July 2nd, 2007

Subject: Checking in Time: 07:39 am

Just had a little look at the journal. Seems kind of empty over the last eight months. 8) Maybe I can focus on it a little now. I guess my problem is that I hate to be completely absorbed on health issues and have my journal reflect that. Over the last months I _have_ been completely absorbed in them. It has taken nearly all this time just to come to terms with the diagnosis and be having some sort of normal lifestyle again. Except that it isn't normal at all. The most I walk in a day is about 200 yards and that is an extremely good day. Kinda makes just doing the housework hard. Anyway. Maybe I am back. Thanks for the nudges, too. I am very glad to be remembered, even after all this time.

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October 16th, 2006

Tags: health Subject: Update Time: 08:16 am Current Mood: hopeful

Hello everyone, Thank you all so much for your support and good wishes. I have appreciated them even though I was not able to reply. I have spent some time in hospital and the following two weeks on bed rest and am now about to be getting around on my own finally. I still look a lot like a crab, as walking is quite painful, but at least we are started on the road to recovery from this relapse. I have been surprised by my family and real life friends a bit. Some have been completely fantastic, taking the boys for weekends and school holidays so that I can rest, and giving them such a good time. Others cleaned my house from top to bottom so that I could relax in a nice place and not worry about getting stuff done. Some have visited from long distances and others have been great in their phone support. Others have been extremely uncomfortable and cannot deal with dealing with me, and yet still others have been too busy "dealing with their own stuff" to even respond to my initial information that I have MS. This last has saddened me immensely and I feel that I have lost some friends as well as everything else. The surprising thing was which friends did which. One of them, knowing of my love for stationery, bought me a basket in hospital full of the ubiquitous fruit, but also crammed with notepads, list pads, pens and glitter pens. My wonderful husband has dealt with all of it - getting kids to and from school, making meals, bedtimes, doing the laundry, ferrying me from place to place, as well as dealing with the change and stress involved in having our lives so completely turned upside down. At the same time he has had to deal with a release of software at work, which is always stressful at the best of times, and never a cross word from him or an ounce of impatience with me. As for me, I am dealing with this in the only way I know how. I did seem to drop into a deep blue funk for a week, there. I know where I was and what I did, but for the life of me I cannot actually remember that week. Now I am coming out of it and with friends visiting and life moving on around me I am getting caught up in all the good things again. I have had to learn to give myself injections of the medication I am on. I have one injection about every two days (Mon, Wed and Fri, actually), and the drug company sends a nurse around to support you through it, teach you how to do it and generally be there for you. They gave me lots of literature, the injection kit, carry kits, travel kits, sharps disposal container, pens and writing stuff, and a backpack to carry it all. I ended up with so much stuff from this company that I did ask the nurse what other incurable diseases I could get... I have more to say, but this is quite long enough already and I am tired now. I will update more in future. I just thought I'd let you all know I was still here and thank you for your support.

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September 30th, 2006

Subject: The Diagnosis Time: 11:07 am

I have Multiple Sclerosis.

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June 30th, 2006

Subject: Work in Progress Time: 08:27 pm

I (heart) Stoneware This is the cross stitch I am currently working on for a friend. I am over one third done, but not quite halfway. I am enjoying doing this one very much. Lots of backstitch though. ( Read more... )

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March 20th, 2006

Subject: Cyclone. Time: 09:04 am Current Mood: worried

Innisfail and Cairns, you are in my thoughts. Jeff Clark, you and your family the most.

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March 17th, 2006

Subject: Feeding wild birds. Time: 10:31 am

Yesterday Twenty Two the Twenty Eight came under our patio and squawked at me to feed him. I thought that was pretty stunning stuff. Today, he came under the patio, climbed the barbecue, scaled the brick wall and tapped on the kitchen window. MY 8yo was making his lunch - he got a huge fright at first, then dashed out to me and told me I had better feed Twenty Two. Twenty Two flew out of the patio area and back into his tree, a distance of about eight metres. He didn't gain any height, but at least he is flying sometimes now. I am very proud of our wild birdie.

