Weekly roundup

I’ve had one of those weeks where every single thing has gone wrong.

Out of the blue at 11am Thursday morning I received a request for a house viewing that afternoon, so a mad scramble ensued to get everything cleaned, tidied and perfect.  After the viewing I received 5 stars on the feedback form, so the house was just what he wanted.  He then preceded to say my immaculate little cottage wasn’t worth what I was asking for it and wanted to knock £25,000 off the price.  I would have laughed if I hadn’t been so fucking exhausted.

Feeling really MEish and unwell, that evening I got into bed just wanting to chill with a brew and Say Yes To The Dress.  Turned on the telly…………and saw the dreaded blue screen with ‘no satellite signal’.   Arrrgghhhhhh.   I eventually worked out that when I was recording a programme the signal went off from every other channel, so I tried all the usual fixes but nothing worked.  *Sob*.  However, I got up the next morning with renewed determination to not spend £60 on a Sky engineer, removed all the cables, cleaned them and put them back and yayyy I’m back to watching grown women fight over whether to buy the sexy mermaid or the humongous ballgown.  Get the meringue you weirdo, it’s your wedding day and the only time in your entire life you get to look like a toilet roll holder princess 😉

I was woken at 4.30am on Saturday by the sound of my dog retching.  Pets at Home no longer stock the hard rubber balls he loves so I’ve had to order some from t’internet.  While I was waiting for them to arrive I gave him a softer ball someone had put in his Xmas stocking last year, only he tore it to bits behind my back and swallowed it 😮  So at 4.45am I was cleaning up vomit laden with bits of white rubber while the dog promptly went back to sleep and had the cheek to snore.  And bugger me, if at 4.15am this morning the mutt didn’t wake again retching, though this time he just upchucked bile 😦  I do hope he hasn’t got rubber lodged somewhere and needs vet assistance – it sounds terrible but I don’t have the time, energy or cash this month to be dealing with a sick Bertie on top of everything else.

My cleaner let me down on Wednesday and my dog walker couldn’t come on Friday.  Again.

I have put on a shed load of weight in recent months and currently look like a Telly Tubby.   I got my winter clothes out this week and my jeans actually laughed at me when I tried to fasten them, so I’ve had to buy some new kit.  I spent ages on the M&S website picking out stuff to hide my Tinky Winky arse, go to the checkout……..and my credit card had expired.  Fuckety fuck fuck.  There’s a link for me to add a new card, but when I click on it nothing happens.  So I stab the keyboard repeatedly with my finger, but surprisingly the link still doesn’t open.  After the week I’ve had I want to blow my laptop to smithereens with a home-made bomb but I resist because knowing my luck I’d be arrested as a terrorist.   I try another browser, same result.  So I have to start from scratch, enter the ‘my account’ section, add a new card, then re-shop and re-checkout.  I’m too tired for this shit.

I have two major photography events coming up – more on those at a later date – but suffice to say I needed to print fifteen A3 size pictures off………..and I ran out of ink.  I also needed to mount and frame ten of the pictures, so I sent for 5 frames off Amazon to match 5 existing frames I have – it’s really important everything is perfect.  I waited 10 days for the frames to arrive, not realizing the order wasn’t fulfilled by Amazon but by some company in outer-mon-shagging-golia, and then when they got here they were fakes and nothing like my existing frames.  Now panicking as I have a deadline, I’ve had to pay £45 more for the frames directly from the manufacturer and my heart is in my mouth waiting for them to arrive and for them to not be damaged in any way.

While I was sat on the lounge carpet mounting my pictures I reached behind me for the scissors……………….and felt something in my pelvis snap.  Ouch.  Ouch.  Fucking OUCH!  My guess would be I’ve subluxed my SI joint and torn the ligament.  Again.   I’m now barely able to hobble and in constant pain during the busiest month I’ve had in a decade.  Thank you Universe for your help and compassion, you twat.

Today my Dad is going to a nearby Castle for a memorabilia weekend to which he’s submitted some images of his Dad who used to work there in the 1950s.  Unfortunately I am unable to take him in the wheelchair as I’m going to a literary festival with a friend, so my brother is going with him.  However, he flatly refuses to push him round in the wheelchair even though he’s totally fit and well, so my Dad asked if he could borrow my little mobility scooter that goes in the car boot.  For 2 years now while my Dad has hardly been able to walk I have tried to persuade him to use a mobility scooter but would he?  No!  He’s either hobbled around in agony or he’s made his sick daughter push him in the wheelchair, but the second my brother tells him to use the scooter he’s on it.  I’m so pissed I could slap the pair of them.  So I’ve had to virtually dismantle the shed to get the scooter out (I don’t use it anymore as I now have a big road scooter), clean it, charge the battery, put it together to let my Dad have a go so he knows how to use it, then spend an hour writing instructions with pictures for my brother on how to take it apart and put it back together for transportation.  Because I’m’ clearly not having a busy enough week.

