By golly it’s dark in the sticks….

So I went away (but as you can see I came back so that’s OK). I had a pretty good weekend (this is an understatement as things went very well and so I actually had a very good weekend) but as usual at these things I ended up absolutely pooped! ^*1

After a late meeting on the Friday night I finally got back to my room and decided to have a bit of a relax and read before going off to sleep. Now I should have realised that there was going to be a problem straight off, but I am optimistic little soul and just though it would be OK. You see, the light switch for the bedside light was mounted on the wall, kinda half behind the headboard. So, I propped a couple of pillows up against the headboard, turned on the light and picked up my book. I relaxed back against the pillows and the light went out! I leaned forward and it came back on! I shifted the pillows just a bit and discovered that the light when on off on off on off every time I breathed in and out which was really just plain annoying and not conducive to a nice relaxing read!

So I got up and got a pair of socks out of my suitcase and wedged them between the headboard and the wall, made myself a cup of hot chocolate (since I was up and halfway to the kettle anyway) and settled back down. The socks did it nicely and the light stayed on. So, there I was, just getting to a juicy bit in the book and I leaned forward to pick up my cup. Unbeknownst to me, the socks escaped and fell down the back of the headboard and when I leaned back against the pillows, yep, you’ve guessed it - the lights went out!

Well, this was just getting a tad annoying by this stage, but now I was missing my socks so I got back out of bed and got down on the floor and started fishing under the bed with my walking stick. I knew it was a bad idea to lean on the bed to do this, ‘cos just as I managed to hook them from the furthest corners under the bed (thankfully there was no monster^*2 under there) I pushed a bit too hard on the bed and the light went out again. This time, when I shifted my weight the light stayed off and so there I was in pitch blackness (this place is out in the boondocks so no street lights) in a strange room and with no socks to boot.

Well, finally I shuffled around and found the right switch and eventually got my socks back. It was sometime around this point that I realised that I had neglected to lock my door when I came in so anyone could have walked in and found me with my a*se stuck in the air and my head under the bed and the only explanation I would have for it was that the lights kept going out unexpectedly!

^*1In fact so much so that after I got home I started drifting off to sleep whilst watching CSI – and it was a good one! True it wasn’t the series with Gary Sinise (I have a soft spot) but all the same, there I was eyes slipping shut like some old lady in the corner…
^*2Which is good because I didn't have one of these handy.

That’s it – I’m off

Just thought I’d better stick a post up to tell you I’m not sticking a post up (am I making sense??). I shall be away for a few days so there will be no new entries until next week. Now I know you are all bitterly disappointed and wondering how you will fill your empty days, but I’m sure you can manage.

I shall be back after the weekend with tales of derring do, fun, excitement and really wild things (and if nothing exciting has happened I shall make some stuff up!).

In the meantime, take a deep breath – hit the big Google button and let me know if you find anything exciting…..

I have been nominated for an award

I have been nominated for an award, which has totally mystified me as I have no idea why they thought of me. Now don’t get me wrong, I know I’ve done a couple of unusual things in my life that are noteworthy (like having spinal surgery for one), but I didn’t expect to be nominated for anything, let alone this.

Let me explain – out of the blue I had an e-mail from a college tutor saying he wanted to see me. Now I resisted this initially ‘cos he’s not my type (OJ!) but was intrigued so toddled off to see him. He had decided to nominate me for an adult learner award – as a couple of years ago I decided (somewhat foolishly) to do a school exam in physics. Now in itself that doesn’t sound too mad, except that I had never done any science in school and was having some problems comprehending what an atom was, let alone trying to understand such alien concepts as pressure, torque, moments, magnetism, waves and quantum mechanics^*1

So, mad woman that I am, not only did I do a GCSE in the subject, but got persuaded to carry on and do an A level too. Funnily enough, I mostly enjoyed it (apart from the maths and apart from the aforementioned quantum mechanics….) and I thought that that was that. Having learnt why sticks look bent in water and how electricity gets down wires and also that neither of those things have anything to do with little green men was enough for me….

So, why nominate me for the award? He wouldn’t say, just that I was the first person he thought of. I’m thinking at this stage that there is an age limit associated with this and it’s none too flattering – still regardless of the reason I’m chuffed just the same!

^*1 Have I lost you yet?

Snow pictures

Well, I promised some, so here they are:

Well, above is proof that it was snowing alright....

...and on the left we have an idiot driver who thinks that it's just fine and dandy to whack a couple of cars as he slithers his way along. (This photo doesn't show just how steep our hill is, just how icy the road was and just how stupid he was to even think of doing what he tried to do).

