I decided to wait til the CD drops in price to buy it and be able to put it onto my iPod.
We dropped Alf off at home and went to our local Polling Station to vote. I saw the start of the BBC's election coverage and hope that the exit poll isn't representative of the actual results. The exit poll was created by asking random voters across the country who they'd voted for. And it suggested that we'll have a hung parliament with Conservatives getting the most seats, followed by Labour. It also suggested that Lib Dems will actually lose some seats. I'm supporting Lib Dems so I hope they do better than that. I do suspect that the Conservatives will win though :( I'm not watching the election coverage on TV tonight, I'll just check how the seats are going on the Internet before I go to bed and hear the final result when I get up tomorrow morn.
When we got home I saw my morning tablets out in the kitchen. I'd got up too early to take them this morn so put them out ready to take before we left the house. But I'd forgotten. Whoops! Think that's the first time I've ever done that. I took my Tac as soon as I got in plus the tabs that I only take in the morn and then tonight I took the tablets that I take twice a day minus my Tac. I think that should be ok as sometimes people have to delay taking their Tac if they're having a Tac blood test done at the hosp.
When we got home I also saw my post. Outnumbered series 2 on DVD arrived, so I'm really looking forward to watching that :) Unfortunately there was also something else waiting for me in the post. I opened it to discover my DLA renewal forms - arrrrgggghhh! The last time I applied for DLA was just after my transplant so lots of things have changed since then - my health problems related to my transplant have reduced but I've developed ME. Unfortunately people who have ME struggle to get DLA. I've got a few months to fill the forms out and dad said he'll help me with them, but I am still worried about it. I found the ESA forms hard, this is going to be even harder.
That's now my day to day updates completed but I'm going to do a couple more updates about other bits and pieces before my blog is completely up to date. It's definitely nearly there now though :)
Wednesday, 5 May 2010
Getting up to date with April - part 6 (more day to day stuff)
On Tue 27th April I didn't do much. I did pop out to the local shop though to buy the latest Radio Times and in the evening I helped Alf cash the IOU I'd given him for his birthday at the start of month. He didn't have an iPod charger of his own so kept borrowing mine. If I let him take it out my room he'd forget to give it back so I then told him that he had to use mine in my bedroom. That wasn't ideal though so for his birthday I gave him an IOU for an iPod charger of his own up to the value of £10. The official charger in the local Apple shop cost an astonishing £37, but Alf found one on Amazon that looked fine but wasn't branded for just under £5 (including P&P) so I bought that for him on Tue. When the charger arrived on Fri I was a bit nervous that it might not be compatible with Alf's own iPod Mini or might not work, but it worked fine :)
On the morn of Wed 28th April I popped round to the surgery to collect my new suncream. It's only factor 30 (my previous one that I reacted to was factor 50), but I guess that'll do. It's a huge heavy tube, so I wont want to carry it around with me when I'm out, but it'll be fine to put on at home or in the car before I go out. After that I phoned Barnardo's and talked to the deputy manager again. She said that they would have some work for me to do that day so I agreed to go in after lunch.
As we were heading out I got bad stomach pains but decided to go anyway and see how they were when I got to Barnardo's. They were still quite bad when I got there but I decided to start volunteering and I could always finish early if I was in too much pain. I volunteered for an hour and my tummy was very painful for the first half hour :( But fine for the second half hour :) It was much quieter than the previous time I'd been in and I liked that. However some furniture had been moved around in the back room so I had even less room to move! The only other volunteer in was the deputy manager and she was quite grumpy so I didn't manage to get into conversation with her. It was nice that the clothes I had to hang up were folded and piled on the floor rather than just thrown in a heap.
I then met up with mum and we went for drinks in a cafe in town. After that we looked in a few charity shops where I picked up an Agatha Christie short story book, a 4 DVD set of 80s films (containing Pretty in Pink, Ferris Bueller's Day Off, Some Kind of Wonderful and Planes Trains and Automobiles) and a CD of rainforest sounds which I thought I might be able to listen to when trying to get to sleep at night. When I was in hospital for my transplant I found a CD called Temple in the Forest on the ward, which contained relaxing music that sounded like a forest. That helped me to relax and get to sleep but when I listen to it now it brings back memories of hosp which doesn't help to relax me. So I was pleased to find a CD that looked similar that I thought I might be able to listen to instead. However when I tried it out I discovered that it wasn't music, it was just rainforest sounds. I didn't find it very relaxing to listen to as there was an annoying background chirping sound constantly and then every so often there'd be another animal noise over the top of that which would make me jump! Then me and mum did a supermarket shop before heading home.
