Tag Archives: sickness

August 19, 2022 · 11:15

Do they resent me?

When you’ve been bedbound sick for a while you learn coping mechanisms, to keep you going; especially when you start to believe you are failing as a mum because you can’t do the things a normal housewife could and should be doing.

You learn to release responsibilities to your husband so that you can heal, so there are less hospital trips due to you collapsing over exhaustion as you try to pretend there is nothing wrong with you!

You learn that there are things you can still do as a bedbound parent, but it doesn’t feel the same.  As a bedbound parent you learn to make the most of a small space, you learn that you don’t have to need a desktop PC and you can use a laptop in bed with an adjustable table.

You start to think that you are a burden, but you can’t help it.  I became this badly sick when Henry was 3yrs old – Henry hasn’t really known a healthy mum, he is twelve now and my health is stabilising slowly.

You start to believe that your rocky relationship with your son who is worried sick about you, will improve as you get better – but that’s a fallacy!

Since Henry was five years old, he learned that the best way to have time with me and play is by sitting with me drawing, reading or playing Roblox games every moment he is out of school.

I was wrong not to set tight boundaries about that, because in all honesty, I never believed I would get better – in fact I thought I was going to die before Henry becomes a teenager!

But now I am getting better, I am trying to make a life for myself – I have lost nine years of freedom from my mum since becoming sick and I want to make it up to myself.

I really thought my immediate family would be pleased I am getting better, but far from it, they resent it.  Paul feels less needed and is dropping things at such a rapid pace nowadays that it is leaving me feeling like he is sabotaging my healing process because he is afraid that my health may mean he’ll lose me.  Because he knows I am unhappy with the state of the house and unhappy with the morose behaviour the people of this house has!

Henry doesn’t understand that I need to drop the games because twenty minutes of fun always ends up with six hours of lost time.

I am trying to hone my skills as a writer, keep this blog alive, learn how to use social media, networking with other creative people, trying to learn how to set up a YouTube channel and how to get into screenwriting professionally and learning Italian because I want to get back to my Italian roots.  I am trying to do this by my own set schedule and goal and time is running out!

Henry’s behaviour has become sour since I seem to be getting better and in the heat of the moment he has screamed that he wished I would get sicker again, just so he’d have someone to play with all the time again!

There is no emotional support from Paul regarding this – as Henry storms off because I won’t play for longer, Paul runs after him telling him he knows how he feels and how mum needs to do this and that, but also how I really should spend more than just half an hour a day with him and he knows its not fair.

Proverbially slapping me in the face in the process!

Paul is tired of updating my friends when I am too busy, sick or absorbed in free courses – he has made his stance very clear to me. I ask him not to be rude to them, because sometimes he can be a bit too terse with people; he isn’t known for tact.

I am in this on my own.

It’s my fault I am getting better and chose to actually pull us out of poverty because I can’t hack just making do anymore, so I have to do it all myself now!

It’s abundantly clear and it’s a lonely place to be.

I have resided myself to the fact that perhaps this family doesn’t want me unless I am in bed all day playing games to keep the boy happy and out of Paul’s hair.  We’ve had this discussion and it’s clear, I might be moving away from them soon – we don’t know when – but it’s something that’s coming.

The prospect of complete independence is stomach churning.

I’ve never been alone before.

I’ve always been dependant on others, can I do it?

Who knows?

Am I being fair to them? I can’t help but feel guilty for wanting this!

Thanks for reading!

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May 20, 2022 · 11:15

Price of ink and financial rants

My situation is such that when I write I will print off as I go along, because I don’t trust clouds and data saving technologies, because they have failed me numerous times before.

Recently my finances have become worse and this has affected my novel writing more than anything, now I am able to get back into novel writing since I had Covid, it has meant that because of the decline in my finances I can no longer print the seventy pages a week I used to, I can only afford to print twenty a week at most and one week in the month, nothing at all.

If it is novel writing, I will print it as I go along, because of two reasons – I do not trust data saving technologies and I find it difficult to read and edit from a screen, whether I create a blue background to read from or not.

It’s frustrating because I want to write towards four ideas immediately and I can’t write by hand anymore because my arthritis is getting bad.  Every time I write more than an A4 page of handwriting, my hand swells up to the extent I can’t properly hold the pen anymore and if I ignore it, the cramps come on.

My arthritis has meant I have had to give up my knitting hobby altogether, because not only does it exasperate the arthritis, but it has also reawakened my carpal tunnel problem too!

I miss knitting, because of the style of gloves I used to make for myself and the scarves – because the style and colours I like can’t be bought cheaply, like it can be made!

I don’t have the money to buy a knitting machine or else I would do that, I also liked making toys for children I knew, but now I have been thinking about learning felt crafts or sewing the toys instead – because for some reason or another sewing doesn’t affect me.

At the moment we have a printer that is breaking down, because it appears not to be getting a hundred pages per cartridge anymore and we can’t afford to replace the printer for at least a year.  The cost of the ink is always £15, cheap in comparison, but for us it’s three days meals.  We’re near the brink of needing food bank help again – and no Lee Anderson, I can actually cook thank you very much, in fact I cook most things from scratch and manage left overs very well so there is never food wasted here!

