Category: Health

No, She Hasn’t Been On A World Cruise!

Four months on, she reappears and is most touched to find her blog has the same number of followers as when she last visited her site! Thanks all, for your loyalty and patience.

Despite the post’s title, this particular lady wouldn’t fancy a world cruise even if she could afford one, but a trip to the Norwegian Fjords to watch the Northern Lights is definitely on her bucket list.

Rather than list the negatives that have stood in the way of regular blogging throughout 2019, she will share with you some good things.

  • She has bestowed much tender loving care on her garden.
  • She has finished the 2nd draft of her 6th novel Twicers, a satire set in the near future, which she began in 2017 during National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo), and has entered its opening chapters to a competition. Its rules didn’t insist on the entrants polishing their work to a gleam, let alone completing the first draft. The 2nd draft is now with beta readers, to whom she extends her heartfelt appreciation and thanks. She awaits their feedback/constructive criticism with bated breath.
  • She has discovered the wonderful calming effects of CBD oil, which has stopped her heart palpitations and lifted her mood, and for the first time in 20 years her thyroid levels are normal due to the endocrine boosting effects of the oil, plus a 3-month course of homeopathic Thyroidinum.
  • She has new, super lightweight and comfy eco-glasses and can now see properly, as well as doing her bit for the planet. For those who haven’t come across these specs, the frames consist of 63% plant-based materials and 95% recycled materials, plus every time someone purchases frames, ECO plants a tree — over 1.5 million trees so far.
  • She has joined an all-female small choir and mastered the art of singing alto, having previously always sung soprano. With three concerts under her belt and two more scheduled for this year, she’s feeling on a high. They’re a fab group of girls and the choice of music most eclectic.
  • She has two wonderfully practical men in her household who’ve recently drilled a hole in the wall of her home office upstairs and hardwired her PC to the modem downstairs, which means she can be more efficient with her work and still have quality time with the family, dig the garden, do singing practice, and re-engage with the blogging community.

For those of you who sent such kindly getwells to a certain sweet old chocolate Labrador at the time of her op and convalescence, she has just had her 6-monthly health check at the vets and passed it with flying colours, despite still hosting the mast cell tumour that was meant to have been removed! Thanks to love, prayers, and alternative remedies, she’s in fine fettle: eating and sleeping well, enjoying her walks, playing/winning tug of war, and fully engaging in her role as chief supervisor.

A game of canine peekaboo!

Working from Hard Copy While Nursing a Patchwork Dog

Here I am again, at last!

As mentioned in my last post, my sweet old chocolate Labrador bitch had to undergo surgery to remove some lumps, one of them a nasty mast cell tumour. On the day of her surgery, it felt as though I was delivering her to a torture chamber.

Usually the association in my dog’s mind between visits to the vet and bountiful “good girl” treats makes things just about okay. However when a dog has had no food since 8 pm the evening before surgery and then has the vet steal her away from her family on an empty stomach, this is bad news. The previous morning it seems she sensed the need to build up her strength.

Following many hours of waiting, the vet called us to say the surgery had gone well. Late in the afternoon, we collected a very sorry-for-herself but brave dog all trussed up in a string vest to hold the padded dressings in place and protect her stitches. She came home armed with anti-inflammatory pain meds and some tasty soft food, her appetite unaffected by the experience.

We live on a hillside and that means loads of steps in the front and back garden, but our list of instructions for her included no running up steps or stairs. Initially this meant carrying her up on to the lawn to do her business and banning her from going upstairs in the house. She also had to stay on the lead in the garden, to prevent her from chasing marauders, scratching her underside on undergrowth, or jumping against the fences.

Of course I made sure to stay downstairs with her, so she didn’t feel lonely or unloved! This meant a holiday from my computer, which lives upstairs. With editing still to do on my manuscript, I decided to do it the old-fashioned way and print it out into hard copy. This enabled me to set up my nurse cum editor station on the sofa, with a wedge pillow as a climbing slope for my four-pawed friend.

On Day 3, the vet removed the string vest and suggested our old girl wear a T-shirt instead, to help the air circulate better to assist her healing. Mister and Son donated one garment each for this purpose, and pretty super-cool madam looked, too. As for the indignity of wearing one of those lampshade collars, Mistress Houdini was out of the offending anti-fashion item in one minute flat. Mister tried it on as a hat and it suited him much better. Shame I didn’t have my camera to hand at the time.

Zoom forward to 13 days later and freedom at last: stitches removed, off the lead in the garden, stairs and steps permitted. And a week on from then, her undercoat has regrown and resembles brown carpet underfelt. She is back to her usual happy and exuberant self, even demanding I play tug of war with her today.

As mast cell tumours have a habit of popping up elsewhere on a dog that’s susceptible to them, I’ve added cod liver oil to her diet, for its anti-inflammatory and anti-carcinogenic properties. I’m also treating her with relevant homeopathic remedies, plus the twelve cell salts. Fingers crossed, she’ll be with us many more years yet, hopefully as long as our last Labrador who lived to the grand age of 17.