On Wed eve Claire came round. We had a lovely evening chatting, having tea, playing on the Wii and watching a film together. A few months ago Claire had asked me about giving a talk on organ donation to some of the students she teaches. She works at a unit which teaches children who can't attend school for behavioural or medical reasons - I met her when she taught me when I was too ill to go to school before my transplant. I'd said I'd get back to her about it but it was just one of those things I'd not managed to get round to. So on Wed I asked Claire if there was still time for me to do this before the end of term. Claire said that'd be great so we decided on a date - Wed 19th May. I'll be speaking to up to twelve GCSE year students, so they'll be about 16. Before then I need to look through the organ donation resources I've got and check I've got enough leaflets, fluffy bugs etc and I also need to plan my talk. I'm confident giving talks to adults, but teenagers seem quite a bit more daunting. And then of course I have no idea how well I'll be on the day. But it'll be great if I can do it to raise awareness of organ donation :)
On Thur 29th April I slept through my alarm (which always goes off at 10.30am so I can get up in time to take my morn Tac 12 hours after my eve Tac) and didn't wake up til 11.40am! Whoops. That put me out of sync for the whole day :P In the post I received some raffle tickets to sell to raise money for AYME and a very cute sock monster that I'd ordered from Lou's Folksy Shop (you can also see Lou's blog here). That morn I wrapped and parcelled up Rosie's birthday presents before taking the parcel round to the post office to send off to make sure it reached Rosie in time for her 18th birthday tomorrow. I was very surprised that she actually received it just 2 days later (I sent it 2nd class)! I also wrote and posted a long overdue letter to Kate - my AYME buddy.
I had a lovely evening watching a film with my mum. Then I got a bit frustrated because Facebook was playing up, but luckily it got sorted out within a couple of hours. Me and mum discussed the possibility of going on a family holiday to Center Parcs later in the year, but she's not mentioned this to dad yet, so it's only a dream at the moment. I'll let you know if it progresses any further.
Thur was one of those days where I realised how fantastic some of my friends are. I got a lovely PM from Rosie as I do every day, when I asked Lou if I could buy another sock monster from her for Mia's 4th birthday she said that she was happy to send her one for free, I received 2 very understanding responses from Michelle and J (who I met at the PINNT meet-up) when I sent them both a brief email to them to let them know that it might take me a few days to reply to their emails and I also received a lovely eCard from Michelle :)
On the morn of Fri 30th April me and mum headed out to a local garden centre that also sells books, clothes, pets, crafts and food for a browse round. We had some drinks in the cafe there and I saw a cute ferret in the pets section. Mum bought some plants for the garden and we bought a new house card for nan in preparation for her move the following day.
After that we headed into town to wander round the shops and do a supermarket shop. When I say town I mean one of our two local towns, we don't go into the same town each time :P I bought a Some Like it Hot DVD in Cash Converters and a deodorant. I also picked up a free local magazine in a charity shop because it included an interview with Marina and the Diamonds. Mum rarely buys DVDs and if she does she buys cheap ones (either reduced or second hand), but that day she bought Avatar on DVD! Mum saw it at the cinema with Alf so she was keen to see it again and for me to watch it too. We've not seen it yet though. We ate our lunch as we were walking round. While we were in Sainsburys I spotted a funny sign on the box of a Wii game which said "Warning! This product contains a security tag which is NOT MICROWAVABLE" I'm not sure why anyone would try to microwave a Wii game! :P Mum said that apparently some security tags can be removed by microwaving the product which might explain that label, but I still thought it was funny.
That eve Chris and Sophie popped round again.
On Sat 1st May my nan moved to another flat in her building. The flat she moved to is more spacious and lighter (due to more windows) than her old flat. Dad and Alf went to help out with her move in the morn and were joined by my uncle Danny and his wife Diane. Mum was at work in the morn and I stayed at home because I wasn't feeling too well but we went to join them after lunch. I didn't feel v well while we were there so wasn't of much help but it was nice to see my nan and my uncle and aunt. The move went smoothly :) I was made official photographer, but because everyone was busy it was difficult to get good photos. I had a go though so thought I'd share a few with you :)
Dad busy at work
Dad showing off the dancing he's practising for Glastonbury, eek!
