1Y & 6 Wks post R2 - Sunshine, BBQ's and my Super Powered Big Toe

Well it’s 6 weeks into year 3 and Britain has been having what by British weather standards is a heatwave. We’ve reached the lofty heights if 34 degrees celecius which is unheard of in the middle of summer let alone late spring

There’s nothing British people love more than a really big moan about the weather being too hot / too cold / too unreliable / badly timed etc – preferably over a nice cup of tea and a biscuit :-)

Personally I’m loving the heat (despite being ginger) – I suspect that I might be part lizard because I really do love the heat (very strange for a person with MS to say that I know) I have even built on the pitiful attempt at a tan that I got in Portugal and have not returned to my natural pale and spiteful state (apart from the bit of my legs between my knees and ankles which remains frighteningly white)

Toe update – I’ve had about a bazillion Arnica tablets this week with extra Tumeric supplements and to be honest it looks like a toe again instead of a big nasty purple lumpy mess. It’s still quite ‘tender’ to the touch and I’m walking a little gimpy but I’m  ready to declare the break healed as I I was able to wear shoes again on Saturday morning – So big toe now wins the fastest healing bone competition with 8 days.

Gareth and I have now not used the oven at home for 5 days thanks to the beautiful weather – the BBQ has been in daily use with a variety of lovely dishes with epic salads to accompany them. We’ve had piri piri chiecken, greek lamb, steaks which were all lovely and one rather dodgy shop bought burger which mostly went into the dogs (who didn’t seem to mind it so much)

So this last week with the Norovirus / broken toe situation has also been what I refer to as ‘Hell Week’ it starts on the Sunday with Fathers Day, is swiftly followed y what would have been my Mum’s birthday and then rounds out with the anniversary of Ian’s funeral. Just on the off chance I was unaware of the timing, Facebook reminds me of each of these things in turn. It’s been okay this year – not ‘all right’ because it’s never going to be that, but on the sliding scale of how I’ve been for the last few years, it’s been okay. I miss them all something fierce and it hurts my heart, but I’m not falling apart this year so that’s okay.

I’ve got my bi-annual appointment with the lovely Margaret – my MS nurse on Friday for my ‘so how’s life without all that MS nonsense bothering you’ review. My only moan will be that despite everyone’s best efforts getting me onto an annual smear schedule still seems to be somewhat more difficult to achieve than organising world peace.

I had a quick chat with Margaret regarding the freaky blood results, we’re neither of us concerned and just waiting for next months bloods to see what is the state of play whilst celebrating the thyroid behaving itself again (I miss asparagus, cabbage, green beans and broccolini SOOOO much but they’re the common denominator in funky thyroid behaviour so they’re consigned to the back seat in very small quantities).

We have training this weekend for the volunteering that we do and some friends of Gareth’s coming for dinner (another BBQ methinks) then I’m probably going to duck out on the Work BBQ thing in Sunday for Gareth’s company, it’s too far away and too long to leave the dogs alone (plus Gareth is staying the night in Bath as he has a meeting first thing on Monday morning).

So all quiet on the MS front, and just he way I like it. I’m actually looking forward to the next month’s bloods (wishing the time away to get to them – yup I’m weird) but I’m really interested to see what happens to the lymphocytes – will they slowly start rebuilding (I hope so ….. life with a serious shortage of thie little buggers has been so much simpler) or will they rematerialise (like the TARDIS)  back to their previous levels – BOOO) :-(

My world as always remains very strange but very lovely xxx

Year 3 Week 5 Monthly Bloods, Broken Toe, Norovius and the case of the dissapearing Lymphocytes

The tail end (oh dear – the irony) of last week was certainly a game of 4 halfs (yes I know that doesn’t make sense and is mathematically impossible)

Mid-afternoon on Thursday it became very obvious that there was something clearly wrong with my ‘insides’ …. Well it’s TMI (too much information to those not Au fait with da kidz) but quite frankly my arse was falling off / out in a pretty catastrophic way.

