Friday 8th to Sunday 10th July

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Wednesday 6th to Thursday 7th July

I didn’t stay and do overtime at work today as had been planned as I felt ill! I had a headache and a tummyache and I couldn’t face any food. I only just about managed to get through my shift.

I did manage to find three interesting articles selling your organs, one millionth organ donor and register on iPhone for you to have a read of though.

One bit of very good news for this Wednesday evening was that the vendor finally agreed to sell his house to us! Yay 😀 So I need to contact some people tomorrow now to officially start the ball rolling …

Thursday and my tummy was a bit better, I still had the headache but now I had a sore throat too and I just didn’t feel quite right 😕

This morning at the John Radcliffe I came across my first patient that didn’t want to talk to me when I went over to see him! I guess I’ve been very lucky so far. Then I visited a poor man that was in so much pain. He has been suffering with so many different things, I did really feel for him, and he seemed so nice. I find it quite amazing what some people tell you when you’ve only been sat with them for a few minutes and you don’t really know them at all, but I guess in some ways that makes it easier for them.

Then I came across Mark sat in the day room, so I just went and joined him in there for our weekly visit. He was waiting for a bed to become available. He has to bring his big packed suitcase with him every time in case he gets a call while he’s there. Can you imagine having to do that weekly? He has quite a journey to make by bus, so he has to get up early, catches the bus to the hospital, waits for a bed and to have his drain, stays overnight and then leaves again early in the morning to catch the bus back home, lugging his big suitcase with him. And he has to do this every week without fail. He can’t really go away anywhere or get a break from it. What a nightmare, but it’s part of his life now. I do really wish he gets lucky and gets his call very soon.

While we were in the day room a nurse that I had briefly spoken to earlier popped in and said that she had been thinking and she realised that she remembered me from the time when I was a patient myself on that ward! About 18months ago that was!

And my funny story for this week? I went to buy myself a pack of 3 mini filled rolls from the Marks & Spencer shop they have in the hospital and then I sat down and waited for the bus to take me back to the Park & Ride. This lady came over and sat down by me and started chatting and she told me she had just had the procedure where they put a camera down your throat. She hadn’t been allowed to eat since the day before and was now very hungry, but her throat was a bit sore. She said she liked the look of my rolls! I told her where I had got them from, that they were nice and soft and she should be alright to eat them. She then reached out and gave one of my rolls a great big squish. ‘Oh yes, they are soft aren’t they?’ I mean, would you dare to do that to a complete stranger?!! 🙄

I drove over to Great Tew later, where Gary was helping to get the Riverside stage ready. I did think to myself what a complete contrast this was from where I had been this morning and just how much a lot of those patients would love to be able to leave their various illnesses behind, get out of their hospital beds and pay a visit 😏

‘The Cornbury Music Festival is one-of-a-kind: an eclectic and eccentric musical carnival – a dynamic summer festival disguised as a country fayre – a lovingly crafted, top notch, very English open air party, tailor-made for the whole family.

The festival takes place over three days from Friday 8th until Sunday 10th July 2016, with the campsite opening on Thursday and closing on Monday.
Held on The Great Tew Estate in Oxfordshire, Cornbury Festival offers an experience like no other – a heavyweight line-up of heritage and up & coming artists, the UKs top comedians, an interactive kids zone, gourmet caterers and camping in the rolling hills of the Cotswolds.’

And this is where I was going to be spending the next few days!

Saturday 2nd to Tuesday 5th July

First of all I just want to apologise for getting a bit behind with my blog posts. This has been annoying me very badly for quite some time now! My time mainly has been taken up with all things connected with arranging our house move – phone calls, forms to fill in, emails etc, on top of still having to do all the normal day to day jobs and working, despite not feeling in the greatest of health 😫 Oh, and I have also been to Cornbury music festival! (photos to follow shortly). So I think I’ll do a couple of ‘catch up’ blog posts

Saturday and Sunday was a weekend of odd jobs at home really. A visit to my sister too on the Saturday and I also started the sorting out in my bedroom. Still a long way to go in that department though! I have so much ‘junk’ and so many clothes that I need to go through and take to all the charity shops in town. I did much more of the same on the Sunday but also added in a trip to Caffe Nero in the morning with my two sisters and Robyn and Hannah, and then went to see a local band play in a nearby village hotel in the afternoon, followed by a meal out.

A busy day at home on Monday with work on Tuesday.

Amongst all the ‘busyness’ I did manage to find a few minutes to read an article about the oldest organ donor though!

Monday 27th June to Friday 1st July

A busy week!

