Friday 6th to Sunday 8th November

A man from the HR department was waiting to see me when I got into work. We went through what hours had been agreed for me to work and he said that it would be a bit flexible as long as I was showing signs of being able to increase my hours and that it fitted in with Adam (my boss).  If I get to a stage where I feel like I cant increase any more then I would have to probably reduce my contracted hours. He said to make sure that I tell Adam if I am struggling at any time or don’t feel well. This is the bit I’m not very good at though, I tend to just get on with things and then suffer after. This is one of the reasons why my GP was a bit apprehensive about me returning to work, because he knows what I’m like.

I then went straight onto the tills this morning. It was busy too but I always used to like it that way. 

I was very very tired when I got home. I sat on the sofa yawning my head off.

When I woke up Saturday morning I wasn’t very well. I had a terrible headache and just didn’t feel well at all. (As a result of having a busy shift back at work? Really don’t know )

Gary had arranged for us to have lunch with his daughter Emma in a nearby garden centre where her boyfriend Jamie works as the chef. So I made the effort and went along. Gary and Emma had the chicken pie that Jamie had made and I ordered a jacket potato with cheese and beans (which eventually arrived after the others had almost finished eating as the girl had lost my ticket!) I managed to eat some of it. We had a bit of a walk around afterwards but I found it really hard work, I just wanted to go home really 😦

Which we eventually did. Emma needed to get back to get ready to go out later. So then we decided to pop in to Banbury. I didn’t really feel like going but I was trying to take my mind off of how I felt and I also needed to get some new trousers for work as the ones I had been wearing were awful! 

I didn’t find out until too late that Robyn and Leah were going to a local fireworks display before going out later. If I had known I probably would have made another effort to go there with them, as I normally do. Unusually I haven’t been to watch any fireworks this year 😦

I just sat at Garys and watched tv in the evening. I hadn’t picked my iPad up all day and had hardly been on my phone. Now that shows you just how ill I was feeling!!

I felt a bit better on Sunday. My headache seemed to have got a bit better too. Thank goodness. I wouldn’t have been too happy if my whole weekend had been ruined. One day was bad enough

I was even able to eat a very delicious breakfast baguette. Bacon, scrambled egg, sausage, mushrooms. Hard to eat, but I think one of the best things I’ve ever tasted! Thank you 😋

At teatime me and Gary went down to the Blue Boar to watch a band we like, Palmerstone. They were really good. Then we called in to another pub on our way home that we used to go in quite regularly. It has been closed for a while, been completely renovated, and recently reopened. What a difference. It’s been really opened out and is now really quite posh! They have a lovely room now which they are calling the snug, with leather chairs and sofas with like animal hide seats. It’s a perfect place and I can’t wait to go back there, get myself comfy with a nice mug of coffee and blog 🙂

Wednesday 4th to Thursday 5th November

I was tired when I woke up this morning and my body was aching just a bit more than normal, I’m guessing as a result of work yesterday. But I had a lot of jobs that had mounted up over the last couple of days, so I just got on with doing those.

In the evening I watched the last in the series of Gift of Life. This week it was a young man that had a heart transplant and a woman that had a double lung transplant. I’ve enjoyed watching that. I find all this kind of thing very interesting now. I would have definitely agreed to have had my story followed and filmed if I had the chance. And imagine being able to watch back your own transplant operation. A great thing in my opinion to be able to look back on.

I did manage to get a photo of my actual liver though! We asked before my transplants that if it was possible please could they take a photo. They can’t promise anything, as obviously it depends on how everything goes when they are taking it out I guess, but they managed to do it for me😃 And here it is.

Looks very solid to me and black!! No wonder I felt so ill before they took it out   

I hope my new liver now looks a bit more like this one.

Oh it’s weird when you think about it all isn’t it? I now haven’t got the liver I was born with and that grew inside me for many years because something went wrong inside my body and that turned it into this black thing and stopped it from working. So then some very clever people had a dig about inside my body and replaced it with another one that I am very lucky and extremely grateful to have received. Twice …

On Thursday I decided I was going to give the bathroom a bit of a spring clean. This actually really hurt my back but I had decided that’s what I was going to do and I wanted to finish it.

