Surgery plus 92 days. Impending return to society…

Well, made it through my recovery.

Can tell you, its been very strange.

I have to now integrate back into the world of actual people. I have to remember how to behave in public…

Being out of my pj’s will help…

I have done such a lot these past three months. I mean, apart from recover for lung lopping.

I have realised things about myself. (Quite major things…I may touch on that at a later point, possibly too much self analysis…hmm)

I have started a blog. (And that’s been fun hasn’t it!!??)

I am so much more *me*, definite about things. But that’s all very well and good in your pyjamas indoors, you know!?

Right, into the mix. I can do this. It’s fine. It will be fun.

Agh. See you on the other side!!

A very large nod to a very special someone

I know someone who is very special.

She has hidden strength and amazing fortitude.

She has the ability to create.  Not only artwork and crafty stuff, but she has created amazing children and a safe environment for those wonderful children to bloom in.

This special someone has huge struggles and I know for a fact she gets blown away by the enormity of obstacles put in her way.

And you know what?  Everyday an obstacle is knocked down, progress is made, all the kids and her husband go to bed warm, fed (or attempted to be fed..they are a special bunch..) and they are wrapped up in a blanket of love so thick that the real world can never knock them down.

I admire the strength shown in quite trying circumstances.

I mean, let’s face it, all I have to do is keep myself and an almost 40’s husband alive. That’s a piece of cake.

3 dependants who have specific needs and requirements, juggling all of this…. Wow. I mean really WOW.  It would cripple me the first time a child turned round and flatly refused to eat something that had previously been a mega favourite for example… What’s that all about?

And these days there is also an air of ‘you chose to have kids, what’s your problem?’ But the expectations are huge.

You must have perfect kids. Your work life balance must be immaculate … God forbid you do actually choose to stay home and not return to work (and hell, those child care costs..phewey..) and you must not complain.

Raising kids and being at home: You have no HR department to complain to when one of your team do something ridiculous that derails a well laid down pre agreed plan.  You have no paid holiday, you can’t take sick days properly. It’s a job that you have to do from the soul. It’s a hard job.

I say this as a very definite not mum.

I seriously could not do what this amazing person does.

She is my sister and I have been amazed from the second I held my new born niece 16 Years ago.

16 years on the job and she has done all these amazing things.  Her mum CV is bursting with skill set and ability. Seriously.

I am so proud of how she deals with the unexpected, the demanding, the every day keeping dependant people alive.

So, even in the dark and gloomy days, the days where it feels like its all a big spinning maelstrom of chaos, the battle over breakfast days, all of that, she does it. And she does it bloody well.

So, Kiera, well done you. Well done. You are awesome you are. Bloody amazing. Keep doing it. You’re doing it right you know!!?

FODMAP… Oh gawd!

Bless the GP’s little socks. I love her. She listens to my fibromyalgia symptoms and takes a harder route without tablets where possible.

Finally someone has taken my IBS seriously and she has tasked me with FODMAP diet.

It cuts out pretty much everything.  I first thought I’d be sitting licking a rice cake, but the more you drill down into it, the more ‘normal’ food I can still eat.

Onions – not on your nelly. BAD BAD BAD
Wheat – out this includes easy to obtain biscuits, can search for special ones, but that’s a lot if work for a biccy!!
Chocolate – out
My fave crisps – out

However …. Potatoes YES!!

Rice is good to go too!

I’m not going to starve and the end results are going to be awesome..I know they are.

And to be honest, it’s not really a ‘diet’ as it is health bettering based. 

I hate doing the diet just to loose weight. It’s so much easier in your head if you can think that life gets better and less painful as a result. I should lose weight as a by product. It’s not the only goal and certainly not the primary goal.

Win / win Innit.

So, I will see you in 5-6 weeks. Hopefully with my intestines in order and being awesomely healthy.

*off to put spuds in oven*

Recovery – possibly how not to do it…

Got diagnosed with cancer. Got lump removed with half my lung. Simples?

I’ve now been recovering from surgery longer than I was aware I had a tumour even though I had been incubating the lump (named Thor, long story) for three years.

