A Question Of Comfort

If you read my last post, you would know that at the time of writing, I was plagued by Sciatica  and all sorts of useful advice from blogging friends and family started to come in from that post as to how to overcome it.

 Sandy's mother was getting rid of a perfectly good double mattress as she was downsizing to a single bed to make more room in her flat. She had paid £1000 for it not very long ago and she asked if I'd like it as it was going to end up on the city rubbish tip. Usually I wouldn't consider a second hand mattress unless I knew the owner and knew that it was going to be clean, which I did on this occasion and I jumped at the suggestion. So Sam and Sandy brought it round and took my 15 year old mattress away to the tip. The old mattress was really hard and never very comfortable and Sam couldn't understand why I'd put up with such discomfort for 15 years but it just seemed too much effort to change it again.

Surely this new mattress would help ease my back problem?  

What I didn't realise was that Sandy's mother smokes heavily and the mattress, although in very new condition did stink of cigarette smoke and our night attire and bedding picked up the smell and had to be changed frequently. After spraying with fabric conditioner every morning and evening for a week, and leaving the mattress bare in front of the open window all day, the smell gradually decreased. The mattress is more springy than the old one, kinder to the bones and we did both get a better nights sleep.

Another blogger who I hadn't heard from for a very long time put me in touch with certain exercises for sciatica from the net. This got me interested in self help and I did a bit of research and found a simple stretch to ease the trapped nerve. This morning the edge seemed to be off the pain and I could walk a bit better so that seems to be the way to go. I'm all for self help and hope to cut the pain killers down soon.

So many thanks to all those who made helpful suggestions....... I really don't know what I'd do without my blogging pals (and family and non blogging friends too). You are all really brilliant.

Slow As A Slug

Photo Copyright: Maggie May

It seems that after a thorough examination by my Oncologist that I am suffering from Sciatica.  There is also a possibility that I am suffering from a stress fracture due to radiation treatment that will take a couple of months to heal if that is so. It is a relief that they don't suspect its anything more sinister but believe me, it is a very painful condition. 

I've had Sciatica before and its taken months to get right in the past. We seem to be prone to it in our family.

I'm hobbling around, sometimes with a stick and I'm trying to keep exercising as that apparently is the new way of dealing with it and not lying on a flat board like they used to do.

The pain killers make me feel sick but I can't manage without them.

I had lots of plans that I've now had to put on hold. In the meantime, I'm trying to carry on as normally as possible, allowing myself plenty of time for everything because I am now as slow as a slug.

I'd be interested to know what others do if they have this complaint. What has benefited you? 

Like A Butterfly

Photo Copyright: Maggie May

My posts seem to yo yo from happiness and good things happening to the very worst. I jump from one situation to another, just like a butterfly flitting from flower to flower, drifting on the wind.

In my last post I was writing about always expecting the unexpected and I was really happy then. Suddenly my life has been turned upside down again by something unexpected and its not good this time.  I have been suddenly afflicted by really bad pain in my lower back and hip.

Before the days of cancer, I would have accepted it as sciatica because I have always been prone to that and used to go to the Chiropractor to put it right. Ever since being treated for cancer, I haven't been able to have any chiropractic treatment because it is far too risky and might break a bone, made fragile by cancer and radiation treatment. 

I wish I hadn't experienced a burst of enthusiasm last week, when I climbed the portable step ladder and painted two walls. I felt so good when I saw the transformation and had planned to paint two more. Its not as if I was doing a thorough job, like moving everything out and doing the ceiling and all the wooden paintwork. No, I was doing a cosmetic job and just lightening the walls and it was really looking better and made me feel good.

Now I have this awful pain and can hardly walk and I am obviously thinking it might be the cancer returning faster than I thought.

So, I have panicked and have brought my Oncology appointment forward by weeks and I am going today to be seen after the afternoon clinic finishes and to be prepared to wait a very long time, bring a book and plenty of Paracetamol because that is all I was advised to take for now. 

I will not find out anything today, only a scan can really tell me what is going on and believe me, the amount of scans I have had over the last two years is enough to give me cancer.  However, at least I will be in the system again and will get a physical examination and be put on a waiting list for a scan if the hospital think thats what I need. I will get advice on painkillers and such like. I have been down that road before and don't want to be doped up, but it is surprising how pain will change one's mind and in the end there is no choice. 

This post isn't meant to whinge but to be a source of therapy by writing and to be an account of what is happening to me for future reference. I regard my blog as a journal so I'm sorry if it is taken as a grumble. Its all part of the journey when I flit from one state of mind to another.

Allotment Wassailing

Photos Copyright: Maggie May

The weather was sunny but crisp. There was activity on the local allotment. People were heading there in dribs and drabs, families mostly but older people went too.

What could be driving so many to visit the community orchard on our local district allotment?

Today was Wassailing Day.

An ancient tradition in the south of England that attempts to get the sap rising in the apple trees and encourage them to start to grow. This involved putting toast that had been dipped in cider, on a tree branch. Getting the children to bang on tins to get rid of all the bugs lurking around and pouring last year's cider around the apple trees to get them to produce more apples.

