Do you remember that on 13th February I posted a link about 3 liver transplants being carried out within 18 hours at The Royal Free in Hampstead.

Well now The Royal Papworth Hospital has carried out 5 organ transplants in 36 hours!

A big thank you to all the donors and their families, without who these lifesaving operations would not be able to take place.

Saturday 10th to Friday 16th February

It’s Winter Olympics time! ⛷🥌⛸

It’s taking place in Pyeongchang County in South Korea. Live tv coverage is mainly shown in the mornings so that was my weekend sorted! Harder during the week when at work, but I’ve been watching when I get the chance.

I love to watch the snowboarding 🏂, the speed skating and the skeleton – where they career down the icy track head first reaching speeds of over 80 miles per hour.

None of which I’ve ever fancied doing myself! I’ve never even been skiing. Why would anyone want to pay to go on holiday to a cold country?! I can’t bear the cold ☃

Here are 11 things you may not know about the Olympics. It’s quite an interesting read. If you click on the ‘Worst crashes and injuries’ box while in this link you will find some great photographs!

I also came across a video of Chris Klug, who is a professional alpine snowboarder. I really wanted to put the video on here so that you could see it but very annoyingly I just could not figure out how to get it into this post! 🤷‍♀️😡 So I’ll just tell you about him instead. He had a liver transplant in 2000 due to Primary Sclerosing Cholangitis. Then in 2002 he went on to compete in the Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City, where he won a bronze medal in the Parallel Giant Slalom. This was the first and so far only time a transplantee has competed in the Olympics, either winter or summer.

He has also released a book called To the Edge and Back: My Story from Organ Transplant Survivor to Olympic Snowboarder. This might be an interesting read 📖

On Sunday we went out for the first time in ages to watch some live music in a local pub. Just a man and his guitar, he played for about four hours straight with no break, that must have took some doing. How does he remember all those words?!

Time to go and visit my favourite hairdresser! on Monday 💇‍♀️

A week of birthdays – my brother Peter’s on the 13th, my sister Julie’s on the 14th (a Valentine’s baby) and a visit for tea and cake 🎂😋 and then mine coming up in a few days. Where did all the birthday cards go when we all lived at home?! Funny that the three of us were all born in February and my other brother and sister were both born in October!

And not forgetting Valentines Day this week of course ❤

My walk on Thursday afternoon involved me walking down to the sorting office in our town to pick up a delivery for Robyn. I got the lovely job as she was at work until 8pm. Thankfully they weren’t too heavy but carrying one shoe box and one box even bigger up 3 steep hills was certainly a good workout and made my arms and shoulders ache! And then it turned out that it was my own birthday presents that I had struggled home with!

(By the way, my big toe hurts more and more ☹️)

Just thought I’d share a couple of stories with you 🙂

What a great deal of hard work and preparation took place to make this happen. Extraorganary! I hope all concerned are doing really well.

And how about this, just in time for Valentine’s Day ❤️ tomorrow. How sweet!

Monday 5th to Friday 9th February

I don’t know what got into me on Monday!

First of all I started to do a bit of a major spring clean in the bathroom 🛁 (to be continued), I sorted washing and hung it outside on the line to dry, my treat was a trip to Nero’s for a blog ☕️🍰, I walked 3.7 miles and then in the evening I cooked sweet chilli sausage pasta with roasted pepper, mushrooms and cherry tomatoes 😋

But the rest of the week didn’t turn out to be quite so productive! 😣

After I have been to work I just feel so extremely tired that it’s hard to get myself to do more when I’m home. It’s just been so cold again this week which doesn’t help. I think that the extra effort my body is making in trying to keep me functioning while I’m there is draining me of my energy!!!

I must be mad because I always make the effort to then go back out into the freezing cold to suffer just a little bit more for my walks with Jackie and Alfie 🐶

I didn’t volunteer this week as I still had no car to get there. I tried to make use of the time and get some paperwork sorted but my concentration was so bad. This was making me very frustrated. I tried to persevere and got a little bit of it done in the end.