Amongst my cooking skills are homemade pies, cakes, soups, casseroles and pasta dishes, not to mention the fact that I have been fakeaway cooking at least ten years before it became “fashionable”!  But when your colleagues Mr Anderson insist that because I have a bus stop outside my house which is within the walking distance I can do without an asthma attack they cut my mobility money by £100 a month, which meant that I could no longer afford to manage the finances which included getting medical help to try and get me back on my feet (in order to work), because you took the money I needed to travel to the local hospital 20 miles away in another town, which costs me £20 a time and I need treatment around twice a week quite a lot of the time – which meant I had to decide to become anorexic and get treatment, or just give up fighting to get my life back and make sure my family doesn’t starve to death!  Which one would you choose? 

Because when I had to do the above we had £10 for the week for food and I often had to cancel at last minute the doctors, because I couldn’t afford to get there – because doctors don’t house visit anymore, no matter how poor you are!

Along with this, we’re still not getting a lot of free stuff sending our child to school.  We had to cancel his eleventh birthday last year and all household birthdays and have the crappiest Christmas ever just to save up to get him school uniform for his new secondary school, because you can’t get it free here and there was no way in getting second hand, we checked.  The child gets reprimanded at the school if their uniform is not complete, whether you can prove poverty or not!

We would love to give up the internet in order to get £6 a week more in our pockets to eat better and maybe get some medical attention – but that would mean my son can’t do his homework so losing the internet is not an option for us!  The irony is, they say that they are doing more and more for kids in poverty these days, honestly I don’t see it!  His meals aren’t free at school; it costs him an average of £3.50 a day for a hot meal in winter.

Don’t you dare blame the poor for poor management!

Free schools, meals in schools, the NHS was all originally created for the poorest in the community, but these days the poorest in the community are not reaping the rewards of yesteryear, it basically is slowly turning back to how it used to be.  Everything is slowly privatising again and they think we don’t see it!

I don’t normally turn my posts into political rants, but this Lee Anderson has a lot to learn and remember about the society he is trying to lead!

Funny thing is, despite being bed bound and housebound sick for around twenty weeks of the year, I could work, at the pace I can.  There is some work I could do, but the problem comes with practicality – I’ve tried slogging on looking for a job outside of the house whilst managing my sickness and nobody wants me!  No one wants someone part time three hours three days a week, even on a check out, because I have ailments which embarrass the company!  I have what appears to be a permanent streaming cold!

No one wants to work alongside someone who is sniffling all year around and then needing three weeks off four times a year because she can’t even get to the bathroom she’s so sick!

So I told the benefits OK, there are other things I can do, I can write, I can do art, I can upcycle things to sell, help advise me in how to set up my own business to do that and teach me what I need to know to run a business from home.  They won’t.

But understood only this… you said you can work?  OK we’re taking your ESA away and making you go to job search centres five days a week all year around and if you don’t turn up for three consecutive days because you are sick, we’ll pull your benefits again and it will take six weeks to reapply for benefits again, meanwhile there is no transitioning money…

So, who is going to opt for all their amenities to be switched off and starving your family for six weeks solid?  What sort of incentive is there to actually get your ass off benefits if you are sick?  What kind of incentive do they give the sick to try and work out their own ailments in order not to be a scrounger?

Because seriously, this is how it is here!

So people who call sick people on benefits scroungers, talk to your government about their crackpot schemes, and don’t go attacking us!  It’s not our fault!  Most of us would love to be independent and work and get even £5 extra a week in their pockets, because no one likes going through those humiliating interviews every year!

Paul and I had thought about going to Ireland as they take care of artists and writers on sickness benefits more than they do here in England – but lately we’ve seen the news, there are political issues cropping up – will we be welcomed in Ireland?

I know my great grandfather was Irish (from Roscommon) and I know that genetically I would be accepted with opened arms, but it’s still looking complicated…

I am very frustrated, because there are lots of things I need in order to get myself a job and there is absolutely not help at all and the money is being cut again and again, to the extent, that I haven’t impulse bought a thing since 2017 and I am losing a huge amount of weight, but can’t afford to replace my clothes as the weight falls off and I am looking ridiculous!  I have lost four dress sizes in nearly a year.

Doctor says that they don’t find that a worry because I was so large to begin with.  I was a size 28, I am now nearly a size 20, they won’t worry until I am a size 12 potentially – potentially I might be dead by then, before they investigate why!

They know I have an IBD because of my high markers, but they won’t investigate until I literally start screaming in pain at A&E, seriously, been told that, NHS is so badly stretched financially that they are now only dealing with life threatening conditions as they appear, cancer not one of them, government recently warned the UK that if you get cancer now, you are more or less fucked if you rely on NHS!

Also, I have a new cholesteatoma growing in my left ear, but my ENT specialist said his department is in so much debt right now, he will not deal with it until it is life threatening! I have been through this before when I was a teenager, I really don’t want to go there again, but I have no fucking choice, because he won’t help me! That means, if the worse comes to the worse again, I won’t be able to physically care for myself bathing wise for nearly three years again nor bend down! I will also be 100% deaf!

Anyway, I am going to close this rant up, because people are home now.

