I have been back to see my GP a couple of times since I last wrote, made an appointment to see a cardiographer, and had a bucketsworth of blood tests.
So, the heart thing is ongoing, BP still a bit elevated (but nowhere near the 190/100 that it was when I first went to see her!!!) and there was a bit of a worry that I may have some heart damage, even perhaps a little stroke. I don't think so in light of blood test results.
I have CMV - CytoMegaloVirus.
Which is a nasty little virus in the same family as Epstein Barr Virus (EBV is more commonly known as Glandular Fever), chicken pox (and all the other Herpes cousins).
HERE is a link to some government official type info about the whole box and dice of CMV.
Although maybe up to 80% of people in 1st World would test positive to CMV I haven't ever had it. I tested negative in a blood test a couple of years ago when we were trying to work out why I was so tired and feeling crappy. Compared to what I was feeling then now I feel triple crappy. Maybe quadruple crappy.
Because of my previous health record - all the Chronic Fatigue/Fibromyalgia stuff as well as the cousin of that bleeding syndrome I also have (seems memory loss is also part of CMV...sigh) I have been well and truly felled by this bout of bugness.
All I do is *sleep, make a cup of tea, sleep, drink cold cup of tea (urk), sleep,
check Facebook, sleep, 'nother cup of tea, sleep, Pin something on
Pinterest, sleep, knit a little bit, sleep, more sleep, toast* repeat from * to * . Sometimes I cry cos I want my Mum.
And this might go on for weeks more.
I am not sick of being in bed.
Yet...
It is really quite cosy. I have a feather down mattress topper, and lovely sheets and then a feather doona with a pretty floral cover.
Lots of feather pillows to fluff up behind me and a couple of little ones on which to prop the notebook I am using to keep me connected to the world.
Enough room on the bed to have a basket of tapestry wools to use for the Sock Yarn Rug I am knitting (mentioned in the last entry). I am managing about a square a day. (Actually, not that many but I am trying to cheer me up).
And TWO bags of library books on the floor beside me. At least the joy of going to see my GP every week means I stagger in to the library and replace the books I have used up in the previous week. My attention span is about that of a toddler. I borrowed Kevin McCloud's new book a few weeks ago -
"43 Principles of Home" through an inter-library loan. It is FABULOUS, such a useful book for anyone contemplating building, extending, even just livign in a house! My only complaint is that it is way too heavy a book for in-bed readings. Makes my tummy hurt.
I have got books on knitting, garden design including building a dry stone wall and water features, crafty things, 800 years of the written word, travel - all from the non-fictions ection. I don't have the attention spam to be able to cope with fiction. Even gorgeous lovely Kevin has to be taken in small doses and re-read to be able to comprehend what he is telling me. Not my usual way of digesting books.
I creep downstairs and load another lot of wood on Ned Kelly, my aging but trusty slowish combustion stove, which keeps my draughty old home quite warm. Especially upstairs. Sometimes I sleep so long that it goes out. I have discovered that spraying kindling with WD40 makes it burn much better (I ran out of fire lighters so this was a stroke of brilliant necessity).
And make a cup of tea while I am down there.
Sometimes I have a shower. But not very often cos I have to fire up the Rayburn to heat the hot water service now that winter is upon us and the sun is below my trees and the solar panels are in shade (insert sad face here and yearning for brave men with chain saws to return my house to winter sunshine).
I am so tired already that the effort of actually having a shower totally exhausts me. Anyway, I figure I haven't done anything to get filthy dirty. I have a cat wash every so often - there is a big pot of water sitting on top of Ned keeping water heated for dishes and a slosh of a face washer when I imagine I can't bear my stench.
I am not smelly at all. Can't be. There hasn't been a delegation of neighbours or a visit from the Health Officer from the council...
And in between I sleep. I nod off with my glasses on my nose and the laptop on my belly and wake hours later, still the same. Or crash at night, waking 18 hours later. With the fire out.
Last night I drifted off in the afternoon and didn't wake till 8 a.m. Didn't take my drugs last night, so was feeling yucky. And woke totally confused, and disoriented still involved in the dream I was having being a photographer on location in Tasmania taking pics of a politician. My camera wouldn't work and I was having all sorts of problems with the settings. What a weird dream. And what a weird location!!!
Time to either put more wood on the fire, make a cup or tea and/or have a snooze. Catch you soon. XXXX
I have had the Rayburn fired up a bit recently. And made some overly sweet pancakes from a recipe that I found on an American blog. They had started with a basic pancake mix with a spiral of butter melted with cinnamon and castor sugar. Flip the pancake, finish cooking them all, layer them and add a frosting with cream cheese, icing sugar and cinnamon. The sugar burst made me fall asleep almost immediately. Furthermore, the original creator never said that I would need a cold chisel to get the cinnamon toffee off the pan...
It is getting bigger and bigger!!! There is enough left from 8 metres of what is on one of the skeins to make one of the tiny squares which start with 8 stitches per side.