Then I heard from the garage. My car was finally ready for collection. I don’t think they even touched it on the first day, it was left on the side of a main road with some random car parked incredibly close to it 😡, then they told me that when they started to fix the brake pipes they came across another pipe that had previously been glued together and now needed replacing, so another wait for the part to be ordered, delivered and then for them to actually get round to fixing it. And this obviously was going to add more to my bill 💷 but what choice did I have really?

It’s a good job I love you Buzz because you have cost me a LOT of money. It is real nice to have you back though 🚗😃

Thursday 1st to Sunday 4th February

On Thursday I went back to volunteer at the hospital, the first time since I had torn my calf muscle in November. Not being able to walk or drive, then Christmas and a couple of other appointments and things had all seemed to get in the way!

I went off for my usual walk afterwards. I had already decided to walk the exact same route as I took when I tore my calf muscle. As I got nearer to the crossing I did feel a bit apprehensive and was very thankful when I managed to get to the other side of the road in one piece!

Following the storm damage to my car it has been tucked away in a garage in Banbury since the 19th January while all the repairs were being done. I finally heard that it was ready for collection so we went to pick it up on Friday, later in the afternoon. Not really the best thing to do after a busy day at work and it being just the right time of day to get stuck in all the traffic 🚙🚌🚙🚗🚛

The MOT had run out on my car now. So I drove it straight back to another garage in our town where it was booked in for its MOT on Saturday morning.

And guess what? It failed 😖 Yep, brilliant! Tyres, track rods (whatever on earth they might be?!) and brake pipes. And there’s an oil leak which also needs investigating too. When am I ever going to get my car back all sorted and ready to drive 🤔

Not the best news to start the ‘not very busy’! weekend.

(I just wanted to show you these fun teapot cosy’s which I found while having a look around on the Internet.

Aren’t they great?) 🙂

🐌

Monday 1st to Wednesday 31st January

So January started with me being ill for the first week. In fact on New Years Day I only had a few sips of water all day long. I didn’t even take any of my tablets. I just could not face a single thing. I wasn’t able to go to work or do much else. It really wasn’t the way I wanted the new year to begin, I was hoping it was going to be nice to me 😏

I managed to do a few short walks around the town to get my last few miles in before my challenge ended on Sunday 7th. This day was dry and sunny. Gary and Robyn came out for my last walk with me.

We did 3 and a half miles. And that’s it, my year was up! I had completed my challenge 🤗 My total mileage for the year was 1043.19. I am disappointed that I couldn’t do more. Tearing my calf muscle and not being able to walk for a month was just not in my plan. I am thankful that it didn’t happen until after I had walked my 1000th mile though or I would not have been a very happy lady! I haven’t added all of my sponsor money up yet but I will let you know the final total when I do 🙂

I will say that I have spent most of the month just feeling completely exhausted. I have found work quite a struggle at times. My shoulders hurt a lot from the constant repetitive movements which are done while I’m also hunching my body up trying to keep warm, I don’t think that helps matters. I also suffer with Raynaud’s disease (which causes some areas of your body such as your fingers and toes to feel numb and cold in response to cold temperatures or stress) and it is particularly bad at the moment. Can you imagine trying to handle money while your fingers are white and numb from the lack of blood flow – it’s not an easy thing to do.

I also have a sore hip and my big toe still hurts. I’ve started to get cramps every now and again in my toes and hands. I’m falling apart I think 😖 I also have noticed that I have been itching …

It has been nice to get out with Jackie and her dog Alfie 🐶 for a few short walks and in the middle of the month I was finally able to join the Thursday evening gang again for some of our longer walks. I’m hoping that my calf muscle is up to these again now as I have missed them.

