After almost 2 and a half years since my last post this blog is definitely well overdue an update! Although some great things have happened since I last wrote a post - Tom's sister's wedding in 2013 for example - the last 12 months have been pretty challenging to say the least. Those of you who know me will know my family suffered a real blow in January 2014 - my older sister Jane lost her battle against Bowel Cancer. Whilst Jane and I hadn't been particularly close for a number of years, something I really regret, it of course had a huge effect on me and my family. Thankfully I was able to visit her in the hospice to say my final goodbyes which was possibly the most difficult experience of my life so far, but at least I got to say goodbye. Even typing this now, almost 12 months down the line, it's hard not to feel sad and I can feel tears begin to form, but Jane's death has had some positive side-effects - her husband Al raised a phenomenal amount of money for Beating Bowel Cancer by running the Bupa 10k in May last year, and my younger sister Annie and I both ran the Cardiff Race for Life 10k in July in aid of Cancer Research UK. Whilst the money we raised was considerably less than Al's stellar fundraising efforts I know that every small amount of money contributes and makes a difference in groundbreaking research in the fight against cancer.
Aside from anything else, training for and running a 10k was the single hardest thing I've ever done physically, so I feel really proud of myself for sticking with it and for making it over the finish line with Annie. I worked out that I ran over 217 km during my training which is the equivalent of over 10 half marathons (or 5 full marathons), and given I was a self-certified couch potato who had never done any running before, I was understandably really chuffed with this achievement. It proved that I could actually do something I had previously thought myself wholly incapable of doing, so this is an important lesson I am going to keep in mind for 2015!
My medal reminds me what I am capable of.
This year has also been challenging for work-reasons - I don't want to go into great detail but after almost 9 months of stress, anxiety, and generally feeling miserable and worthless I ended up leaving my job in November. I didn't have anything to go to which was scary, but I've survived and I'll continue to survive, and hopefully this will lead to something even better. Financially it's obviously not a great situation to be in but I have some savings and my family have been extremely supportive and most importantly I am building up my confidence and self-belief again.
Although I am currently feeling a little precarious, I have options and I don't feel anywhere near as stressed as I did 2 months ago. I took a temporary job selling books over December which was hard work but I loved every minute of it, I met some great people and I made a good impression on the managers, who have said they'll definitely let me know if any more work comes up, so at least there's that. In the end, there seems very little point being desperately unhappy on a daily basis just for the sake of a job that only looks good on paper. I'd much rather be earning less in a job that actually makes me happy and that I look forward to every day. So for the time being I'll carry on working hard applying for jobs, helping my Mum out with her various businesses, and also doing volunteering for the National Trust which has proved to be pretty cool (sometimes literally!).
Stewarding at the Illuminated Gardens event at Powis Castle
at the end of November - beautiful but freezing!
Some good things did happen in 2014 though - Tom got a job with Open Reach which has it's own challenges, but he gets to work outside instead of being desk-bound all day, he gets to drive a big white van and work with some pretty cool tools, and he gets paid to climb things! I am so proud of him for working his a** off and beating the competition to get his place, for making it through the long training period in Leeds (which sucked being apart all week), and I hope he enjoys it more and more as time goes on. My big brother Jonjo also bought his first flat and we had a great weekend visiting him and seeing his awesome new pad.
Some college friends also got married in June, and we had our 10 year college reunion in July which was brilliant, although my hangover the next day was a pretty horrendous! My sister Susie also had another little girl in April, Sophia, who is just gorgeous and amazing and they also moved house in the summer so I hope we get to go visit them in France again sometime soon when money permits!
I'm sure I've forgotten some other big things, and I haven't yet finalised my resolutions for the year, but in order to help me remember and cherish the good times of 2015 I've created my own memory jar for the year ahead. The idea is to write down on small scraps of paper good things that have happened throughout the year and pop them in the jar to read again at a later date. It doesn't have to be the big things like weddings and babies, even little things like a catch up with a friend, a walk in the woods, pottering in the garden, or a craft project like this memory jar itself - all these things contribute to making me happy, so they are worthy of going in the jar. Some people don't read the bits of paper until New Year's day the following year, but I like the idea of dipping in and out of the jar throughout the year to remind myself of moments that have made me smile.
