Diabolical Clay

Yay!!!! Go see Lotus and ‘nom’ on her nose…

Last night I was watching the news and when  I saw that there had been an explosion in an apartment building in the Ukraine I immediately thought of Kompostela. There were also bad news stories from LA and I wondered if I knew anybody in Los Angeles and I thought that Veronica’s friend, Kat might live there.

If  I  see anything about  Alaska I think of Julie, Belgium is Jientje, Holland equals Xbox. London is Barbara,Bendy and Casdok and the list goes on and on..

My husband thinks that I am bonkers and gets quite grumpy when I try to talk  about my bloggy friends .. I am lucky in that I have my daughter Veronica to talk to and together we worry about Ivy, grieve with Dawn, hope for XBox and cry with Lotus..

Until I met my friend Mrs C, I  thought that Christians from the bible belt were all “Praise the Lord” and ” Pass the ammunition” types. As my personal experiences with Born again Christians had been negative to say the least. I am pleased that Mrs C has broadened my horizons and made me see that not all committed Christians are “froth at the mouth God botherers..”

I could go on and on but I have spent enough time, “Playing on the computer”  as the spouse calls it. In order to keep the peace I need to do some token housework so it looks like I have actually done something this morning, *sigh* Then I can turn on the cricket and hope that the Aussies whomp the Proteas..

Thank you my imaginary friends, you all mean a lot to me …

Yep, it is Christmas morning here and all is well, (so far). We are off down to lunch at Mum’s today and I will celebrate the day with  some relatives that I don’t much care for and some relatives that I adore. So it should be an interesting day… I wonder if it will be seen as a bit odd, if halfway through lunch I whip out a note-pad and start jotting things down..hmmm???

Now back to the Tadpoles and their mighty clean-up. I have a fish tank on the table next to my computer and over the years this tank has held everything from spiders, (which ended up so cobwebby you couldn’t see anything) to lizards. Who begged me with their sad lizardy eyes to be let go back into the wild of the garden, so they could dream dragon dreams.

At the moment it actually has a couple of small silvery fish in it. One of the very first things Amy does when she is here, is  feed the fish. I pass her the fish food and she plonks a great  toddler handful into the water.  Miss Amy happily gives the fish enough food to satisfy a smallish shark and then  I distract her with the ball and Harry the dog.

So, because of the generous overfeeding of its inhabitants, the fish tank had become a bit green and algae-fied and even after I had cleaned it out, the algae started to grow back really quickly.

Enter the tadpoles… Yay.. I relocated 6 taddies from one of the outside ponds and they ate all the algae.  In two weeks it has gone from a green pit of doom to a normal looking fishtank.. YAY…

I am off now to get ready for Christmas lunch. Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays or Bah! Humbug! The choice is yours  xxx cheers Kim

Yay.. It is Sunday again and that means it is time to visit Lotus. This is all her idea you know..

Now before I start I am going to have a bit of a whinge…

” WordPress please fix your photo uploader. I know that it looks very nice and shiny but aaaargh I would like to upload my photos without having to click eleventy hundred million options. The new sizing looks very pretty as well but it is a pain to use(a big fat pain actually) .I miss being able to click on an image to enlarge it when the photos are published, *takes a deep breath* Also I would like to be able to upload more than one image at a time..aaargh.. KTHNXBAI Kim…

Now back to what I was doing…

more wordless wonders

The first photo this week is for Lotus. I picked some roses from my garden today and I took them down to the river.  I  said a prayer for all the angel-babies in the world and I watched as the roses floated out to sea…

The sky was awesome early this week and David (my son) posed for me. I published these two on Wednesday but I like them so much that I am going to publish them again….

Then we have these…

I will finish up with these three…

So I will just jump right in and start burbling away. Yesterday (Friday) Veronica had a 2.30 appointment with our family GP. The spouse needed to see the quack as well, so the receptionist squeezed Jeff’s appointment  in just after Veronica’s.

Jeff and Vonnie went in and saw the doctor together and he has referred her to  the Genetic clinic at the hospital. So the wheels are in motion. It could be weeks before we get an appointment but we are heading in the right direction. YAY….