Storm Fionn visited us in the early hours of Thursday 18th. I just happened to have stayed over at Gary’s house that night. We both woke in the early hours of the morning to the sound of very strong winds, only for Gary to discover when he looked out of the window that his garden wall had fallen down. There were bricks and other stuff everywhere! As daylight came we then discovered that some of the wall had come down onto my car 😢

Just another little thing to be sorted!

I’ve had a couple of odd days off from work to use some of my holiday up, I’ve met my friend Nina for a coffee, had coffee with my sister Lynda, I’ve been out for a tasty roast dinner, there’s been a couple of curry Saturdays, one of them being a very delicious Punjabi tamarind curry of chicken and cauliflower with pilau rice, I’ve been to Oxford with Leah and bought some more fish for my tank (I really must show you photos of these at a later date), I’ve had a cuddle of newborn baby Joey (belonging to Robyn’s best friend Lucie) … so there has been a few nice things going on too.

We woke up to more snow one Sunday morning again. Let’s all go for a walk so that Leah can take some more snowy pics on her new camera we thought. By the time we were all ready it had started to rain. It was a real horrible walk in the end, just thick slush to try and walk about in and we all got SO extremely soaked and cold. It turned out to be a real nasty day weather wise in the end but thankfully it meant that the white stuff didn’t hang around for long this time.

I didn’t feel well again at the end of the month. Unsettled tummy, diarrhoea, funny head. And still just so tired. This makes everything so much harder work.

So overall January hasn’t been a great month really. I am very fed up of just being SO exhausted all of the time. A lot of the time I haven’t had much enthusiasm to do anything and my appetite hasn’t been great. I think I need a very long holiday in some warm sunshine!☀️

Sunday 24th to Sunday 31st December

Christmas Eve started off well with my favourite breakfast 😋

Then last minute wrapping of presents, tidying the house and a visit to my mum and dad’s grave 😢

Gary, my brother, sister and niece came round for a few nibbles in the evening.

Christmas Day and Leah was working 😖 The first time ever that Robyn, Leah and myself haven’t been together in the morning to have stockings and open presents. Everything all felt a bit strange. Christmas was just on hold really until Leah came home. Me, Robyn and Gary went for a short walk around our town and then we went to Julie’s and waited for Leah to return …

Then Christmas dinner.

And finally time for present 🎁 opening. Yay – at last 🤗

We had a nice day and yet again I was spoilt with all of my lovely presents.

Boxing Day was a walk down to see the Heythrop Hunt that meets in our town every year. We met up with my niece, nephew and girlfriend and had a few drinks in the pubs and finally was joined by my brother and we had a nice lunch. Leah had gone off to work again and later Robyn met up with her friends so it was just back home for me.

I spent quite a lot of my time between Christmas and New Year just being home alone and not really doing anything 😔 I was back at work too, it’s miserable that you don’t get a break when you work in a shop.

We had more snow. Not quite as much as last time but still enough for Leah to have to dig her car out again. The paths all around were just a nightmare as they weren’t being cleared and it just kept freezing overnight. Getting to work was a bit of a problem, it was just SO slippy that you couldn’t actually walk on the paths, you just had to try to make your way onto the roads as soon as you could, but then you faced the danger of the cars just heading straight towards you!

I was lucky enough to have one day out. My friend Nina invited me to go and see War Horse with her in Oxford. We had a bit of a look around the sales in the shops and had a bit of a hurried pizza for lunch as time was running out before the show started!

It was GOOD, quite amazing. The way the horses were made and worked by the puppeteers was completely fascinating. If you get a chance, go and see this show.

Just time for coffee and cake ☕️🍰 after the show before we set off for home.

I also went back to Oxford again at the weekend. A walk around with Robyn and Gary. I took pieces of my Christmas cake with me and I gave them out to the poor homeless people that were just sat about on the street.

