Hi! I’m so sorry I forgot to update you. In summary, I’m feeling pretty good. I’m full of health and beans and enthusiasm.
I have to start with an apology. Firstly, maybe I should never really have written THIS. “So, How are you?” ask very few people since I publicly took the piss out of you for asking this question. Serves me right. Don’t worry, I know you care really. Which means the delay in getting this update out is all the meaner of me.
I have been writing, I just didn’t finish and publish anything. That means we go from no posts in almost a year to all of this writing at once. I’m going to colour code, Green for the snotty ones you might need tissues for. Skip the links and scroll down if you just want to hear how I am now.
A quick summary….
- I recovered really well from the surgery. I wrote about it. I didn’t finish it so I didn’t post it. Shoddy if me. I’ve filled in some of the gaps and left some of the gaps in. Read it here
- I had a scan in June which went reasonably well. I wrote about it but didn’t send it. That wasn’t nice of me, I’m sorry.
- I got busy at home and plastered Ivy’s bedroom wall. I got very sad and wrote this. This is really what stopped me publishing the writing. I’m not sure anyone wants to read something that sad. You’re welcome 😉
- Then I had a moment of being less busy and got even more sad and wrote this. I didn’t know how or if to share it. I stopped because Dee does my proof reading and I didn’t want her to read it. You might want to skip that one too.
- So I phoned a therapist. She was on holiday. So I phoned another. She was also on holiday. It seems that the end of August is a bad time to get really sad. That’s when the therapists go on holiday. So I waited and went in September. This lead me to write this. Yup, it’s another sad one.
- And Life Expectancy: to floss or not to floss?
- I wrote about preparing for scans and Scanxiety.
- I had another Scan on the 4th of January….
EGG CHECK 2
I got the old MRI machine again, so no fancy mirror or music. It wasn’t fun, I lay almost naked in the freezing cold in and MRI scanner for an hour and for the first time felt really resentful and miserable. The machines, and some people, get hot in the scanner so they make you hand your clothes in and blast freezing cold air down the tube. Next time I’m allowed to take my pyjamas to wear.
When my first ever MRI on my knee many years ago there was music. Possibly because I was at a private hospital, nice. The benefit of the music is that it makes it possible to count the songs and, say each song lasts about 3 minutes, gives a sense of time. Without a sense of time, the cold and the incredible urge to wiggle became almost unbearable. There’s a panic button but I resist pressing it as I imagine it would only make the whole thing last even longer and also, I’m a big brave girl and I can handle this. Yes I am. I am. I am. Just.
Additionally, I’m not fond of needles and in particular not fond of cannulas (that’s when they put a big needle in your arm and just leave it there). This adds to my discomfort. Still, I’m a big brave girl. Yes I am. Once, in another hospital on a different day I had a cannula go wrong and the drip missed the vein and just started filling up my arm under the skin. A bubble the size of a golf ball grew up and up. It didn’t help my anti-canula disposition. That was very sore. Then I had a baby, which frankly redefines the scale on pain. It’s not unusual in hospitals to give a “pain score”, they say “how is the pain on a scale of 1 to 10”. Getting the baby out is useful because I definitely know where 10 is. Brain surgery? Didn’t really get past a 3 or 4 so that’s good. Canula gone wrong? Probably a 5. I could list my experiences which reached 8 & 9 but that’s not necessary. So, rest assured mothers, if you’ve had a baby and needed significant stitching after I can, with some authority reassure you, that’s somewhere up there in the region of a 10.
To get to the interesting stuff. Left Gwalia at 7am, Mum, Corinna and Janet looked after Ivy. Ivy was sick, unusually, on someone else. I had the scan, it wasn’t nice. Had a long wait then a brief conversation with Mr. H, good news, “no change”. This is as good as can reasonably be expected. A small part of me harbours a fantasy that he’ll say “Oh my gosh… It’s gone!” but this is very unlikely so in conclusion, yup “good news”. Next scan is in July. I promise to write. Really, I will. I made a commitment now so I must!