I’m taking homeopathic remedies, too, along with probiotics containing anti-histamine bacteria — all to good effect so far, other than my inability to put on weight (unusual for hypothyroid, I know). Unfortunately the synthetic thyroxine medication prescribed by the doctor made me very ill and I had to stop taking it, but that’s another story for another day.

Have I done much editing during the last month? That’s questionable, although the experience has reminded me that working from hardcopy has its definite merits. It’s easier to spot errors, get a sense of flow, and put yourself in the reader’s head, plus it stops you going boss-eyed in front of the computer screen.

Dratted Thyroid! The Culprit Behind My #Writer’s Block

Today I’ve decided to break a rule and blog about my health, not to gain sympathy, as my malady is only minor in the scheme of things, but to share something that might prove relevant to other people suffering from inexplicable writer’s block.

For the last decade, my thyroid has shown up as borderline underactive in routine blood tests. This means everything I’ve achieved on the creative front, including publishing two novels and writing two more, has proved a mega-exhausting business. However, during that time I’ve rarely suffered writer’s block for longer than a few days.

On December 2, 2018 things started to take a notable downward slide, or was it a plunge? My brain felt as if it was disappearing down a sink plughole. On one level I kept up pretence of having energy and enthusiasm, but on the other I was heading for a very dark place. It was like being two different people: inwardly half-dead but outwardly engaged and wearing a brave smile not to let other people down, especially Mister, after his severe medical crisis throughout October and November.

I’m glad to say Mister is now bounding with energy, thanks to modern medicine and the correct drug regime. In our garden, he has chopped down two dead trees – an apple and a lilac – and dug all the beds (his stepson’s job being to saw up branches and mine to bag them up). At the allotment, Mister has dug the whole plot and (with stepson’s assistance) has erected a fabulous greenhouse acquired from Freecycle. Plus he has restored some antique oak furniture in his workshop and built a bespoke cabinet for someone’s kitchen, which he installed yesterday. Not to mention his carrying on with his musical commitments. See what I mean about exhausting 😉   

Mister, garden gladiator, wields his chainsaw!

Regarding my thyroid dysfunction, not everybody displays all the symptoms, which makes diagnosis nigh on impossible without a blood test, or two, or three, or many more.

This is my list of symptoms…

  • Exhausted all day, despite 7-8 hours of interrupted sleep at night
  • Loss of appetite (full up after a few mouthfuls)
  • Falling asleep at the dinner table
  • Weight loss (BMI 17.0 at last count)
  • Depression/extreme negativity/anxiety
  • Slow, irregular heartbeat (except during anxiety attacks!)
  • Low blood pressure
  • Digestive issues
  • Brain fog
  • Extreme sensitivity to cold
  • The death of all creativity

Spot the odd one out that doesn’t fit the usual hypothyroid picture… WEIGHT LOSS? Hence, my latest blood test a week ago checked for cortisone levels as well as thyroid stimulating hormone (TSH) levels, in case my adrenal gland was sending my thyroid gland haywire. Not so, but my thyroid was now sufficiently underactive to require treatment. Might I add, that if I’d lived in the US or Canada, rather than the UK, I believe I’d have received medication a lot earlier, although I’m not sure it would have been free! Perhaps one of my fellow bloggers from over the Pond would elucidate me further on both points.

People who know me well, are aware of my reluctance to take pills. I prefer to solve things with diet and lifestyle changes, but there are limits to how rotten you can feel before you bend to the call of conventional medicine.

For the last few days, each morning I’ve taken taking the minimum dose of thyroxine (25 mcg). The doctor will review this in about 5 weeks, after I’ve had a further blood test. If my levels are up to a healthy level, I’ll continue on 25 mcg. If they are still too low, then the doctor will have to try me on 50 mcg. Whatever dose I end up on, I will need to take thyroxine for the rest of my life (let’s hope for my sake and Mister’s, there isn’t a shortage of medication if there’s a hard Brexit, as the scaremongers are forecasting).

I am not out of the wood yet, but there’s a slight improvement. Firstly, I’m getting my appetite back, which should help me gain some weight. Secondly, I’m much warmer than usual. Thirdly, I took myself out for a brisk quarter-of-an hour walk following my usual half-hour plod with the dog. Not sure about the creativity but at least I’ve motivated myself to write a blog post, my first in over two months, which is a good start.

The anxiety is still there, but with good reason. In just under a fortnight, my beautiful 11-year-old chocolate Labrador bitch has to have some lumps and bumps removed, one of which is an aggressive malignant mast cell tumour. The good news is that she’s otherwise in excellent health and blissfully unaware of the planned operation, which means she can enjoy the next few days and leave all the worrying to her family. The brilliant vet, who’ll carry out the surgery, specialises in treating mast cell tumours and I have every faith in him to do the best for her.

Madam’s favourite armchair

So there we are; that’s life in the Potter household at the moment — some good, some bad, but always full of love and hope.

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