Since my recent phantom period my stomach has been swollen like a football and I have not been in the best of humours (just in case you can’t tell from this post).  However, today I am meeting my bestie for lunch and we are going to listen to a couple of speakers talk about some shite I can’t even remember and I am very much looking forward to getting out of the house and doing something different.  I’ve been awake since 4.15am, am dizzy and my pelvis is on fire but I’m sure driving 60 miles and sitting on a hard chair for a few hours will be grand and if I pass out my mate will cover me with her jacket and let me sleep.

 

Histamine Testing

As regular readers know, last year I discovered a research team in Hong Kong who had a prototype testing device for measuring the histamine content of food.  They had made it predominantly to test for histamine in fish and seafood, but after I wrote to them explaining about our illnesses and the fact we were all desperate for a way to be able to test the histamine in other types of food they said it should be adaptable for our needs.  I was beyond excited and one of the researchers came over to the UK to demonstrate the device to me.  That was back in April, but despite saying they’d send me the prototype to try by early June I heard nothing from them.

Today I received an email from the lead researcher to say that unfortunately the company they’d approached to produce the prototype wanted $30,000 and there was no way that was affordable for them, so the project had been shelved 😦  I am absolutely and utterly gutted.

Not only has the project been shelved, but the lead researcher has left his post in Hong Kong to move to the UK in a different role so that is very much the end of that.  So my friends, we are still out in the wilderness in terms of being able to test our food for histamine and playing Russian Roulette as to whether we’ll go into anaphylactic shock or not on any given day.  Great.

Weekly roundup

I do my bit for other people and hope I am both a good friend and a good daughter.  People rely on me because I’m dependable, practical, knowledgeable about ‘stuff’ and will help someone out if I feasibly can.   Because I am at home all day, they assume they can call on me whenever they need to.  They also assume I am free to go out to lunch, off on days out and generally have so much time on my hands I am sitting by the phone just waiting for them to call.  They tend to forget that I am sick and live alone with no-one to help me.  I spend a minimum of 17 hours of every day in bed so only have 7 usable hours each day in which to fit my entire life, I have severe energy restrictions and I struggle just to get dressed.

I do try to set boundaries, but enforcing them can be just as exhausting as caving in.  An elderly, sick friend is currently moving house and I have spent whole days helping him.  On top of that he goes to a cafe every Sunday morning and expects me to meet him for brunch, even though I might already have had lunch with him one day in the week.  He became so demanding this week that I had to remind him of my situation and that in the past month I’d actually spent more time with him than my own parents.  In addition, I had not had one single day to myself, where I sat in the garden with a book, for an entire YEAR.

I try to have 3 ‘holidays’ each year: Easter, my birthday in September and Christmas.  I never go anywhere as I can’t afford to plus there’s no-one to have the dog, but I am supposed to spend the time lounging around doing absolutely nothing, just like I would if I were on the beach in Greece.   It never fucking works.  I missed my Easter holiday this year because I had a virus, so I told my parents I was having a week off this week as the weather was due to be lovely.  I was so looking forward to just lying on my sunbed and snoozing for days.  It didn’t happen.

Monday I had to go into town as the battery in my watch died and Bertie’s repeat prescription needed picking up, so I called in to see my parents.  My Mum’s doorbell needing fixing (vital and couldn’t be left), a birthday present needed wrapping for their sponsor child in India (there was a deadline) and she wanted me to order some cropped trousers for her as she’d put on weight and none of her summer clothes fitted and being as though we were expecting 38C temperatures and if she’s hot her breathing gets worse I felt like I had to.

Tuesday I did manage some ‘me’ time, but it was physically demanding as it involved being down by the river to take some photos.  I was quite pleased with the results, though, as I’d wanted to capture a gull fishing for at least 3 years!

Wednesday I went to view the bungalow in the morning, then my cleaner was here in the afternoon and I have to tidy up before she arrives because the house often looks like I’ve been burgled.

Thursday I have my groceries delivered and they needed to be put away.  Then we had wicked thunder storms and torrential rain, so I was forced to lie in bed watching repeats of Escape To The Country.   Lightening hit near my parents’ house and their landline stopped working, so I had to go in and work out if it was their phone (in which case they needed a new one) or the line (in which case they needed an engineer).  It turned out the micro filter had blown so they needed a new one of those.