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February 10th, 2006

Subject: Twenty Two the Twenty Eight Time: 07:45 pm Current Mood: amused

I just had to post this. I live in just outside of Perth,Western Australia on a half acre block with over fifty trees. As you may imagine, we have quite a bit of wildlife around at times. We encourage birds with wild bird seed bells and bird baths and water features near our aviary with Indian Ringnecks in it. We get wild cockatoos (black, sulphur crested) and parrots and many many magpies.We don't like magpies. But every afternoon around three pm to four pm we get a heap of twenty eights foraging outside the aviary. We love watching them and they are fairly used to us. Over the last week and a half we have noticed that one bird has not left our property, he is obviously not particularly well as he does not fly unless reallypressed to it and then he won't fly far. So we have made sure there is water (it evaporates by 11am if we don't make sure) and seed near the aviary for him. I have called the wild life sanctuary near us but they say that if the bird does fly he has probably just pulled a joint(?)and if given peace and time he will recover. So we watch for him and try to look after him without frightening him. Our youngest boy,CycloneOz, is very wildlife aware and has taken to getting up in the morning, dashing to get dressed, and watching out the back windows for our injured twenty eight. Today we were talking about him and decided to give him a name so as not to confuse him with our birds. I suggested Henry but CycloneOz, with a determination beyond his years, decided he was TwentyTwo cos he isn't quite a twenty-eight if he is injured. TwentyTwo he is. More about Twenty Eights Thanks to tatterdemalion for the icon. I love it.

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January 29th, 2006

Time: 10:21 pm

It was nice to have a day off today after three nights work. For some reason I keep getting headaches at the moment - whether it is due to tiredness or new glasses (same lens, new frames) I don't know. It could be stress I guess. I am tired of headaches. I am tired of tired too - staying up to work nights is not easy sometimes. Today was good though. We went to my sisters new place that she has rented on her return from Melbourne down south of Perth. We had lunch as her house-warming. I made a dessert that was a real hit. Tiramisu it was called. One of my sisters called it elegant. I tried to gain that term for myself but I am afraid only the dessert rated it. I had never heard of it but everyone really liked it, which was great. I just saw it in the book and thought it sounded really yummy. Of course, with my milk allergy, I cannot eat it which sucks donkey's balls. Oh well, it was a great day anyway. I'm for bed now. Headaches are no fun to stay up with. Tomorrow SweenyTod is back to work, I have to organise kids for school on Wednesday after the long break and myself for uni.

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January 28th, 2006

Time: 08:08 am Current Mood: hungry

I have been working a lot the last couple of days. I got to do the SkyShow, of course. I think about every security person in Perth was probably on duty somewhere in the crowd. Apparently the crowds got to about 400,000 so it was no where near as big as it has been. I even had to miss the cricket. Last night I started a new venue for us (the company) a winery! That was a very short shift, extremely good job at a very nice place. The people seem lovely too. Best of all I will probably get this shift the most as I live closest to the site. Tonight I have a party to do. I don't normally do parties, they have such a potential to go _really_ bad, but this one is very close to my place and my boss is working it with me, so I reckon it should be ok. WishBone is settling a bit. She still doesn't move around her cage much unless she falls off the perch but the panic attacks and complete freak outs seem to have slowed down a lot. She knows where her food and water is now but is not at all confident of moving to get them. It is more a case of she waits to fall of the perch and has a couple of bites while she is down. I was weak and went and got CivIV. Great game, but it is taking me a long time to work out how it goes, it is very different from CivIII in many respects. Yeah, so I am going to read some lj's, check my inbox and go back to learning the differences.

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September 11th, 2004

Subject: Hi there. Time: 08:30 pm

I had a big computer hiatus and have ended up having to redo all my stuff from scratch,so at this point I have no livejournal update program, email with no filter and a very bad spam assassin, and I just haven't had time to put it all together again I had had so little time,in fact that I have taken six months off uni to give myself some room to get all the things done that we want to do. Soooo, I will get back to it, and update you all with what is happening very soon. Just not today. (eeek, and it's a month since I wrote - BAD Trickie!!)

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