Pass the cellotape for my mouth please

Crap...I've always said if I had a brain I would be dangerous, but I would really like to take one out for a test drive now and again.
I seem to have spent the weekend wrapping and not just Christmas presents, but myself in tangles most of the time.
Yesterday morning it was presents to be wrapped around Jean's house and luckily we got everything done before my time ran out, as I was suppose to be at Chelmsford within 15mins of finishing the last card. I as I don't have a time machine and I'm no longer known for being speedy, I set off thanking the gods for the day I got a car with a built in phone.
I did a couple of quick apology calls up front for being late, until Sam pointed out that I was in fact an hour early as I had got the timings wrong. Ok first mistake of the day.

Evening time it was off to see Mrs Christmas, or commonly known to us as our mate Lynn. There are some people in this world that actually adore everything Christmas and she is one of them, from making her now Christmas cake to putting mini Santas everywhere.
The decorations in Lynn's lovely little cottage have been up inside and outside since the 1st December and in every room including a rather jolly Santa toilet seat in the bathroom!
The whole experience is guaranteed to make you smile...
Which was much needed as the hour before leaving for Lynn's had been a bit fraught as Oliver wanted to ask a few more questions regarding getting everything correct in preparations for getting to Papworth when the call comes, while he was balancing on a chair trying to get my Christmas tree down from my attic.
Where I used to see Oliver on a daily basis when we worked together, we now have to grab any moment we can and as normal when you are trying to have an in depth conversation, the phones keep ringing.
Nowadays if my home phone rings, my heart does still have a habit of leaping into my mouth and tonight it rang dead on cue while I was going through the contact procedure again with him...they will try my home phone first, then my mobile, then his mobile etc... and the pair of us very nearly fainted!
So more apologies to my girlfriends in the car going to Lynn's as it was them who had called me with various questions.
I didn't think I looked stressed, but I must have done so I apologise now for that too.
I didn't sleep well last night again, as I was running through my faults again in my head so it was pretty busy in there.

I'm going for a much needed chill out at a spa tomorrow, which will be my whole 'one night holiday' for 2011!
I brought a voucher six months ago and although I was going to use it in September, things took an unexpected turn of events in my friend's life who I was going with and it has looked like it wasn't going to get used at all until about two weeks ago, when I sold it on for us.
Since then this voucher has been going backwards and forwards and now the voucher is back in my court, so I have been talked into going with another friend and I will try and put all my worries away and enjoy it before it expires next week.
I will need a rest after I've loaded up the car with the oxygen concentrator, oxygen back pack units, nebuliser, drugs, Papworth emergency case and my normal overnight case for the spa.
I won't even be gone for a whole 24 hours, but I might as well be going up Kilimanjaro with the amount of stuff that I'm taking and how my nerves are on edge.
I just long for the day when I can go away with my girlfriends for a whole week and not be frightened of my own shadow.
So if I have upset anyone in this past week because of my jangly nerves, I apologise profusely and for those that I haven't upset, I'll sincerely apologise now, because I'm sure I unintentionally will do before the week is up!
If I have any friends left after I have this transplant, it will be a miracle!

Lots of love Debbie x

ElvisDebbie has left the building

Hoorah the Thursday curse has left the building, so much so that I actually didn't know what day of the week it was!
Hoorah, happy days are here again. I really didn't enjoy having a downer on Thursdays, but that was how everything had got to me. I didn't realise how grumpy I had become.
I guess I've settled down into this new phase in my life and life is slowly returning back to normal or normal for me at least. Which of course to most people after my various ranting, would have them thinking that I should be locked up in an attic where I could be seen and not heard!
As I'm no longer waiting to go 'active' as I now on the 'active' list, I can relax a bit and I am now sleeping better as I'm no longer laying awake half the night waiting for this call and a night's sleep is a wonderful thing, believe you me.
I've now settled down into realising that the call will come as and when, with me crossing that particular worry bridge when I get the call and not before.
No doubt when the call does come, I'll be throwing up with fear and probably lose all control of my bowel and bladder simultaneously...yeah a regular Friday night ahead then!

I had a really good day today, as two of my old friends came down from London to see me again and to treat me to lunch out...bonus.
Had a very lively catch up over a very scrummy meal with lots of laughter and reminiscing again over old and new stories. It is lovely to be able to fall in with old friends and chat like neither of you have ever been away from each other. We lost contact with each other for over twenty years, but she tracked me down via a newspaper earlier this year and now we try and see each other once a month.
We did have to miss November as I was bouncing a bit off the wall that month... on the Richter scale of being highly strung, I was off the chart!
So now things are getting back on an even keel thankfully.
Yay...the moanie Debbie has left the building...or has she???????

