Roleplay

During my waking moments (dad bought me Lucozade to help with the lacking of energy) I'm back into Second Life :)



If you happen to see "Lady Verity" in Avalion which is where I'm hanging at the moment (along with Quan Li), please come say hi :)

And I've got an adult colouring book (it's a book on horses, get your mind out the gutter lol), and Asda have games for £3.98 so we have Battleships. It's also quite scary to see how much of a little Hannah Montana collection I have going. In the newspaper they had a voucher for the first issue of the Hannah Montana magazine for free, but W H Smiths ran out, so I don't have it. I do have the Top Trumps game, 2 packs of trading cards, the sticker album and the photocard album. And some Sandylion stickers which was a random purchase in Waterstones.

G is off work this week too. It can't be much fun for him at all, I'm very sad because we didn't get to go away and I'm also always tired or out of breath unable to do very much, and when I'm awake I want to be doing something so end up on the computer on Second Life, lol.

Downer

This is so hard. I'm still sleeping a lot. Yesterday when dad drove me to the tip just to drop off my fridge freezer, I came home and was so exhausted I just nodded off as soon as I sat down.
Dad picked me up today and took me to my parents house so I could look after the dogs while he ran errands. It was nice to snuggle up to Taz, and I was only there an hour or so, got home and out for the count again.

Come 9.30pm I'm fast asleep for the rest of the night until my alarm goes off at 6am for my tablets. Dad came round and put an old TV on top of my wardrobe so I can go to bed and watch TV and G won't have to wake me up to get me to bed. In the front room I have the little foot rest thingy that my dad made for mum's feet after her operation, so I can sit in the front room without having the sofa out into a bed (so G can sit down normally) yet I can lay here and sleep and relax.

There was also a letter from the travel agent saying we owe them money for the discount I received for the holiday that we can't go on seeing as I can't fly for 4 months. Bascially they want us to pay the discount they took off the holiday and for us to claim it back from the insurance. I'm on a major downer about that. It's Wednesday today and we were supposed to be going on Saturday. I was seriously looking forward to spending a couple of days at Port Aventura.

I hate you NHS.

There's so much stuff I didn't realise about pneumonia. For one, something as simple as getting up and making myself a drink of squash and I'm out of breath, and constantly tired. It sucks.

And another sleepless night (pt3)

I spent the rest of the day chatting to the girlies. I was starting to feel better enough and my fever had gone. Me and Janet borrowed Cheryl's DVD player and I sat in the chair next to Jan's bed, we pulled the curtain and joked around about pretending to be in the cinema. The funniest thing is none of them believed how old I was. If it wasn't for the fact I had my DOB on my hospital wristband, I doubt anyone would have. An awesome nurse named Carl joined into our banter. As me and Jan were flicking through the DVDs, Carl promptly said: "Cheryl! Put THOSE DVDs away! The poor girl is only 12, don't give her ideas!!" LOL. He never shares chocolates, but as the 4 of us were around Cheryl's bed on our final day, he brought a box of chocolates over and told us to help ourselves. We had a great crowd.

I don't think I've drunk so much in my life either. In fact, I have a taste for Ribena now and it's all I'm drinking lol. I felt sorry for Jan, who for her CT Scan had to drink a pot of this nasty water stuff, only for Carl to come in and tell her the higher ups had changed their mind of what sort of scan they were doing and she didn't have to drink it after all. She had half a glass left and it made her a little poorly.
When the consultant came around and told me on Thursday that all being well I'd be going home on Friday, I was so relieved but at the same time I was really quite upset to be leaving our Bay C posse. But I just wanted to be home. That night it was another odd one. I was coughing a lot. It actually made me really disheartened because I had been doing so well and I thought that if I had my cough back they wouldn't send me home after all. I didn't get any sleep from the coughing and I started to find it hard to breathe around 1.30am. The nurse gave me a nebuliser which they had stopped the previous morning as I'd been doing so well. I was so super special I got to do my own peak flow and nebulisers and write it down on my own chart :) By 3.45am, Cheryl wandered up to my bed and asked me to keep her company as she hadn't slept a wink either and we were both coughing our heads off. It was then that the elderly woman in the bed next to me who had been put there less than 24 hours before messed herself. I couldn't go back to bed, the smell made me want to throw up. I told nurses but they were up to their eyeballs with another 3 patients who had done the same thing. By 6am I was so tired and grumpy and I just wanted to lay down I was practically in tears. It was 7.25am before I could actually get back to bed once the smell and mess had been cleaned up and gone.