Erring on the side of caution I decided to head home from work before rush hour hit so I wouldn’t get stuck in traffic (good idea)

Tara had been and cleaned the house while we were out and the house looked and smelled beautiful – the dining table chairs were upside down on the table as the floor had been swept and mopped (good idea)

I decided to turn the chairs over before Gareth got home and accused me of being a lazy mare (VERY VERY BAD IDEA)

Mid rotation of the first chair I lost my grip (clumsy not MS) and dropped it sideways from pretty much shoulder height onto my BARE left foot ….. CRACK – Broken Big Toe

Now the thing about a broken big toe (when it’s not actually bent off to the side or something) is there is nothing they can do really except tell you to be careful and not bash it around ……  so the thought of 3 hours in A&E while they told me it was broken (yeah I know that) and to be careful – not so appealing …………. So I iced it, elevated it and tried to be very careful whilst hobbling back and forth to the bathroom to deal with my catastrophic arse.

Friday the broken toe had turned really dark …. It was hugely swollen and the skin was stretched so thin it looked like a ready to pop spot – hmm ….. I remember having to get Gareth’s finger ‘lanced’ in a similar crush type injury situation looks like we’re off to A&E then – dinner time on a Friday appears to be an awesome time to turn up, I’d been seen by the triage nurse within 5 minutes of arrival and within 20 minutes was with the doctor …… they even found some nail varnish remover so they could get a proper look at the whole toe … yes it broken – no it doesn’t need to be ‘popped’ – yes I need to elevate it MUCH more than I have been – don’t kick any doors soon Mrs D … out in about 35 minutes start to finish (I declined a pointless x-ray to tell us what was stunningly obvious even to a blind person)

All things considered I can’t praise the Royal Berks highly enough (again) they’ve been awesome with me

So the rest of the weekend has been spent alternately with my leg raised above my heart or sitting on the throne with my arse falling off crying my eyes out because of the stomach cramps and ‘acid attack’ on my poor arse …. It’s ‘Norovirus’ for those interested – it would appear my hygiene OCD has had a critical failure somewhere along the line ……

But Hey the stairs are done ….. unfortunately it would appear plan A of putting the Amtico down might not actually happen as Winston-Dog is terrified of them – Gareth is having to carry him up and down to bed each night ….. Looks like I’m carpet shopping again this weekend … something bland, doesn’t show dog hair flat weave and durable is the ‘list’.

We saw the girls on Saturday night for Kate’s birthday (me not drinking and running back and forth to Kate’s bathroom – Arnica was handed over for toe bruising and Glucose and Lemonade for the arse situation …… (sounds mad but it didn’t taste crap and kept me hydrated so I did it)

As of 9.30am Monday catastrophic arse finally returned to normal ….. (thank divinity of your choice) so 48 hour count down and I’m back in general population again YAY.

In other more interesting news …. My monthly bloods have come back. These are month 25 ….. the first set of year 3 and well lets just say my eyebrows have raised for a number of reasons ……

• There are some of my normal readings which are not coming back on the results (request made to the doctor to give the request type a little tweak)
• There were some funky readings last month as I was just ‘under the weather’ with something the Lymphocytes shot through the roof so clearly the little army was scrapping with something …..
• Strangely despite a broken big toe last Thursday and what appears to have been norovirus over the course of the weekend everything as returned to pretty much normal
• Even the naughty thyroid (it really doesn’t want me to eat green vegetables)
• my lymphocytes however seem to have deserted me ….. I’m used to a few of the little sucker’s cliff diving like lemmings when the fight is done but this seems to have been a mass suicide on the scale of Waco L ……. (whilst I regard lack of normal levels of lymphocytes as a good thing as they’re not eating my Myelin ….. I’m certainly having a ‘raised eyebrow what the heck happened there moment)
• Broken toe is going for the healing record ….. (currently 10 days to the left wrist scaphoid) at day 5 it’s almost back to normal thanks to a diet of Arnica, Turmeric Supplement, Oxygen Therapy and a bottle of white wine J

Despite all this strangeness, now the Norovirus has buggered off I feel great J

So here you go …. This month’s WTF happened there then blood results J

Year 3 week 4 Sun, fun and pot holes

Well this is different, now I’m just posting Year 3 Week updates …..

