Faery Grandmother

I said ages ago I wasn't going to write about personal stuff here, but I am going to renege on this. I have a lot to get off my chest and things to resolve in my head so I might write some stuff down in the hope it helps.
Lots has happened in the last few months, I have changed a lot, I haven't been able to post crafty stuff for various reasons, and things have been a mess. I have even let the TUSAL slip!!

To summarise, the last four months of last year were hellish, far worse than anyone realised, I think. The tooth abscess, extraction and resultant septic socket was incredibly painful and made me feel really ill. I contracted Norovirus followed shortly by a flu type thing and a nasty chest infection and had odd symptoms that led to my me being regularly feverish and unwell and having tests, scans and X-rays to check for possible cancer (apparently).

Now it is all over, I have worked out what was going on. Firstly, I was coming off the Seroxat (antidepressant I'd been taking for 8 years) which caused brain zaps and I'm sure, the intermittent fevers.
Secondly, I think I had an intense menopause; I didn't get hot flushes, but I think all the vulnerability to illness was due to that. The reason I think this is because since last October I have not had one single migraine. That is miraculous considering I have had them roughly every month since I was 12. Even though I was told years ago that they would probably disappear with the menopause, I never really thought it was linked to my cycle because they were not every 28 days. However, looking back, my cycle never was that regular; when I was getting periods ( I had a hysterectomy in '93) my cycle did vary between 26 days and 56 days.
Thats what I now think was happening to me last year.

Sadly, I lost some friends over this. At the time I went very quiet and disappeared a lot from the internet scene, and some OU friends I made took offence at that and basically were unable to forgive me for retreating. My longer standing and truer friends knew that I wasn't good and gave me space, but this particular group of people didn't and I have been hurt by that. I know it is probably unreasonable of me to feel this way, because being newer friends they didn't know me so well and understand that I do tend to disappear when life gets difficult, whereas my older and better friends do know and accept it. I did let these people know I was having a rough time, but they never once emailed me to ask what was going on' just made it clear that they felt I was being rude. I'm told they left messages on Facebook, but my FB wall tends to be over run with game posts and the like and at that time I never had the energy or inclination to really sort out my wall so I daresay I missed their posts. The reason I am so raw about this again right now is because I went back into Twitter for the first time in months yesterday and found a message from one of them saying that friendship had to be a two way street, and I replied and got an almost abusive message back.
Anyway, there seems to be no way back there despite my apologies, so I just have to regret the loss of what could have been good friends.

At Christmas, my dad was diagnosed with terminal lung cancer and given just weeks to live. My spare time from then to his death on 13 March was committed entirely to him and Mum; apart from a couple of weeks in early February, I spent each evening either hospital visiting or at their house, and spent a lot of my time ferrying then around to hospital appointments and taking Mum shopping and all the other minutiae. Apart from 3 weeks in total, we managed to keep Dad in his own home, and that's where he died. The last 48 hours was awful. I had no idea how dreadful lung cancer could be, and what a terrible way it is to die. Dad was cremated on 30th March, and I'm proud to say that I organised a good funeral for him. We had a Humanist Celebrant, and it was a celebration of his life and not an overly maudlin occasion, although we did get terribly upset at some moments, of course. We are all adjusting slowly, and my Mum has shown amazing strength through it all. I'm so proud of her.

I have just come out of hospital myself; I went in on 16th May and had a TVT to treat my stress incontinence, and also had an anterior and posterior pelvic floor repair, plus a cytoscopy and two biopsies. It went fairly well, although I had to have a catheter for an extra three days as my bladder went on strike, but all is well now and I am healing. I can't do any heavy lifting and get tired, but I was able to start driving again today which is wonderful after feeling stranded for the last couple of weks! I am off work until 27th June.

Now some good stuff. Because of Dad's diagnosis, although I was only half way through the 6 months Seroxat withdrawal programme, I did the second half cold turkey over two weeks, because I knew I would need to help Mum and Dad a lot and couldn't afford to feel dopey. It was tough, but oh, it has made such a huge difference to my life!! I am no longer fighting severe drowsiness all the time, and fighting to stay awake at work; I no longer need to sleep 12 hours out of every 24 to feel half human. I can manage on 6 or 7 hours sleep most of the time, am awake at a reasonable time in the mornings, and feel like me again. I'm no longer living in a haze.
There has been one downside; it has also made me realise that to all intents and purposes my marriage is over. Thats a story for another post, I think!!