I got on quite well with sorting my shed on Monday. There is of course more to be done but I was pleased with the good start that I had made. Physically exhausted though with a painful back 😦 Then off for a meeting with Robyn and Leah and the Financial Advisor to get the mortgage application started off and then I went back to Gary’s to watch the England football match with him. They were playing Iceland tonight in the next round of the Euro’s. But of course England lost, so are now out of the competition. Silly game! ⚽️

Tuesday was work.

On Wednesday I had to go into work early and then leave early so that I was able to go off to the John Radcliffe hospital in Oxford in time for the scan that I have been waiting for, to check if there is any trace of fibroids. The lady said that everything seemed to look okay but of course I have to wait for the official results from my doctor.

Thursday and I am still suffering with back pain, but never mind, keep on going!! 🏃 There’s lots to get done!

The good thing about my hospital visiting today was that I chatted to a lady that was just sat waiting to go down for her drain in the afternoon and she was really quite worried about it. We had a good chat about our families mainly and houses! which helped to take her mind off of things for a bit. Success 🙂 I saw my friend Mark today who has to come in for a drain every Thursday and I do try to see him if I can. The bad thing about my hospital visiting today was that in the bed opposite him this week was a very, very confused man which did upset me quite a bit actually. He just stood staring at me at one point, I asked him if he was okay and he said he was bullfighting as he was waving his hospital gown about. He was constantly wandering about, he kept looking for a pen he said he had lost, and everything else he was saying was just so muddled. He was very yellow and had ascites. Very obviously suffering from hepatic encephalopathy and I really didn’t like seeing him like that 😰 I am afraid that I sure do know what that is like 😦

Friday morning I went off to work knowing that I was having to go back again for my second shift later today as it was stocktaking, which means every member of staff has to go in and count all the stock on the shelves and do the lots of other jobs that it creates, and this is all done while the shop is still open and with customers doing their normal Friday evening shopping! But what a morning I had to get through first! As soon as I sat down the first customer was there, with a problem! In the first 20minutes of my shift there were 3 problems that needed sorting! 

My concentration was not good at all today anyway as we were kind of waiting to hear news about the house, I had masses of jobs that needed to be sorted at home, I had things that needed doing on my iPad and these complications didn’t do me any favours at all! There were no gaps between customers to kind of ‘gather your thoughts’ for a few minutes. They were just continual. A VERY busy morning 😖 How on earth am I gonna get through this day?!

A quick break back home and then back to work. Stocktaking, for me anyway, was a little less problematic, but still busy 😱

Saturday 25th to Sunday 26th June

A trip to Banbury today. I needed to pop into the building society there but then I didn’t really need anything else! I’m trying to get rid of stuff as we have to move house shortly, not buy anything else just to end up packing it in a box!

Then we called back into Caffe Nero as Leah told me she was visiting there with Julie and Hannah so we went to meet up with them. So I decided to take a silly photo of us all for #loveyourliver week organised by British Liver Trust.

The evening was taken up, unusually for me, by the TV. I watched Madness at Glastonbury, then it was time for the football – Wales v Northern Ireland – and then back to Glastonbury for Adele. What a way to spend a Saturday night 📺

As when we moved a couple of years ago, we moved into a much smaller house many boxes were just stacked in my shed in the garden for storage, with the intention of sorting them all out, but of course as we know I became very ill and none of this actually got done. Now it’s time to move again and as I am ‘better’ the sorting can now begin! So as it was a dry Sunday afternoon I decided to move a few things about to give myself a bit more space ready for action tomorrow! as it looked like I was going to get a free day. Oh dear, even just lugging those few things about hurt my lower back and later I was completely aching 😣

In the evening I was just sat chilling on my iPad at Garys, with the tv on in the background, and the Electric Light Orchestra (ELO) came on as they were playing at Glastonbury in the ‘Legends’ slot. They were actually really good, playing lots of old songs that I recognised. I was really pleased that I just happened to come across that by accident!

Then finishing off the festival were Coldplay – simply brilliant. The flashing wristbands that were given out looked brilliant.
Don’t forget to have a look at the new pictures of Robyn and Leah’s recent birthday celebrations that I’ve now uploaded onto my ‘Photos’ page 📸

Thursday 23rd to Friday 24th June

My tummy felt a little better today but I was still very stressed. A very good example of this was that I left the house this morning with no money! It wasn’t until I got into Kidlington that I must have got a sudden thought and I realised this. Oh flip (or words to that effect!) now what on earth was I going to do. Luckily I pay in advance for my bus pass but I had no money anywhere to pay to park my car in the Park & Ride 😖

I decided to drive on into the Park & Ride. I was thinking that maybe I could arrange to pay online or something. I found a car parking attendant when I got there and I explained what I had done. He said it takes hours to set up the online payment thing Oh fiddle. Luckily in the end, he fished around in his pocket and gave me a £2 coin 😃 Thank goodness I didn’t now have to drive straight back home. I told him I would repay him next week when I come, so I must make sure I remember my money then! What a lucky escape for me.