No evening walk for me this week as two of the ladies I go with were on holiday. I don’t think I could have managed it anyway after spending most of the day, on and off, in the bathroom! And I need to be fit enough for work again in the morning! I did miss my walk though 😦

Tuesday 3rd November

The day has come. A year since I was last fit enough to work, on the tills in our local Co-op store. And I’m back. I made it through 😃 

This made me think back a bit. Blimey I did struggle during those last few months when I was still working. It was such an effort to get myself to work, then serve my customers and be pleasant to them when I was feeling so awful. Many of them used to say to me ‘what on earth are you doing here, you should be at home’

Then when I got home after my shift was over I was fit for nothing but still had all the normal jobs to do, washing, cooking meals, tidying etc. It was very hard. When I sat down in the evenings I just couldn’t stay awake. The tiredness was one of the hardest things to live with. It made everything such hard work (it’s one of those things that no one will ever understand unless they’ve suffered it themselves). I think maybe sometimes people didn’t believe me, both in general life and at work.

I’m not trying to make myself out to be amazing or anything like that at all because I’m not, but I just didn’t want to give up. Then eventually, last November, my GP told me enough was enough, I wasn’t doing myself any favours, and I shouldn’t work any more. I knew at that time that I had to take his advice.

So here I am, a year later, having had two liver transplants and all the troubles that came with them, and I’m back on my till! I know I’m only doing two shifts a week, each of four hours, but I’m back. I’m doing these hours for a month to see how I get on with it, then adding another shift of four hours for another month and then it will all be reviewed and will go on from there. I had to go through Occupational Health to kind of get these hours agreed, as my boss seemed to want me to get back up to my normal contract of 24 hours a week within 6 weeks, and I’m not sure I can do that See how I get on I guess. 

I wasn’t at all worried about going back. I thought I was going to be a bit nervous but I wasn’t  at all. I was looking forward to it. And thankfully I was feeling well today so I think that helped too. I think it will all be very different again when I have to go on a day I’m not feeling quite 100% 

I had to catch up with some things on the computer first, that all staff have to do regularly anyway, and then I went onto the shop floor and just stood behind one of the other ladies to refresh my memory. I did this for about half an hour and then it was my turn. I was glad I had the chance to watch first because I had forgotten a lot of it (though amazingly earlier I had remembered my 6 digit clocking in number) My very first customer was another lady who works in the shop who had just finished her shift!!

My time to feel weird about it all was when I got home! I kind of felt like ‘what on earth was I doing sat here, I should still be working’ and I didn’t know what to do with myself at first. I was completely out of my routine. I made myself have a bit of lunch but as it was now the middle of the afternoon, I then wasn’t really that hungry in the evening So I guess I need to sort that problem out!

I was lucky enough to get a little present from Robyn for my first day back at work too 😃😃😃

Monday 2nd November

When I woke up this morning I felt a bit breathless and my chest felt quite tight. I was a bit surprised at this as my cold had seemed to be getting a tiny bit better. After a bit of nagging from Robyn (it had come round to her day off again already!) I made an appointment at the doctors just to check my chest for any signs of infection. I couldn’t go until 5pm though.

Robyn went off to the gym and I decided to make an apple cake as I had been given some windfall apples. When Robyn returned from the gym she decided to make some pumpkin soup. 

  
So we had a busy day in the kitchen, with lots of extra washing up for me to do!  

I decided I would take some of the apple cake to Robin (the man who gave me the apples) and his wife, who live on a farm just along the road from me. He always used to come to my till to have a chat when I was working. I also took some to Gary. I hung it on his door so it was there for him when he got back from work! I took a bag of things I had been sorting out recently to the charity shop in the town and then picked up a prescription of mine. Thanks Robyn for giving me a lift so I could get all these little odd jobs done 😙

Time for my doctors appointment then. No chest infection, thank goodness, I try to avoid antibiotics now at all costs. So I pick up my note that Dr Fisher has left for me at reception, saying I can go back to work as long as I’m doing shorter hours than my normal shift for a while.