Not finished yet - need to decide what
colour to do the lettering.
Vintage-style pocket watch stamp that I
got this Christmas. It seemed appropriate.
That's it for me for now. I'll try and do a post on how I made the memory jar soon, and will update on my resolutions as well soon. Hope everyone had a fantastic Christmas and New Year, and here's to making the most of 2015!
Hi everyone!
I just updated my cooking challenge page with a few new recipes ticked off the list - I've now completed 31 recipes so far with 41 to go. I've been going a bit Eastern crazy lately as I've done the Thai Green curry and more falafel (but baked this time which made me feel a lot better about the calorie content!) and I'm thinking of doing a chickpea and potato curry in the next week or so. Check out my Cooking Challenge page if you have a moment!
In other news, Tom's birthday has been and gone - we went to Silverstone to see the Free Practice for the MotoGP. Unfortunately we couldn't stay for the actual race on the Sunday as Tom had to work but we still had a brilliant time (despite the typical British weather that somehow left me drenched and sunburnt in equal measures) and we're already thinking about booking the whole weekend away next year.
Free Practice on the Friday at Silverstone
Because of our trip to Silverstone I thought Tom's birthday card should have a MotoGP theme to it, and after wracking my brains for days I finally came up with a design I really liked involving a hidden message - the design had checkered flags on the outside, and images of one of Tom's favourite MotoGP riders, Casey Stoner on the inside, and a hidden message in the folded part...
Checkered flags (which took ages...)
MotoGP winner 2012 Casey Stoner
Before he won the Championship last year Casey Stoner's rider number was 27 so I thought this would work well seeing as Tom turned 27 this year.
And now that Stoner is the reigning champion he is now riding under the number 1, so I thought I could play on this to write a cheesy message on the inside of the hidden part of the card.
It's small but the blue number on the bike is 1
I found the hidden message card tutorial on Youtube here (it takes a second or so for the video to start) and even though the original design on the video was quite feminine, the basics can be applied to any kind of card like the one I made.
In addition to the recipes on my Cooking Challenge list I also baked some toffee brownies as a late birthday treat for Tom. Absolutely, unbelievably, sinfully delicious, but so, so bad for you it doesn't bear thinking about (seriously, a whole stick of butter and 3 and a half bars of chocolate went into it!).
In other news, I'm going to be working at another Flower Show in London next week (Hampton Court) which also coincides with a family party to celebrate my cousin Jenny's end of treatment for breast cancer and her 40th birthday, so I'm really pleased I've managed to coordinate things so that I can work on the stand and do the family thing as well.
What else? Oh yes, we had Australian Christmas last weekend which was great fun - it's essentially a big get together for friends who we might not see on a regular basis and we have a bbq and just pretend like it's Christmas in Australia (but without the presents). There's been so much going on in the last month that it's been quite hard to stick to my budget so I'm hoping the next couple of weeks I can get by without spending much and slowly get more out of my overdraft. There's more birthdays coming up in July (including mine) so I'll still have to be careful about money for the time being.
And finally I got to see a specialist about the on and off dizziness I've been having, and he doesn't actually think I have labyrinthitis, which is good news in one sense as it means I won't be left with lasting damage to my inner ear. Unfortunately though he believes I'm been getting vestibular migraines which are what is affecting my balance, and which means I might need to be on medication for the rest of my life (boooo), and also means I have to completely cut out caffeine. Now I can cope without the stimulant side of caffeine as I don't drink much real caffeine these days anyway, but I just really like the taste of coffee and tea, so not sure how I'm going to cope without that. The bit that really upsets me though is.... *pause for dramatic effect*..... no more chocolate either!!