I only visited one lady in the hospital this morning but I spent all my time there with her! I didn’t realise it was lunchtime until I heard the trolley come onto the ward. We had a good old chat about all kinds of things 🗣🗣 She even said she would have given me some money so I could go and buy myself some lunch if she had brought her purse into hospital with her!

There was no walk this evening as two of the ladies were away doing different things. I did miss it.

Today in our country was the day of the EU referendum. The question we all had to answer was ‘Should the United Kingdom remain a member of the European Union or leave the European Union?’ The campaign for and against has been going on for some weeks and I think many, many people were still baffled by it all and weren’t sure which way to go, including me 🤔 I am not a great follower of politics at all but when it is about something quite major I like to do my bit, so I went along to our local Polling Station in the evening and posted my vote in the box ❌

On this day last year I felt unwell and had a high temperature and I was ‘bullied’ by my family into contacting the doctors in Birmingham who told me I had to go to my local hospital to be checked out and of course they admitted me 😫 What followed was just a nightmare, the worst two weeks. I was given strong antibiotics which always upset my tummy and they did endless tests on me as they were looking for any signs of infection, but they could find nothing. And also because my white blood cell count was very low I was kept in isolation and I was not a very happy lady! 

Right now we are suffering with terrible weather for this time of year really with lots of rain, but I can tell you that the following two weeks last year were extremely hot and sunny. I was watching it through my hospital window ☀️ 😖

Back to this year, and Friday was another longer than normal shift at work again.

Then I went to pick Robyn and Leah up from work as previously arranged (and good job I did really as it was still pouring down with rain ☔️) and we went off to look around a house that was up for sale and that we liked the look of. I’d had a sudden thought that I knew the man whose house it was and sure enough I did! When we met the estate agent at the house and she knocked on the door the owners were still at home, so that was quite amusing being shown around his house while he was sat watching the tv 😂

Very nice house 🏡 We would like to buy it!

Later in the early evening when we were all together in the kitchen and Jack had come in from work too, there were some funny chats going on about the referendum result Brexit. Leah was getting quite cross about other people’s reactions to it and things that she had been reading on the Internet (Leah is very ‘matter of fact’) and Robyn was just her normal silly self 🙃 Quite amusing 😂 

Monday 20th to Wednesday 22nd June

So it turned out to be another Monday afternoon visit to Costa. Robyn’s boyfriend Tom met us for a little while today too. He had been to a music festival over the weekend and was still feeling a bit hungover and very tired!

I came across this on Radio Oxford’s Facebook page Biff, Chip and Kipper. Just a blast from the past – Robyn and Leah learnt to read with these books! 📚

Both Tuesday and Wednesday were spent at work (staying to do 2 hours overtime on Wednesday) and then at home.

I know it doesn’t really sound like a whole lot has been going on! But I haven’t exactly been feeling my best as I’ve still been suffering with my aching tummy and feeling sick. But I’ve still been going to work and even stayed on and worked extra!

I’ve also had my financial head on at every opportunity, adding up our monthly income and expenses, adding this figure and that figure, and whatever else I can think of, that will help me to decide if we are really able to afford to BUY a house rather than find another one to rent. My two daughters would get the mortgage and I would use the money I have from the sale of our old house as a deposit. Would this all work out? Is this a completely stupid idea? I do feel extremely guilty about thinking of going down this route, I should be able to provide a home for my children until they choose to leave it, but the fact is that I simply can’t. One very good thing is that the mortgage payments would actually be much less than the new rent amount we would have to pay, we will in fact be better off! so surely we have to give it a shot? 😏 I’ve been going through this in my head over and over, in the mornings when I have woken very early and can’t get back to sleep, when I’m at work, doing some jobs at home, whenever and wherever.

It’s been quite a tough few days actually and I have very often felt like doing something like this:

Saturday 18th to Sunday 19th June

A trip into Banbury and then back to spend some time in the garden as it was a lovely sunny afternoon and evening. 

I was lucky enough to be spoilt with another barbecue and another onion, courgette, pepper and haloumi kebab 😋

We were also joined by another friend in the garden yet again.

Ugh, they make my body shiver when I see them! But it does fascinate me as to why these toads seem to like to live in Gary’s garden 🐸 I always wonder where they have come from in the first place? I have always associated them with living near water and there is none anywhere near! 

