A Fridge Magnet Explanation

As a child I only went on holiday once. A week in Weston-Super-Mare with my Grandma in 1975. In my late teens I'd already had to leave home due to unfortunate circumstances and was working three jobs just to keep my head above water.  Holidays just never featured in my life. 

When I met my now husband, I discovered he had the most extreme form of phobia about flying. It must have been catching because somehow I was convinced I was scared of flying too!  So we had a week in a rural cottage in the UK somewhere, once a year and I was very grateful for that. :)

But then came my mid life crisis:-). I was in my mid 40s and had never done the holiday abroad thing. Never flown.  I felt I'd missed out and wanted to at least try it for myself. 

My husband was adamant he wouldn't.  So.....I went alone. Amsterdam first. Then Rome. 

After the second trip he realised he wanted to come with me, so he went on a fear of flying course in Manchester in November 2012. We drove up together and while he was on the day long course I met up with Wombat37 and LittleMavis which was really lovely!

Also....the course worked! So it was a very good day all round :)

Since then, we've been making up for lost time, seeking out bargains and offers and going on mini breaks whenever we can.  

Every time we go, we buy one or two fridge magnets and as you can see.....there's quite a collection forming!

As you'll also see.....there's PLENTY of room for more ;-) 

Moody

I don't half annoy myself, (other people might think I annoy them...at least they can get away)! There I am in a nice mood. OK sometimes a slightly silly or hyper mood I admit, but it's nice and I am happily going along feeling fine.

Then suddenly, striking without warning, usually triggered by one little comment I have probably misinterpreted, the black circle strikes! My mood plummets, I start worrying about what I said, who I said it to, what people think and who I have annoyed or upset. Then I get really cross with myself for allowing myself to do that and generally feel absolutely horrible.

At this point I should NOT keep talking to people; I should close twitter, not ring or text anyone and just basically keep my head down until the mood passes. But do I?

Um....no of course not. I feel this urgent need to apologise or make up for being so annoying and this, possibly combined with a desire for some reassurance, leads to me entering the digging a big hole for myself phase, filling it with stupidity, then continuing to dig as more and more stupidity jumps in with me.

So the silly, hyper, annoying comments on twitter make way for stupid, moody, even more annoying ones!

And why is it a black circle? Because it keeps bloody happening! I know the mood I am in now will pass, but sadly, I know it will return again, (I personally believe that the black circle also has vicious spikes, but I have no evidence of that) :).

I also know that this is a very self centred, self conscious post and that most people (if not all), if they notice me blathering on at all, couldn't actually care less what I say.

The problem is...I do. :(

Perspective

I never started this as a true blog, because in all honesty I don’t feel I have anything of interest to say and besides, I am no writer! Recent events however have left me with an urge to write about them, so....whether anyone ever reads it or not, that’s exactly what I am doing.

Since we moved here (just over 7 years ago) I have got my money’s worth out of the NHS. I have had numerous trips to the local GP, one ambulance ride, one trip to Morriston A&E with a torn muscle, one trip to Singleton A&E with a staple gunned eyeball, lots of trips to Prince Phillip Hospital in Llanelli for many tests and scans and I have had three separate 5 day stays in West Wales General Hospital including one operation.

However, I have never been so grateful to the NHS as this last fortnight and never has the physical pain of my own various ailments matched the emotional pain of the worry of seeing my husband so ill.

You see, I’m the ill one, the unhealthy one, the one prone to accidents; he is always there fit and healthy to look after me, to visit me twice a day in hospital despite the 32 mile round trip and the fact he was working full time, to take care of things.

On Tuesday 18th August, Paul popped his head around just to say he was finishing work as he’d suddenly felt unwell. Nothing you could put your finger on...very tired, headachey, dizzy and a little sick. He felt bad enough the following day not to work and although it seemed like nothing serious, he went to his GP on Thursday 20th. There was no evidence of anything in particular so it was put down to a virus going around. He was sent home to rest but told to ring up straight away if anything changed.

On Saturday 22nd, he suddenly felt a pain in his abdomen. Not too severe but this was a new symptom so we rang and got an appointment that evening. There was by now some evidence of a urine infection so a prescription for antibiotics was handed to us along with information that Tesco’s pharmacy would be open the following day.

