Hoary

Managed to get an emergency appointment with the doctor this morning, which was a relief.  Apparently I have both a virus AND a bacterial infection, which is why I felt a bit better after the first load of antibiotics before Christmas, but then much worse again. 

It seems that my body is hosting a tag-team of infections, taking it in turns to overpower my feeble swooning immune system and ravage it whilst twirling their moustachios.  Listen...you can just hear them going "Mwahahahahahahahaaaaa" as they do it. 

Lovely.

Anyway, he's prescribed me some more powerful antibiotics and signed me off work for a week, and told me to come back if I am not greatly improved by the weekend.  He was very reassuring, which has made me feel much better.

Whilst walking around town* for a few minutes waiting for my prescription to be made up, I took a couple of pictures of the hoar frost on the trees.  It is still minus 4 outside, even though the sun is shining.  At least we haven't had any snow recently.

It's very pretty out there.  I'm just glad I get to enjoy it from inside my warm cosy house.

Other news:  All the fish in the aquarium are still alive, which is encouraging.The two little shoals of tetra and barbs are swimming around together, which is entertaining to watch.  The gourami seems to prefer hanging about near the surface, sometimes diving down to the gravel at the bottom, terrorising the leopard cory. 

*Ha.  But I did pop into the butcher to get some mince, and tell them how great the turkey was.

Appointed

Told him. Am being referred. And I only wept a little bit, which is an improvement. Yay me.

He said I need to be aware that depression could strike me down like a huge, mace-wielding vengeful demon* once the SSFH** is no longer foremost in my mind, though, and I have to watch out for that. So I will.

Fingers crossed that tomorrow will be a nice day as we are planning a trip to the Wood Fair. See the link over on the right there to the one we went to before. Under "Grand Days Out"...it's called "Wood." Can't miss it.

I also need to pick up my Rickenbacker from the shop. Apparently the bridge needed raising, as somehow, mysteriously, it was too low. Hmm, how can that have happened I wonder? Might it have been when it was restrung a few months back? We shall see what, if anything, they try to charge me for fixing something that I think they broke in the first place. Heh.

Other news: I have made several deeply moving recordings of Mr WithaY making beautiful music on his didgeridoo. Now I need to work out how to install them on the blog.



*I paraphrase slightly
**Shit Storm from Hades

Appointment

Today is the day I go back to the doctor and ask for a referral to a shrink. I've seen one before, although last time I had to be more or less ordered to do it, believing as I did then that depression was something that weak-willed people allowed to happen to themselves.

Ha. How very interesting it is to learn about these things first hand.

Anyway, I'm not depressed again. I know how that feels and that is not what is going on. The doctor talked about Post Traumatic Stress Disorder when I saw him last, but having no previous experience of that I have no frame of reference. What I do know is that I am still hugely unbalanced* and that it takes very little to set me off on an uncontrolled, prolonged weeping fit. Which is nice.

I am also struggling to get back into my normal work routine. The long, long, oh so long commute now feels like a hideous obstacle whereas before it was an inconvenience that I was dealing with successfully. I have lost a lot of my ability to focus, which is a bit of a shame given the job I am doing, and I am completely exhausted after a day working, to the point where I come in, collapse on the sofa and am usually asleep by 9.30. That is not how I usually am.

Right. Time to go and tell all that to the doctor.



*More than usual, I mean.

Rolling rocks

Clearly this is going to be a difficult week. It's only Monday (well, for another 15 minutes) and it already feels as though the days have been dragging on endlessly, running into each other like headless chickens on a windy day*.

I spent much of the weekend weeping and swearing, the aftermath of a trying day on Friday, related to the recent SSFH** stuff. Things are slowly being resolved but boy is it hard to deal with while it all happens. And, of course, with Mr WithaY away and unreachable on his luxury dive boat*** in the Red Sea, it's all felt far harder than I expected it to.

So. How am I dealing with all this, you ask? I managed to get through to the doctor's surgery on the phone eventually this afternoon and made an appointment. A week on Friday. I couldn't bring myself to lie and say I was an emergency, but having to wait 10 days to see the doctor is pretty poor I think.

Anyhoo, I am going to ask him to refer me to a psychiatrist/counsellor again. It helped the last time I went bonkers, so hopefully it will help get me through this particular episode of stress and horror. I have hardly slept since Thursday last week, so I decided not to go into London today, as originally planned.

Instead, I had a long and embarrassingly tearful telephone conversation with my colleague (who is an absolute star), then went through my email with the laptop, and then went off for a restorative cup of tea and sandwich at lunchtime. I came back to a message telling my that my password had expired and I need to login to a different machine to set a new one. Fucking great. So I need to try and call the system administrator tomorrow and ask them to sort it out remotely for me.