CURSES!!
He's definitely missing his Cadbury's Caramel
So that's my life in a nutshell for now. I'll try and update more as the weeks go by on everything (Cooking Challenge, decaffeinating myself, and getting out of my overdraft).
The last few weeks at work have been frustrating to say the least, to the point where I've felt at times like I just wanted to walk out. I'm not going to go into details as it would be unprofessional and also it will just make me mad again but suffice it to say that right now I'm feeling pretty darn low about work.
When I was a student I probably worked longer hours than I do now (partly because my boss claims they can only afford to pay me for four days/week), weekends were my prime essay-writing/translating/grammar exercising times, and I probably had even less money than I do now. But somehow, even though being a student certainly had stresses of it's own, I was happy to put up with that, safe in the knowledge that, hopefully, one day, all the hours spent in confusion over some mental 19th Century French poetry, the late nights grappling with German philosophers where even the English translations left me completely in the dark, and even the pain of Elaine's Showalter's "The Female Malady", one day, all this would all be worth it. One day I'd get a job that would challenge and inspire me - or at the very least, cover the bills and make me feel ok about getting up in the morning.
Before graduating back in 2009, I had no idea, honestly no idea, how important - or rather vital - weekends would be in my adult working life. Before then TGI Fridays just meant a chain of restaurants, but now I rely on Chris Moyles' 'McFly Day' on the Friday morning commute and Scott Mills' 'Wonderyears' to get me through the week, and bring me into the weekend where I can finally let my hair down and let off some steam.
'Letting off steam' as a phrase reminds me of one of the more memorable lectures I have had as a language student. Martin Crowley, one of our 20th Century French specialists, was giving the lecture on a Monday morning and he started off by commenting that some of the students looked a bit worse for wear, which he surmised was most likely the result of having been out over the weekend 'letting off steam' in true student fashion, e.g. drinking, dancing (or moshing if you're that way inclined), and singing til the wee hours, joking, laughing, larking about, copping off with that person you fancied from your seminar, throwing up, perhaps getting in a fight outside Gardi's (the legendary kebab shop on Rose Crescent), stealing the odd traffic cone or two, or heaven forbid, running across the pristine lawns in college (a privilege reserved for academics and their guests) if you really felt like putting up two fingers to the 'system' - in other words being rowdy. Over the course of the lecture (even though at the time it didn't really feel like a lecture), he tried to get us to think about why we feel the need to 'let off steam'.
Illustration: Ezio Geneletti/Getty Images
If you think about it, we, as students or employees, work hard all week to either get paid, or to complete our assignments so we can eventually graduate with a decent enough qualification to get us paid work. The weekend, or whatever time off we get off, is therefore a socially sanctioned opportunity to act wild and let our hair down in order to vent all the pent up frustration, stress, and petty grievances that build up over the course of the working week. Venting all of this pressure helps us get it out of our systems, so we can simmer down, so that we start the following week somewhat less stressed and frustrated, allowing us to continue to function as students and employees. If you think of the weekend as a safety valve on a boiler, if we didn't have the opportunity to 'let off steam', if our safety valve was missing or faulty, then the pressure would keep building and building and building, until eventually... something a bit like this would happen:
Now the point of the lecture, when it eventually came out, was the suggestion that the cycle of working, de-pressurising, then working again, actually plays a vital role in keeping people working, in keeping us functioning, kind of like human pressure vessels, so that the economy can keep going. As Mythbusters host Adam Savage comments, at 85,500 pounds of pressure, you'd fail too. If we did not have the opportunity to regularly vent, then we would eventually 'fail', and then not only would we be of no use to our employers, but nor would we be any use to the economy as a whole. In some cases, if pressure continues to build and is never properly vented, then you end up with seemingly normal people 'going postal' and murdering their co-workers and managers. [If you're wondering how on earth this links to French literature it has something to do with transgressive (some might say pornographic) writer Georges Bataille who proposed an economic theory involving excess, waste, and non-productive activities].