Happy reading everyone… if it was that kind of experience, which I doubt. 

P.S sorry for being an Eeyore today!

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April 29, 2022 · 18:50

Sickness and feng shui

Covid hit my Henry in the first week of April, then it hit me a few days later, because of this I have been functioning at zombie level, because not only did I have Covid at the time but I was recovering from a non-Covid chest infection and gastric flu – which coincidentally, happened again just a couple of days ago.  More gastric flu hit the house on Wednesday and apparently gastric flu is spiralling in and out of everybody’s lives a lot in the last few weeks or around here in any case.

Because of all of this, I haven’t written a word towards a novel since the 2nd February 2022, ironic considering this was going to be my hardest working year in writing and I wanted to start as I meant to go on for the year.

I am exhausted but recovering slowly, my asthma seems much worse these days and my bronchial tubes seem to be permanently filmy and half opened, along with this it is also a bad hay fever allergy year for me.

Just existing is difficult these days, but I am trying to push through and though I have never been a huge coffee drinker, Covid has made me become one of the worlds many addicts as it seems to be one of the main things which is helping me through it all!

I don’t know if it is my neurological problem or Covid which has made this happen, but recently I am struggling to walk in a stable manner and I am finding it hard to sit up from a laying down position.  My legs feel like they have weights on them, however the weird thing about it is, it is as though I am walking on air at the same time, or that the ground has become marshmallowy.

My appetite has decreased further, where a simple dish of a small salmon fillet and half of a small a jacket potato with nothing else, is a feast to me!  This has meant, finding highly nutritious and varied foods on a small scale has become hard to manage.  I literally need micro-meals, I don’t mean microwave meals either, I mean small meals, miniscule for an adult, perfect for a 5yr old and I need to eat at stupid times.  I now regularly have to have a small meal at 10:30 pm just to get enough calories and nutrition in the day, which doesn’t help the insomnia.

A positive thing though, is I have discovered I am not actually lactose intolerant at all – I have found I have issues with gluten and lactose purely because those foods contained soy, since eliminating soy completely from my diet, I am now able to eat gluten and lactose again and let me tell you, its pure joy!  Though being a Chinese food addict means I can’t indulge in that anymore unless it is homemade and without soy!

I found out because twice I accidentally consumed things containing milk and then expected a bad night of gastric like proportions, but no, nothing happened.  Then I had another food which had milk and soy and I reacted, Paul thought that maybe it’s because I ran out of enzymes, but then we noticed that my lactase pills were not working for certain food items.  So I began a soy elimination diet, as suggested by a friend.

So I had been spending £18 a month needlessly on lactase pills, because it wasn’t a lactose problem at all, it was a soy one!

Despite being ill a lot this year, there is a noticeable improvement in other areas of my health, since going back onto lactose and gluten.  My skin and hair have improved a lot and a couple of other personal issues.

Henry is currently sick with very bad gastric flu and his fever broke earlier today, he had a temperature for so long that the doctor had said that on Saturday, if there was no improvement, he would have had to of been admitted, so there is a lot of relief there that the fever has now broken!

Because of all these health issues and so on, I decided that I should reconsider the house in a feng shui style, I knew certain aspects about feng shui, but not a lot, and I realised that things were better in certain years when furniture was in different places and worse when it was moved in other places.  Considering this, I read some books about what I did right back then, but was doing wrong now.  I found that there is a lot of blockages in areas that was good, particularly the health – which explains why we’re sick potentially.  The health centre of our house was established around the time I started to get sick eight years ago as a laundry pile area – not good feng shui, also we have small mirrors which we glued around each other so our reflections are always fragmented and cut up into bits, again not good feng shui!

Also I noticed that I moved dragon ornaments away from the places that they would like to be according to feng shui, we did better financially when a dragon and a tortoise was in the south west corner of the living room, but things have changed since I put them both in the south area of our bedroom!  Effectively moving them from the transformation area to the career area – career wise things may have improved as we are developing good contacts, though have not dedicated ourselves fully into creating a career just yet – so we will not move them back to the transformation area, but instead, move a spare dragon from another area to the transformation area and then move the tortoise out of the bathroom, which is a bad area to keep it according to the practise, especially as the bathroom is half in the health area!  Because our health centre is split into two rooms, which is unusual and complicated in Feng shui terms!

I love Chinese culture a lot, I believe a lot in the Chinese astrology and I do not like western astrology, I believe Chinese astrology to be more accurate in my life.  So, the idea of throwing me into Feng shui as well, I think, is a good idea!

My grandmother always said there was Chinese in my family, but I found out that she was slightly wrong about the nationality; they were actually Vietnamese and Singaporean ancestors, which kind of explain my so-called throwback eyes as some people call them (I actually think it’s kind of rude, but there you go).

 I would love nothing better than to move the furniture around again, but at the moment the family is sick and the areas I want to move would cause bad things to happen moreso this year, because those areas are all the areas of this year’s sha chi, which means if you move those areas outside of good construction days (according to chinese astrology) you will activate the bad energy there and make things much worse.  So we can’t make improvements until the 9th of May or the 23rd and 24th of May, as per the household’s astrology signs.

I am a water dog, Henry is a metal tiger and Paul is a fire monkey!

