Now for something more substantial

Ok, well first off, appologies for the lack of response to comments etc, as you know I've been quite busy this week and it's been all I can do to make sure I'm posting at least once every day for the sake of NaBlo, even when I have been ill and briefly in hospital, but more on that later!

After all, I have my entire week to expand upon, and pretty photographs to illustrate all the fun things I've been doing :D

Anyhow, last Sunday my lovely mother in law came to visit the hubby and I, and on Monday we took her out into Liverpool. It was a bit grey :( but I did get to spy a sculpture I'd been wanting to see...

"X-ray Ted Golf Bug" is made from recycled materials including those from a motorbike and golf clubs (though the motorbike part is more obvious, I didn't actually realise they were golf clubs at the time lol). I know this particular picture that Ben took doesn't really show it off to its best angle but it is pretty impressive. It comemorates two medical breakthroughs made in Liverpool; the use of an X-ray by Charles Barkla in 1896 to show a bullet in a boy's wrist, and the discovery that Malaria is transmitted to humans by mosquitoes by Ronald Ross in 1902. I'd recommend anyone passing through Liverpool at the minute to go take a peek at it as it is rather impressive. It can be found at the bottom of Bold Street.

And if you needed any other excuses to go see it, it happens to be just opposite a rather awesome sweet shop SugaCane (I think that's the name....) which is where we were on our way to when we saw it so...you know...go get some sweeties and appreciate some culture too!

Anyhow, after satisfying our sweet tooth and ogling the giant motorbike mosquito, we made our way through town to Liverpool One to go to Jamie Oliver's Italian restaurant down there. Once again, highly recommended. I'm not a huge fan of Italian Food but...wow...just wow...that is all I have to say on the matter.

On our way down there we saw some pretty hearts hanging up, remnants of Valentines Day...

They are of no great significance, but it just so happened to be mine and Ben's 2nd wedding anniversary ^_^ so they made me feel happy, and I made him take a photograph so that I could share it here :D

Anyhow, Tuesday saw us taking to the coach to come up to County Durham, and after settling in we spent Wednesday with Mum, Gran and baby brother Natty, out for a yummy meal. It was a pretty relaxing day, nothing much to report.

Thursday we took Natty out to pick up his new glasses and when we got home we watched "Valhalla Rising". I'd attempt to seriously review it for you, however we got maybe 20 minutes in and mum decided to "fast forward" through the DVD to "get to th action". Sadly, whether it was because she skipped too fast or because our conclusion was correct, there was no more action until a few deadly arrows and then a bludgeoning to death at the end. Now...someone I was speaking to recently mentioned Valhalla Rising to me but I can't for the life of me remember who it was who did so whoever it was...but whoever it was seemed to like it, so I was quite looking forward to it. It also promised action and blood and guts which I, as a bloodthirsty shock craving psychopath, was quite looking forward to. There was action and there was blood and guts, but after a couple of particularly gory opening scenes involing the rather graphic ripping out of one unfortunate's intestines, the action and blood seemed to take a down turn.

Still, I think I may well have to give it another watch with a fresh pair of eyes. Knowing now that it's not all action (and mostly not much dialogue either) perhaps I can appreciate it more. That said, most of what I did see in the first 30 minutes or so was pretty much...

Mads Mikkelsen staring mysteriously off into the distance...

Anyhow, yesterday came along...the day I've been waiting for since I was getting a new hair do :D going short again for the first time in 3 years. Anyhow, after my earlier post I did indeed decide on the sleek and sexy look...

 

And it translated as so on me...

If I can be picky, and I can, it's not precisely what I asked for...I even showed her the picture, and expected it to be a little more choppy...but it does still look very good! I'm loving the fact that my hair looks a lot lighter and much more platinum like how I wanted it when I first dyed it blonde when it's this length. Of course, my hair being naturally curly we have yet to see what it will do after a tumble without a hair dryer, but then again it's already gone wavy after the humidity of my shower this morning and it still looks really lovely!

Indeed, it was already getting to that point a couple of hours after that picture was taken...

Mmmmm...sexy sexy. Ben thinks this particular picture is cute. But then, he would :p Dad thinks it looks like it was taken in the psychiatric ward. Dad, if you're reading this...cheers!

Anyhow, that was in Durham, and when we came home from Durham we had a lovely takeout with the family and watched Outlander. Sadly, like Valhalla Rising, I can't really review it for you as I ended up in hospital as you may have guessed from yesteday's blog. I had a really bad do with my asthma and couldn't breath at all, most likely from my cat allergy. So after I nearly blacked out from a panic attack when my throat very, very briefly closed up (but seemed to get better afterwards) they sent me down to my Grans blessedly cat free home, but when mum dropped me off I got worse again. I mean, lying on the sofa gasping for breath and barely even able to talk worse...

She was about to rush me off to A&E when it clicked that our local A&E had closed and we'd actually have to travel further. However, where said A&E had been, there is now an urgent care centre, but you need to call up for a an appointment. After asking about your symptoms they decide whether to keep you at home, bring you in, or call for an ambulace to rush you.

Well. Considering I was gasping for air and having what was obvious to me having dealt with my condition since childhood, and what should have been a relatively short phone call, mum ended up on the phone for 20 - 30 minutes while the woman on the other end of the phone pretty much argued the hell out of her over whether I was having a heart attack or not. At first it was fair enough, standard fare when someone has a tight chest...does she have pain in her chest, is the tightness like a belt around the chest, is there pain in the arm, is there pain in the chin etc etc...the kind of stuff that you'd expect...which kind of narked my mum because she's a nurse herself and she's been looking after me and my asthma since I was a small child...and she had repeatedly said...no...it's just an asthma attack, can we please come and see the doctor here instead of going to A&E...