It's quite a cynical standpoint, one for the likes of Rage Against The Machine frontman Zack de la Rocha, but I have to admit, not only do we see examples of this kind of conduct in 'celebrities' like Lindsey Lohan, Britney Spears (who didn't just let her hair down but shaved it all off), and a whole raft of professional sportsmen and women, but I also recognise some of those behaviours in myself, my friends, my co-workers, and my family (not the killing people part, though the thought has occurred to me recently). When I finished my final exams at uni, some friends and I climbed over the fence of the outdoor swimming pool at the end of a night out and went swimming in our underwear. More recently, (last Friday) I felt really angry and upset about work, so we went to see a comic play 'The Village Fete' by my old ADS group in Guilsfield, which was brilliant as it made me roar laughing and therefore made me feel a hell of a lot better about things. (If only the government saw the real value of the arts...*sigh*)
And last night, we met up with some friends to wonder around the Christmas fair in town, and me and my best friend Amy decided to go on the Waltzers. Now either we have aged terribly in the last couple of years, or this thing was going far, far faster than recommended, but we both felt like our heads were going to get ripped off, Amy thought she was going to be sick, and for ages after the ride had finished I felt like I had labyrinthitis again I was so dizzy and wobbly on my feet. But despite the terrifying speed of the ride, we both laughed and yelled from start to finish, and I certainly felt better and happier afterwards.
Now obviously different people let off steam in different ways, arguably in more healthy ways than going on a massive bender and feeling rough for the rest of the weekend. Some people have movie nights with friends. Some people work out, or go running, horse riding, or mountain biking. Some people go shopping (even better for the economy!!). Some people do yoga or meditate. Some people play adrenaline filled computer games where they can race fast cars or fight bad guys (Tom recently finished Batman Arkham Asylum). Some people write angry letters to the newspaper about this and that. And some people cook.
I once worked with a guy whose wife baked when she was in a bad mood, and baked when she was in a good mood, which he was more than happy about, and sometimes I feel the same. I certainly feel that cooking something delicious really lifts my spirits if I've had a bad day. If I'm feeling unappreciated at work, cooking a dish that gives someone else pleasure and enjoyment is a way of re-building self-esteem. For an amateur cook like myself who normally needs to follow a recipe, cooking is an activity that requires me to really focus on what I'm doing right now, to really be in the present moment. If my mind wonders back to something that's worrying me or frustrating me about work, then I lose concentration on what I'm supposed to be doing - I lose track of time and leave a pan on the stove for too long, or put in too much of ingredient x, or cut my finger chopping carrots - and as a result the dish normally ends up being not quite right. So for me, cooking is an excellent activity on two counts - not only does it immerse me in an activity that takes my mind off other things, but it also (most of the time) results in something tasty, and everyone knows how much I love eating good food!
For Julie Powell, the heroine of the film 'Julie & Julia' (based on the book by Powell), the reason she loves cooking is as follows:
"Chocolate cream pie! You know what I love about cooking? I love that after a day when nothing is sure and when I say nothing, I mean nothing. You can come home and absolutely know that if you add egg yolks to chocolate and sugar and milk, it will get thick. That's such a comfort."
From Julie & Julia, 2009
So having written this long post, how much better am I feeling about work? Well, writing my thoughts down generally makes me feel better, and thinking about cooking makes me feel better. But does it actually change how I feel about work? The answer is no. My situation has not changed one bit. 'Letting off steam' is fine for keeping me 'ticking over' but it does not address or provide solutions to the issues I have about my current job. It's just a distraction / escapism tactic. I think nowadays, in times of recession and escalating utility bills and where a lack of alternatives means I cannot afford to just walk away, it is easier to just keep 'ticking over' in the same position, than it is to take a leap of faith and attempt to do something different. But deep down, I'm not sure that 'letting off steam' in the ways I've outlined above is going to be enough to stop me from exploding sooner or later.