Anyway, thank you for reading and maybe in the future there will be more about the feng shui as I learn more.

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March 6, 2022 · 17:39

Embarrassed by being overly optimistic

This is embarrassing, but for the past few weeks, life here has been difficult and almost non-existent;

Henry became ill and had a lot of time off from school, this made my vulnerable immune system become overloaded with new bugs to deal with and I had a chest infection (not covid) that was so bad, I sprained all the muscles in my chest and back so badly all I could do for the past four weeks was sleep or just remain in bed.

I am still not over the infection, but a majority of the pain is leaving and I am able to be on my desktop for no longer than an hour a day now.

I have tried to write my stories on the laptop but I am still not used to typing at my speed in a different angle and it isn’t working as well, I tried to go back to my preferred writing method of handwriting, but my hands are swelling and holding a pen is becoming difficult.

Along with this my appetite is minimal and I am barely able to consume more than 1000 calories a day anymore, without purging, to say the least, I am becoming sicker by the day and I am still determined to fight whatever it is doing this!

But my ideas about timelines of productivity may just be an over optimistic approach which will inevitably lead to more failure than I am willing to tolerate.

I am trying despite the challenges.

I must admit that I am afraid of becoming a published author, simply because my health dictates to me already that I do not have the energy or the health behind me, to even maintain my own house and personal relationship commitments, let alone going out and having to commit myself to marketing and book signing events.

So with this as a factor in my life, I know, I may be accepted for publication, but I may not ever make it the big time, simply because my health dictates that I am housebound almost all the time and bedbound for around 12 to 16 weeks a year!

With that said, I do hope that I will find a compassionate team to work with some day and maybe, perhaps, I won’t need to stress myself out about failing people within the publishing community.

Hopefully there are agents and publishers I can work with, who fully understand the complexities of disability and failing immune systems, I mean, there are authors who manage to have a career in prison, so why not someone like me who is housebound through sickness?

Thank you for reading and take care!

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September 30, 2021 · 01:01

A scary thing happened today…

I have had ever decreasing health since 2013, little by little my body has taken more and more of life out of me; each day there is something new I can no longer do, or I have to get used to.

Today I woke up fighting, literally, fighting for breath as I coughed up copious amounts of thick white mucus, something I have unbelievably gotten used to in the last five years and though my throat was raw, I avoided my first beverage of the day for nearly ninety minutes, because I knew it wouldn’t stay down.

I got angry with myself for being like that and knowing that this mucus will take a couple of hours to clear and it was getting in the way of what I really wanted to do, I started to move around the house, clasping onto furniture as I struggled for breath, to try and get washed and dressed in spite of it.

I noticed something I never noticed before; my mucus was clearing faster but in bigger globules and although for tens of seconds I couldn’t breathe at all, it was coming at a faster rate.

I woke up around 10am, I didn’t sleep until 5am; I managed to get downstairs by 11:25am, something which in recent months is very unusual!  I wouldn’t be downstairs until 1:30pm on average, simply because my lungs would dictate the course of the day. 

This could be a one off (I have plenty days like those), but it could also be something that could make me function sooner rather than later in the day if it is not a one off. 

I was happy that by 12:30pm I could contemplate breakfast, or rather lunch as it really would be to normal everyday healthy folks.  I felt my chest had cleared enough to keep something down – another thing which is getting more and more debatable as years go on.  I am losing a tremendous amount of weight, size and muscle mass because of the sickness.

So, I made tomatoes on toast with some black pepper corns.  I wasn’t sure I’d eat two slices of toast, but strangely I did today and I kept it down.  What is more, was the fact that I ACTUALLY MADE IT!  I washed, cut, sliced and fried those tomatoes myself with no help at all, I insisted.  Things went well but then I got a little cocky after lunch had settled down and I attempted to do more.

I decided, you can’t get decent sauerkraut from the supermarket, it has to be homemade!  I wanted sauerkraut with my chicken in a wrap and salad tonight for dinner – I had that too.  But I didn’t complete making the kraut myself.  I cut the vegetables and surprised at how weak and out of practise I was doing it and it hurt, it hurt a lot, especially the kneading of the salt into the cabbage and carrots for enough time to make enough brine for it to be storable. 

Halfway through making the brine, I broke out into a cold sweat, really bad cramping pains overtook both my shoulder blades and my heart started thumping hard and I felt dizzy.  I had to go sit down and Paul had to finish the kraut for me after he took my temperature, which was 35.3, unusually low as my temperature usually sticks to around 36.8.

The pain was quite bad but it subsided after fifteen minutes rest, I nearly felt the need to go to the hospital!

I am angry and depressed I didn’t get to do what I wanted to do today, even if I have done more today than I normally would do in a day since 2019.  My life has been completely sedentary since autumn 2019, purely because I am getting sicker and sicker.  Paul is scared, but he doesn’t take me seriously when I honestly tell him, that I personally think I am dying!

I have no proof that I am, but with how I struggle to do the little things now, it makes me wonder?

I am writing this in bed at 00:33am, the day is now over and a new day has already begun.

