I've neglected this blog - yet again. Yet again - I promise that I will try to keep up with it more diligently, but we'll see how that pans out.
I made some HUGE changes to my life through mid and late 2013. For quite a long time now, I've been using my teddy bears and other crafts as a means of distraction from my pain, and also to help keep my hands as strong and mobile as I can. I fought hard to win them back from the CRPS, and I want to keep things that way. As well as my bears, I dabbled a wee bit with making soaps and other body products - just as gifts for a couple of friends. I was encouraged by a lot of people to sell what I was making - and so Bubbles, Bears & Other Wares was born. I might only be able to work at it for ten minutes one day, thirty minutes another... maybe two hours on a really, really good day. But it has given back some meaning and purpose to my life. I will always have some grief for my veterinary career that will never be - but it has been something of a salve for that wound.
With these new plans, dreams and aspirations, New Year 2014 should have been a happy occasion. Unfortunately it didn't go quite as planned... the story of my life really. On the morning of Sunday 29th December I got up feeling sick and sore. Not just a wee bit off, but like I'd been run over by an entire fleet of buses. My whole body ached, my head was splitting and I had a fever. Sunday evening I felt worse. Had a shower, went to bed and actually went to sleep, a real rarity for me - and a sign that I'm not at all well. Sometime around midnight, I woke feeling so ill I was afraid. Anyone who knows me well knows that to keep me in hospital, my doctors have almost to chain me to the bed, yet that night I woke my parents and begged my Mum to take me to hospital. With a splitting head, incredibly sore neck and a 40°C fever, I was worried more than anything that I had meningitis again - something that kept me hospitalised for a couple of weeks in January 2012. As we were sitting in the waiting room at the hospital, I felt my leg getting hotter and hotter. I rolled my trouser leg up to find that my right thigh and knee were now a swollen, glaring angry hot red, and very clearly infected. I don't recall much of the rest of the night - or indeed the next day or so. I was filled up with IV fluids (2 1/2 litres, I was so badly dehydrated!) and antibiotics, spent three days in hospital and another five at home with 'Hospital in the Home' so that I could continue the IV antibiotics without having to be IN hospital. Now on the mend again, though still feeling rather tired and run down.
I made some HUGE changes to my life through mid and late 2013. For quite a long time now, I've been using my teddy bears and other crafts as a means of distraction from my pain, and also to help keep my hands as strong and mobile as I can. I fought hard to win them back from the CRPS, and I want to keep things that way. As well as my bears, I dabbled a wee bit with making soaps and other body products - just as gifts for a couple of friends. I was encouraged by a lot of people to sell what I was making - and so Bubbles, Bears & Other Wares was born. I might only be able to work at it for ten minutes one day, thirty minutes another... maybe two hours on a really, really good day. But it has given back some meaning and purpose to my life. I will always have some grief for my veterinary career that will never be - but it has been something of a salve for that wound.
With these new plans, dreams and aspirations, New Year 2014 should have been a happy occasion. Unfortunately it didn't go quite as planned... the story of my life really. On the morning of Sunday 29th December I got up feeling sick and sore. Not just a wee bit off, but like I'd been run over by an entire fleet of buses. My whole body ached, my head was splitting and I had a fever. Sunday evening I felt worse. Had a shower, went to bed and actually went to sleep, a real rarity for me - and a sign that I'm not at all well. Sometime around midnight, I woke feeling so ill I was afraid. Anyone who knows me well knows that to keep me in hospital, my doctors have almost to chain me to the bed, yet that night I woke my parents and begged my Mum to take me to hospital. With a splitting head, incredibly sore neck and a 40°C fever, I was worried more than anything that I had meningitis again - something that kept me hospitalised for a couple of weeks in January 2012. As we were sitting in the waiting room at the hospital, I felt my leg getting hotter and hotter. I rolled my trouser leg up to find that my right thigh and knee were now a swollen, glaring angry hot red, and very clearly infected. I don't recall much of the rest of the night - or indeed the next day or so. I was filled up with IV fluids (2 1/2 litres, I was so badly dehydrated!) and antibiotics, spent three days in hospital and another five at home with 'Hospital in the Home' so that I could continue the IV antibiotics without having to be IN hospital. Now on the mend again, though still feeling rather tired and run down.