On that happy note, I really hope you all have an amazing weekend whatever you end up doing! :)
Take care x
Just a short post, but I just wanted to share how happy I am that my cousin Jenny has just 'rung the bell' on her final chemo treatment for breast cancer over in Canada where her and her family have been living for the past few years. She's still got a way to go yet before she's out of the woods, but it must feel so good to know that this particular stage of her treatment is now at an end, which hopefully means no more horrible chemo side effects (although the drug she'll need to keep taking does still have some nasty side effects as well), and hopefully it also means she'll get her strength up in time for Christmas, which I know will mean a lot to her family, especially the kids, who've had a hard time getting their heads around their Mum not being well.
It must have been really hard for Jenny as she's always been really fit and healthy (she used to be a dancer), and a really hands on Mum, so she's not been used to feeling ill and weak, but she's kept really positive and has been keeping us all up to date by posting her progress on Caring Bridge, so for those of us who don't live nearby it's been great to hear how she's doing and be able to send her our wishes and thoughts on her guest book through both the good and bad times of her treatment.
I am so proud of her for keeping strong and positive and I know a lot of that strength comes from her and her family's religious faith, and she obviously has a very strong and loyal community of friends around her in Canada and over the pond, and it's been lovely reading all the messages of love and strength to keep her going.
So anyway, this is just to say well done Jenny through getting through this grueling stage of treatment, and fingers crossed everything goes well in the next few months!!
I rely on Mythbusters for an awful lot of my real world wisdom. Anyone who talks to me knows how frequently I come out with little Mythbusters facts about this and that. Some of it painfully obvious (it's a bad idea to store a loaded gun in an oven), some of it really, really surprising (I won't be calling anyone a bull in a china shop ever again), some of it just plain cool (duct tape can pretty much fix anything, even light aircraft).
One mini-myth that I find particularly interesting is about poppy seed products and the claim that they can make you fail a drugs screen test. As one of my favourite cake recipes is a Citrus Poppy Seed cake, I was interested to find out for sure either way. I watched the full episode a couple of nights ago but here's a link to the Mythbusters website with a shortened video.
Result: CONFIRMED
Both Adam Savage and Jamie Hyneman tested positive for drugs after eating poppy seed products and the tests kept coming back positive for many, many hours after consumption. Adam even tested positive after just 30 minutes of consuming a whole loaf of poppy seed cake!
As the doctor in the video said, poppy seeds do contain opium and they are used to make heroin, but the seeds contain such small quantities that you wouldn't expect there to be an effect. This makes me think again of young Dorothy Gale from the Wizard of Oz and the deadly poppy field that sent her and her friends into a sudden and deep state of sleep. L. Frank Baum clearly knew what he was talking about when he wrote that particular episode of his story.
Judy Garland in Warner Bro's The Wizard if Oz
So, another lesson learned from Mythbusters. Definitely something to bear in mind if you're ever going for a job interview that requires a drug test!
If that hasn't put you off, I'm sure I'll be posting a few poppy seed recipes in the future, but right now, housework calls..... joy.
Ok, so it's about time I wrote a little about this bloody dizziness. A lot of friends and family have been really concerned on my behalf, which has been lovely but it's been quite hard to accurately explain to people what it actually feels like, at least from my perspective. I think everyone's been worried that's it's something more malicious than I'm letting on, so the purpose of this post is firstly to put people's minds at rest, and also perhaps to try to articulate some of the features of viral labyrinthitis, which is what I've been diagnosed with.