That morning I had 10 minutes here and there until the consultant came around and told me I could go home. I text mum and got super happy. They had told janet she was allowed home too. And Muriel, which left poor Cheryl on her own. Only when my mum rang the ward they still had a big question mark next to my name. They do an "estimated dispatch date" for the time they think you'll be going home. When I first saw mine I was in tears... 28th September. That's how bad I was. I figured my Pneumonia was bad anyway as the tablets (to go along with the super strong antibiotics being pumped through my line) were labelled and you had one in the morning and one in the evening - it was the same ones the last Doc gave me on the Bank Holiday... Only I was taking 2 at a time.
Right before lunch, Jan was told to pack up her stuff and get ready to go. She had just 15 minutes until the next patient came up, so Jan had her lunch as Cheryl's "guest". Not long after that, I was told to get packing my own stuff up too. Only I couldnt', and Janet had to help me. Just the simplest thing of picking up a bag left me out of breath. I had to be retrained how to breath and had been given breathing exercises to do. I was so exhausted. I had my own lunch and then a porter came to collect me. I didn't get to say a proper goodbye to the girls, but we exchanged addresses and numbers with the promise of meeting up.
Mum came to the lounge and picked me and my meds up. I'm taking 2 different antibiotics, some steroids and an inhaler. The mornings are the worse for me right now though. I have 8 tablets to take in the morning, I have to set the alarm for 6am to take my first one (every 8 hours - 6am, 2pm and 10pm). Really not fun.

Nor is the fact that I was supposed to be going to Spain with G this Saturday, but I'm not allowed to fly for at least 4 months. Now we have to start the agonising task of claiming off the insurance, and even then we won't get all the money back. Insurance is such a damn con. I checked the weather report though, and it's raining today and Thursday and Friday, so maybe a little consolation.

Still, dad is off the rest of this week and he's taking me out for a drive this afternoon so I'm not stuck in the house. He's loading the old Fridge Freezer into the boot of his car and I'm just going to watch him take it to the tip. But it's out, and that's the main thing.

First sleepless night (pt 2)

I had to wait around for a good 3 hours until a bed finally opened up. I got bed 19, and the first thing they did was take blood and put a line in my arm to start rehydrating me because of the fever. I was sweating so much, it was terrible. My mum and G stayed with me as long as they could, but mum went as it was less suspicious that just one person was around my bed after visiting times were over.
They came back and told me I had an infection, but they didn't know what bug was causing it. They went ahead and started pumping antibiotics through an additional line they added to my arm. The cool doctor said he wanted me to have a chest x-ray, which I figured was pointless as the one of the bank holiday showed nothing at all, and he took some more blood from me.
G left at 10.20pm. At 11.10pm they took me for my x-ray which I struggled with as breathing was still hard, and they took me back to my bed. The entire time I was shivering from feeling so cold but I was still hot & sweaty. I was given a hospital nightie as my clothes were soaked through. Back at bed 19, the porter who wheeled me to x-ray told me to rest up as that was it for the rest of the night. I settled down and just drifted off to sleep.
At midnight, I was woken up and told I was being moved to ward 8b - the respiratory ward. Once I was wheeled by a porter to my new bed (21, bay C), I settled down halfway under the covers. I had a great view and was right next to the window. 2am I was wide awake, my fever was back and a nurse came and checked on me every 2 hours, but I just couldn't sleep.

The next morning I was told I was having a CT Scan that day, and I started chatting to the lovely ladies in my bay. Janet, was opposite me, next to her was Muriel and Sandra was sat on my side but at the far end with an empty bed between me and her, and a spare bed next to Muriel. It wasn't long before the bed next to Muriel was taken by a terminally ill patient - a lady named Cheryl, who was in hospital every 5 weeks for a fortnight at a time. She is such an inspiration and she has everything you could possibly need in hospital, and for those of us like Janet and myself who had no idea we were going into hospital, she was more than willing to share. The four of us built up a great rapport, and Sandra was shipped off to a nearby hospital closer to her home. We spent the entire day in our beds, chatting and having such a laugh. If it wasn't for those 3, I'd have been sooooo bored.

The consultant came around and told me I had Pneumonia and a form of Asthma. Now my doctors constantly give me a peak flow for asthma, but they've always said I was fine. That's what's odd to me. Janet went off for her CT Scan first, then mine was at 3.45pm. I had some more stuff put through my line (by this time I was still having antibiotics and fluids through it as well) and went through the scan. It was super scary lol. Then it was back to bed, with more observations and chats. And I was a little poorly... Excorsist jokes went around the rest of the day, but I just couldn't keep the tablets down, no sooner had I swallowed them, they came right back up. I had to be changed and have a sponge bath next to my bed. That night it was another bad night. I was up at 2am in agony in my left arm. The nurse took out the line in my arm. 3am ish I had to call the nurse a second time, this time for painkillers. 4.30am and I was still in pain, the nurse came back and told me to move it. Pain went away finally, and I got to sleep at 5.15am ish. 5.45am - the nurse came to put a new line in my hand this time - come 6am everyone is up and about and we started having obs and breakfast etc. so I never got anymore sleep.