But these things must be done, and it's fairly understandable. What really narked my mum...and Ben and my Gran...and me, understandably, since I wanted to go and get all nebulized up so I could breathe again...was when she started asking the exact same questions again...only with "stabbing pain" " sharp pain" "tight pain" and "throbbing pain". At one point, mum plain stopped and said "look, she isn't in pain, she just has a tight chest because she's having an asthma attack and she can't breathe!". To which the lovely lady on the other hand, instead of carrying on with the script because, you know, as my dad said earlier in the night when I was arguing over whether or not to stay the night at my Grans..."not breathing, that's one of the symptoms of death, isn't it?"...she began arguing with my mum, that tightness was actually a kind of pain...

Then she found out I didn't live locally and started probing about my recent journey incase it was a blood clot in my lung. Hey Einstein, don't you think by the time you'd questioned about stabbing, throbbing, radial, sharp, fairy related pains in every last corner of my body I'd already be dead if it was a clot in my lung?

Ok ok I really appreciate the NHS, I am a huge supporter and it has done nothing but good by me, but it just seemed that 1) this particular woman, having gotten upset by the fact that my mum was loosing her temper was beginning to get narky and irritable back but then, I know pleanty of call centre workers who have to deal with such people on a day to day basis (Ben being one of them) and they can't just get narky and agressive back. I understand her position at having to tick boxes, but if she's going to work the job she has, surely she has to understand that people are going to get narky and upset and panicky if they have to go through this during an event in which they are watching their loved ones suffer and struggle to do something like breathing? In such a situation...surely you shouldn't start arguing over what is or isn't pain, and get on with the phone call. 2) Who the hell decided it would be a good idea to have someone go through all those questions in the first place? Look, heart attacks aren't the only things that can kill people which involve a tightening of the chest or difficulty breathing. Let me get this straight..I wasn't so bad just yet, but I was on the verge of passing out...I couldn't think, I could barely coherently answer my mums questions which she relayed from this woman on the phone. My gran was telling her to hang up the phone and dial 999 but we knew from experience that I didn't need rushing in to A&E...my mum could have driven us to the urgent care centre in perfectly good enough time...all I needed was a nebulizer...but we needed to let them know we were coming and thanks to so many questions, it was delayed.

Seriously, by the time this Q&A system was over, we could have been there. Anything could have happened in the mean time. And it wasn't even the concept of being questioned that was the problem...it was the ammount of basically repeated questions. If you answer "no" to "is there pain in your arm" then it stands to reason that the answer is still going to be "no" if the question is "is there stabbing pain in your arm".

Anyhow...enough of the ranting :D seriously, someone needs to chop away this red tape because things could run so much more efficiently without it...what really reflects on this is that as soon as we arrived the receptionist had me get in a wheelchair and have the nurse come for me immediately rather than wait for my appointment.

Anyhow, it was as I had expected a case of the doctor listening to my chest and strapping on a nebulizer mask and giving me some steroids to take. These came in soluable form and were really quite disgusting...

As you can see, I did not approve of their vile flavour. Haha. But don't worry, this isn't as sick or inappropriate picture as you may think...by this point I'd taken most of the Salbutamol in the nebulizer and was actually able to breathe properly. I was cracking sick jokes and the photo somehow seemed like a good idea "for my blog". Under normal circumstances I probably wouldn't have made said suggestion...but like I said, I'd been a little oxygen depraved and wasn't thinking straight. Ben thinks it should still be put up here because "it's an account of the week". So here you have it, me getting high in a salbutamol den.

Doctor was a lovely lady who had asthma herself, which was great because I often think people who don't have asthma don't understand it. They either think it's a condition which is no more than a minor irritance...a chronic bad cough...or they think it's a debilitating deadly condition which needs mollycoddling. The truth is it can be both and everything inbetween depending on the severity within the patient and how well the condition is managed. With good managment it doesn't have to be a problem, but if someone comes into contact with their "trigger" it can turn nasty pretty quickly. My triggers happen to be allergens and exercise (which is probably why my weight has spiralled out of control, though the sad fact is that weight also exacerbates asthma). I've had doctors poo poo it off before, and I've also been warned heavy handedly by nurses not to be so flippant about having it. Last nights case was a rareity...the last time I was anywhere near as bad as that was over 3 years ago.

Anyhow, today I spent chilling out and relaxing. The problem with asthma attacks is that after having been fighting for air your lungs feel like they've been sandpapered and every muscle in my body aches where I've been tense and flailing (well...flailing is a bit extreme but I can't think of another word to describe it). I was worried about coming back to Liverpool as I'd have to come on a coach where they spray harsh chemicals in the toilet and more often than not the passengers are spraying deoderants and perfumes etc. Thankfully my lovely dad stepped in and drove us down instead. Still having to use my Salbutemol inhaler the doctor gave me every couple of hours because I'm getting chesty again but I think it's just the after effects...lungs that, ironically, have become raw and inflamed after the very act of having an asthma attack.

I hope I haven't bored you all with my accounts of hospitalization and what could possibly be terrible terrible films. I leave you on a much lighter note...which custom Beetle spied on our travels is in poorer taste...

Pink Beetle with custom liscense plate:

 

If you hadn't noticed, this car is painted in the colour "pink"

Or yellow Beetle with custom surfing paint job...

If I can be honest with you, I wouldn't mind owning either of these cars...