So we headed home. Within a couple of hours however, Paul collapsed on the floor. The pain had increased tenfold and I was really scared. On the one hand he kept saying not to fuss (!) but on the other he looked so unwell and was clearly in agony.

I rang an ambulance.

They arrived and took him off to hospital. I followed having hastily packed him a small bag thinking he’d be staying in. Apparently there was only one doctor and I have to say the 6 hours or so we waited while he lay there in considerable pain, was a low point. It was around 5am when we saw a doctor; they suggested keeping him in but he wanted to come home, so home we came with actual antibiotics this time, not just a prescription.

He got no better. The next two days were awful. He was completely bed ridden, and refused anything to eat. We waited for the antibiotics to work, but things only got worse. Again he insisted that he was OK where he was but on Monday, I phoned our GP and asked for a home visit.

The doctor who came was great. He frowned as soon as he saw him, looked over to me and quickly said, ‘he’s going in’. A couple of phone calls later it was all arranged for an ambulance to come to collect him (there was no way he could sit in a car) and for him to be admitted. Once again I followed on with his bag. It was early afternoon.

Once there, he was initially taken to the surgical assessment ward. He was looked at fairly quickly and as he had a bad urine infection he was admitted to Urology. The consultant he had been assigned to however did not seem very impressed with this, he was convinced that the urine infection was incidental or secondary to something else. There followed a debate between up to 4 doctors at one point and the upshot of that, was that it was appendicitis.

Ok. Appendicitis I could understand. I’d had it myself and although it meant an operation I knew it was a common problem so I was relieved.

Surgery was scheduled for the following day but Paul then took a turn for the worse and was violently sick with increased pain and a rising temperature. He managed to scare one of the other patients on the ward into running down the ward screaming for help and in no time at all he was once again surrounded by doctors. It had become an emergency and they were taking him to surgery right away.

I stayed with him holding his hand right up to the theatre door, (I’d have scrubbed in if they’d have let me), but in all honesty he was so ill he can’t remember whether I was there or not.

It was around 10pm by now so I went back to the car and phoned my parents to let them know what was going on. They go to bed fairly early so I said I would phone them the next day with an update. It just an appendectomy so shouldn’t take too long; I would wait so I could see him afterwards.

Time went on...and on...and on...I started to get worried, anxious. Gut wrenching horrible worry where each awful minute seemed to last an hour. I remember one of the nurses asking me if I had eaten and I realised that I hadn’t eaten since breakfast but (unusually for me) I didn’t want to.

When it got to midnight they suggested I go home but I couldn’t. I did all the stuff you would imagine you do in that situation. I paced, I sat, I tried to find something to distract me, I paced some more. Every time I heard anyone passing I’d jump up, only to find it was a cleaner, or a porter passing by.

Eventually, well after 1am, the surgeon walked in. I rushed towards him; he was clearly surprised I was still there. He started to explain, it wasn’t his appendix... they had found a lump in his bowel....lump had been removed...12-18 inches of bowel had been removed... lots of infection...very poorly... don’t know what lump is.....results at least a week.

It was late, I was exhausted, worried beyond reason, hadn’t eaten but I tried to listen and take it in; I tried to think of the right questions to ask. Obviously what was going through my mind was bowel cancer. Cancer. Even now, thinking back to that awful night I feel a gripping panic come over me.

Once I had asked all I could think of, I was told to go home as it could be another 2 hours before I could see him. Reluctantly I did, although I phoned up three times during the night to make sure he was OK. I didn’t sleep at all.

I went to see him as soon as they would let me the next day (technically later the same day - our anniversary incidentally). He wasn’t really able to speak to me, but I managed to find out that he had been told what they had done. I just sat with him for hours, silently holding his hand and feeling very alone.

I went every day for as long as I was allowed and eventually... he did start to get better; once the pain eased enough for him not to need morphine he was a lot more ‘with it’. That was a relief. He was allowed sips of water, then after a couple of days tea, followed by soup and porridge and eventually proper solid food.