Roll on the morning …

Saturday 31st October to Sunday 1st November

On Saturday me and Gary went into Banbury shopping.

Later I popped home to see Robyn. She was going to a Halloween party and was getting dressed up as her version of a pumpkin! This was before she went to her friend’s house to get her face painted.

But still a very skinny and pretty pumpkin!!!

Leah and Jack had been very busy too, sorting out and tidying their bedroom. It was a bit of a state and definitely needed doing. They BOTH have too many clothes that’s the main problem. Looks much better now. How long will it stay this way though? That’s what we are all wondering 😜

Then I went back to Garys as it was going to be another curry Saturday. YAY 😀 While he was cooking I watched the final of the Rugby World Cup, role reversal?! Since the start of the competition I have quite got into watching the game, it fascinates me. Can’t think why 😜

Anyway, chicken, cauliflower and mushroom curry with a tomato and coriander garnish and my favourite side dish, green beans in mustard seeds and this time also with sweet potato added. Absolutely delicious 😋

Nothing much happened on Sunday. It was a lovely sunny day and I really should have been at a car boot sale, as I have sorted some things out to sell, and when I do I’m going to give the proceeds to charity. But I know Robyn would want to help and maybe do something to help promote her challenge at the same time (http://bit.ly/DunbarsDonors) and as she was out at a Halloween party last night, I didn’t think she would be up to it this week!! She was also supposed to be going to visit Tom’s family too. Will try for another Sunday.

Today was #dayoftheliving A day to celebrate donors. So I wore orange today in memory of my donors and lit orange candles for them in the evening. Eternal thanks.

I did a bit of work on my blog and spent some time on Twitter and Facebook also promoting my blog! Watched the results of X Factor and I think that was about it.

PS Just to keep you up to date with my garden path saga, it is still looking the same. No soil or shingle has been put down either side. I haven’t seen or heard from either the builder or my landlord, so I really don’t know what is going on there. I guess they think as I now have slabs all the way down instead of grass and mud, it will be fine!!!

Friday 30th October

After my phone call with my GP yesterday evening about getting a note saying I was able to go back to work but for reduced hours, I had to ring Birmingham today just to check if I was allowed to have a flu jab, as my doctor really wants me to have one before I go back to work. I could only get hold of the secretary and she said she would try to get hold of my consultant, ask him and then ring me back. I’m not going to be able to have it at the moment anyway because of my bad cold.

Had a quiz to go to tonight in a nearby village. Leah took Robyn, Hannah and Julie, then me and Gary picked up George (my brother) and should have been Jackie but she couldn’t make it in the end. So off the 3 of us went to meet up with the others. And this was how the teams were worked out, by the people that had travelled together! But oh dear, none of us seemed to be very successful. 

This team finished last out of everybody! but were rewarded with a Mars bar 😋

This team were third from last!!!
  
Ha ha 😃

I kind of drifted between the two teams as I wanted to hear the gossip from both teams! I promise I didn’t cheat though 😜 I didn’t tell either of them what the others were writing down. I didn’t know many of the answers anyway The questions were quite hard. We had a good time though.

Monday 26th to Thursday 29th October

Monday. Robyn’s day off. So after she had been to the gym we went shopping in Banbury. And can you believe I now had a sore throat. 

Tuesday. My first day being back at home alone for a while as Robyn has been on holiday from work. And I now had a cold. My nose was streaming

But I still spent quite a while down in the kitchen as I had been out and about for the last few days and the jobs had been piling up at home. I also finally put together some plastic drawers I had bought last week so we could start using it to store our fruit and vegetables. We buy so much of them and they always just take over the kitchen table! And there was lots of Jake’s dog hairs waiting to be hoovered up apart from all the usual kitchen jobs.

Wednesday. I was beginning to feel quite poorly. Starting to cough as well now so just a day spent around the house. Is this what I am going to be like now? Catching all these silly little bugs that are always around. Obviously feeling much much better than I have for a long long time, but never feeling 100%? I was a bit fed up with it all today.