Alf not very impressed that I'd taken a photo of him!
My aunt Diane with my mum
My nan
To be continued...
On the morn of Wed 28th April I popped round to the surgery to collect my new suncream. It's only factor 30 (my previous one that I reacted to was factor 50), but I guess that'll do. It's a huge heavy tube, so I wont want to carry it around with me when I'm out, but it'll be fine to put on at home or in the car before I go out. After that I phoned Barnardo's and talked to the deputy manager again. She said that they would have some work for me to do that day so I agreed to go in after lunch.
As we were heading out I got bad stomach pains but decided to go anyway and see how they were when I got to Barnardo's. They were still quite bad when I got there but I decided to start volunteering and I could always finish early if I was in too much pain. I volunteered for an hour and my tummy was very painful for the first half hour :( But fine for the second half hour :) It was much quieter than the previous time I'd been in and I liked that. However some furniture had been moved around in the back room so I had even less room to move! The only other volunteer in was the deputy manager and she was quite grumpy so I didn't manage to get into conversation with her. It was nice that the clothes I had to hang up were folded and piled on the floor rather than just thrown in a heap.
I then met up with mum and we went for drinks in a cafe in town. After that we looked in a few charity shops where I picked up an Agatha Christie short story book, a 4 DVD set of 80s films (containing Pretty in Pink, Ferris Bueller's Day Off, Some Kind of Wonderful and Planes Trains and Automobiles) and a CD of rainforest sounds which I thought I might be able to listen to when trying to get to sleep at night. When I was in hospital for my transplant I found a CD called Temple in the Forest on the ward, which contained relaxing music that sounded like a forest. That helped me to relax and get to sleep but when I listen to it now it brings back memories of hosp which doesn't help to relax me. So I was pleased to find a CD that looked similar that I thought I might be able to listen to instead. However when I tried it out I discovered that it wasn't music, it was just rainforest sounds. I didn't find it very relaxing to listen to as there was an annoying background chirping sound constantly and then every so often there'd be another animal noise over the top of that which would make me jump! Then me and mum did a supermarket shop before heading home.
On Wed eve Claire came round. We had a lovely evening chatting, having tea, playing on the Wii and watching a film together. A few months ago Claire had asked me about giving a talk on organ donation to some of the students she teaches. She works at a unit which teaches children who can't attend school for behavioural or medical reasons - I met her when she taught me when I was too ill to go to school before my transplant. I'd said I'd get back to her about it but it was just one of those things I'd not managed to get round to. So on Wed I asked Claire if there was still time for me to do this before the end of term. Claire said that'd be great so we decided on a date - Wed 19th May. I'll be speaking to up to twelve GCSE year students, so they'll be about 16. Before then I need to look through the organ donation resources I've got and check I've got enough leaflets, fluffy bugs etc and I also need to plan my talk. I'm confident giving talks to adults, but teenagers seem quite a bit more daunting. And then of course I have no idea how well I'll be on the day. But it'll be great if I can do it to raise awareness of organ donation :)
On Thur 29th April I slept through my alarm (which always goes off at 10.30am so I can get up in time to take my morn Tac 12 hours after my eve Tac) and didn't wake up til 11.40am! Whoops. That put me out of sync for the whole day :P In the post I received some raffle tickets to sell to raise money for AYME and a very cute sock monster that I'd ordered from Lou's Folksy Shop (you can also see Lou's blog here). That morn I wrapped and parcelled up Rosie's birthday presents before taking the parcel round to the post office to send off to make sure it reached Rosie in time for her 18th birthday tomorrow. I was very surprised that she actually received it just 2 days later (I sent it 2nd class)! I also wrote and posted a long overdue letter to Kate - my AYME buddy.
I had a lovely evening watching a film with my mum. Then I got a bit frustrated because Facebook was playing up, but luckily it got sorted out within a couple of hours. Me and mum discussed the possibility of going on a family holiday to Center Parcs later in the year, but she's not mentioned this to dad yet, so it's only a dream at the moment. I'll let you know if it progresses any further.
