Angry Old Woman

I apologise for not having blogged these past days.
I have had a stinking head cold where I have been coughing like an asthmatic donkey, my voice had made me croak like a emphysemic past her sell by date hooker and I was producing snot and mucus with the consistency and volume of a day’s run in a PVA glue factory.
Add to that my certainty that my T4 cells are back over-producing. Sadly this does not mean I can morph into a sexy Terminator and cause my hands and arms to melt into large metallic knives to help me chop carrots into batons. Or into blades that I can sever limbs with, as you'll see later!
No, the symptoms are things like despite me having been fitted with a Mirena coil a few years ago, I have had severe cramps and bleeding. Add to that my already weakened bladder which went into overdrive every time I had a coughing fit that would have had John Hurt as Caligula calling for my head (do you know that that particular episode of “I, Claudius” where the Roman guard takes the extreme route of cough management haunted my nightmares for years and to this day makes me shudder?) and you can imagine by the weekend there I had gone through most of my knickers, leaving me in the washed out Granny pants that most women keep at the back of the drawer.
I also have an unquenchable and yes, I admit it, I do chug juice from the carton on the fridge door. My appetite has been OK – before diagnosis I was like some refugee from a stoner movie, eating packet after packet of crisps and biscuits. Luckily back then I was also losing weight so that wasn’t a problem and this time forearmed with the knowledge I’m just eating maybe a second helping of the more nutritious dinners I now make.
The very worst symptom for me and unfortunately for those around me is that I develop a really short fuse, brought on by the frustration not only of my brain racing and not being able to speak coherently (and having a low tolerance threshold for certain family members who call it my Porky Pig moments where I stumble and stutter) but then my normally mild-mannered self who if I were to drop something would sigh and perhaps say “Oh dear” instead launches a tirade of such verbal vulgarity it would have Brian Blessed sobbing like a girl (if you haven’t seen him swearing on Stephen Fry’s new series “Fry’s Planet World – the Uses and Abuses 3rd episode http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b01614w9/Frys_Planet_Word_Uses_and_Abuses/). I hate feeling like this and it isn’t helped buy the lack of co-ordination I feel.
It also seems to exacerbate my ME and Fibromyalgia symptoms, meaning that even the shortest amount of typing like now has my fingers aching and throbbing. If I try to use the miniscule keyboard on my iPod it’s even worse – anyone reading my Tweets over the weekend will have been subject to my outpourings of “live” – why are the 2 most commonly used vowels so close together on a Qwerty set-up?
Thankfully I know what is wrong with me and so in anticipation of a visit to the hospital on Wednesday of this week and an emergency appointment with my own GP last week to try upping my meds to try to alleviate symptoms.
The worst thing of course has been me not being able to write – not only physically but my brain is so full of pus and bile that I haven’t even given thought to writing. I’m off to my class tonight so hopefully that will help me get back into the swing of it. And blogging this disgusting diatribe has helped I think. So please forgive me dear reader for neglecting my blogging and also for perhaps making you wish you’d had breakfast first before reading this xxx