I have been dreaming recently of large pumpkins with white bottoms and dreaming that I am dying and being made comfortable by a strange bald headed man.  Whether or not I am scaring myself about my health that it’s making me dream such things or whether or not the dreams really do have alternate meanings – who knows?  I read up online that kabbalists take dream interpretation very seriously and it is a fine art – my two types of dreams mentioned above, both mean similar things.  It means that I am metamorphosing, changing, it’s a positive change, a renewal, recognition perhaps or success?  Medical help could be on the way and my life could change through that, or I will develop a new coping mechanism for what is going on with me?

Who knows, but if the kabbalists say it’s positive, I hope they’re right!

Happy reading!

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June 12, 2021 · 11:25

Health update 12th June 2021

Because I am spending more time in bed due to my immune system having a major crash for the last week, nearly two weeks now, I have re-established my addiction to Codeword puzzles.

I seem to be completing them faster these days; I am starting to become a bit more of a word geek than I was before. 

Also, I tried to get back into playing online word games such as word tornado and scrabble on my laptop in bed as I decided I could do things in bed on my laptop as at least I would be more productive than just watching YouTube videos on TV and reading books.  But guess what?  BT decided to update this areas exchanges so internet connection has been tetchy and almost non-existent, so I can’t do that or watch YouTube on TV without a disruption every 15 minutes.

I thought only last Thursday to do this, take the laptop upstairs, play word games and update my blog in bed as I don’t like how my illness dictates to me how much work I do, because I’d rather work downstairs on the desktop computer.  Friday afternoon BT alerted us for the coming week that they will be updating everything and they apologise for any disturbances that they might cause during this time.

I would say “typical” but I am not that kind of person, because I know that certain thought patterns can affect your reality and make things happen.  But I do take it as a sign that Paul is right about the universe trying to get me to rest, because it is hard for me to sit back and rest entirely.  I have never been the kind of person who relishes in relaxing and living with Paul has been an education in that at least.

So, I am here, on my desktop again, only to update this blog and have my dinner before going back up.  I am having a really bad day with my arthritis, inflammation, ear infection and migraine.  I can barely eat because my IBD and IBS is bad too, in fact it is becoming a major concern for Paul and the doctors, because I am now eating in deficit, I am losing inches but not weight which is also confusing.

Since Christmas I have lost 3 and a half inches but no actual pounds, it is visible loss but not scalable other than measurements.  I am not exactly changing my diet either, I just physically can’t eat a whole sandwich anymore, I am having what Paul terms as micro meals or not-so-posh-nouveau-cuisine, just to eat something.  Thing is, I really need a tiny half tea plate of food around 5 times a day to be at the calories I need, but I only really get around 2 now.

My mother if she knew about this wouldn’t believe how little I am eating lately and it’s not by choice, it’s because of pain and the inability to keep things down.  If I eat a whole sandwich, I will vomit some of it back and that’s not bulimia, it’s just my body rejecting it.  I have a stupid amount of vitamin and mineral tablets I have to take daily because of this.

I joked to the doctor once about how I must be the only fat person they will know to die of malnutrition, in fact they shocked me with their reply; “it’s more common than you think”.  He said.

Let’s put it this way, my mother used to serve me up 6 to 8 fish fingers with 2 or 3 fish cakes, 2 slices of bread, half a can of beans and half a plate of chips as a regular once a week meal.  These days, she doesn’t feed me; she hasn’t seen me in years.  But now if she still knew me she would be shocked that I could only be served 2 fish fingers, two slices of bread, 1 fish cake, 1 spoon of beans, 1 tong serving of chips and I won’t eat everything before my stomach plays up!  This is a bad example of my regular food intake, because that is what I am eating today.  Usually I have stir fry, salad, and veggie frittata (despite egg problem), casserole with veg, or chili (for some reason my stomach can cope with chili despite the disease, which is baffling to everyone).

Yesterday I had quinoa, with beef chili, loads of Mediterranean vegetables, yesterday’s meal was the biggest meal I ate without a problem all week, but I still only ate half of it, but at least it was around 800 calories.

Which was a big contrast to the day before that, as that dinner was 2 slices of vegan cheese on toast, onion, tomatoes, peppers, and a side of celery and carrot and that was it, I couldn’t eat anything else the whole day!

But this has been normal for almost 2yrs, just got worse around 3 months ago.

I’m permanently exhausted and in pain and I am bruising way too easily too.

In a nutshell, my life sucks.

Happy reading!

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May 18, 2021 · 11:35

Reflections of consequence

Upon reflecting at my notes for new stories, I realise that around a third of everything I plan to write is vampire based.  So this is a revelation because I thought I wrote vampires more than any other subject, but no, it is second to fantasy.  Horror is actually not within the top three subjects I write about but is actually fourth, behind dystopia. 

The poetry I write is really just a means to fulfil the frustrated composer and song writer in me.  Poetry is a way in keeping me sane from the loss of composing music via Cubase, I no longer have Cubase and there is a void in my heart because of it.  I can’t read and write music properly but I have been trying to learn recently, so I can try and learn to cope without Cubase, as I miss it a lot.  I have no desire whatsoever to be a singer though; I just love making music and writing lyrics.