Thur was one of those days where I realised how fantastic some of my friends are. I got a lovely PM from Rosie as I do every day, when I asked Lou if I could buy another sock monster from her for Mia's 4th birthday she said that she was happy to send her one for free, I received 2 very understanding responses from Michelle and J (who I met at the PINNT meet-up) when I sent them both a brief email to them to let them know that it might take me a few days to reply to their emails and I also received a lovely eCard from Michelle :)
On the morn of Fri 30th April me and mum headed out to a local garden centre that also sells books, clothes, pets, crafts and food for a browse round. We had some drinks in the cafe there and I saw a cute ferret in the pets section. Mum bought some plants for the garden and we bought a new house card for nan in preparation for her move the following day.
After that we headed into town to wander round the shops and do a supermarket shop. When I say town I mean one of our two local towns, we don't go into the same town each time :P I bought a Some Like it Hot DVD in Cash Converters and a deodorant. I also picked up a free local magazine in a charity shop because it included an interview with Marina and the Diamonds. Mum rarely buys DVDs and if she does she buys cheap ones (either reduced or second hand), but that day she bought Avatar on DVD! Mum saw it at the cinema with Alf so she was keen to see it again and for me to watch it too. We've not seen it yet though. We ate our lunch as we were walking round. While we were in Sainsburys I spotted a funny sign on the box of a Wii game which said "Warning! This product contains a security tag which is NOT MICROWAVABLE" I'm not sure why anyone would try to microwave a Wii game! :P Mum said that apparently some security tags can be removed by microwaving the product which might explain that label, but I still thought it was funny.
That eve Chris and Sophie popped round again.
On Sat 1st May my nan moved to another flat in her building. The flat she moved to is more spacious and lighter (due to more windows) than her old flat. Dad and Alf went to help out with her move in the morn and were joined by my uncle Danny and his wife Diane. Mum was at work in the morn and I stayed at home because I wasn't feeling too well but we went to join them after lunch. I didn't feel v well while we were there so wasn't of much help but it was nice to see my nan and my uncle and aunt. The move went smoothly :) I was made official photographer, but because everyone was busy it was difficult to get good photos. I had a go though so thought I'd share a few with you :)
My mum looking like a pixie
My uncle Danny
Dad busy at work
Dad showing off the dancing he's practising for Glastonbury, eek!
Alf not very impressed that I'd taken a photo of him!
My aunt Diane with my mum
My nan
Concert!
I'll do another proper update tonight but just wanted to share some excitement with you. I've just got me and my mum tickets to see Marina and the Diamonds in concert in Oct! :D I've been wanting to see her in concert for a while because I love her music but her May tour was standing only, so I couldn't go as I can't stand for that long. I'd been waiting all morn for the presale for her Oct/Nov tour and really hoping that one of my two nearest venues would have seated tickets available. The tickets finally went on sale 15mins ago and although my nearest venue was standing only another venue that's not too far away had seats available and mum said we could go. Our seats are in the front row of the circle :) I'm so excited!!!!!!!!! :D
If you're not familiar with Marina's music then you can see some of her music videos on Youtube here.
If you're not familiar with Marina's music then you can see some of her music videos on Youtube here.
Tuesday, 4 May 2010
Getting up to date with April - part 5 (more day to day stuff)
On Wed 21st April I was woken early by dad shouting Alf because he'd missed his bus to college. Dad ended up running him to a nearby bus stop in the car and Alf caught the bus there. I managed to get back to sleep after that though :) A science GCSE certificate from my secondary school arrived in the post that morn. I realised a little while ago that I'd never received it so Claire chased it up for me. That morn I had to wait in for some deliveries because my mum was out. My Tac was delivered and dad received a waterproof MP3 player for him to listen to while swimming. He'd got one a few weeks ago but it didn't work, so he'd sent it back for an exchange. Luckily the second one he received worked fine and dad seems very happy with it.
Mum had to go to the village library for a lesson in emails. Mum doesn't use her emails at work because the library is single manned so she hasn't got time to read through all her emails (most of which are county council ones that are sent to lots of people and have no relevance to my mum) and reply to the ones that need replying to while serving customers. And she's not going to go in and do it in her own time and not get paid for it. Mum's opinion is that if it's important people can phone her! However the higher people think that because mum doesn't use her emails she can't use her emails so arranged for her to have a lesson. But the lesson was a complete waste of time. The email programme my mum has to use looked different to the one that the teacher used, so she didn't know what she was doing! My mum hasn't had anything to do with her emails for a couple of years now so she had 1500 unwanted emails to reply to. Between them they couldn't find a way to delete them all so the teacher made my mum delete them one-by-one and then delete them one-by-one from the deleted items folder! And that was the lesson over because that took a couple of hours! How ridiculous. I think my mum is attempting to learn the basics of her emails now because there's a qualification she wants to get but she'll need to use emails to get it.