Viral labyrinthitis, if you've not heard of it before, is an inner ear infection which affects your balance, with the common physical symptoms being vertigo (dizziness) and nausea. Luckily in my case I've actually not had much nausea at all since the first time I started getting dizzy (about 3 or 4 weeks ago now). Back then I didn't actually think I was ill, I just felt spaced out and like I wasn't able to focus at work. The main feeling was a feeling of being on a boat, or sea legs as I sometimes call it. It feels as if the floor beneath you or walls around you are moving, even though in my case it doesn't often feel like things are swimming in front of my eyes, and I don't have blurred vision. Nowadays, I also occasionally feel as if my right ear is blocked slightly, and my head feels "full" if that makes sense? If I've spent too much of the day with visual stimuli e.g. e-mails, reading, typing (!), and TV, then I do feel a headache growing as the day goes on, and I might also feel a bit nauseous in the evening, but for the best part I don't feel as if I am a "sick person".
The video link below was made for the NHS by a long-term sufferer Rebecca, and this explains quite well what it feels like to have labyrinthitis, and how it can affect your life.
The first time I felt this dizzy, floor moving sensation, I just put it down to being in an old-ish building at work and thought that maybe the floorboards were a bit loose. But I also noticed that I was dropping things without reason - I'm quite clumsy normally, but just letting a glass of water drop out of your hands is a bit abnormal even for me. That first evening a few weeks ago I did feel really physically sick, but did not actually throw up, which in hindsight I'm really glad about.
Now that I've been told it's viral labyrinthitis, I'm so, so glad I've been spared the nausea for the most part. I've heard of family members and parents of close friends who've had it in a severe way - for instance, they can't move their head at all without throwing up. Thankfully I have not had that at all, although I did have a few distressing moments before I eventually got to the docs.
The second time I remember feeling strangely dizzy was at my friend's wedding in the Netherlands (see previous post). We were standing on some wooden decking in the courtyard outside the venue, and I just attributed the wobbly feeling to the wooden floor flexing and bending slightly beneath our weight, and for the best part of the day I felt mostly fine (albeit a little bit emotional, which I put down to hormones and the context of the wedding.) Perhaps the alcohol and hormones masked the symptoms, but who knows?
It was only when I went back to work on the Friday for Staff Development that I noticed I was feeling dizzy and wobbly pretty much constantly. During a tour of some new facilities for the Entry and Pre-Entry department (one of the few elements of work that I think are absolutely great), I had to lean up against some lockers to keep my balance, even though I didn't feel like I was likely to fall over, I just felt like I needed support and that perhaps not relying on my own legs would make the spinning sensation ease up. It was almost as if my legs didn't quite belong to me bizarrely. Later during an awards presentation everyone stood up to applaud the chair of the governors, and I had to sit down again immediately. It must have been the sudden movement but I felt myself get very hot almost instantaneously, and felt extremely lightheaded and weak, and bizarrely, I also felt tears well up in my eyes.
On that first day it did feel pretty disconcerting, but I couldn't think why I would suddenly want to cry for no reason, but I suppose subconsciously it must have been panic. In a weird way, I think the tears made me even more concerned, as I didn't feel like I was anxious or stressed about anything in particular, so I couldn't explain where they came from. When I finally decided to go home early, I had to sit still in the car for a good ten minutes to calm down before turning on the engine.
As my new surgery doesn't have a walk in emergency surgery session, I had to wait until Monday before seeing anyone. In the meantime I did a bit of my own research to try and figure out what it might be. The NHS Direct symptom checker was not particularly helpful as at first it seemed to suggest that I might be having a stroke (the questionnaire only asks you to indicate yes or no if you have any of the symptoms, and won't let you clarify which ones, or indicate on a scale how severe those symptoms are). But after a bit more research I was pretty convinced that it was something like Labyrinthitis and came across a really helpful website written by two long-term sufferers Emma and Isla. http://www.labyrinthitis.org.uk/
One of the most important things the website helped explain me to was not just how I was feeling physically but how I was feeling emotionally.
