12 Days to Go

In 12 days I'll be in hospital, probably going under where some guy is going to take a saw to my spine...  And I'm excited!

It's Easter Saturday around here and I am pausing in cooking and cleaning to blog.  Cooking because the Squeeze's kid, wife and baby are coming to stay. Most people would be groaning at the thought, but I'm lucky. I love all my kid's partners and the Squeeze's are mine too; so that is that.

I loved my son's wife - who was a nursing sister at the hospital in ED. One night she got bashed severely and wasn't the same since then. She had a bleed on the brain and ended up killing herself - which was devastating to us all. It is a pity you don't find that stuff out until after. 

The bleed in her brain made sense to me because she has several accidents; writing two cars off. When I researched, people with brain bleeds often commit suicide. But I wonder how I didn't put it all together before and do something.

I try to remain anonymous on here, but this is a pic of my gorgeous son and his beautiful wife!

 

13 Days...

It's funny. My whole existence is focusing on this operation on my spine. I think it sounds stupid; if I was reading this I'd think this woman was stupid. But... If this stops the pain I can live a normal life! 

It's Good Friday and here I am, I don't want to go anywhere because of pain (that, and the fact I look like a balloon who doesn't give a shit how I look. That is to a point true; I couldn't care less... But if you feel awful, you look awful :(   Time enough to fix that when I get out of hospital!

I'm an exceedingly house proud, to the point where you could eat off the floors they are so clean. The garden's - same. But here I am, taking the Squeeze approach. Well, not as bad as the Squeeze, but the garden looks shabby and weed infested; unlike its pristine self!

And I'm really looking forward to being able to clean the house from roof tops to rafters! Get out side and garden! 

So... Aside from the garden and house, I'm thinking of going someplace on a holiday the last week I'm recuperating! Some place close like New Caledonia or Phuket! So now I'm going to research!

14 Days and Counting!!

It is now only 14 days until I get operated on my spine. I can't wait. Although this seems seriously terrifying; both financially; my neurosurgeon charges $3580.05 and the rebate in $1,580.05 and that doesn't begin to count the same for the anesthetist and the excess I pay for the hospital... But I can't wait.

It will be so nice to walk normally! Not having to cringe; walk gingerly; walk like I have a stick up my ass! Normal! Yay!! I can't wait...

Today I had to do a lot of running around for the hospital (figuratively!); give blood and do an ECG and fill out the forms online! And I had to get a roadworthy on my car and run around and get it so my girlfriends daughter could come and pick it up (and it looks fab the car! Makes me think I should have kept it!!)

And I did all that in between working the day!

Roll on now I say, because it is the end of the work week and it is Easter! So - have a happy Easter everyone!

OH let's do a bit of surgery on your back!

Well here we go again! I'm going for surgery! Not my brain, or my hips - but my spine. It sounds like fun! (yes... that was sarcasm!) They are going to open me up, and then 2 or 3 bits from the bottom of my spine, they're going to cut the bone out so it doesn't impeach on my spinal column - and I can't wait! (that wasn't sarcasm)

But I'm sick of it!

I'm sick of it hurting all the time. I'm sick of the steroids! I'm sick of not being able to walk; of being a fat cow. So 16 days... and everything will be different! 

Bring it on! Oh God! Bring. It. On.

A Week... In My life

You guessed it. This will be the shortest blog ever  :)

We worked all week... I limped around a lot. Why? Well my Neuro suggested that stretching or bending could increase the size of the disc spaces in my spine, there by alleviating the strangulation of my spinal column. I mean it made sense; at the supermarket I bend over and lean on the trolley, not realising that was what I was doing!  Anyway, it didn't work. I did it, but I think something got jammed somewhere because now I can barely walk and that comes with a lot of sweat and swearing.

See! Down the bottom they don't look right!

It is Sunday today; only five more days until I see my Neuro again and he'll decide if it is Spinal Stenosis or not after checking out the MRI scans. If it is; God... I could kiss him (lucky he is very good looking and young!) but even if he was old and ugly, having an answer after years of pain will be astonishing!

Now I know he isn't going to whip out a scalpel and operate straight away but I'm going to vote for it as soon as possible. It no point trying me on meds. I've tried them all! Most I'm intolerant to, some I'm downright allergic too.

Last day of the mini break...

Mini breaks are so good at the start of them; not so good at the finish line.  It's 41 degrees celcius here again today. 3 days of 40+ and I'm hiding in my house, air conditioner blasting - like a vampire. I can't let the sun touch me, because it is like being submerged in battery acid.

We went out for breakfast and it was nice under cover, but as soon as I went in the sunlight; I wondered how in the hell I had managed to get out at all. And of course, I dropped the Squeeze and his kid off to go swimming at Eastern Beach, so that means I've got to go back out in the hideous heat to get them! The Squeeze magnanimously said "oh we'll walk home!" but one look at the horror on the kid's face and I knew there was no way they were going to walk home.  The Squeeze sometimes he forgets he's 69 years old I think...

So I'm sitting at home, in front of the air conditioner, blogging while they are doing a swim. It would have been nice, but I think of my legs (read I'm almost a cripple) so getting in and out of the water would be a nightmare. I'd rather stay home!

I'm counting down the days until my appointment with my neurosurgeon. Please let him have the answer because I'm damned sick of being an invalid. 11 days... then if I'm right, or rather he is, I'll have to have another damned operation (this time on my spine), but at least I'll be normal then! Just one of the plebs!

A day of relaxation...