Lots of love Debbie x

Henchman in yellow pages??

Wanted...One medieval rack and henchman if possible. Will accept second hand, but must have instructions if it doesn't include a henchman.
This is what I feel I need at the moment, a damn good stretching, as my neck and the base of my back are giving me a bit of gyp this last week. I think it's down again to carrying my oxygen unit on my back day in day out for what seems like the last hundred years or more.
I had to have a lot of quite painful physio on my arm and shoulder a couple of years back from where I used to sling the unit over on one shoulder to carry it and ended up with an impinged shoulder cuff or something equally weird.
But once I got that arm back to normal, I always made sure that I carried the weight equally across my back, because as I said the treatment hurt as much as the impingement and I was not going through that again in a hurry. It was only the fact that the physio was rather gorgeous and I didn't want to make myself look a wimp that I didn't howl my eyes out. I waited till I got to the privacy of my car to do that!
Actually this time two years ago, my leg was giving me gyp too thanks to the spine being thrown out from carrying the oxygen unit. Maybe it should come with a government health warning!? 'Warning...It stops you from dying from lack of oxygen, but you will look like Quasimodo after prolonged use!'
Whatever it is, it hurts and gives me quite a nauseous headache.
Perhaps I should fish out my yoga and Pilate's DVDs out of retirement for a good stretching session and learn how to use the DVD function on this TV, after all I've had this new TV long enough.

It really is icy out there today and when driving along to hospital this afternoon, I noticed that there was still frost on the grass where the sunshine hadn't reached it.
I've taken to wearing a thin jumper and a cardigan around the bungalow as I'm terrified of having huge bills to pay this year.
Every time you put the news on, there is doom and gloom on the TV, the cost of this rising or that rising and jobs or benefits cut. I know I am very lucky as I have my lovely little bungalow, nice clothes and good food on the table, even when I'm on a baked beans on toast saving money drive, it's still hot food. So I don't think of myself as hard done by, but watching TV, you realise that the divide between the rich and poor is getting wider all the time.
It was something that we were talking about over coffee at the Christmas craft fair on Sunday, that some of the prices of things on sale were so exorbitant and people were still buying them. There was a lovely fur hat that I thought Ann could have, until I realised that it wasn't a typing error and really was £140 not £14.
Even if I was suddenly wealthy, I don't think I could ever pay the prices for things that you see in the glossy magazines. I just keep thinking how the money would be better spent on worthy causes and the inner glow that you would get giving money towards feeding and clothing a homeless guy or even working out in the soup kitchens yourself, then buying yet another handbag that would get relegated to the back of the wardrobe along with the others within three month or so.
When you read articles in 'Hello' or 'OK' magazine etc and see these clothes horse women standing in front of their wardrobes with racks and racks of shoes in a room just for their shoes, you have to ask yourself how can they think that is acceptable?
Thank goodness for the Duchess of Cambridge, our future queen who is happy to wear dresses from the high street shops to various events. Now that is a role model to be proud of... Well done Kate!
Don't get me wrong, I love pretty clothes as much as the next person, but those days of buying for the sake of it went a long time ago. If I buy a new dress, then I sell an old one or it goes down to the charity shop in the village and I never buy unless in a sale and it has to be a real bargain around the £25 mark. And I think I look presentable.
Lord I am a moanie old git aren't I?!
Sorry.

Lots of love Debbie x

I'm Santa's best friend...twice

Up and dressed early today, as day two dawns of waiting for the heating engineer.
I may have got dressed early, but no way was I leaving my bed premature, as I laid on top of it fully dressed and had another 40 winks or more!
It's freezing out there, so why would I want to be parted from my best friend the bed I ask you? As I laid there, the heating was making the loud groaning noises again which is why I called them yesterday. The groans are a mixture between Marley's ghost and a cow in labour. I knew when I rang to make an appointment, that the receptionist thought it was just my radiators that needed bleeding, although I knew it wasn't the case, I did know that no way would anyone come out yesterday,so I was wasting my time staying in all day.
I so hate being right all the time.
I was right on both accounts, no engineer yesterday and no, it wasn't the radiators. It was however the same pipe that the spider had nested in and that the engineer had covered up a hole in the pipe with tape and this was making the fan work overtime.
With cows and spiders, my bungalow is a regular animal farm!
I do wonder, whether all these discoveries will make my bills lower? It is warmer in here...just, but every bit of savings counts. I do have a draught coming from somewhere, but I can't find where from yet.