I peeled the potatoes and prepared lots of vegetables for mine and Leah’s tea and then left her to cook it while I did a bit more spring cleaning in the kitchen! Yay, we now had space to actually eat at our kitchen table!!!

In the evening I watched the second Gift of Life programme. This time a lady who was sent home to get fitter so that she could go on the transplant list for new lungs, a young girl that eventually got a lung transplant and is now doing well, and a 3 year old girl that had a heart transplant but very sadly still didn’t make it after a few months. As I said it WAS sad but still a very interesting programme.

Thursday. Still not well. And the weather was miserable. But I had planned to meet my friend Jackie for a cup of tea. So I made myself get ready and I walked into town. I went to the bank first to pay in the money from our Organ Donation promotion day, so I could get a cheque sent off to them. Then I went in to Co-op to wait for Jackie. I saw a few people in there who said why on earth was I out on a day like this and why hadn’t I been to the doctors. I saw Hannah and even she said what was I doing out and I should be at home in bed! I did look and sound a bit rough I’m also due back at work very soon and I have to go feeling like this? Am I going to make it back or am I going to be on antibiotics for a chest infection? 😷

Had a good cup of tea and a natter with Jackie though (between the coughing), then went home and still did some washing up. I never seem to stop!

Leah made herself a great tea.

 
Pizza omelette. I’m going to get her to make one for me as well next time!

Saturday 24th to Sunday 25th October

Oh my goodness. My poor body (as a result of yesterday I guess) And I don’t feel great. And Gary wants to go to Oxford shopping Off we go. Well I do still need a new coat for winter.

And I get one at last. Black and quilted with fur round the hood. It’s lovely and warm!! And when I get it home, even the kids like it. Sorted 😃

We call in to a Harvester pub on our way back for something to eat. Spit roasted chicken and chips for me 🍗🍟 Something just a bit basic was all I wanted. It was nice.

Glad to get back and just rest though.

We were invited out to Sunday lunch today. At Julie and Hannah’s. How exciting! I was at home in the morning doing little jobs and getting my bins ready to go out for collection! (Robyn, Leah and Jack had already gone along without me!) but I seemed to just run out of time. So when Gary called to pick me up I really wasn’t ready, just stuck my shoes on and off we went. Robyn said to me when I walked in ‘where’s my scrapbooking stuff?’ She had text me earlier to say she had forgotten it and could I bring it along. Of course I hadn’t got it. Then I realised I hadn’t taken my morning lot of tablets either and also didn’t have any in my bag. Whoops So Gary gave me a lift back home to pick everything up. My head really wasn’t working was it?!

 I still wasn’t feeling too great about food but I had a small plateful. It was lovely. Chicken, roast potatoes, brussels, broccoli, carrots, peas and sweetcorn. For pudding there was fresh strawberries, melon, pineapple, angel delight and meringues. Everyone else tucked in.

Then suddenly it seemed everyone was going to go for a walk. Just what I needed! (Apart from Jack, he was escaping to a friends’ house to play Uno can you believe?!) So Leah, Hannah and Julie started walking. Gary gave me and Robyn a lift to our house as she needed her coat and I needed different shoes! Gary went off and said he would be straight back. And this is where it all went wrong Robyn went off to meet the others and to carry on walking with them and I waited for Gary to come back. And waited and waited. Then I got a phone call to say he was up at the cemetery with the others already and where was I? I had been forgotten! 🙄 So off I set … 
Seems like they kept themselves amused while waiting for me.

  
When we eventually all met up together we walked up to my mum and dads grave 😦 and had a wander around the rest of the cemetery. Then Gary went back in his car and I walked back through the park with the others.
 

They all had fun anyway 😀
Then back to Julie’s for a cup of tea. I did some blogging, Robyn did some scrapbooking, Julie did the washing up, Hannah did nothing (just rolled about the floor on her phone!) and Leah went home.

Weekend over.