In the evening we watched the film Django. Now normally I fall asleep when I set out to watch a film, or I get fed up and get my iPad out but unusually this film kept me hooked and I was gripped to it from start to finish 🙃

On Sunday, after getting a few jobs done first, we went for a lovely family walk around the town 😂 Even Jack came with us. We were having a bit of a look around to check out some houses that we had seen on the Internet which were up for sale.

Leah and Jack had fallen a bit behind as they had seen a little dog and they went to check it was okay! so we waited for them to catch up in the bus stop and then decided to have a little random photo taken 😊 Leah looks pleased with herself anyway and Robyn was all ready to take herself off to the gym!
I have still been feeling a bit unwell this weekend. Sometimes I have felt sick, other times my tummy has felt unsettled and just been aching. This was really starting to annoy me as I don’t like it when I am not feeling 100% anymore especially as I have been feeling really quite well lately. Well physically anyway, mentally I still find it hard sometimes. Plus I am now also going through all the hassle of trying to sort out where on earth we are going to live, which is not easy at all I must say, along with various other things that have been going on.

I really don’t know whether I should dare to say this – I seem to have been clear of my Shingles type virus for a tiny little while … 😏

Thursday 16th to Friday 17th June

A good morning spent visiting patients at the hospital. I went to see the man from last week again that has recently had his transplant. I could see the difference in him in just a week, he was looking brighter. I also went back to see the old lady that was confused last week and what a difference! She was so much better. She was very chatty and the confusion seemed to have almost completely gone. Such a sweet lady 👵 All she wanted to do was go back home to her husband, they have been married for 62 years. I sat there thinking that I really wished she was my own relation so that I could continue to visit, such a dear lady. And the really nice thing was that she remembered me from last week, and when I left said she had enjoyed our chats. And that gave me a much needed boost too 😃

I also visited another man who has been waiting 4 years for a new liver. Imagine that He goes into the JR every week so they can drain his fluid off. He was very pleased to have a chat and said he would look forward to the next time! 😊

I do have a funny story that happened to me this morning to tell you now. When I first went on to one of the wards I went over to the container on the wall and got a squirt of the ‘alcohol rub’ (hand sanitiser) and was rubbing it around in my hands while I was stood talking to the housekeeper, but it wasn’t just disappearing which that stuff normally does, it was getting bubblier! She said to me ‘you’ve used the soap dispenser not the alcohol rub’ It sounds like such a silly thing for me to tell you I know, it was one of those times when you ‘had to be there’ if you know what I mean, but I did feel so stupid, what an idiot! How many times have I visited hospitals before? 😂😏😫😱

Evening walk 👣

I think Robyn must have got some new gym stuff for her birthday!

Then on Friday morning I was entertained with the story of Robyn’s dream 😂 She was telling me all about how her feet were being sewn to the floor with green cotton and she had to keep cutting it so she could try and get away as Voldemort (from Harry Potter) was going on the rampage and was trying to kill everyone, but he was especially trying to kill her! She could remember so much, in such great detail. Dreams – funny things aren’t they? Our amazingly complicated brains.

This dream must have happened to you in your ‘rapid-eye movement’ stage of sleep Robyn! Goodness knows what ‘stage’ I was in when I had all my crazy dreams in 2015 😖

At work this morning I served a lady I know that has been waiting 7 years for a kidney. Can you imagine that? Add this fact to the man I met yesterday that has been waiting for four years for a liver, it makes me realise yet again just how extremely lucky I have been 😏

My stomach started hurting while I was sat on my till today though and I really didn’t feel that great. Oh no 😫 

Good job stocktaking this evening at work had been cancelled or I would have had to be going back again at 5pm and I really don’t think I could have faced that today.

Wednesday 15th June

Happy Birthday Robyn 💐🎁

In the end, luckily, I was able to arrange to have today off work, which meant we were having a day out 😀

But first Robyn had to be spoilt with all her breakfast on a tray!

Then we set off for Busy Brush Cafe in Wallingford with Julie and Hannah (poor old Leah had to work). 

Robyn and Hannah had taken all their scrapbooking things with them. Julie and me chose to do some decoupage. Good bit of stress relief for me that is!

What a great way to spend a morning! Well quite a good few hours actually. I think they might have been waiting for us to leave  

As if we hadn’t drunk enough tea and coffee we then called in to Caffe Nero on our way home. Good job we did I think as look at the lovely ‘summer’ weather we’re having at the minute. Such heavy showers 🌧

In the evening it was birthday meal time! Me, Gary, Robyn, Tom, Julie, Hannah, Leah – and Jack joined us a little later (he had to go to his college awards ceremony, well done Jack 🏆).
Julie and Hannah had excelled themselves with their cake making skills again. This time Robyn’s cake was made completely out of fruit 🍉🍍 one of Robyn’s favourite things to eat  #fruitcake

Hope you had a good day Robyn 😘