When my mum got back we popped round to the local shop and the village butchers together. We couldn't believe that the butchers had no free range chicken! So we didn't get any chicken for them - mum changed the meal we were going to have for tea and based it around ham instead of chicken. If we'd have wanted free range chicken we would have had to drive into town to go to a supermarket. I thought it was ridiculous that the village butchers had no free range chicken, I think I might write a letter to them about it - it's on my list of things to do.
That evening Chris and Sophie popped round again and I spoke to Lizzy on the phone to confirm Sat.
On Thur 22nd April I attended my first physio appt at Hosp H. I was very nervous beforehand in case I had another physio who knew nothing about ME but it went much better than I expected. The physio I saw knew a lot about ME and was very easy to talk to. We talked about the importance of pacing (a technique for managing energy levels in ME). It sounds like her idea of pacing would be for me to work out my baseline for various activities (how much I can do comfortably) and then try to gradually increase that. She gave me an activity diary to fill out for a week (which I've already done) and asked me to find my walking baseline by timing how long I can walk for on a good day, an ok day and a bad day and then averaging the times out. I did try this once on an ok day but found I could just keep walking until I got to where I was going. I recorded when my legs felt more tired though and would have recorded when my heels started hurting but they were fine that day. I'll show that and the activity diary to my physio when I see her again on Wed 12th May. I also mentioned the pain I'm getting in my feet due to plantar fasciitis so she said that she'll have a look at my feet next time for me.
After my physio appt I met mum on a bench outside the hosp where she'd struck up conversation with a stranger. Hehe. Then we had our packed lunches in the hospital quadrangle, which brought back some memories of spending time there when I was younger. After lunch we went to visit my Nan who at this point hoped to be discharged the following day. She hadn't had an xray as the doctors had decided that she didn't have a broken rib. I think that they thought that her feeling ill had just been related to her heart problem. That evening Chris popped round.
I didn't go out on Fri 23rd April but had a busy morning wrapping some presents for friends. It was Claire's birthday the following Mon (26th April), but she was coming round that evening so I wanted to be able to give her her wrapped presents then. I bought Claire the Radio Times exclusive Doctor Who book and 2 DVDs (Speed and Memoirs of a Geisha). I also wrapped up the doll we'd bought for Mia's 4th birthday. It isn't her birthday until this Thur (6th May), but because her and Lizzy were coming round the following day we wanted to give Lizzy Mia's present then. That afternoon I decluttered and tidied my room a little bit and then Claire came round in the evening.
On Sat 24th April my Nan was discharged from hospital and dad helped her settle back at home in her flat :) Lizzy and Mia came round about lunchtime to spend the afternoon with us. It was a lovely warm sunny day so we sat out in the garden and I had to get changed out of my poloneck and into a t-shirt! We chatted a lot, went to a local jumble sale (where I bought the Joseph soundtrack on CD and A Series of Unfortunate Events audiobook for 25p each) and had a BBQ for tea. Me and Lizzy also played on my Wii together but Mia decided she wanted to play too so that was good fun :) I asked Lizzy to record Holly's Battlefront prog when it was on TV again a little while ago and write it to DVD for me, so when she came round she bought 5 DVDs each with a copy of the programme on :) Lizzy also lent me some short story books that she thought I could try because I can't read novels at the moment. I've only tried one so far but I managed to read it :)
On the morn of Sun 25th April lots of old Mr Gumpy style cars came driving down our road. Mum sat out on the front bench and waved to each of them but she often didn't get a response from the snooty drivers. Mum thought she saw about 70 in total. We only live in a little village so this was quite intriguing! Mum heard from someone that they were going to a posh house in the next village (not really sure why), so we had a walk there to look for the cars. Unfortunately they'd all left by this point - they must have gone a different way as they didn't go back past our house. Then we walked to the village bowls club where dad was playing bowls. We stopped and chatted to people there for about an hour. I had no idea who most of the people were but everyone seemed to know me and everything about my health too! Thanks mum - she tells everyone everything whereas I like to be a bit more private! I wanted a drink there but they didn't have any milk or apple juice. They only had J2Os (which I think would be too strong for me), fizzy drinks (yuk) and alcoholic drinks.
