Tails from the Bark Side

Since living here and fending for myself completely for the first time in my life (before I always had someone to provide me with awesome food and cuppa teas and other winning things, omg Anna I miss you), I have experimented a lot with cooking. I think I've just about mastered most things, but I'm no expert by any means! I've also been experimenting with my diet, trying to find ways to cure my IBS and other health problems. I've really got into it actually; I love being in my kitchen and chopping and boiling and steaming and frying and baking and eating. Yum yum. I might start some kind of food blog! Especially if my latest diet experiment works out - it seems to be working well so far but I think I need to keep at it for another week or so before I get excited. So, more on that later.

Since I've lived on my own, though, my health's gone shite! When I moved here and accepted that I'd be paying a whole rent on my own, I was all ready to work hard. But since I moved in I have had 2 stomach bugs after years of not having anything more horrible than the odd cold; then I had one bad cold, then the chronic migraine started in February, and it's just all gone tits up since then, to the point where I'm finding it hard to work. I'm waking up exhausted, finding it hard to climb stairs and even stay upright and awake sometimes; then there's other things that I'm experiencing that have prompted friends to tell me to get referred and tested for ME/chronic fatigue syndrome. My mum and nan keep telling me 'not to think like that' but there's no denying that I do have pretty much all of the symptoms. I've even been having random sore throats for the past year that I've been wondering about. I'm having another blood test on Monday because for the last two weeks the lymph glands under my arms have been like golfballs. Really bloody painful. I hope I do have glandular fever or something, because I really cba with a chronic illness.

:(

I don't know if this is all down to the accident and whiplash I had back in December. If it is, I won't be able to claim any more money from that, because my claim's going through now.

:(

I do wonder if it's just Salisbury that's the problem. Haha. Something in the water!

On the 6th February (dog bless you, Facebook) I was driving to Tesco's where I intended to buy a bucket for fishy purposes. As I was driving, in the fast lane, I kept thinking there was another car next to me. There wasn't. My peripheral vision then went away completely, and then came back with a plethora of flashing zigzags. Weirdly, I didn't freak out. I somehow knew it was a migraine even though I hadn't had one like this before, and hadn't had one with an aura at all since I was 12 (that was the only one I could remember having and it completely effed up my first day in Disney World!)

So, I navigated Tesco's, trying my hardest not to fall over when the left side of my body decided to go tingly and numb. It started at my thumb and travelled up my arm and down my legs, then up my throat and into my face. I convinced the pharmacist to sell me some strong migraine stuff as I was now convinced that was what it was, and I struggled to drive home, and fell into bed - by now I was really clumsy and shouldn't have driven at all really. My head had started to pound, so I boshed some of these pills I'd bought (that cost me the best part of a tenner!) and fell asleep, woke up four hours later with the headache gone completely, and that was that. Random! Or so I hoped.

On the night of the 22nd I woke up in the middle of the night to find my left side had gone numb again. Fantastic. I went back to sleep and if I got the brain pain I didn't notice. The next day I rang my new doctor to see what he thought, and he told me to go in. He took my blood pressure (fine) and did some neurological tests. He had a look at my neck when I told him about the car bash I'd had before Christmas, and said the migraines could be due to that. Luckily I was about to see a physiotherapist for that anyway. Doctor gave me sumatriptan, which supposedly are brilliant at killing migraines before they kick off.

So, on the 27th I woke up, picked up a book and it all went foreign. Lol. I couldn't see the words at all! Then I started getting blind spots, and couldn't see one of my hands when I held them up in front of my eye. So weird. I got showered anyway, thinking it was just my eyes being sleepy or whatever, then when I got out my hand had gone numb. The right hand this time. What the hell? Boshed a sumatriptan, but it was too late by this point. The headache began and I went to my physio appointment anyway, which was nice. It helped relieve it a bit, but when I got home it got worse, so bad that it made me throw up, and the whole day was a write-off.

I was fine the next day, but the next one (29th) was another write-off, but only because I didn't feel safe to drive, not because I was in pain. This time I managed to take the pill in time to stop it and just got a few twinges of pain. For the next three days though I felt terrible; light-headed and weak and 'floopy'. On the second day I felt really bad, like I was about to pass out all the time, and in the evening felt like another aura was coming on so I nearly took a pill, but it went away when I had a sleep.

THEN! I had another physio appointment, and a week completely free of migraine/floopy-feelings! Woohoo! Then yesterday I had another physio appointment and she totally beat up my shoulder, which was amazing, but today? ARGH FUCK OFF. I was round Daisy the puppy's house and got a tingly left thumb, out of nowhere, instantly followed by flashies and BAM! Headache for three hours even though I'd taken a pill as soon as my thumb went weird. I worked through it this time though, which was aaargh, then as I decided to concede defeat and drive home it went away. I feel okay now, apart from my legs which feel a bit achy.

THE END HOW INTERESTING I HATE THEM SO MUCH GO AWAY.