12 June 2009

Visibly deflating

No the title of this teensy post is not a reference to any success with the fat cow tablets. I am being a good girl. The tablets don't seem to be doing much at all. Darling other half is up to his usual 'helpful' tricks of rushing out to buy low fat ice cream so I can 'still' have some, when I wasn't actually partaking in the first place.

He did that straight after my hospital stay. We hadn't had crisps or biscuits in this house for a year or more, but he stocked it to the rafters with 'low fat'* versions of both in all shapes, colours and price brackets.
(*Extremely high fat but for legal and marketing reasons, just measurably less than the regular junk.)

I don't blame him entirely - once it was here, spilling out of the cupboards every time anyone looked, and once there was nothing else to eat, I caved.

This time around he is working away from home and I have control - although he has a week off next week. Officially that is a WONDERFUL THING. I just have to forgo my TV, my routines, my sofa, my mealtimes and anything else I've accidentally settled into in his absence; turn a blind eye to him clutching the TV remote and deciding our every waking moment, and just concentrate on keeping his sticky mitts off the menu and the shopping trolley and his mind out of the fridge.

Its going to be tough. I hear the thrumming, throbbing intro to the Mission Impossible theme, as I write. Where are Cybill and Maryanne when you need them? Still, I'd make a bloody funny looking Ninja, all in black and dragging climbing gear round the aisles of the supermarket.

No.

The reason for sagging shoulders is my membership of a questions and answers site - answerbag.com (no it does not warrant a link).

As an example, first couple of questions to catch my eye are:

1. What are fun jobs that works with the computer? and

2. Do you think the word "swine flu" has been overused?


I just wanted to share the physical pain. (Sorry, Badaunt.)

09 June 2009

Gone Wobbly

Gone wobbly in all sorts of ways.

I do not know my own mind, it seems, which is to be expected as this body's prescribed chemical shackles are currently being tweaked. Think of it as changing your bra whilst running a half marathon - nothing much may be different to the naked eye once the procedure has been successfully completed, but that same naked eye might very well be accidentally poked out by mounds of heaving flesh suddenly and joyously free from constraints.

To be less poetic, by a giant wobbling tit gyrating in God-knows-what directions like an escaped maniac.

Or, indeed, an escaped tit.

So there you have it, my brain and everything else, being physically, miraculously and holistically connected to the blood pressure which is the real target of these tablet-shaped fetters, is currently wobbling about like a giant escaped tit.

It makes sense that the blood pressure is, too.

It seems that a lot of the podge in my hands and feet has, for the longest time, been nothing more than water retention! Wonderful news! I say that with some confidence as the prescription water tablets I started taking this weekend have had more of a result than even I expected. I've lost half a shoe size and can nearly get my three-gold Russian wedding ring back on; well the solitary hoop that we didn't mangle with wire cutters.

What? I'd swollen up like that frog balloon in Shrek, at the time. My ring finger had passed blue and was heading towards dark and nasty. Fine way to find out you're allergic to aspirin, huh.

I am VERY HAPPY. Over the moon, in fact, as there are only two reasons to get oedema, the heat version or any other:

1. Your heart is a bit fucked, as evidenced by your pulse going bonkers trying but failing to push all the puddling water uphill.
2. The beta blockers you are taking are working too well, putting too much of a cap on goings on, as evidenced by your pulse functioning on a par with Sleeping Beauty's (the snoring years) and not even trying to do its job.

Seems my problem was the latter, so my beta blockers have been halved.

Unfettered metaphorical bazoombas bouncing around all over the place, here; you get me?

I've spent a day or so hoping that my energy levels will go up with this but all that's happened so far is that my (previously only suspected) ADHD has crept back.

The brain is going too fast for the fingers.

The mouth is going too fast for the brain.

Still, if people who've only met me in my recent, comparatively sane and sedate years, can put up with me turning into Taz on a lead, with a slightly shorter attention span, then we're going to get along famously.

Nick Mallinson, SeahavenFM (whom I shall tag as often as possible and politely ask you to do the same - He's trying to be a Google front page, top ten results kind of a Nick Mallinson for the sake of the Seahaven FM radio station, which would mean loads to me too),

*cough*....

Nick Mallinson, because he's trying to teach me and because last week at least I could shut my mouth long enough to be seen to listen (I DO listen, just in this state it seems best done concurrently with beginning another conversation or six and generally multi-tasking on the whole left-field, wild-tangent, multiple streams of thought, yes I'm manic aren't I, "sit down dear while we find the straight jacket and the pretty syringe" kind of a way), well, to get to the point (there was a point??); he's probably one of the first I should tell.

Its just, how do you look someone in the eye, whilst taking that eye out with uncontrolled ripple effect and general ebullient confidence, joy and enthusiasm (which no, whilst temporarily ramped up a teensy weensy bit, isn't actually a side effect in this case but simply comes from being at the radio station AT ALL); how do you prance like a pranny, uncontrollably bounce up and down like an over-excited terrier trying to jump for a squeaky toy, this way and that, somersaulting in mid air (or back from the analogy, in mid sentence) simply to gain the desperately desired approval and the prize, irrespective of pride or basic functions such as genuine thought; how do you do ALL THAT.....

