Making it to the Top of My Own List

Doesn’t time fly when you’ve set yourself a time-bound goal?   I’ve now got nine full months to the big birthday, and after the positivity of my last post, I’m afraid it’s all bad news for this update. I’ve had a major, major dose of the lurg.   I may have mentioned it, although it’s not like me to share my suffering, ha ha.   I’ve been off work for four weeks with a nasty chest and lung infection (so definitely not the catarrh the first doctor said!) and it’s knocked me for six.   I haven’t been able to get to my classes for a month now, and although I barely ate for a week (and hit my lowest weight for about three years!), once my appetite came back, the scales crept back up.   The bits that were feeling firmer are feeling soft again (much to Daughter’s joy that the bingo wings haven’t gone) and I’m a long way off buns of steel.   I’ve stuck to Choc-Free Feb though, as long as I don’t count the numerous chocolate digestives I snaffled yesterday. ...

I was blow drying my hair the other day and I saw it.   Just hanging out there, like a hard-faced silver interloper.   Yes, there it was.   A grey hair.   Now, don’t get me wrong.   At 39, I know I’ve had a good innings, and it’s not actually my first.   I’ve got a couple of baby fine silvery strands at my right temple, only visible during the most extreme episodes of tying my hair back (pretty much just when I put a face pack on).   But this devil was on my part.   And as if to mock me even further, it hid when I brushed my hair, smug in the knowledge that I know it’s there and now I can’t find it.   I’m on high alert, ready for it to pop up at any point.   The good thing for me is that I’m nearly 6 foot tall, so not many people see the top of my head, but now I know it’s there and I wish I carried a hat off with more panache. I know I’ve done well to get to this age without more grey, and all my forays into home colouring have bee...

I'm off work ill. I've got a chest infection. A chest infection that Dr 1 said was catarrh. This was while he was writing me a prescription for both an inhaler and ' something to relieve shoulder pain'. The something was ibuprofen gel which, for the unasthmatic amongst you, the average asthmatic cant use. Me included.  A chest infection that Dr 2 upgraded to an upper respiratory virus. A chest infection that Dr 3 finally identified, perhaps because I virtually crawled in there. A chest infection that has set a tooth off that I had root canal two years ago, like an old war wound. Did you know some root canals never settle? No, nor did I. Wish they'd told me that first!  Despite the eventual identification, the antibiotics don't seem to be touching it and I feel Very Poorly Indeed. If only I'd walked into the ER at Grey Sloan Memorial, they'd have had me sorted at a glance. Of course I probably would have been diagnosed with some incurable tropical disease...