I heard from Becky that the Telegraph were giving away Dr Who audiobooks. I'd missed Sat's because I didn't know at that time but wandered round to the local shop on Sun to have a look. The Sun Telegraph only had half of the audiobook (the second half would be in Mon's paper) and cost almost £2 so I decided against it. I'm sure they'll turn up at carboot sales and in charity shops soon.
On the morn of Mon 26th April I phoned Barnardo's to see if they had anything for me to do if I went in that afternoon. Usually the manager (who I know) answers the phone, but she wasn't in that day so the deputy manager answered the phone instead. She had no idea who I was so had to go off to ask if anyone else had heard of me! Then when she got back to the phone after speaking to someone else she said "Does you mum bring you in?". I'd prefer not to be known as the volunteer who's mum brings her in! Then I was told that there was no work for me that day.
Me and mum went into town anyway. On the way we went via someone's house to pick up a Doctor Who DVD (Utopia from series 3) that they had been offering on Freecycle and I'd got. We went into all the usual charity shops. In a charity shop I nearly bought the Blue Planet DVD boxset for £5 but I left it to think about it and when I went back for it it had been sold. Never mind. I bought 3 Agatha Christie audio books in one charity shop for 75p each and bought both parts of a Dr Who audiobook called The Stone Rose (which had originally been free with the Radio Times) for 50p in another charity shop. Me and mum stopped for drinks in a cafe, but again I didn't have much luck with drinks. They couldn't sell drinks of milk and didn't have any clear apple juice so I had cloudy apple juice instead (which I don't like as much). Me and mum did the crossword while we had our drinks. Then we called in at 2 supermarkets before heading home.
Once we got back to the village I called in at the surgery to pick up some tablets I'd ordered. I also found out that a new suncream had been ordered for me.
Mum had to go to the village library for a lesson in emails. Mum doesn't use her emails at work because the library is single manned so she hasn't got time to read through all her emails (most of which are county council ones that are sent to lots of people and have no relevance to my mum) and reply to the ones that need replying to while serving customers. And she's not going to go in and do it in her own time and not get paid for it. Mum's opinion is that if it's important people can phone her! However the higher people think that because mum doesn't use her emails she can't use her emails so arranged for her to have a lesson. But the lesson was a complete waste of time. The email programme my mum has to use looked different to the one that the teacher used, so she didn't know what she was doing! My mum hasn't had anything to do with her emails for a couple of years now so she had 1500 unwanted emails to reply to. Between them they couldn't find a way to delete them all so the teacher made my mum delete them one-by-one and then delete them one-by-one from the deleted items folder! And that was the lesson over because that took a couple of hours! How ridiculous. I think my mum is attempting to learn the basics of her emails now because there's a qualification she wants to get but she'll need to use emails to get it.
When my mum got back we popped round to the local shop and the village butchers together. We couldn't believe that the butchers had no free range chicken! So we didn't get any chicken for them - mum changed the meal we were going to have for tea and based it around ham instead of chicken. If we'd have wanted free range chicken we would have had to drive into town to go to a supermarket. I thought it was ridiculous that the village butchers had no free range chicken, I think I might write a letter to them about it - it's on my list of things to do.
That evening Chris and Sophie popped round again and I spoke to Lizzy on the phone to confirm Sat.
On Thur 22nd April I attended my first physio appt at Hosp H. I was very nervous beforehand in case I had another physio who knew nothing about ME but it went much better than I expected. The physio I saw knew a lot about ME and was very easy to talk to. We talked about the importance of pacing (a technique for managing energy levels in ME). It sounds like her idea of pacing would be for me to work out my baseline for various activities (how much I can do comfortably) and then try to gradually increase that. She gave me an activity diary to fill out for a week (which I've already done) and asked me to find my walking baseline by timing how long I can walk for on a good day, an ok day and a bad day and then averaging the times out. I did try this once on an ok day but found I could just keep walking until I got to where I was going. I recorded when my legs felt more tired though and would have recorded when my heels started hurting but they were fine that day. I'll show that and the activity diary to my physio when I see her again on Wed 12th May. I also mentioned the pain I'm getting in my feet due to plantar fasciitis so she said that she'll have a look at my feet next time for me.