Friday was the only day I managed to sit in the garden, because on Saturday it peed down.  And of course every single afternoon, plus 3 mornings, I have to take Bertie out because his bladder doesn’t take a week off.  And I still have to make meals, and stack the dishwasher, and put the recycling out…………

Needless to say it hasn’t felt much like a holiday.  It never does.  I am just as knackered as I was at the start of the week and I genuinely don’t know what the answer is.

 

Weekly roundup

I had every intention of writing a fun, informative post on some wildly exciting theme this week but life had other plans.  I’m currently contemplating redecorating my lounge and I would love a new sofa.  I bought the one I have now 15 years ago because it was practical – it’s a recliner for my orthostatic intolerance, it has high backs to support my neck and it’s dark coloured wipeable leather for the world’s muckiest dog – it’s also ugly as sin and cold to sit on.   Just for once I want a pretty sofa and have my eye on a velvet corner unit, however if I’m going to spend a massive amount of cash on a piece of furniture it has to be just right and I’m struggling to find exactly what I want.  So on Tuesday I decided to trail miles to Gateshead to the Sofa Workshop to see if they could make me one up.

However, I knew I’d get back late and be totally zonked so at 7.30am I thought I’d prepare the veg for my dinner so it was ready to come home to.  Big mistake.  Huge.  No-one should be in charge of sharp objects when they haven’t eaten breakfast yet and are still half asleep.  You know what’s coming.  Yes, my friends, the knife slipped and I tried to chop my thumb off.  Ouch!  (only I didn’t say that – I said words that began with F and B 😉 ).  There was blood everywhere and I nearly fainted because I hadn’t eaten for 13 hours, however I finally got my hand wrapped in a damp dishcloth, managed to make and eat breakfast and get dressed, waited for my dog walker to arrive so that she could have the mutt and drove the 7 miles to A&E one handed where I ended up having 6 steri strips put on.  As I have hEDS and my skin gapes like a fish when it’s cut I thought I might need stitches and to be fair looking at it 6 days on I think I should have had stiches because it hasn’t knitted together well and the wound is all lumpy, but it is what it is.    Taking the steri strips off yesterday was a sod, as I had to rip the caked on bloody scabs off too – yowza.

So all the things I had planned for this week went out the window as life one handed is tricky.  Having said all that, later that morning I still drove all the way to Gateshead,  light headed and with my hand on fire, to look at sofas and was gutted when even they didn’t have what I was looking for!

As if all that weren’t enough, I was out with Bertie for his afternoon jollies on Friday when all of a sudden he sat down and started licking his back end.  When he stood up again his lovely tail, which proudly curles over his back, was limp and hanging like a dead weight and he was obviously in pain and refusing to move.   He already has a severely herniated disc right at the base of his back/top of his tail so any problem involving his back end makes me panic!   His legs seemed fine though, so I wondered if he’d been stung by a bee or something.  I managed to get him home and gave him some paracetomol but it didn’t help and he was in so much pain he couldn’t sit, stand or lie, so we ended up at the vets who was as flummoxed as I was.  She gave him some Tramadol and said to see how he was the next morning, but even the Tramadol didn’t stop the pain and by 6pm he was still unable to sit or lie down.  So I rang the vet back and we added 200mg of Gabapentin (he’s already on a low dose of Gabapentin for his spinal problem).  That did the trick and he finally managed to get some sleep.  Thankfully on Saturday morning he could move his tail, if not curl it, and the pain was much improved so I’m now wondering if it was a bite from a horse fly into the joint – they’re evil little fuckers and having been bitten by one myself I can safely say it’s agony.

So my week has been a bit draining, both physically and emotionally.  I love my dog so much the thought of anything happening to him turns my insides to ice.

There has been good news too though, yet again from my photography.  Each year, our regionial wildlife charity puts together a Calendar to raise funds and I have had this image of Swans chosen for the February entry 🙂  The other exciting thing to happen this week is that I bought a gorgeous red and gold hooped gown in a flash sale to use for a photo, so look out for the resulting image in next week’s roundup.

 

Home Histamine Testing News!

As my regular readers will know, a dedicated team in Hong Kong are working on a small device which will allow members of the public to test food in their own home for histamine.   It’s the Holy Grail for us, as the only way to know how much histamine is in the food we eat is to test the food we eat!

The testing device is now in fairly advanced stages of research although isn’t on the market yet.  The team have promised to send me the device to test in the next month or so when the final prototype is ready.  I’m sooooo excited about that I can’t even tell you and am eager to start testing foods and sharing the results with you all.