The blood tests continue, but treatment wise – well I’m not on anything, not MS related or anything else. Life is MS free and continues to be as strange as it ever was.

I have an appointment with my MS nurse later this month, our bi-annual get together where we discuss how there really isn’t anything I need and that I’m doing great. There will be the ‘pesky thyroid’ discussion to be had, but that’s really not going to be terribly interesting assuming that my avoidance of broccoli, cabbage and cauliflower brings it back again (that’s a pain in the arse when you’re trying to follow a Ketogenic diet) 

The weekend was lovely with lots of sunshine and a planned visit with ‘boy’ to see how he’s doing. We had a lovely walk with the dogs, but I think we ‘broke’ poor Winston with too many balls thrown he definitely overdid things and needs a few days of gentle exercise and lots of water to get him right again.

Today (allegedly) the pot hole people are coming to fill in all the craters in the lane which hopefully won’t cause too many movement challenges with the neighbours. The stairs however are an ongoing issue – allegedly they are being done Thursday and Friday this week (the belief in that is now starting to fade if I’m brutally honest since he’s still not come back with the parts order or confirmation of the dates)

Work remains completely hectic and insanely frustrating and rewarding at the same time – I’d say it keeps me out of trouble but to be fair I’m usually in the middle of a battle of one type or other all day every day so – not so much so.

Monthly bloods and pee tests are scheduled for this Friday (must remember to actually take the urine sample in this time) so hopefully news on the naughty thyroid and it will be more well behaved than it was last month.

I’ll stop waffling now. Virtual love, hugs and all that stuff to everyone xxx

Y3Wk3 - Back home and Month 12 bloods from R2

Apologies for not posting last week, getting home and back to 'real life' after holibobs was pretty frantic and mixed up with the added anniversary of losing my brother and the memorial service in Knowle to lay his ashes to rest.


So what's been happening .... well I got home from my holiday at 05:45 in the morning on the 26th with my appointment to have my bloods done at 09:30am ..... that made for an interesting if exhausted experience. The M23 and the M3 were both closed coming back from Gatwick so being tired and following diversions through unknown routes in the dark wasn't fun.


We went up to Knowle in Sunday for the memorial and internment of my brothers’ ashes. A long and emotional day, it was good to see so many people who had cared about Ian again. We were supposed to go to Loch Fyne for lunch after the service, but the thought of going to a fish restaurant after had my stomach rolling around so we just came home to the dogs and then I took a long nap on the sofa.


Tuesday of course was the anniversary of losing Ian and I’d previously booked the day off, but the thought of spending all day clock watching and reliving that day at home alone suddenly seemed like a really dumb idea so I went into work anyway just to get away from myself.

The rest of the week was more relaxed, I managed to get in an oxygen treatment over the weekend that made me feel far more human again.

So my month 12 blood results …. Here they are (I couldn’t squeeze out a pee sample on 3 hours sleep that Friday morning – I did one later and meant to drop it into the surgery, but I forgot and it’s still in the baggie in the hall on the table – must get rid of that when I get home tonight - EEEK)

We have the carpenter coming at 19:30 this evening to measure and sort out the order of materials to fix the stairs, I may have all the neighbours baying for my blood later as I might be locking the whole road for an hour tomorrow with a big tarmac truck and having the pot holes filled ….

Life in my world continues to race past at breakneck speed in a completely random and illogical manner.

Anyway – those blood results ……new doctors, a few missing and clearly fighting something with some of this months results but then I knew that anyway. But good news (kind of …. ) Lymphocytes are finally back in the ‘normal’ range …. Unfortunately I suspect this is because the little darlings have been breeding like crazy to fight whatever bug I have and will have all suicided themselves by the same time next month

Sadly once again the thyroid is being a lazy slob so I'm going to be ultra good and avoid broccoli and cabbage again for a few weeks and just take care of myself and see if that helps right itself again.