Then it was New Years Eve. I started to get a tummy ache in the afternoon and felt a bit sick 🤢 I didn’t really feel like eating anything at all but thank goodness I started to improve slightly as we had a table booked for a meal in Bitter & Twisted in the evening. So I made the effort and got ready. I did enjoy my meal and we had a bit of fun.

Goodbye 2017 👋

Friday 1st to Saturday 23rd December

December – my least favourite month of the year 😖

Christmas is coming and it just seems to take over my life! All those many different shopping trips to be done, round and round trying to find suitable presents but it all looks like the same stuff that you bought last year! Sometimes you seem to be successful and then other times you might as well not have bothered because you spend ages looking around but then come home with nothing. And all of this was made even harder and more painful this year because of my leg.

Early in the month I started to walk without my crutches but I still was not able to put my foot down to the floor completely, I was a bit of a hopalong with a limp. And I still couldn’t walk very far yet before it started to hurt.

I went back to work at the beginning of the month. I had to reduce my hours so that I could catch a bus to get me into the town, as I wasn’t able to walk from home, that was too far a distance yet. I was okay while I was sat on my till and I managed to hobble about and did the stairs there (very slowly) so that I could get to the staff room and be able to clock in and out. Then I just had time to pick up a couple of bits of shopping before I needed to be outside to catch the bus back.

It was good to get back to ‘real life’. I really don’t like the isolation from being at home and not able to get out and about when you want to. It’s not good for my head and the whole thing was not good for my body! It really takes it out of you in every way. I was SO extremely tired. And it didn’t help going straight back into being non stop on the checkouts, the shop was now VERY busy as obviously people were filling their big trolleys very full with food for Christmas.

I had another ‘painful but good’ private physio session – massage and ultrasound again. She said that she could feel the difference in my muscle, that it was slowly starting to get better. I guess that was encouraging to hear as I was feeling very frustrated that it was taking so long.

Later in the month I had my first NHS physio session. I don’t know whether this was just an assessment, but what a difference in treatment. She barely touched my leg, just while she was examining it, no massage or ultrasound, just watched how I was now walking, asked what exercises I had been given and sent me off with many more! I know my leg had improved a bit by this time, so maybe that’s just what they do when your leg has started to get better? But I did come away feeling disappointed, maybe I have just been spoilt with my private physio lady.

Since the end of November we had been without hot water in our house 😖 We have always had a slight problem with the water pressure and occasionally had to release a lever to keep the boiler happy! But this was starting to need doing more and more, every day and then many times a day. I knew this wasn’t right, but when I managed to finally get in touch with the man who fitted the boiler, he just kept telling me that was the problem and resetting it. Who am I to argue?! So we carried on for a bit longer until finally he agreed that something was wrong, but then he told me that he couldn’t fix it himself, we needed to get the actual boiler repair people out, how frustrating! Can you imagine what this has been like with us three girls just wanting to have a shower at all kinds of times throughout the day, but instead having to organise and pack bags and take off to the leisure centre, Robyn and Leah sometimes went off to their dads, or arrange with my sister or Gary if we could use their facilities 🛀 !

Finally in the middle of the month the day arrived, out came the repair man, we had to have three things replaced, but when he eventually left we had hot water again 🤗 We do all take a lot of simple things for granted, what a nightmare this has been.

We had snow ❄️ and quite a lot of it! Thank goodness my leg was getting better and I was able to go out in it 😀 We all went for a little walk in the town to see what the roads were like and what chaos the cars were causing! and stopped off for a coffee in Nero’s.

A bit later me and Gary went for a further walk around to take some ‘snowy day’ photos.

It was nice to have a little walk about in the snow as I haven’t been able to get out and do any proper walks. And then I was lucky enough to have a roast dinner cooked for me 😋

So the month ended with me now being able to walk the three quarters of a mile each way to work and then back although I still had some discomfort, mainly in my ankle area. I finally finished my Christmas shopping on 23rd December after many, many shopping trips and I was just totally exhausted.