After my physio appt I met mum on a bench outside the hosp where she'd struck up conversation with a stranger. Hehe. Then we had our packed lunches in the hospital quadrangle, which brought back some memories of spending time there when I was younger. After lunch we went to visit my Nan who at this point hoped to be discharged the following day. She hadn't had an xray as the doctors had decided that she didn't have a broken rib. I think that they thought that her feeling ill had just been related to her heart problem. That evening Chris popped round.
I didn't go out on Fri 23rd April but had a busy morning wrapping some presents for friends. It was Claire's birthday the following Mon (26th April), but she was coming round that evening so I wanted to be able to give her her wrapped presents then. I bought Claire the Radio Times exclusive Doctor Who book and 2 DVDs (Speed and Memoirs of a Geisha). I also wrapped up the doll we'd bought for Mia's 4th birthday. It isn't her birthday until this Thur (6th May), but because her and Lizzy were coming round the following day we wanted to give Lizzy Mia's present then. That afternoon I decluttered and tidied my room a little bit and then Claire came round in the evening.
On Sat 24th April my Nan was discharged from hospital and dad helped her settle back at home in her flat :) Lizzy and Mia came round about lunchtime to spend the afternoon with us. It was a lovely warm sunny day so we sat out in the garden and I had to get changed out of my poloneck and into a t-shirt! We chatted a lot, went to a local jumble sale (where I bought the Joseph soundtrack on CD and A Series of Unfortunate Events audiobook for 25p each) and had a BBQ for tea. Me and Lizzy also played on my Wii together but Mia decided she wanted to play too so that was good fun :) I asked Lizzy to record Holly's Battlefront prog when it was on TV again a little while ago and write it to DVD for me, so when she came round she bought 5 DVDs each with a copy of the programme on :) Lizzy also lent me some short story books that she thought I could try because I can't read novels at the moment. I've only tried one so far but I managed to read it :)
On the morn of Sun 25th April lots of old Mr Gumpy style cars came driving down our road. Mum sat out on the front bench and waved to each of them but she often didn't get a response from the snooty drivers. Mum thought she saw about 70 in total. We only live in a little village so this was quite intriguing! Mum heard from someone that they were going to a posh house in the next village (not really sure why), so we had a walk there to look for the cars. Unfortunately they'd all left by this point - they must have gone a different way as they didn't go back past our house. Then we walked to the village bowls club where dad was playing bowls. We stopped and chatted to people there for about an hour. I had no idea who most of the people were but everyone seemed to know me and everything about my health too! Thanks mum - she tells everyone everything whereas I like to be a bit more private! I wanted a drink there but they didn't have any milk or apple juice. They only had J2Os (which I think would be too strong for me), fizzy drinks (yuk) and alcoholic drinks.
I heard from Becky that the Telegraph were giving away Dr Who audiobooks. I'd missed Sat's because I didn't know at that time but wandered round to the local shop on Sun to have a look. The Sun Telegraph only had half of the audiobook (the second half would be in Mon's paper) and cost almost £2 so I decided against it. I'm sure they'll turn up at carboot sales and in charity shops soon.
On the morn of Mon 26th April I phoned Barnardo's to see if they had anything for me to do if I went in that afternoon. Usually the manager (who I know) answers the phone, but she wasn't in that day so the deputy manager answered the phone instead. She had no idea who I was so had to go off to ask if anyone else had heard of me! Then when she got back to the phone after speaking to someone else she said "Does you mum bring you in?". I'd prefer not to be known as the volunteer who's mum brings her in! Then I was told that there was no work for me that day.
Me and mum went into town anyway. On the way we went via someone's house to pick up a Doctor Who DVD (Utopia from series 3) that they had been offering on Freecycle and I'd got. We went into all the usual charity shops. In a charity shop I nearly bought the Blue Planet DVD boxset for £5 but I left it to think about it and when I went back for it it had been sold. Never mind. I bought 3 Agatha Christie audio books in one charity shop for 75p each and bought both parts of a Dr Who audiobook called The Stone Rose (which had originally been free with the Radio Times) for 50p in another charity shop. Me and mum stopped for drinks in a cafe, but again I didn't have much luck with drinks. They couldn't sell drinks of milk and didn't have any clear apple juice so I had cloudy apple juice instead (which I don't like as much). Me and mum did the crossword while we had our drinks. Then we called in at 2 supermarkets before heading home.
Once we got back to the village I called in at the surgery to pick up some tablets I'd ordered. I also found out that a new suncream had been ordered for me.
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