I think about music as much as I think about my stories, but I have learned to give up music for various reasons.  Occasionally ignoring it can make me go literally insane enough that I have to blurt out poetry just to shut the thoughts up in my mind, but it is starting to get quite loud in my mind lately.  Not sure how long I have before I will give in and sell stuff just to get another type of music software to help me.  I bought a glockenspiel last year hoping to sate my need for music and around once every eighteen months I notice I buy a new instrument just to try and sate the musician in me, but I think my brain is getting wise to these distractions.

I do believe that if you are creative and you have many outlets, to ignore any one of those outlets for too long can both make you go nuts, but also seep into your other creative works and make you resent the attention you give them, because you are ignoring the other.  All creative outlets are both food and poison for the other ones, depends on whether or not they feel neglected or not, a bit like a polygamous lover, you know?

I am an Artist, Gardener, Musician, Writer; I do sing and I used to like acting in drama classes at college, I do voices too.  It is strange that since I totally gave up practising my voices, that I have been getting a lot of illnesses that affect the throat, some spiritual healers tell me they are not surprised, because it is the throat chakras way in responding to this creative neglect.  I suppose too then, that when I don’t write for a while, the migraines I get in my head are to do with the stories having a civil war in my mind too?

I’m very spiritual, so to me, everything happens for a reason and I believe that sickness can be caused because you are neglecting a spiritual or creative part of you.  I think love and freedom has a lot to do with a person’s overall health and I suppose that it is this reason that I am ill.  I don’t have much love and I never had much freedom, I don’t mean to sound whiny but it is true and therefore, it is unsurprising that I have autoimmunity issues.

I am very unsurprised that a vast majority of my illnesses are ear, throat and stomach related.  Because throughout my life I have heard things I do not like to hear, I have never spoken about what has happened to me and I hold back when trying to stand up for myself verbally, I also ate things I never wanted to.  So when you reflect on things like this, you can plainly see how it can all make you ill in those parts of you.

I find myself a lot, saying to people I don’t want to hear this, it is not kind, I don’t want to hear this, it is too negative.  I am such a sensitive person, I don’t like hearing negative things spoken all the time, I don’t like hearing another person’s distress.  I lost my hearing when I was a teenager in my right ear, because I kept hearing things I didn’t like, now I still hear things I don’t like and gradually I am losing hearing in the left ear too.

I either have to become harder and more tolerant to what I hear, or completely isolate myself from society altogether, lol.  If I chose the latter, it will surely affect the health of my heart due to a lack of connection and love?  So I will have to learn to harden up and become tolerant to the negativity around me, I don’t know how I will do that, but it needs to start happening soon, or I won’t be able to hear music anymore, let alone play it.

Anyway, happy reading and I will post again tomorrow, thank you for being here!

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May 12, 2021 · 11:45

What I am trying to do as from now…

I am more than a little irked at the concept that my followers could have been scammed or duped by a poser; I had not planned to start writing on my blog or become active on social media for another couple of months, because I am taking a long time to heal from a current chest and ear infection.  I am very ill at the moment to the extent of being permanently exhausted. 

However, I think that I should start again right now, when I am at my worst physically because it seems likely I am having more bad days than not and I am sick and tired of being sick and tired and not doing what I want to do in life, even the most sedentary of things.

I often struggle with the idea that I must always produce a poem or a short story for my blog, because this blog was created with creativity in mind.  I was meant to use this as a portfolio of sorts; for my creative writing, photography and art, instead it has become more of a journal.

I think therefore, that this blog is likely to be 50/50 journal and creative outlet.  Because I am going on a big journey spiritually, physically, mentally and hopefully career wise too.

My blog will show you more of me, my personal life, my art, my thoughts and feelings and I will try not to be too bias when I do so.

A lot of my day to day stuff will probably be talks about how I am trying to manage my mental health and disability whilst trying to be a productive creative and housewife/mother.

I will also talk about my medical journey, because it still is not entirely clear what it is I have, other than it seems to the doctors that I have around 4 different types of auto-immune disease, deafness, PTSD and potentially a serious neurological disorder too, which they are leaning more towards MS on, but irritatingly it has not been thoroughly confirmed yet.  Sometimes they say yes, sometimes it’s again, no, it’s all presumption by my GP because I haven’t been tested yet.

I will talk about my past, if I feel it would be therapeutic at the time to do so.

I will discuss life with my pets and gardening, what little I can do there.

I will discuss most aspects of my life, whilst throwing in my poetry, songs, compositions, short stories, art, snippets and advice.

I am working on far too many stories at once, most of the time.  I am also practising art, because I have an idea for a children’s picture book and I have also two ideas for comics.  I don’t buy the fact that the comic industry is dead, sorry!

I have also learned recently that there are many people who like reading my reviews; I have had so many requests for reviews recently that I have considered to be more proactive in that.  But I tend to review old stuff, because I am pretty slow to reaching out for current social trends.  To me, something is a current social trend if it has been published or bought out within the last decade.  Oh dear, well you see what I mean – non-fiction science aside that is.

I am one of these lame people who love the 50s & 80s and are waiting for a huge retro bash that will last a decade or more in fashion, movies and music.  So you won’t find me any time soon, sporting the latest trend of anything that is currently major, if it is not retro based. 