To be continued

So it was pneumonia all along... (pt 1)

So things got worse as you can well imagine... I ended up in hospital for a few days. Now this story may take a while as I don't want to miss anything out so I will probably write it in parts.



Monday as I was going home from work I wasn't right. I even commented to a few people that I felt a little odd... I got home and promptly collapsed into G's arms and then on to the sofa. I was boiling hot to the touch but I was sat shivering terribly. G went to my parents to pick up a thermometer and confirmed I had a fever. He rang the out of hours doctor and raced me there with my mum in tow. The lovely Doctor, Zoe, actually sat and listened to me. She consulted her medical book and went through EVERYTHING. It was so nice to have a doctor who wanted to get to the bottom of things. She listened to my chest and back extra carefully and confirmed my right lung, where the pain had been, wasn't taking in as much oxygen as the left (which shows she listened more than the others). She was concerned about my temperature and the fact my heart rate was through the roof. She looked at all my notes and pretty much took it into consideration but didn't go by it 100% as to make her own decision which I cannot thank her enough for. The fact that on the notes it stated: "Not taking pain killers regularly enough" made me so mad as I hadn't seen anyone since the doctor prescribed them and I hadn't had them that long EITHER, so how could they write that!?

She was so concerned she said: "It's either pluracy or pneumonia..." To be honest, when she said that, I wondered how on earth it could be pneumonia, but then I didn't know a whole lot about it. I was just thankful someone was starting to put names to things. She promptly rang the hospital admissions... but no beds were available. There was no way she was sending me home in that condition, but nowhere else for me to go, so she kept me in her office and brought my fever down and my heart rate, and sent me home on the promise that I would have supervision for the next 24 hours - and if I felt worse again I had to call and they would send someone to me. By this point, I could sense an urgency but she was so restricted at the same time. She had not been able to see any other patients for nearly an hour and a half until she got me feeling a little better as she insisted she watch over me until then. G had to take emergency leave from work and made sure I was ok throughout the night.

To be honest, I'm not entirely sure how I made it through the night. But when the morning came I wanted G to ring my own doctors as I'd tried to hold on as long as I could as the out of hours were closed as the regular ones were back open. G explained they were going to admit me into hospital, this was an emergency appointment... and all they could give me was 3.45pm.

I couldn't wait. G took me down A&E, closely followed by my mum.

Once there, a completely snotty nurse told me that if I stopped coughing, the pain would go away. That it wasn't an emergency... Even if there weren't hospital beds they'd have taken me in... Yeah lady? and where they HELL would they have put me? On a blow up bed in the corridor!?!?! I had to do a peak flow which showed my breathing was my normal (about 300) but the first time I was sobbing my eyes out as she was packing me out the door and dismissing me like everyone else had done. I was so frustrated and breathing was hard nor would she even check my notes from the previous evening.

So it was back home once again. Back on the sofa, with a fever shivering yet hot to the touch. I had to wait until my doctors appointment that afternoon. Just before we left to go I was violently sick over and over in the bathroom. We finally got there and waited until we were called. It was the same doctor who gave me the painkillers and once he examined me and checked my notes, it was as if he suddenly realised his mistake. He sent us out into the corridor, and I was feeling awful by now I seriously wanted to rest. He had managed to secure me a bed at the hospital and sent me back over there...

To be continued.

Candles & Class

Mmmmmm, Yankee Candles. Have been burning "Good Morning" this week :)


And Cathy's class. Got the album and the prints done, just got to put it all together now :D


I do apologise for the terrible lighting in the photos. I don't think we've seen sunlight in a long time. Horrible British weather.

Cough is back... with a vengeance. Well the Bronchial mixture worked for 2 whole days. That was 2 days peace that I enjoyed, even if it was like drinking tar. Blood test came back fine, so everyone is still completely stumped. I'm still in so much pain and I can feel an irritation on my chest.

Drama

Yesterday got to the doctors in the morning and had the nice nurse who did my blood test and gave me a glass of water afterwards. It freaking hurt. I raced home at lunchtime as a lady who comes in part time at work was telling me about her daughter who is Miley Cyrus crazy, and I happened to mention I'm somewhat of a closet Miley fan and had a few of the Panini stickers from the album that were duplicates and some other Hannah/Miley bits that I took in to work to give her girl, and I grabbed a little lunch including a chocolate mousse.