The lump has similar symptoms as my fibromyalgia. This is probably why I didn’t notice I had a Thor growing.

I can’t tell you how well I felt when I came round from surgery.  I felt the difference immediately.

I started on my surgery recovery.

It’s a horrible mix.  You have to not do anything for what seems like an age.  (Massive scar round my rib cage, looks like a shark bite, lots of muscle intrusion and internal rummaging, plus collapsed lung and stuff. Got to be careful not to balls up initial healing process by lifting and all that.)

You need to concentrate on things like breathing, getting up and down stairs, bathroom rituals. SNEEZING. (Omg the sneezing, jeez that was horrendous.)

But then you want to do things, you are sitting in a world of pain and anything is a distraction.  Taking tablets is not what I consider an actual activity..

But you can’t do things.  You spend an hour doing something relatively small then sleep for four hours as you are that knackered.

This went on for some time.

I’ve been increasing my activity levels as I work on the looming ‘Return to Work’ date.  I need to know I can go back to the office and at least be awake enough to get through the time I’m being paid for. (My work are actually very good about this.. I’ve had a lap top at home and have been keeping on top of stuff anyway so….It’s not as scary as it could be.)

Today it occured to me that even though I am recovering from the surgery and the shock that has come from the whole thing, I am still suffering with my fibro.

Stress kicks off a flare.  My usual first stress reaction is IBS and, man, has that got bad recently. I have started to cut various things out of my diet like onions and cheese (argh, not cheese, noooo!) And I’ve been so careful with what I’ve been eating anyway as I’ve been so sedentary, I didn’t want to turn into a 28 stone lump.

Also, my back is in virtually constant spasm. Something they did during surgery (probably trying to move an unconscious me, I’m not small) and then I’ve not been able to sleep on my sides until very recently, has made my back hate me. Laying out flat for two months and hardly moving during the night…argh.

Also, we are trying to buy our currently rented house.

Stress much. Oh hell yeah.

Read the spoon theory again today:

The Spoon Theory written by Christine Miserandino

This is the BEST way I’ve read of describing how it is….

And it occured to me…I’ve had most of my spoons taken from me.  Surgery and recovery have left me very short of spoons.

I’m not totally sure how I fix it.

I spend quite a lot of my time just getting on with things. I honestly don’t know how to do anything else. Sometimes I just forget I’m ill. I’m that used to it. To feeling cruddy. To basing my existence round taking tablets, making sure I’m all done with loo stops and cramming other tablets in for that.

Anyway, I then read this:
http://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/5878410

This is also all true.

Oh, I don’t even know where I’m going with this.

I’m off to the GP on Friday for the verdict on my return to work.

I will hear soon about the offer made on the house (if that is not a go, I, sorry we, have to find a place to live and move in three months).

I think I’m only just getting my head round things and then parameters change. Boundaries move. I don’t know what I’m supposed to be doing.

I am a control freak. I know this. Anyone who knows me knows this.
I’ve been thrown a flanker, I can tell you.

How do I control any of this???

Answers on a postcard Innit!!

I think I just need to do the keep calm and carry on….. Without any cute memes or logos.

Look. I know this is badly written and very rambling.  I don’t know how else to get it out.
I will persevere and see what happens.

It’s all going to be alright. Isn’t it.

My Terry Pratchett

We all knew it would happen. This does not make it any easier.
This afternoon has been full of real emotion and a devastating feeling of loss and sorrow.

Honestly, my earliest reading memories are the Secret Seven..then a gap, just can’t really remember. Then I started to nick my sisters discworld books which had been lent to her by a neighbour.

Changed my bloody life.

My first ever book review was Discworld. Just try to describe the library and a colour that doesn’t exist in our world.

I own them all and covet them like treasure. (Do lend out, but do NOT dog ear on pain of pain). The maps, the science books, nanny Oggs cookbook… And my pride and joy:

Signed by the man himself.

This weekend my sister came to stay and our life was dominated by Pratchett references. Me, my mum and my sister ARE the witches. (I’m nanny ogg, what can I say).

I have filled my pinterest with pictures and quotes, I have shared through Twitter and Facebook.