I heard from Roy this morning with some fabulous news.   The team had submitted their sensor to the 47th International Exhibition of Inventions in Geneva and I am thrilled to announce they have won gold 🙂  GOLD!  Isn’t that brilliant?!  The exhibition is regarded as the world’s most important event exclusively dedicated to inventions and involved more than 700 exhibitors from 45 countries.  Inventions are presented by companies, universities, private and State Institutes and organizations, and there are more than 30,000 visitors from five continents alongside 650 journalists from both the written and spoken press and television from throughout the world.   It’s a massive achievement.   Huge congratulations to all involved and I’m delighted the team have been awarded the recognition they deserve.

Weekly roundup

I have had a horrendous few days.  The depths to which people can be vicious and vindictive shocks me, especially when they are grown adults.  I have alternated all week between being  angrily defiant to being a weepy, crumbling wreck – I am too ill for this crap which is wholeheartedly undeserved.  I wrote about the situation in my last post so I won’t harp on.

As if being slandered and publicly humiliated weren’t bad enough, I have had one of the worst colds in years this week.  It started with an 8 day migraine, then came razor blades every time I swallowed and three days later the sneezing, streaming and coughing began and to add insult to injury I still have a banging head.  Due to that, and the almost unbearable stress of recent events at my Camera Club, I have barely eaten or slept for days.  The Pheasant splattered by a car on the road outside my house feels better than me today.

I have felt so poorly I have done nothing and seen no-one.  I speak like Donald Duck, cough like a 40-a-day chain smoker and you can image what massive stress + a virus has done for my M.E.   Consequently I really don’t have much to tell you.

The only bright light on the horizon is the news that I won another photography medal this week at an international Salon.  Silver, for my new picture called ‘On the shelf‘.  My friend told me she now has congratulations fatigue.  Another medal?  Yeah, whatever……. 😀

Weekly roundup

This week has been physically tough.  My period arrived (I swear I’ll still need sanitary products when I’m dead cos Aunto Flo is showing zero signs of buggering off!) and I am currently on day 7 of a migraine.  My knees and elbows are having a pain flare for reasons unknown and I’m still so brain fogged/exhausted I feel like I’m drugged.  But other than that I’m good 😉

On Monday I took my Mum through to the city to visit the hearing aid clinic at the Hospital.  She wears two hearing aids but they simply won’t stay in her ears and she’s already lost one which dropped out as she went round the supermarket.  It turns out she has very narrow ear canals and even the smallest aid is too big, so they’re custom making her ones which sit inside the ear itself instead.  As my Mum rarely gets out of the house we made a day of it, having our lunch out and a tootle round Matalan as it’s all on the flat for the wheelchair and has a good sized disabled changing room.

The rest of the week I’ve been trying to organize repairs to my car port, the back of which is made of old wood which has totally disintegrated.  All was going fine until we discovered asbestos and then it was on to plan b!  When you have M.E. you barely have the energy to get dressed let alone for events to go belly up.  So now the job is much more complicated than I expected and will take twice as long – of course it will, because Mr Sod has it in for me.

As I wrote about in this post my Dad and I made a last minute trip to the Hospital in Newcastle on Friday.  I was expecting them to finally say his neuropathy was idiopathic (ie no explanation could be found) and to tell him he just has to learn to live with it, however they’ve said that idiopathic neuropathy isn’t usually progressive and severe like my Dad’s so they are still searching for a cause, which is great news but means yet more 180 mile trips to the Hospital for tests and appointments which nearly kills me and takes a week to get over.

Yesterday I found out I’d won two more trophies for my photography in an annual competition which involves all 52 camera clubs across the north of England 🙂  I genuinely wasn’t expecting them so am tickled pink.  However, my joy was momentarily marred by the news that a smear campaign has now been started against me by the bullies at my Camera Club who are saying I’m writing shit about my Club on Facebook.  It is blatantly untrue.  I have written one post on Facebook about their behaviour and the way they have treated me, in a measured non-ranty way and mentioning no names, but would never in a million years ever trash my club because I’ve loved being a part of it.  The sad part is, people who aren’t even on my Facebook and haven’t read the post are believing the bullies 😦  This is what bullies do when their behaviour is exposed – they deflect negativity away from themselves and on to the victim, who eventually ends up the bad guy.  That people fall for this bollocks is really fucking disappointing.  When I find myself questioning why this situation has come about I like to read this quote and remember it’s not about me, it’s about the bullies’ inner demons:

Today I am looking forward to meeting my bestie for lunch and a catch up, but first I am eager to take the mutt out for his morning constitutional.  Spring has officially sprung here in the UK and there is no prettier place on earth.  The hedgerows are covered in fluffy blossom, daffodils nod in the breeze, birds are busily nesting, I saw my first butterfly yesterday even though there is still a sprinkling of snow on the fells and as Bertie and I wander by the river, hoping to catch a glimpse of wild Otter, I am thankful every day to live where I do 🙂