....and then find a moment to casually mention that you're probably a bit screwy because one new tablet can lower blood pressure, the other new one can raise it, and the one that used to control it is half as strong as it was, so even you don't know when you might be either comatose or high enough to be scraped off the ceiling?

Would your listener hear - " blah blah blah 'total effing nut job'" (likely), or would they hear "tablet tablet tablet tablet put any weight on this one and she'll collapse like a porcelain shelf dropped from a great height, so step away from the breakable lady"?

Both are likely considerations. Neither are true. Neither would take me a step nearer to transferring this waffle onto the radio, which is the most focused goal I think I have ever had in my entire life.

So, I am being a sad chicken type and hoping those links bear fruit so we can all have a chuckle and I don't have to actually say anything about it at all. What a coward!

And now I remember why I started to post.

I am so, so happy about my new tablets, which are temporary prescriptions. All I have to do is get through this.

One is to get shot of accumulated water whilst I settle in to the lighter beta blockers and rejoin the land of the living, with a pulse you can actually read.

The other (Yay, hooray!) is to kick start the loss of a stone or three or five, oh OK about 70 pounds, that went on in the year before and after the sh*t d*mn this doesn't define me 'heart attack' and just never would shift off again. Nothing I've done in the three years since has made the slightest difference in my weight, for good or ill, its just stuck, so now we are going to get shot of it. I'm so happy I could cry.

Right. So. I think I mentioned that one new tablet can lower blood pressure, the other new one can raise it, and the beta blocker that used to control it all is half as strong as it was, and all these changes took place in the same weekend.

So when the hospital dentist poked me around last night, I was a bit wobbly on the way home, and when the call centre girl from the gas company rang me this morning to explain why increased gas prices 12 months ago mean they can now see my monthly usage has increased in cost by 150% from £20 to £50, but, as if that wasn't bad enough, that she is determined to add my statements together as if they were bills, to calculate a monthly direct debit amount based on a fictitious total usage of £168 per month (backdated over 12 months, naturally), I was a little more wobbly than that, even though my voice stayed calm and my mind was deliciously clear and rational unlike my experience of the high beta blocker years, when the functioning braincells would hide under a metaphorical bucket and plead for mercy until flipping out and 'doing a Susan' (poor Susan Boyle, at least she's taken over in the British consciousness from Vanessa Feltz).

Even though I was thinking so fast I was wrapping this poor little girl in knots, like Superman skipping round a maypole, I still managed to begin to physically shake.

Most bizarre. Sitting there, talking on the phone like some sort of dominatrix on a short fuse, whilst holding my own hand up for observation and watching it almost twitch. Its alright, now.

Could be that the heart wanted to pump adrenalin and the pulse wouldn't shift into action. Could be the other way round. Its gotta be one of those, I just don't know which.

I've typed for an hour now, non stop, and my head is still very much wide awake, but I'm still feeling a bit sickly/wobbly.

I think it probably is low blood pressure and unused adrenalin . Time to turn the radio on, very very loud; or go and cat nap, I'm not sure which.

Ye gods, I may have to take up running, even though a week ago the only way to get both my feet off the floor at once was by me screwing my eyes up, going red in the face and relying largely on psychokinesis. Wish me luck?

08 June 2009

Thank you thank you

This is like free-fall free-range free speechless spouting, if you catch my drift, but that's just how my brain goes sometimes so if it isn't doing it for you, its fine because its doing it for me (I think, hope, pray).

I thought the phrase was free association, but that's when prisoners are allowed round the pool tables all at the same time, isn't it?

OK so maybe I just endorsed that contention by mistake.

Something makes me want to type like Vicky Pollard (yeahbut nobut, can Pollard type?), at least type as she speaks. I have so much to blurt. Its not often I go silent on the blogs for fear of being thought nauseatingly chipper, however in recent months it does seem that I must have been Seeking the Kingdom of God in something approaching the right way, because, boy, all these things are being added unto me.

Its like Christmas. Its like things are going right at an alarming rate of knots. Oh life isn't perfect; there are no lessons left in perfection and I still want to learn (and does anyone else smell a paradox coming?), but old, long forgotten little 'no chance' wishes are popping up all granted and my little corner of the world is "wow, brilliant, thank you, I'd forgotten how much I'd wanted that, thank you thank you".

I just told a friend (a real friend, one of those people you can trust for an opinion, you know?) *cough*, I just told that friend that I've spent the last week or so being totally Pollyanna, blowing enough sunshine outta my ass to feel like a hovercraft. My feet aren't quite touching the ground. I guess this is what it feels like, to use the very British vernacular, to be 'fart-arsing about'.

Its all true.

This is the point where any tentative, speculative thoughts of running up a little post on here have faltered - who wants to hear how GREAT someone else's life is going?

03 June 2009

Marginally peeved

I am looking at the previous post. The longer I stare at it, the more I become convinced that the past tense of 'grit' is, in fact, 'grit.

How annoying.

Any thoughts, please?