That night I got home from work and me and G agreed on a pizza for our tea. I got into the freezer and noticed that the pizza wasn't frozen anymore. Well, I assumed one of us hadn't shut the door properly. After I had put the pizza in the oven, the fridge/freezer was making horrible noises... so I checked the fridge section, and I'll be damned if all my mousses weren't warm. Nothing in the fridge was cold at all.
We promptly stuck all the frozen stuff into bags and run to my parents house (they have a fridge/freezer and a standalone freezer so plenty of space for our stuff!) Ours was buggered to put it bluntly. Dad promptly took us out to all the electrical and white good stores to find a new one. Only being in such an awkward council flat we only had 50cm gap to get one... and standard ones are 60cm... EEK! We desperately wanted one with a larger freezer section anyway as it was just about big enough for me when I lived alone.

Sadly the stores closed and we didn't find one. We shoved all the fridge stuff in the freezer section with ice packs from my parents, and Stewart had a little fridge that he kept in the spare room for his cans of cider/lager (lol!) which we could borrow at a push if it would have been the weekend before we could get a new one. Dad went out this morning and bought us one and told us to consider it our Christmas present which is super lucky for us as this month is expensive anyway. With the help of Stewart, it was all set up for when I got home :) I'm so lucky to have such a fantastic family, and great parents. I can turn it on in just 10 minutes then I'm off to my parents to grab the frozen stuff to start putting it back in.

And another thing that totally made my day, the lady was back in today and had a letter in an envelope with my name on, a heart and a butterfly. It was from her daughter saying thank you very much for all the Miley stuff as she's a huge Miley fan. I thought that was so cute and thoughtful, it really did brighten my day, expecially her cute spellings and the fact she sat and decorated the letter with butterflies and stuff. IT was just... awwww :) lol

And to add a really odd quote from a guy at work: "She was on holiday... well I say holiday, she went to a funeral..." It was a you-had-to-be-there moment to find it funny.

The state of the NHS

The new doctor I saw today was more interested in making me comfortable than trying to get to the root of my cough. 4th doctor I have seen about this, but I have super strong painkillers and to take matters into my own hands, G got incredibly worried when as soon as I got through the door I was having a coughing fit and couldn't breathe, so took me to the shops for some bronchial mixture. I guess the funny thing was, while I was coughing, I was still trying to put my Hannah Montana postcard thingies (I get them free, I would like to point out...) into the Hannah binder while gasping for air, trying not to lose count as the postcards are numbered but the damn binder sections aren't.

I got some scrapbooking done:

, and embellished Emily and Lauren's album. I bought a new 12x12 album, one of the cheapy ones from Hobby Craft. When I get enough money, I'm so buying some American Craft ring binders so I can change up the sizes of my pages. Not only that I need one for my "Design Your Life" class. That's on my next to scrapbook (my prework) layout alongside a cute personal page for my Book of Me, and another page for that new 12x12 album.
and got my twopeas gallery up together: http://www.twopeasinabucket.com/userprofile.asp?user_id=161143
and a Lady who is an absolute inspiration :) Moon Ko. Her website is here: http://www.moonkophotography.com/.

Now for some linkage :D
Becky Higgin's Family Heritage downloads. A ton of worksheets and templates etc. Seriously awesome - even if you don't scrapbook, I'd say it's worth downloading them still and printing them out and getting family members to fill them in to preserve your story.
Paper dollhouses. I am sooooooooooooo printing and assembling the Christmas house scene to go with my Xmas decorations this year. I've run the page through the translator already for you all :) Although the instructions for assembly is in Japanese, it's got very clear diagrams so I'd feel confident giving it a go!

**WARNING** Not pretty...

The rain we've been having has been terrible. The school down the road (my old Primary School! :) ) was closed today due to flooding. Yesterday it was monsoon rain I swear. I'm also in winter PJs snuggled on the sofa with the guest duvet, and G is sat at the computer in sweatshirt etc just to keep warm. We are determined that we're not sticking the heating on just yet.
I've managed to accidentally take a bite out of my mouth, down by my bottom teeth on the skin in my mouth and it hurts real bad. I think I might have done it while coughing, so I have a pain in my mouth to add to my problems. Today I was bad. Real bad. I will warn you if you're easily grossed out etc, not to read the rest. I will continue under the cut...

Major downer

I'm just not having a good day. In fact in a moment I plan on snuggling down on the sofa and playing on Hannah Montana game on my DS, and to cheer myself up I booked myself a place in Cathy Zielske's class (but cost me $99 [£58] ouch.) but Cathy's pages give me warm fuzzies, and I will have super cool pages that will give me warm fuzzies when I look at them.