I have technically died before… I need this sign tattooed on me!!

My sister is currently working a ‘can til. can’t’ design.

The screaming monkey thing..hell yeah, I get that. Use it all the time with people.

I have loved the city watch since the first drunk moments in a gutter with Vimes..watched him be angry at the world. Watch him grow.

I have read his non discworld books… Strata for example, seeing the seeds of discworld planted.

Finding Mrs Widdgery’s lodger crop up again.

He made me laugh, he made me cry, he made me see, then see again.

Death of rats… Say no more!

Watching him and Rob trudge through a jungle on a quest for a cranky orangutan.. pure epic awesomeness.

He wasn’t *just* influential for me.

I can’t put it into words.

He is a part of my life. Always will be.

He gave me another world. 

He was a gift to humanity. I know that sounds kind of trite, but he was.

He has done for me what Tolkien has done for so many, but with humour and drama and just a whack of sass.

I have also really appreciated other peoples reactions to the devastating news. I’m not alone in how I feel. He changed and touched so many people.

Thank you Mr P… Thank you.

Satsumas…

Have you ever had the moment of wonder when you peel back the zesty pith on a satsuma? You are the only person to see the inside of this perfectly formed, delicious fruit.
The small joy when you find a small segment growing between two larger ones.
Every last piece of that satsuma is wonderful.

Take a look at the sky at night. Look at those twinkling stars, those long distance balls of nuclear fusing heat and light. The enormity of the Galaxy laid out before your eyes. The way everything spins in place, the order but also the chaos.

Isn’t everything wonderful?

Adjective

1.

excellent; great; marvelous:

‘We all had a wonderful weekend’

2.

of a sort that causes or arouses wonder;amazing; astonishing:

‘The storm was wonderful to behold’

I do find myself having moments of wonder.

Even picking up a rock on the beach, seeing that it’s cracked and opening it to reveal a surface that would have never been seen by human eyes before. Looking at something that is millions of years old, spewed out by the bowels of the earth.
A rock on a beach can be the key to imagining time, not in terms of days, weeks, lifetimes, generations, decades or even milleniums, but the stupid time that is so very, very vast… Past all history written by people and into history that can only be recorded by landscapes, time that turns bones to stone and stone to diamond.

Take a look around you now. What can you see? That thing there, look at it, look at what it is, how it was made, whether natural or manufactured.. Look at it. Isn’t it amazing?

Satsumas can make you think you know.

Happy birthaversary to me/us…

Tomorrow is my birthday…literally the most exciting day in the whole year, shortly followed by Christmas.

I have always been a very birthday centric girly. Usually doing a countdown from Christmas day. if not slightly before…. In my early years, when post it notes first came out, I used to do reminders and pop them all over the house. (My mum still reminds me of this, I think she misses it. I should send her a pack of pre written reminders so she can stick them around herself next year..)

8 years ago, and after 11 years with my fella, I decided to actually share my special day with someone and we got married at London zoo on my birthday in what was the best party I have ever had. (Was a tad over dressed for the birthday, but spot on for the wedding.)

Every year I now wear my wedding tiara, sit in my pj’s and open my presents. I am always so very spoilt and my ripe old age it is something I never take for granted.

It is, however, very strange as I get anniversary cards through at the same time as birthday cards. I get to open them both (hubby really doesn’t mind, he enjoys my excitement surrounding the whole thing) but it’s a constant reminder that I done something that for me was very grown up and shared MY special day.

This may not seem a big deal for most. I have also been told it was a silly day to do it by others (hmm, thanks people. Always love unsolicited negativity.)
But MY birthday is a day when I am legitimately centre of the universe and can have everything I want and can do things I don’t normally get to ask to do.. like funky day trips out and more expensive than normal dinners. you know.

So, on the one hand we can never forget the wedding anniversary, but on the other, I will never have my special day as a solo event ever again.

Upon review, I am actually very happy with the arrangement, I think it has actually enriched the day as hubby SHARES the excitement, he is included in my sparkly bubble of childlike selfishness.  We BOTH get to run around like kids and behave like carefree people, it’s a joy.

I think really he was the best present I could have ever had!