But their phone number is on the computer. Which I can't login to. But I need to login to get the number to call the help desk to tell them I can't login.

There's a hole in my bucket.

Actually no. I feel like that bloke who had to roll the giant rock up the mountain every day, then watch it roll back to the bottom every night. Who was that? Except my particular rock at the moment is made of cat shit and broken glass****.






*I know it doesn't make much sense but it's a great image.
**Shit Storm From Hades.
***It has a hot tub. In my book that equates to luxury.
****Worst combination ever.

Hack III - The Revenge

So. Absolutely nothing of any interest has happened to me in the last few days. Mainly because I have been spending my time alternating between:

1) Coughing until the top of my head feels like it is coming off and my lungs will shortly be appearing out of my nose.

2) Trying not to cough, then remembering that I am supposed to in order to expel the goo demons inhabiting my lungs.

3) Taking antibiotics. Mmmmmmmmmmmmmmm. They've prescribed me the ones they give to people who have been exposed to Anthrax. Which makes me feel a bit special and Secret Agent-y.

4) Drinking water. It says I have to on my Anthrax-b-Gone pill packet.

5) Crying like a big girl. This mostly happens at night when I am exhausted and unable to sleep because of activities (1) and (2). I am currently exiled to the spare room, so that Mr WithaY can get some sleep and doesn't try to kill me in the night after I keep him awake with activities (1), (2) and (5). On the plus side, I get to wake up and do the "Where am I?" thing every day, looking adorably like Clara Bow.*.

6) Listening to my chest rattle. This is both gross and alarming but unavoidable when I lay down to begin my nightly cough/hack/weep/cough routine.

7) Phoning my new boss and trying to croak down the phone at him until he understands that his shiny new team member is both unreliable and a sickly old bat. He must be delighted.

8) Trying to read the huge scary heap of documents I brought home last week and realising I am so far out of my depth with my new job that I don't even know where to start.

9) Trying to get another appointment with the doctor** to see if I am improving or just sinking into a Romantic Poet stylee decline.

Still. Mustn't grumble.


*In my head

**2.30 today. Hurrah. They just called me back.

Hack

I have a chest infection.

Marvellous.

I went to the doctor today as I have been coughing more and more since Saturday. He listened to my chest, and said I was rattling. Ugh. I have a week's worth of antibiotics and some really horrible cough medicine.

One amusing thing. It wasn;t my usual doctor, and as he looked at my records on the computer, he seemed puzzled.

Doctor: Have you ever been much (pause) heavier than you are now?

Me: Um, no, I think this is about as fat as I've ever been*. Why do you ask?

Doctor: Well, according to your records, you weigh 245 Kg. How tall are you?

Me: Five foot ten.

Doctor: That gives you a body mass index of about 75. (Looks at me again) Hmm, that can't be right.

He then insisted on weighing me, just to make sure I didn't in fact weigh as much as a small bus.

So. Even a trained medical professional had to check that I am not quite so huge that walls would need to be demolished to get me out of his office. Gah.


*Thanks for asking you git

Doctor, doctor

No, not the start of a crap joke, the excellent UFO track.

Anyway.

Been to see mine today to talk about my high blood pressure.

Good news: I am not likely to start pumping it out of my ears just yet.

Bad news: I am officially a fat bastard and need to lose weight ASAP. Damn.

And there was me hoping that the height/weight charts would have been seasonally adjusted to make someone of my build the perfect female form.

The UFO thing reminds me - Michael Schenker (yes, THE Michael Schenker) played a gig at the Frome Cheese and Grain the other week. How unlikely is that?

I was seriously considering going along, but tickets were £20 each and Mr WithaY resolutely refused to go with me. Also it was in the middle of my Holiday in Wiltshire when my lovely Mum was staying, so it wouldn't really have worked out. And the reports from our man at the gig were "It was crap".

According to informed sources, Mr S came onstage apparently a little the worse for wear, was unrecognisable, incomprehensible, and the music was so poor that people were leaving before the end in droves. A real shame.

Still, there are a few bands coming to play there over the next couple of months that I might go to watch. Frome seems to have a never-ending demand for AC/DC tribute bands. Maybe it's a contractual thing - every other gig has to play all of AC/DC's back catalogue. Not that I mind.

Other news: Did some mega rain-forest style slash and burn gardening at the weekend. Very satisfactory, but it means that the rest of our estate* looks a bit rubbish now. Mr WithaY filled up all the bird feeders but I think our feathered friends are sulking and ignoring us because they've been empty for a few weeks.

I suppose thre's only so much rejection a bird can take before it gives up entirely.

Ungrateful little bastards.


*The back garden. And the front garden. We only did the little bit round the side, really.