It is really cold out there today.
Still this time last year it was snowing really badly, so I'm thankful for small mercy's. It is easier to swap coats and wear thick boots, then to balance on the ice and snow with my rocket pack come oxygen unit strapped to my back like last year. If walking and balancing isn't nerve racking enough, then driving in the snow absolutely terrifies me!
I had a good day though doing little bits here and there.
After the engineer left, I visited my eldest son with soft food as he had broken a tooth and had some treatment done on it.
Came home and made a rather nice winter warmer stew for myself for lunch before visiting my friends, who are going off to France soon to spend Christmas with their family.
My friend was getting ready to go out with one of the town's major charities on 'Santa Patrol', he was going to be Santa!
Strangely enough my friend Derek is going to be Santa for our village 'Santa Patrol' too. Blimey, did I ever dream when growing up that I would be best friends with not one but two Santa's? How cool is that!
Driving home from their house, I noticed just how many Christmas trees were going up in people's windows and just how many people now decorate the outside of their houses too. Although alas some aren't as tasteful as how my neighbours decorated our hedges with the lovely plain blue sparkly lights, but some are like Mississippi show boats in full sail or even a fair ground attraction in their front gardens.
As Julie would say 'You are a snob!'
Still, they are pretty and they make you smile and that is good enough for me!
Ho ho ho!

Lots of love Debbie x

Slimming World...I salute you

Whose the mumma? Who... is...the... mumma? Meeeeeeeeeeeeeee!
I have been weighed in tonight at tubby club and I now register the desired weight of 10st 2lb given to me by the doctors at Papworth!
Who would have thought when I sat in their office on the 25th July and they told me to get fit and to lose a stone and a half in weight, that I would have achieved either?
In fact I have lost more than a stone and a half, as I have lost a total of 1st 9lb 7ozs, as I had managed to gain a couple of lb more while deciding which leg to cut off in a bid to lose the weight.

When I sat in their office, listening to all their words of advice on what I should and shouldn't do, although I was nodding and inanely smiling while they talked about losing weight, I was secretly thinking 'they must be off their bloody heads, as there is no way, I can lose that much!'
But here we are less than five months down the line and I have done it and I'm a lot fitter too.
I can't believe it.
Jean said tonight that she was so proud of me and she too had her doubts that I could lose it, knowing how much I loved my chocolate bars and blueberry muffins with a daily cappuccino.
I remember us discussing this tall order later on, and mumbling that maybe if I could by some chance lose a stone, then that would satisfy them.
But Jean said that I had shown how strong my actual will power can be when there is something I desperately want.
I honestly thought that side of me had disappeared a million years ago.
My boys and Reni are chuffed to bits too. When Oliver said that I WOULD do it, I thought he had got me muddled up with the mum I used to be when he was about five years old, as he had that unbending belief that I could do anything then too.

I thought that the wheelbarrow full of drugs that I take each day and have done for the past six years, had taken it's toll on my body and I wasn't going to see the old me ever again.
But thankfully I was wrong.
Slimming World, I salute you.
Ok I'm not as firm as I used to be, although my tummy has always needed a bit of extra help. I did have very fab legs only a couple of years ago. Very firm and absolutely no cellulite on them at all, but no exercise and lots of 'mean old' drugs to help my breathing, and my legs aren't no where near how they were. But I am two years older and I have had hardly any real exercise to build up my muscle and keep the old pins firm since this disease took hold.
The steroids must have retained a lot of water on me, as I would wee for England in the first month or so on the Slimming World diet and now my tummy is so much flatter.

I wouldn't say that the first week or so was easy, far from it. I was so hungry that I would have licked the food photos off their diet cookery books, but once I got the hang of it, I actually enjoyed cooking again and I can't really say that I have been that hungry. I still have cappuccinos when I go out and share a cake.
I am hoping to go swimming again soon, but I have to be honest, the thought of stepping outside into this cold weather after a swim, has me diving for my duvet!
I am hoping that I get this transplant soon, so by the time autumn gets here, then I might be allowed in the water again, as swimming is off limits for a while.
And if I swim in the sea, I'll have to keep my mouth shut too, as strictly no shell fish or sushi.

I now have another challenge and that's keeping it off, but I'm not that worried. Extra pudding or a size 12 dress?
What do you think!?

Lots of love Debbie x

Heave ho my hearties

A bit of a roller coaster ride today.
The first part of the day was lovely, a leisurely morning getting ready for my first Christmas lunch of the season at the Silver End bowls club.
I don't play bowls, but Greta and Ken do, so we get to go as their guests when these fund raising events are being held.
It was a really rather jolly lunch until it was time to go home and that's when my breathing started to get a bit laboured.