For someone like me who does everything at top speed, who walks and talks quickly, having to slow right down and do everything at a snail's pace, and in some cases do nothing at all, was unbelievably frustrating, and I think that's perhaps why I felt tearful at work. Depression is actually a very common feature of viral labyrinthitis, especially since because it is a viral illness there is not much you can do medically to make it go away. I have been medication to help the symptoms of vertigo and help prevent nausea, but I have to admit I've not noticed any let up in on the dizziness front.
One of the main things I find frustrating is not being able to cook. Normally I do the vast majority of the cooking in the house which I love (have I mentioned how much I love food?), but now standing up for long periods of time (we don't have a kitchen table where I can sit to prep food) increases the dizziness, but also there's the moving around the kitchen, reaching and bending to fetch ingredients from different cupboards, or check on something in the oven. As Rebecca mentioned in the video above, one of the worst things is bending your head downwards, so even looking at a pan on the hob can make the dizziness worse.
This obviously applies to other things besides cooking, like getting dressed, moving around the house, picking stuff up from the floor, and having showers. Me and my sister had a laugh about it when she came to help me work from home earlier on this week, as I jokingly asked her if she'd sit on the bed in my room and listen out for me in case I slipped over and 'brained myself' on the shower cubicle. I've had to learn how to pick stuff up from the floor by bending my knees and squatting rather than bending from my waist and back, and by not looking at whatever it is I want, but instead looking straight ahead and groping blindly until I find it. I feel a little bit like Ziyi Zhang playing a blind woman in House of Flying Daggers, or as if I'm a toy doll who's neck and waist won't bend like the rest of the body. It's awkward and I probably wouldn't want to do it in public, but at least it stops me tipping my head forward.
Not like I'm going out in public much. I find walking slowly so annoying (I was one of those people who "Liked" the Facebook group about hating being behind slow-walking people), and I also find that when I walk I want to find things I can loosely hold on to if need be, which makes me feel self-conscious. It's like being on an ice rink and wanting to hold on to the rails I suppose, except in the real world there isn't always something to hold on to. That's one of the main things that upsets me, is this feeling of vulnerability, and feeling a bit useless and dependent on other people and things.
As I said before I don't necessarily feel like I am a 'sick person'. I don't have a fever, and I don't feel shivery. I don't have a sore throat, or hacking cough, and I don't have red eyes or a snotty nose. My sense of smell and appetite pretty normal - I even joked to my boyfriend that I was a bit sad not to have nausea as I could normally rely on being sick to help shift a few unwanted pounds. But in this instance I've eaten a fair bit of junk food when I'm home alone, and the lack of physical activity is certainly not going to help.
In general I feel fine - just dizzy, so anyone who is worrying please don't *smiley face* I am taking things slowly, so I'm not likely to collapse, or fall down the stairs, and the boyfriend and the rest of my family are really looking after me at home, so I'm not going to starve or anything like that!! I'm hopeful that this will sort itself out sooner or later (3 - 8 weeks is the average apparently, which does still feel like I long time to me). I don't feel ill (according to my narrow definition at least), just... incapable sometimes, with respect to how the dizziness affects your day-to-day life, but then no worrying I or anyone else does is going to help that.
So I hope you feel reassured that I'm not dying, and that it's just a blip. On one end of the spectrum I even at times feel a little like a fraud. Because I don't feel sick, and don't feel that I look or sound sick (despite my mother claiming I looked washed out - that's because I haven't worn make up in days Mum), I worry that some people (people at work in particular) might think I'm just skiving. Because it's something that is so interior, that is so invisible to the untrained eye, I worry that some people will think I'm just malingering or attention seeking, and I feel bad every time someone tells me to go to bed and rest, and offers to do shopping/cleaning for me, or just asks how I'm doing with a tone of serious concern in their voice. In the scale of things, I feel like this 'dizzy' problem is nothing compared to some stuff. I know of at least 3 people who have been diagnosed with some form of cancer in the past 6 months, two of whom are barely 40, one of whom is suffering from terrible chemo side effects, and one of whom has been given a matter of weeks to live. So in the scale of things, I feel bloody lucky.