Personally I feel the best decades for fantasy were 1860s, 1870s, 1890s, 1950s, 1980s and 2000s, 2010s;  I am a huge Lewis Carroll, George MacDonald, Frank L Baum, J.R.R Tolkien, Terry Pratchett, Neil Gaiman, Susan Hill, Stan Lee, Tim Burton, Stephen Spielberg, The Frouds, Colleen Doran and Neal Shusterman and oh so many more I better stop listing them=  fan.  This was just fantasy; don’t get me started on horror, Sci-fi and dystopia and lets not be picky between artists, writers and directors either! 

There is a lot of people I have missed on the above list that deserves to be here!  This is how I know; I really can’t sit back and say I have no idea what I post for my blog.  I was just being too picky about what I should put.  I didn’t think I should really put reviews and personal feelings towards other people’s work on my blog, but you know, if it keeps the blog active, then maybe I should start?  At least it will give you an idea of how I became who I become; the kind of things that I devour for my hungry creative soul that made me produce, what I produced.

Until next time, happy reading!

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January 21, 2021 · 19:31

Research what your doctor diagnoses you with!

As someone who has had pneumonia once a year for the past 5yrs, I was told when Covid19 came into the world that I should consider never going out as I am on the very vulnerable list especially as I have other health issues on top of it all and Covid19 as we all know is known as a super pneumonia! 

Being used to isolation since childhood, it seemed to me to be a doddle of a thing to accept.  But it is frustrating, because I was just starting to get my life into gear and I am starting to feel that this is some kind of curse my mother has put on me.  I know it sounds ridiculous because the rest of the world has it and surely she can’t have cursed the whole world?  Of course I know that is nonsense, but it still crosses my mind a lot!

How ironic that this has happened just as I am free from her isolating me and shutting me away?

Well anyway, Monday was the first time I went out since the first ever lockdown in the UK, because I have dental issues that need to be seen to and I am due to have an IV treatment for my teeth in February – coincidentally today I have woken up to feel as though my chest is bruised and I have a cough and a cold on top of my usual respiratory problems.

A few days ago I started getting into the habit of making smoothies, particularly green ones, because I wanted to boost my immune system for when I have my tooth seen to in a couple of weeks’ time; when I get a cold and a cough like this after being on a really super rich high vitamin and mineral diet for the last 2 weeks, it makes me wonder why I bothered in the first place?

Surely I would be stronger by now?  But no, I have a cold or something…

Well anyway, desperate I am to find any recipes for immune boosting so I found something called Goot, made it myself, lemons, turmeric, ginger, cinnamon, apple cider vinegar, garlic and honey, going to take 2 spoons 4 times a day to see if I get better any sooner than I would normally – which would normally be around 3 to 5 weeks’ time – a lot of colds and flu turn very chronic for me and last up to 6 weeks on average at the chronic level, something doctors could never understand!

Well anyway, a few years before I met Paul, I remember being diagnosed with pernicious anaemia, but nobody explained to me what that meant so I presumed, much like my mother did, that it just meant really bad anaemia – well Paul after hearing me reminisce this, decided to research it to find out it is an auto-immune problem which can make absorption or development of vitamin B12 very difficult for me, which would explain the neurological problems I seem to be developing!  I have been living with pernicious anaemia for a little over 15yrs and no one told me what it meant or treated me, no wonder I am falling apart!  I have also been diagnosed with and untreated for 17yrs with rheumatic arthritis!

Pernicious anemia can severely damage your nervous system and digestive system over a course of years if untreated, it is an autoimmune disease which can make you severely malnourished of certain B vitamins!

So because I am scared to go out unless absolutely necessary because of Covid19 I am waiting until things die down a bit so I can tell my new doctors here in Rugby, Warwickshire about my health past and how I have never received treatment and see what they got to say about that!

I think perhaps this is what my doctor meant when he phoned me a few months ago about a medical review, because I gave him a list of symptoms in an email and he was concerned and said he is going to look into my files etc. about other things and see if there are links – but I never got back to him!  Perhaps he has seen my medical records and understood I am not being treated right!

My doctor knows that I have suffer from chronic anxieties at the best of times and I am very OCD, so getting me out of the house unless it is an utter emergency during covid is going to be a huge challenge!

Just thought I say this to update you all!

Hope that the UK takes lockdown seriously this time around so I can get my health back into check by keeping to my appointments and investigations!

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March 13, 2020 · 20:10

Bedlam, chaos and disorganisation

Bedlam has taken over my creative space and moved it around the house.  Naughty Bedlam, I shall punish it later.

Bedlam has its way in bringing out The Evil Queen in me. 

Bedlam puts my work both writing and art into strange unconnected folders and boxes then distributes these folders and boxes all around the house in random crevices and nooks, playing hide and seek with my work is not fun!

What is this bedlam of which I speak?  My family, primarily my loving husband who tries to keep house when I am bed bound sick, when I get well again it can take up to two weeks sometimes more to find my work so I can get back to it again.

So far I have found my vampires mingling with my fantasy stories and even my paleo recipe folders.  I guess human blood can be thought of as a paleo food, but still, it’s in the wrong place!