One night when neither of us could sleep, we texted each other, alternating our choices of song which we would then listen to ‘together’. It might sound very silly, but it helped.

A couple of days after that (8 days after the operation), he came home. That was last Tuesday, 31st August. It was so wonderful to have him home but of course he was weak, tired and still in some pain, but worse than that, we had the worry of the results still hanging over us, as we still didn’t know what the lump was.

Each day there was a small improvement. On Thursday the stitches (well clips) - all 39 of them - came out, and his appetite has got better and better each day. Then finally yesterday, on Saturday 4th September, we got the results through.

Our post doesn’t get put through our front door, but instead our postbox is at the top of a long private lane; when I went to collect the post and saw a letter from the hospital I drove back down at a stupid speed, wishing I could open it...but of course it was addressed to Paul.

I gave the letter to him and he wanted to see first. Torture! So I stepped into the kitchen for all of 5 seconds before insisting he let me see. He handed the letter to me but the broad smile told me all I needed to know. I read the letter anyway. It was only two sentences. The second one is my favourite. It says ‘Therefore there is no cause for concern here’.

Imagine if you can, the world’s hugest sigh followed by the world’s most heartfelt (but gentle) hug, along with tears of relief)! A flurry of phone calls and updates later and the world (well our little world) knew the good news.

So...it’s a long recovery but at last life seems to be more normal again. The terrible bleak gut wrenching days of worry have gone and although he is frustrated that he can’t do anything and I am tired (for the same reason), it is going to get better; it will just take time.

This afternoon, it would appear to most people to be a typical Sunday afternoon; rubbish on the telly, both sat doing nothing much with a cup of tea, but when I looked and saw him sat there, pain free, on the mend and home...I just felt like the luckiest person alive.

Perspective can do that.

This is the reality bit...

Now and again someone will ask something about where we live and why Mr C aka @moschops66 is seemingly always on the roof! So here is a bit of information I can point people to which explains our 'project'.

Our previous house was a perfectly nice 3 bed semi in an average suburb of Cardiff. Both our jobs were (and are) based in Cardiff too. Having lived there for 6 years and got it all how we wanted it with a nice manageable mortgage, we of course decided to move (obviously).

Hard to explain why we wanted to move, because most people probably won't quite understand, but we felt claustrophobic and hemmed in. We were surrounded by other houses which were occupied by the usual mix of people; some nicer and more considerate than others when it came to parking, noise etc. We just felt that we could never fully relax or escape the stresses of life being so 'in the middle' of things.

So we took out a silly mortgage, moved 60 miles away and bought an old, rather large house with 10 acres and no near neighbours, which would take us all our spare time to do up/maintain probably for the next 20 years!

The original house is about 250 years old but it has a hideously ugly 1970s flat roof extension; most of the original features went I suspect during the same decade and the whole thing is a pebble dash nightmare so please do not conjure up images of some beautiful old stone cottage because sadly, that it isn't!

To be honest it was the setting and the lack of neighbours, along with the accessibility to M4 corridor / Cardiff for work that swung it. A picturesque cottage would be nice but we also had budget to consider and compromises have to be made somewhere!

Seven years later...most of the inside of the house is now how we want it; @moschops66 (actually let's call him Paul) has done 99% of it himself and he has no background in this sort of work which makes it all the more impressive when you see how bloody brilliant he is at it! He won't agree of course but anyone who comes here, whether it is to their taste or not, will always comment on the quality of the work.

There is still a little way to go inside but this summer is all about the outside. Bizarrely, the previous owners had painted two faces of the house white and left the other two as the original brown pebbledash. The white paint was looking decidedly off colour, the fascia boards had all rotted and the guttering had broken so all in all, it was looking horrible. It couldn't wait another year so the whole Spring/Summer/Autumn project was decided. (That is along with mowing an acre of VERY awkward lawn regularly and cutting enough logs for the winter)!

To give you an idea...yesterday just removing one old fascia board took many hours involving saws, drills, rope and one very exhausted husband. He then has to make (yes he is making his own) replacement fascia boards, sand, prime, paint and fit. So there's that job many times over before we start with drainpipes, guttering and actually painting the whole house (which is quite big).

And THAT'S why he's always on the roof!