Maybe I should give him a PWSBK award?







I love it though - it always looks so pretty - all that fairy dust on the trees - just like someone's been out with the sugar sifter!


Hope you like the photos.....

...I guess that'll be it for snow and excitement for another ten years so I thought I ought to post them now while I have the opportunity!

So sad...

Today I heard the very sad news that someone from one of the scoliosis forums died after complications from her scoliosis surgery. She was due to be fused from T6 to L3 through a posterior only incision which is supposed to be the most risk free way to do it. She had a very experienced surgeon but the anaesthetist made a mistake which meant that blood ended up being pumped into her lungs and she suffered a massive stroke which ultimately led to her death.

Her surgery took place exactly 12 months after my surgery and so I felt some kind of connection with this lady whose thoughts, concens and fears were the same as for us all. She was only 31 and will be missed by us all on the forum.

It is very sad and I want to join in with so many other people in sending warm thoughts and sympathy to her family....

Ah, snow. Don’t you just love it?

So we had snow. We don’t do this very often in the Southern half of Britain, let alone where I live so it is always the cause of much excitement and confusion. Me, I think it’s great to look at but here’s the rub, it’s cold stuff and even before someone shoved a yard of metal in my back I didn’t like the cold. Now I have my own personal inbuilt cooling rod, I like it even less – except through the window when it is very pretty and sometimes fun and always great to take pictures of (I shall stick some up for you in a few days…).

We haven’t had significant snow since we moved in here 6 years ago and they forecast that Thursday was to be the exception to that. They closed the schools in preparation – the news reporters all took up heir allotted posts at the areas worst (potential) accident black-spots and we all looked to the skies. Well, when the snow started falling you could just see the country’s weather forecasters all smiling glibly and patting each other on the back for having got it right (remembering at all times that this is the country where Michael Fish famously said that there was no hurricane on the way). In fact, they forecast that it would snow from the wee small hours until lunchtime and this is exactly what it did. Hardy souls like hubby went to work and the rest of us just decided to stay in and do things Friday instead as the forecast for then was for nothing more than a bit of rain….

So, Friday, hubby goes to work as normal and a bit later I looked out the window to find that it was snowing again – completely un-forecast! It looked bad too – I couldn’t see the hill behind the house but figured that it would all be over soon and pretty much ignored it. An hour or so later I looked out the front window to discover that the hill outside was covered in snow and was freezing fast. People had started sliding sideways down the hill and we were gathering casualties by the hour as they bounced from one pavement to another hitting cars and walls as they went. Some seemed to think the best thing to do was to accelerate all the way down the hill (presumably with their eyes closed) and others seemed to think that just locking up the wheels and wiggling the steering wheel from side to side (also presumably with their eyes closed ) was the way to go. My car was protected for several hours by someone who missed it by about 2 inches but then got stuck diagonally in the road just ensuring that everyone had to go round him (and me)! I have to say that I spent a large part of the day in the window holding my breath…..but thankfully my little car survived the afternoon - safe but a bit frightened!

Occasionally someone decided that they could make it up the hill (presumably because they thought that they were a superb driver whose Renault Clio has better traction than anybody else’s) and a lot of people had to swallow their pride and reverse (or at least slide) back down again. I saw one guy impressively sail up the hill in a Subaru Impreza – reckon he must have had spiked tyres he did so well, but apart from the odd Jeep or Landrover (who are obviously experts as they plainly do not buy these vehicles just to do the school run...) he was the only one who made it. Actually, that’s a fib – a Rover made it earlier in the day, but he hit 3 cars that I could see – an almost new Rover – not a nice way to treat it….

Anyway, for quite some time I was able to judge how deep the snow was (about 6”) by the pile on the top of my car until some ‘orrible little oik decided to scrape some off for snowballs – OK so it gave me a measure of how much had fallen in the two hours (about 2”) until another equally ‘orrible little oik decided to do it again. I bet they are exactly the kind of children who grow up to write their name in the snow too….My my, that makes me sound like a grumpy old git myself, but I really do like the pristine-ness (is there such a word?) of fresh snow.

So, the forecasters were wrong again and the country ground to a halt for another 24 hours. I was just grateful that it cleared enough for us to get away to PTV and HLW for the weekend – I was horribly afraid that they would be eating posh food without us and that we would have to have beans on toast or whatever I could dig out of the freezer as the news had reported that the shelves in Tesco were empty after panic buying! Winter eh? Two days of snow and the world goes mad….