I have found trolls in my box of pagan things hiding underneath packets of patchouli incense and dried agrimony and dragons playing with unicorns in my learning how to read music bag.

I have even found a baby ogre in my knitting kit – and please do not mention the flying octopus!  For some reason I found that partially hiding underneath the chest freezer.

And then there are the eyes, eyes, eyes everywhere!  Hanging on the bedroom wall, hidden on a bookshelf, under the bed, on top of the rabbit cage and in a shoe box!  The eyes have it!  Or rather I have had had enough of the eyes! 

Of course I am talking about my various works, whether it be fiction writing or pieces of art I have done, I am not talking about the imaginary friends I have, not yet anyway – why are you looking at me like that?  Every writer has them.  Imaginary friends that is, how else do you think you get stories?  Though sometimes I wonder if my imaginary friends are all that imaginary as weird things are noted around my house by guests, but we never speak of those, do we?  You could say I am insane and I accept that opinion of yours because what is normal to me is ludicrous to you.  I can stay at home for three months solid and forget that it’s not normal and be quite happy actually and very occupied with various things, whilst Joe Bloggs down the road goes insane after forty eight hours.

The biggest work for me at the moment in gathering all my work back into its former place is the fact that two of my vampire folders have  fallen off a sideboard and behind it and has intermingled with other papers in an attempt to try and gather them for me.  This had meant that the four drafts I have done of one particular story is meshed together and I have to work it out like a jigsaw puzzle because I have done all four drafts to the seventeenth chapter and the novel is not finished.  What makes it worse is I am ever so slightly absent minded as a trait I was born with, so therefore many things have been printed twice and are not noted until an accident like this happens… yes I am a nightmare.  But honestly, when people leave my work alone, I am actually very persnickety about filing and organising, it is really hard living with someone who will store anything anywhere and doesn’t have a system.  It really messes my time and system up – unfortunately I live in circumstances where I don’t have a spare room all to myself and I do not have the funds to organise a heated shed in the garden for work, so I have to fight to work, literally, every day, not only my health, but the flipping disarray in the house and have to blooming accept my work being meddled with on a daily basis!  Because my husband, bless him, is a recovering hoarder. He is recovering because whilst living with me he doesn’t have a bloody choice!

So when I get bed bound sick, I have the added stress of knowing that he will slip back into his hoarder care-free ways and its muggings here that has to clean it all up again, when I get the good days back, rather than working or gardening.  It’s all made worse by the fact that he doesn’t work outside of the house, he is home almost all the time.  Love him, but I wished I had time to sort things out for a few hours a day without him following around me in a panic all the time.

I am desperate to paint, I love to paint as often as I read and write, but again, I have no specific place to paint.  I have to rely on a clean dining table to paint and often it’s cluttered with my husband’s essentials and bottles of condiments and a laptop.  So when I have the energy to leave the bedroom to go and paint, it takes me an average of 45 minutes to tidy away enough space and find my paints and materials in order for me to work, often by that time, if I am still sick, I am too knackered to work immediately after clearing that I need a rest and then by the time the rest is over, its dinner time.  Creative people will know how I feel about living like this and you are right, I do feel that way too!

It’s a battle with my health but it is also a battle with my living arrangements and housemates.  My work productivity suffers greatly because of these things and it isn’t because I don’t try, because I do, even on my sickest days, but you have no idea how hard it is to live with these battles day in and day out, I will admit that I have mental health problems normally anyway, but since having my work affected as a result of this lifestyle (if you can call it that), I have for the first time in my life around five years ago, become suicidal as a result.  It is something I have discussed with my husband and he does acknowledge the cause, but what can you do with someone in their mid-sixties who has never lived any other way?

I am not used to a house like this.  I don’t accept a house like this, but I have to make do.  So when I use the work bedlam I do not use it lightly.

I try to stay light hearted about things, but it is a BIG try.

It is gut wrenching to force yourself, as sick as you are, to cough and choke your way through two rooms to clear and tidy and clean, only for the very next couple of days, for it all to revert back, because your husband is motivated in another room unsupervised and doesn’t understand how to do it, he just moves things from one place to another and undoes your work in just a few hours.  Then you’re in bed exhausted, chest clogged up worse for all the dust and you can’t move for another week.

The thing is, writing this makes me feel guilty.  Because he is my carer, he cares a lot, he does a huge amount, and more than any man would really.  He is twenty seven years my senior, he does everything for Henry, everything for me.  He does the shopping, the laundry, the ironing, he cooks, he shops, he deals with all our problems and I have never known a man like him before.  Complaining like I have done, feels wrong.  But it is a big reason why I struggle to work lately.  I am fighting for a work space, but I have less than 3ft square to arrange things in and my art and writing stuff is much bigger than that little corner, the box room would be an ideal office, but it is Henry’s bedroom, the big bedroom can’t be used at all because we have a leaking roof we can’t afford to fix.  In an ideal situation we would move our bedroom into the big room, Henry into our current bedroom and I would use the box room as an office.  But at the moment I can’t.  We have had a survey on the roof it will cost us 5k to fix it, that is around 15yrs of savings for us currently.  Not feasible, especially with the storms we get up here.

Am I so wrong to need to get this off my chest and explain myself?

Tis bedlam here.

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