Well where to start, it’s been a long time since I updated my little corner of the Internet, and a lot has happened in that time. A 3-day hospital stay for yours truly (really not as bad as it sounds, I’ll elaborate further on), my beloved turning the big 3-0 (this again not as bad as it sounds, bit don’t let him hear you say that!), tonnes of time off work due to the cocktail of drugs I have had foisted upon me and lots of other little bits & pieces.
So, children, are we sitting comfortably? Well I’ll begin (I’ve always wanted to say that)
First, the hospital admission. Now, most people are content in giving themselves a little birthday treat, a new pair of shoes, a manicure etc, not me. For my birthday this year I gave myself, in no particular order; a 3 day hospital admission, compromising, numerous blood tests (now I understand that to most people this is not a big thing, but if like me your blood pressure is continually on the floor, you’re anaemic and have veins the width of toothpicks, even drawing blood is akin to a torture session, usually taking 4 or 5 attempts to locate a vein & then the painstaking wait while the blood is coaxed out, to give you an idea of just how bad it is when my blood is taken they have to actually draw it out with a syringe as my blood can’t actually be trusted to spurt into the little tube of it’s own accord, such is the piss-pooredness (what? that’s a word) of my blood pressure!), a gastroscopy a sigmoidoscopy (these where both done at the same time – double whammy!!), a abdominal x-ray, an abdominal ultra-sound and my most favorite one a barium x-ray , except that I’m just so lucky that I wasn’t able to swallow the barium but had to have it manually forced in via a tube that was fed up my nose, down through my stomach & into my bowel – it was just the most perfect birthday gift I could have gotten myself, I’m really thinking of making it an annual thing such was my enjoyment of the whole procedure. I’m guessing that the doctor and two technicians didn’t enjoy it as much as I did, however due to me projectile vomiting all over them, think the scene in the Exorcist & then times that by ten, it was that bad!
The outcome of this little soiree was that I now am a bone fide Crohns disease sufferer – woo-hoo! As such I am now taking more drugs than I have ever taken, compromising, steroids, Mesalazine and Azathioprine – there are about a million links to these lovely drugs and I couldn’t pick just one, so if you care go Google crazy and you’ll find all you wanted to know and more. The basic thing is that they are anti-inflammatory and immuno-suppressant drugs which although they do help control the symptoms they carry a plethora of side effects, some of which are down right scary, but on the plus side I did get a two week sick-note from work, which I needed if not to ease myself into taking the tablets and coping with the overwhelming nausea and tiredness they gave me, then to try and stuff myself stupid to put some of the weight back on I’d lost. When I left hospital I weight 7 stone 11 ounces! I don’t think I have ever weighed this little, well not in my adult life anyway.
So, that’s what I’ve been doing – how’ve you been?
It’s not all been bad though, we’ve set a date for the wedding, well in truth we had to cancel the original wedding as the credit crunch, you know I think referring to it in this way is just a ploy by the media to fool us into thinking that this whole recession dealy is nice and fuzzy and by giving it a non-scary name we’ll all just carry on as normal and not notice that our houses are worth about 50p and that a loaf of bread costs more than our car did last year, any-hoo, due to the fact that we have no money we had to cancel the fancy-pants hotel and scrap the big formal wedding breakfast. Which if I’m totally honest I’m not actually that bothered about, I wanted to get married in a registry office and then have a ‘do’ afterwards with buffet (NB this must be pronounced buff-et if you’re Northern, 2 syllables, thank you!), but N was the one who wanted to go super formal and have the whole toast-master, 5 course dinner bit, but that’s not me. Too much fuss and too much emphasis put on tradition and etiquette, and those who know me will know that I don’t give a rats ass about etiquette and tradition so all in all I’m much happier things have worked out this way. I think it will be a much more relaxed and fun day, and what is a wedding if not a excuse to get drunk and dance along to The Music Man ?? No? Just me then? Well, as long as it’s understood I won’t actually be doing any of the dancing, I’ll be standing to the side in my purty dress and laughing at everyone else, but you know, the sentiment is there, right?
Plus, this gives us much more control about how things can be done without giving any of our older relatives a coronary because it’s not being down the right way. So we’ll be getting married at 12 o’clock, after the ceremony everyone will be back to our house for sandwiches and cups of tea etc. Then we’re sort of hoping everyone will sod off for a few hours, well seeing as most of our friends and family have small children we’re guessing they might want to take them off for a nap so they won’t be too crabby in the evening, and then we’ve booked the same hall we had for our engagement party and thankfully the club have done loads of weddings before and have assured us they can do everything including the food, the decorations, the flowers, the photographer and DJ for less than £1000 – which compared to what we were paying is a total bargain. Plus the fact we now don’t have to pay almost £400 for the registrars to come out to the hotel, that has been cut to about £100 for the marriage license and to get both of us ok’d to get married in the first place.
I was going to go on and tell you about other stuff, but then I realized I’ve rambled on for far too long so I’ll save that for another time.