This wasn't caused by an attack or anything, but it's more about my diaphragm pushing up my lungs and making life a bit painful until in my case, I can empty the content of my lungs and settle things again.
This is why I have weekly physio sessions to give them a really good drain, it used to be twice a week , but the girls are terribly overworked now and I have now learnt how to control and release the phlegm myself.
But I didn't think that the bowls club were ready for me to do that little procedure in the ladies toilets quite yet. Plus I would hate for the members to think that I had lost my weight by being bulimic on top of everything else, so it was a quick exit home for me.

It wasn't that I had over loaded my plate, as a) it's weigh in time again tomorrow at tubby club and I still have one last lb to lose before I reach Papworth's desired weight for me. This weight is the doctor's recommended weight to help me recover faster after the transplant.
And b) more importantly, my rehab classes talks have taught me the do's and don'ts of handling this disease and why certain problems arise.
They reckon small plates of food, or as they would say little and often.
Some foods also can cause phlegm to increase in your lungs or to blow your diaphragm up like in IBS or in my case both. Too much milk, cheese, bread or too richer food are all baddies and of course Christmas lunches do tend to be a tad on the rich side.
Plus in some breathing related cases, people with rapid breathing tend to swallow a lot of air causing tummy problems too.
So add together a bloated diaphragm that's crushing your lungs upwards, which in turn stops the lungs from taking in and out as much oxygen as they should...not forgetting these lungs aren't working properly in the first place anyway...then fill those lungs up with thick sticky liquid and you don't feel that wonderful. No afternoon Salsa classes for me.
So I got home as quickly as I could and then had to empty my lungs in the comfort of my bathroom and without bringing up my dinner too.

After a little nap, it was business as usual, but just a lot slower than normal as completing a few rounds of postural drainage does tend to take it out of you in more ways than one!
I used to think it was the cocktail of drugs that I take that made my stomach blow up like it did, but since being on this diet to where I have changed my eating habits, I am amazed just how much my tummy has gone down and how the IBS symptoms have eased off.
Meals out were always a nightmare, as I always ended up with a mad dash to the toilet, but my meals hardly ever end up like that now thankfully.
I do get comments that I should be wearing a halo when not filling my plate to overflowing, but being greedy has never has appealed to me anyway and why should I want to voluntarily put myself through that pain?
I may be daft, but I'm not stupid!

Lots of love Debbie x

Santa's little helper

Well nothing has been returned to me in the night...the bosom fairy hasn't been to visit me as my boobs are still pretty deflated.
Though the North wind fairy has visited instead as I have turned into my mother! She has a neat habit of farting when she walking and alas today that was true of me. This is where I wish I had a dog to blame it on.
Not sure what has brought that on, but obviously something that I ate yesterday...my homemade curry maybe or the smoked goose salad for lunch today?

This morning I went to the Cressing Temple Christmas fair with Greta's husband, with the soul aim to help Ken get her a lovely personal Christmas present.
I steered him away from the purple 5" sequined heels and the black stockings with the bows printed on them, as I have a sneaky feeling that if Greta opened them on Christmas morning, she probably wouldn't be speaking to me by Boxing day morning! I just hope he doesn't sneak back tomorrow unsupervised and buys them.
How the hell anyone manages to walk in them is beyond me, as I would need trainer wheels attached.
When we sat chatting about them over a cup of coffee in their tea room, he explained how high heels give women's legs a definite shape...I explained if I wore them then my leg shape would be that of a wish bone, as I would be a bandy as hell balancing on those bad boys. In fact, I would need a pencil skirt on to keep my legs together!
Ladylike I am not.
He went home empty handed and a glint in his eye. So Greta if they turn up under your tree, I am innocent.

The rest of the day really dragged. I did various jobs around the bungalow, played scrabble with mother and it was still only 5pm.
So I went home and had a nap, a bite to eat and then off to the cinema.
I still find a visit to the cinema far from relaxing at the moment, but I was able to sit nearer the exit this time and after I texted the boys to tell them where I was if I missed the call, I found a great use for my now empty bra cups...a mobile phone cradle!
As I have said many times before, I like and very much need a structured plan as I can't just wing things now and a visit to the cinema needs just the same planning. I need to know that I can get to the phone, check who it is and answer it before it rings off.
No doubt the first time it rings in the cinema, it will be someone trying to sell me an upgrade...heavens help that person.
If I hear anyone say 'Just relax' or 'you have to get on with your life as normal' once more...trust me... I'll probably spit in their eye!
Still I'm sleeping better, so baby steps hey.

Lots of love Debbie x