It's too hot to do anything else other than relax. We could do television but its only 10am. I've cleaned up so my day, in effect, is over until 3pm. Then I have to pick up my mother and my other son and his fiance come over for roast lamb. Okay; a roast in this incredible heat probably wasn't a great idea... I think we might do it Greek and then just do a huge souvalaki mix... which would be better than a sit down roast.

A couple of weeks ago we had the floorboards done. They look fabulous! But my God... the work involved. I'm never doing it again. We had to move everything out of the house, including pictures off the wall! And the dust!!  But my oldest boy did it and he had to sand the whole house back to the original colour and then paint it.

But the dust! Last night the Moodle brought a ladder in and climbed up because the air conditioner was making a funny noise (and I thought please God... Don't take my air conditioner!) and it was full of floor dust!!!

Now I may just lay on them to keep cool; or would if I could get down and then up again!

Oh My God....

It has been a balmy 41 degrees Celsius today; which in the old measurement, is 105.8 degrees Fahrenheit.  In other words, it was freaking hot; which is weird for March. Back when I was a kid it used to be summer in November and December. Now it feels as though summer is getting later and later.

My car continues to do weird things; the air conditioning didn't work for some of the time and the side mirrors never came out of their sleep mode and went back to work so I had to guess a lot. Mostly, I figured it was too damned hot to do anything so no one would be out any how!

My daughter's new house is closer than the old one, only an hour and a quarter from mine and the house is quite lovely; or it will be when it's sorted and finished; still, blistering hot weather and all we had a good time. My son and his girl friend came over, running with the 'many hands make light work' but it seemed mostly, we had to zip here or run there and so the day was finished before the work was and we left the family to do their stuff.  To be honest, I think they would prefer to sort the place out exactly as they would like.

So we got in the car (air conditioning working thank God) and were half way to the Moodle's place when they called him to say they weren't going out as Sunny wasn't feeling well - so I said "let's go home!"

And that is exactly what we did! 

It is still bloody hot; 31 at 10 pm.  What is with that?

Boy... I'm just going to go with the flow...

Feeling like crap again, but that is the normal these days... The world goes on...  Today I did nothing really. Got dressed, went and got my toe nails done because when you feel like crap, its a way of making a little dent in everything in your life that's horrid.

I bought a new Mazda; I picked it up last weekend. I love it (I loved my old one too) but this is like driving a cloud.  Tiny trouble, something seems wrong with the electronics. It keeps fading in an out of the radio. The fuel gauge is stuck on FULL (wouldn't that be nice to be accurate!); the air conditioning only works intermittently and cruise doesn't work at all! So, I have to take it back. 

 

Not even that one thing can go right!!!!

Tomorrow we're up early and off it my daughter house to look after her boys! They are in the middle of moving house so I figured we'd go and help by keeping the boys entertained. Then we are off to the other side of down to the Moodle's son to look after their baby while they go to a wedding! It's about the only nice part about getting old!

Perhaps I'm finally ready...

My blog sits here doing nothing… perhaps I’m ready to start it again…  After years of wandering in normalcy! Being a ‘partner’. Going to work. Doing housework. Yep; you guessed it. I’ve become boring. Mundane is my middle name. Colourless is my description. Where once I used to get glances from men (which put a little zing in my step); now they don’t even see me. They may as well shout it at me, I’m an old balloon head. Well they could shout it out at me if they saw me! I’ve disappeared! Into nothingness!

But stuff that. I say I’m going to get myself back on track!

I’ve become a boring mouse of a woman. I’ve even look like a mouse! Grey and boring. But if it is the spine thing; my life is about to change! No more pain! And it’s hard living your life when you’re in constant pain. I can’t see anything else; it’s all covered with the red haze of pain.

But I’m living in the clouds at this moment because I’m just awaiting scans to see if it is, indeed, spinal stenosis. And if it is; get out of my damned way!

Yes; it comes with surgery on the spine but hell, I wasn’t joking in my last blog when I said I’d sleep with Satan to be fixed!

So… I’m going for scans! Wish me luck!

I feel like shit...

I'll admit, after years of religiously blogging; I've taken a huge leap into the unknown...  I find I don't care about much anymore, so its hard to blog about something when you don't feel passion about anything!

I'm here, living my life.  The Moodle is with me, but I even sense I'm not really doing it for him either; he's just going through the motions.  It is hard to feel a great love for anything when all I feel is crap within myself; when everything hurts!

So although I take it the 'higher being' thought it would be damned funny to give me 27 brain operations (and there will be more to come!) I kind of got that. Hell it's amusing! But then he thought it would be a damned laugh to give me brain damage - I sort of got that too, because I rose above the brain damage (let's face it, what was I going to do? Jump in the grave and pull the dirt up over my head?). I dealt with it because I had to.

So now it seems, I have Spinal Stenosis. OMG does it hurt! I've had three years of it, just trying to diagnose it! My neurosurgeon discovered what it was (after 2 hip replacements did nothing!)  I'm on steroids which is making me as fat as a cow and nothing fits me, and I feel miserable!! My head looks like a beach ball with short hair on top (thanks to the 2 brain surgeries at the end of last year where they left a rats tail at the back!! WTF??? Which I had to get to the hairdressers and get Kim to fix it!

So tomorrow I go for cat scans and MRI and then another cat and then he'll tweak my shunts if necessary - but at least I'll know! I'll have an answer! So what, another surgery is the fix (this time on my spine which is a little disconcerting) but hell, I'd sleep with Satan if he fixed me!