A comment on yesterday

So, a year and a day eh? (don’t worry, I shan’t do this every day- ergo- a year and a day, a year and two days, a year and….well, you get the picture!).

I just thought I’d leave a brief note on further updates on my back (for those of you mad enough to want to check up on me). I intend doing an update every 3 months for this first (second) year and then we’ll see if there’s any point in doing any more. In the meantime, there’s always space in my blog for more dribble - oops, sorry, that should have said drivel, I was just thinking about chocolate at the time and it sort of slipped out. No, don’t be so gross, I didn’t need to mop up the keyboard or anything…..

It’s my anniversary….

…I’m 12 months post op today and what a wild ride it’s been!

Be warned, this is a long post too…

It is hard to believe that in the last 12 months I have been opened up, had my insides rearranged during surgery, had 2 ribs removed, ground up and stuck back inside me in a different place and had a couple of large chunks of metal shoved inside me. I’ve had my lung collapsed and been in ITU for less time than anyone ever expected. I’ve had nerve damage that meant I had to learn to walk all over again, let alone learning to do it a different way because my balance has been completely changed. I’ve bought one pair of very funky walking sticks and am contemplating a second set. I have taken my wheelchair to Belgium, Czech Republic and China and have exceeded my wildest dreams of timing during my recovery. That’s some ride, isn’t it?

Getting this surgery done seemed to take over my life. It was never far from my thoughts before the op – when I wasn’t wishing I could get it over with, I was wondering if it was really necessary at all. Talk about the sublime to the ridiculous, but it’s true, that’s the way it was. Then of course, it happened and my life for the next few months was just plain hard work – from those first moments when (excuse me for being gross) I had to have help to wipe my own bum; through the effort it took just to get a drink once hubby had gone back to work; and then all those exercises that I had from the physio – it’s not the easy route by any means…

Having said that, it was the most worthwhile thing that I have done in recent years and indeed it may turn out to be the most worthwhile thing I ever do for my future health. I would go through it again if I had to and that’s saying something!

There are lots of reasons to consider surgery like this, but none so compelling as the prospect of doom and gloom in the future. The trouble is, that it’s the hardest one to quantify too – there’s always the feeling that you will cope whatever happens over time. Whatever pain you are in, well, you know what its like; you fear that things will get worse instead of better or that the recovery will be so painful and stressful that it isn’t worth trying. Of course, the decision is a hard one to make and that’s especially true if you have borderline curves (say 40 degrees). Of course, for me, (although I had had a pair of 45 degree curves for around 20 years without them ever moving) I more recently had a documented history of progression – my curves weren’t just progressing, they were accelerating. It seems they shifted the normal 1-2 degrees a year for a few years and then started galloping along at 6 degrees a year. 6 degrees! That’s 12 degrees in 2 years, 18 in 3 years etc – just do the maths. Bad news, when you start from a 75 degree curve!

So, I got it done and I am happy. I have still ended up with what some people would consider significant scoliosis (with curves of 30 degrees thoracic and 33 degrees lumbar). That will never go away and in time, my thoracic curve may shift and need more surgery – not at the moment though (and hopefully not ever). I still get significant back pain and still get the heartburn problems. That’s the bad news though and sounds worse than it is because all my symptoms have been massively reduced – probably by 50% - which coincidentally is about the amount of correction they managed to get in my curves. Now I wonder if there’s any link between those two facts…..

So, that’s it really – I get less pain now and that should always be true. My curve hasn’t moved for 12 months and that should also always be true. My heart and lungs are no longer in danger. True. My internal organs ditto. I am fit and healthy. So that’s all the practical stuff, but then there’s the other stuff which is just a nice bonus - like gaining 2 inches in height and being able to wear some clothes that I never thought I would. The operation has given me all that and was so worth all the agonising, all the risks and all the effort. If anyone out there is contemplating going through it, think about it carefully, consider your own circumstances, but don’t fail to get it done just through fear of the unknown.

Comments on toplessness...

So, I posted my topless photos and went away for the weekend. When I came home I checked my statcounter and discovered that over the weekend I had had about 5 times as many hits than I usually get on a weekend (and for once I am not exaggerating!). I mentioned this to hubby as I was mystified by the sudden increase in readership.

"Ah", says hubby sagely "that'll be all those teenage boys Googling 'topless photos' while their parents are out doing the weekend shopping."

Oops....


Interestingly too, I am fascinated to learn that there is now a verb to Google although Google themselves want to try and keep it out of the dictionary...it's an amazing (and confusing) world isn't it?