Veronica has written a more detailed account of her appointment here.

David can dislocate his knuckles, he only showed me this new trick of his after I mentioned that Veronica might have some hypermobility issues. So now I am wondering if Dave’s “Severs Disease” has been wrongly diagnosed as well. *sigh*

Yesterday evening a peacock just wandered into the yard.

He wandered around for a bit, said hello to the girls ( my chooks) and then wandered back into the bush.

My daughter Veronica is twenty years old and for those of you who don’t know her, she is the author of “sleepless nights”

This is hard to write because the story is so long, so full of heartache, frustration, fear, anger, lots of anger and finally a numb acceptance of, “Well this is how things are going to be, best just get on with it..         “So I will just outline the bare bones of our story for now..

In february 2002, when Veronica was 13 she complained of a sore hip, bursitis was the initial diagnosis and Von ended up on crutches for a few weeks. Then Vonnie had a fall at school, hit her head and developed a headache that just wouldn’t go away. Veronica was then struck down with a mysterious virus that had the identical debilitating symptoms of glandular fever. Veronica was very very sick.

So with my teenage daughter experiencing painful joints, a constant headache, nausea, night sweats, general weakness and malaise, I was beginning to become very worried. The best description that I can give of how sick Vonnie was, is for you to imagine Ross River virus/glandular fever/lupus all at once.

It was about this time (April or May) that we jumped onto the medical roundabout and at the end of the ride I had formed the opinion that most doctors are twats. In my more furious moments at home, I would refer to the specialist of the moment as a ‘stupid fucker’, ‘condescending shithead’ and other terms of endearment…Veronica has written about this here in a post aptly titled, “I dont look sick.”

At the end of 2002 after all Veronica’s blood tests had returned as normal. We were told that it was Chronic Fatigue Syndrome and to go home and “Deal with it”

And deal with it we did. Veronica was always a high achiever at school and she didn’t let a little thing like a chronic illness stop her from participating fully in all the stuff that her school had to offer. She was a straight A student who played sport, was in the physically demanding, Rock Eisteddfod and had  an active social life as well as a good lot of chores to do at home.

In her final term of year nine, after a few months of being reasonably well, Veronica became really ill again, with terrible joint pain, headaches, nausea and a grinding fatigue. Our GP prescribed something for migraines and told Veronica and I that it was a CFS flare-up and we should expect them from time to time.

So Veronica went back to school, thinking that it was a flare-up and tried to make the best of it. When in fact she had contracted glandular fever.

Writing this now  years later I can’t believe that my 14 year old daughter went to school with glandular fever and still managed  to ace all her subjects.. *sigh*

Seven years later we are still no closer to getting a diagnosis for Veronica.

Until Monday.

On Moday I took Vonnie to what we thought was a quick trip to a physiotherapist  to get a brace to support her pregnant belly. Here is a chunk that I have lifted from Vonnie’s blog post describing the physiotherapist’s reactions to Veronica..

According to the physio, all my pelvic and hip pain stems from the fact that the right side of my pelvis has twisted anterior, while the left side of my pelvis is normal. She realigned my pelvis and then gave me a sex-ay pelvic brace to wear to keep everything in position.

So.

We talked a little about my CFS and the condition of my muscles and joints which are in her words ‘the worst muscles and joints I have ever felt’. Apparently all my joints and the muscles/ligaments holding them together are very weak and not in great condition.

Even better? She doesn’t think that any of this is related to my pregnancy at all, she feels that it is all related to my “CFS” and has been aggravated by my pregnancy.

My CFS was never ‘formally’ diagnosed. It was what my GP told me I had after 2 years of tests and bloods showed nothing conclusive. It was what everything boiled down to when I was still sick and nothing could be found.

I got put in the ‘too hard’ basket.

So, finally after nearly 7 years some things are starting to gel. Some pieces of Veronica’s health puzzle are falling into place. We are off to our GP again tomorrow  and Veronica is going to discuss the possiblity that she might have EDS. Ehlers Danlos Syndrome..

I am a tad worried now…

To be continued……..

For more wordless wednesday wonders, just click here..