Thursday 21st April 2022
As Time Goes By
Hi everyone again, it’s been a lot longer than I thought since my last post and I hope everyone is doing well. I have improved but it’s slow going. The worst part is that everything is going in so fast at the moment and I don’t really have much to show for it. I’ve been able to get out for a few walks, I phoned up the forest service to order the forest pass but they didn’t have the facilities at the time to do it and they phoned me back about a week later to get it completed.
The main place I was wanting was Castlewellan but that’s no longer part of the forest pass and is part of a different one with the council but it also includes Delamont, to get that I’d have to go to Newcastle or Delamont and not Castlewellan. And so a few days later I went there to get one, while there I spent a bit of time walking around and taking a few pictures. It was a short walk and could probably do it in about 15 minutes but with stopping and resting it took a fair bit longer. It was nice to get out and with it being early on a Friday too it was quiet with few other people about.
I was glad I went, I felt much better after, although uncomfortable and I slept well that night. After finally receiving the forest pass, I went to Tollymore on Easter Sunday, I had planned to be there by 9 to miss the crowds but I woke up about 6ish and took some tablets and went back to bed and didn’t wake up again till about 8.30, but I felt pretty good with taking the tablets earlier and went off to Tollymore getting there by 10. It was busy enough when I got there but not as bad as it would be later.
I went around the river walk as there are few hills there and plenty of places to stop, which I done, a lot, it was also nice. It normally took me less than an hour to get round that walk but this time it took me near 3 hours and for the final hill back up to the carpark I had to stop three times to get my breath back and to ease my legs and stomach. Hopefully next time I go it will be much easier.
The point of getting the passes is to try and encourage me to get out and get a bit of fresh air and help the brain a bit. As it has been pretty much two and a half years of sitting within 4 walls. I almost have a fear of going outside and really need to encourage myself to do it and if there is any excuse not to I don’t and then I feel bad because I haven’t. I always think of how rough I’ll feel after for days even with the simplest of things and what if something happens and I tweak my back or something happens will I even be able to get back to the house? Will it be worth it?
One good thing about the move is there is more sunlight in the sitting area and so I try to sit outside and read or as I’m doing now, writing this, getting a bit of fresh air and sunlight, but it is a little breezy today so I will probably not sit out too long plus I’ll probably need to move to get comfortable again.
I’ve started to sit at the computer for longer to try and adapt my body for getting back to work to make sure I can do it. I haven’t been able to do long stints yet but it is improving before I get too sore. My main problem is concentration and fatigue, I just get so bloody tired doing anything. And the tablets I’m on aren’t helping with that, and so I thought I would run a test and reduce one of them which didn’t work out too well, apart from feeling like crap I got next to no sleep, I think over the 2 days and nights I tried it I only got maybe a total of 3 hours and so on the third day I took the full dose and a couple of hours later if even I felt so much better and that night slept really well or more normally.
The previous time I was at hospital they done a load of extra blood tests to check different levels and one of them was an IGG level which I get an infusion of and I was hoping it would be high enough that I would no longer need the infusion but the levels were still low so I still need to go and get that. I was disappointed with this but everything else seemed to be doing fairly well. They booked me another lung function test as the results from the one in January never seemed to get sent to them but at least with the two they will be able to compare them and they also booked me an echo scan for the heart. I haven’t got the results back from them yet but the lung function seemed to go pretty well again. Despite still having a really bad, productive cough I seem to be keeping it out of my lungs.
The cough is not getting any worse and some days it’s much better than others, it seems to be mostly caused by my nose running back. Over the last couple of weeks I have noticed I still seem to be reacting to things. I had a scenty thing in the room and it was running low so I binned it and for a couple days after that my nose seemed to improve and I haven’t got a new one. While I’m in the room I don’t seem to be too bad and thankfully that’s the room I spend most my time in. I am always pretty bad in the mornings so I’m thinking there may be something in my bedroom which is triggering it during the night, or it could just be with lying down and sleeping that it builds up. I’m not sure when I go up to bed I always just lie down and try to sleep so it’s hard to tell.
I’m still getting the “almost feverish” feeling in the mornings and early evening which I need to take paracetamol to ease. My temperature always goes up by a degree or two but never high enough to be an actual fever and feeling rough like you would with a bad cold, joint pains, face feeling bunged up and just generally feeling like crap. I have absolutely no idea what’s causing it. It was initially just the once a day but since December it’s now twice and some days it hits earlier than other, but it always hits at some point there just doesn’t seem to be a pattern, at least not a pattern that I’ve been able to work out. Hospital have no interest in it.
I’m pretty much back at the stage where I have no appetite, I’m rarely hungry and the thought of eating puts me off. When I do eat it not only makes me tired but it’s really uncomfortable with my back, there have been some days where I have completely forgot to eat, then you know you have to eat something and you’re having a meal at 10 just before going to bed. It’s not good and I need to remember to feed myself at set times again, but as I’ve a really poor routine it’s hard to do.
For all the time it’s been since the last post there really hasn’t been much going on, it’s all been pretty stagnant with the odd ripple, which I guess for me is a good thing, to think how bad I was this time last year and that was before I fractured my back, I’ve taken fairly big steps forward but there have been massive leaps back also, I just need to remember not to do anything stupid.
Until next time.