It was mainly aimed at the children and they all seemed to participate in this ancient fun tradition.

I normally go with my granddaughters, however, they now have to go to Japanese School with their mother every Saturday. Other years, Sam has taken part in the Morris Dancing display, but sciatica has prevented him from taking part since last summer. Even though the pain has much improved since he stopped dancing, he didn't feel he could risk starting another flare up of pain.

Still, it was good to catch up with the others who I'd got to know and exchange a few words with them and to watch them dance.

This was perhaps the biggest crowd of people who had attended since the first time that I'd ever witnessed it.

Things change with time and never stay the same.

Last year, I wrote about a similar visit on Wassailing Day.

The allotments (plots of land for growing vegetables and fruits), are good places to snap up scenes with a camera. There are always little nooks and crannies that I find fascinating.

After spending an hour or two in the cold, I was glad of a hot cup of tea when I got home and to toast my cold fingers and toes in front of the gas fire. Then there was the prospect of a Chinese take away that Harry always seems to get on a Saturday (no matter how he is feeling) and a cosy evening in watching TV or reading. Contentment.

Do others take pleasure in doing such basic, maybe boring things?

Ever Had A Bad Day?

Photos Copyright: Maggie May

Ever had a bad day from beginning to end?

I woke up with excruciating sciatica. Well, that is an understatement because I've been battling with it for weeks but this particular day I felt I just wanted to sit and cry with the pain. It is a problem that keeps recurring and has done since I was in my late forties.

Harry is just starting chemo 3 and isn't very well right now, though he has been doing fine since the strength of the treatment was reduced last time.

The area I chose to do my shopping in that day seemed to have a great problem. I realised that the roads were blocked off and buses had ground to a halt. Passengers had to get off and walk and eventually the vehicles had to go a different way through some really tricky side roads and narrow streets full of parked cars.

There was a terrible smell of acrid smoke and fire engines all over this (usually) very busy road. Pedestrians were eventually stopped and I turned into a little lane, up a hill and suddenly saw the shop....... or rather what was left of it. People witnessing everything, told me there had been several explosions, as the shop had been a nail bar and had chemicals stored there. Luckily no one got hurt but the flat above was gutted as well as the shop.

I felt a bit of an unsavoury character taking photos but lots of other people were doing so too. I do carry my camera at all times and am always ready to snap unusual things but of course this was tragic for the people involved, losing property and possessions. However, when it comes down to it, no lives were lost and it could have been so much worse.

Some hours later, I went back a second time and the fire engines were still there but this time pedestrians were allowed to walk to the other side of the road. Still there were no other vehicles allowed....... only Police and fire engines and crew. There was a car next to the nail bar that had partly melted with the heat.

When I eventually got home....... a phone call that I answered made things so much worse. My friend, who had been in hospital for several weeks had died that morning. She wasn't expected to die as she'd got over the worst. She'd even talked about coming home in a few weeks last time I phoned her. I'm so glad that I did phone her when I did a few weeks ago, little realising it would be the last time I would ever hear her voice.

The Twenty Minute Slot!

My Chiropractor was not happy with me this morning when I went for my three monthly check. "What have you been doing?" He asked. Well, I couldn't think of anything unusual and I'd been so careful with lifting and bending as I know from experience what the excruciating pain that a bad back and sciatica can be like. Absolute torture and the phenominal expense of having the necessary run of chiropractic treatments needed to put it right again was something I didn't want to repeat.
I suddenly thought, the only thing that is different in my life now from when I last saw the chiropractor three months ago, is my blogging! Well, I wasn't going to tell him that, was I? My blogging is an absolute secret! So I said, "I seem to spend a lot of time on my computer!"
"You mean you have spent hours slouched over a lap top?" He asked me. I felt like a naughty school child being told off for something bad that I had been caught out doing and reluctantly admitted, that yes, I did love computer work.
Computer work, a sort of obscure phrase that. Could have meant anything really, but certainly not blogging! Obviously he could think that I was doing something much more sinister on my computer than that and the fact that I kept it all a bit 'cloak & dagger', made me think he did! 

He was quick to tell me that I must carry a timer with me whenever I undertook any task and I had to set it for 20 minutes. After that time, I must move on to another activity.

Well, I ask you! Just imagine having to resist the temptation to read just one more blog because my pinger decided to go off just at the wrong time. I might be really involved with a creative flow of words only to be interrupted by a "ping"! That would be very off-putting.

Not only do I have to time myself on the computer, but for every other task I undertake. I can weed the garden for 20 minutes and then have to do some clipping or pruning whether it needs to be done or not.

My ironing is not a task I really enjoy, but imagine setting it all up, only to leave it again 20 minutes later! My steam iron would be just getting into action by then.

Too bad if my cooking takes longer than the alloted time, I must now move onto dusting and forget about the dinner.

I wonder what Work would say if my pinger went off and I said, "Oh well its time to move on to another task now!

I expect I'll have to come to some compromise but I am the type of person who likes to see a task through to the end, so it will be really hard for me to leave anything unfinished. Goes against everything in my nature.

Excuse me, I've got to go, now, my pinger has just gone off!