Well, what
a summer! I was wondering why I was so
tired and put it down to a combination of lots of visitors, viruses and de-stressing
(I cannot believe how much I had been affected by the NHS changes). However, I sat in my chair one day and just
didn’t get up until bedtime. I had to
make myself get up to go to the loo. Didn’t
feel ill, didn’t hurt, didn’t ache, didn’t feel anything, and didn’t want to do
anything. I could make myself do
something if the necessity was enough, but I was very slow doing it and puffed
and panted like I was running a marathon (not that I’ve ever run a marathon,
but...). This, for me, is frankly weird,
so I phoned the doctor.
As soon as
I spoke to the triage nurse, she said “have you got asthma?”. I had completely
forgotten my asthma and I’m not quite sure that she thought I was all there. When I was diagnosed the first time, I had
the most terrible whooping cough that had caused all the registrars to come
from their room to gather around my convulsing body and hum to each other.
Bless, they were cancer docs so basically didn’t have a clue, but it was very
amusing. Not a hint of a cough this
time! Anyway, I trotted down and got some inhalers, sold what remained of my
body to pay for them and now have to spent the rest of my life and those of my
niece and nephew down the mines to pay for the inhalers.
When I went
to see the asthma nurse, she said that it would take months to get back to
normal, due to the fact that my tubes were almost closed and it had been going
on for some years. Oooh er....
So I’m hoovering
every day, (central vacuum system, marvellous for this type of thing) and
trying to go for a walk or cycle every day. After 6 weeks, I can now do 4
things a day, (hurrah) unless I forget to hoover, like over this weekend, when it all goes rapidly downhill. It’s incredible how much we are dependent on
getting enough oxygen and how easily things can sneak up on one.
There is
also the fraught question of what to do with the cat. Should one get rid of a living creature, who
is really very attached to us (yes, you sceptics, it is us, not the territory) and
to whom we are also much attached just because I can’t breathe? Ah, I’ll just
have to see.
The thing
that really worries me at the moment is that I promised Graham that I’d go to the
Labour Exchange/Job Centre and I’m not going to be able to hold down a job at
the moment. Oh well, just suck it and see, as it were....
