More Unfortunate News

I hate to just use my blog to vent about difficult things going on in my life, this year is just turning out to be a year of difficult things.

Last Saturday night while I was out with friends I suddenly developed a strange rash on my legs. It started as red spots all over that didn't itch or have any strange sensation or texture. They came on quickly and were nothing I recognized so I went to the ER. While at the ER my legs swelled up and the spots became raised and started to burn. The ER doctor (while shrugging his shoulders and looking bewildered) told me that it was probably an allergic reaction to detergent or new jeans. He told me that I needed to follow up with my GP on Monday morning, so thats what I did.

My GP at first thought it could be an allergic reaction but also said it could be a condition that can affect the kidneys. (Um, okay, way to drop that one in there Mr. GP!) He had me pee in a cup and told me to come in one day during the week to have blood drawn. So I did. Fast forward to Thursday, bumps are still there and the GP calls to tell me the urine and blood samples were both normal. Cool, but why do I still have bumps?

Then Thursday night things got a bit more tricky. First of all at night the tingling sensation on my legs got so bad I was unable to sleep for the entire night. Also, my ankles swelled up and became very painful. Jason got home that night so first thing Friday we called the doctor and scheduled another appointment. When I got in he had me pee in a cup again, said there was no protein in my urine but thought this was a condition called (insert gibberish here) and it usually clears up on its own. He then said if I wanted he could check me into the hospital because they could run more tests than he was able to OR go home and wait it out.

Clearly I chose the former of the options. So off we headed to the hospital. When I checked in at 4 I noticed that my right hand had started to swell, it actually looked as if I had broken my hand but I obviously hadn't injured it at all. I saw a couple doctors over the course of the night, first was a first year resident, then a rheumatologist who just happened to be assigned to the Emergency Assessment Unit I was admitted into. I'd been told by the nurses that he found my case fascinating, but I will hand it to him that he didn't geek out on me during our consultation.

Both of these doctors said it was most likely a condition called Henoch–Schönlein Purpura, or HSP for short. They told me that its a complicated condition to explain because not much is known about it but basically its an inflammation of the capillaries that is caused by an autoimmune reaction to certain otherwise normal viral infections. These spots on my legs are basically where capillaries have become irritated and burst. They also explained that in many cases it can affect the kidneys and the bowels, which is why they had me pee in many cups and took several vials of blood to send off for testing. They reassured me that they were monitoring my kidney function closely and my kidneys were functioning perfectly normal.

At first they said there was a possibility I could go home that night and come back in the morning to meet with the consultant since there wasn't anything they could do to treat me, then as it approached midnight the joint swelling started to get increasingly worse. Both of my ankles were so swollen I could hardly walk, both of my hands had swelled by this point and the right hand resembled a latex glove that had been blown up, also my elbows and right knee joined the club. After this sudden swelling the night shift doctor broke the news that she wanted me to stay overnight so they could keep an eye on my symptoms and by that point I agreed that it was probably the best thing. So despite having another miserable sleepless night, made worse by staying overnight in a hospital room I shared with 4 other women, I did have the peace of mind that if something scary happened I was in the right place.

Nevertheless, the night was hellish. Again the itching and tingling flared up during the night and made it impossible to sleep. In the morning the consultant finally came and did his rounds with the the other doctors and let me know that after watching me overnight they were quite certain this was a case of HSP, that there was no treatment for it short of steroid injections and I just needed to keep the skin moisturized and take ibuprofen for the swelling. They also said they would send me home after the rheumatologist came back in just to make sure he was on board with all their recommendations. He decided against steroids because he said it would make it very difficult to evaluate the condition and be sure to rule out any other factors. Also the steroids could make me even sicker. They told me that once all the blood tests came back (one takes 10 days) an appointment would be arranged for me to meet with the rheumatologist at which point he'd consult with me further and also do an ultrasound of my kidneys to keep checking that they aren't being effected.

So they sent me home and I've now been home for two nights.

Last night I didn't sleep much again. During the day I have very little itching and the spots seem to be flat and soft, then around 9-10 at night my legs become hard, a new crop of spots flares up and the old ones become raised and irritated. This has been a nightly occurrence for the past four nights now. The only good news is that the joint swelling has gone done almost completely.

Last night I actually felt like the itching sensation was going to drive me insane, luckily tonight was a bit better. Before bed Jason pressed a bag of frozen peas all over my legs which really helped relieve the itching and I also took a cool oatmeal bath to sooth the itching a bit. The relief was short lived and I've only had little spells of sleep tonight but the pre-bed routine seemed to dial down the itching a bit and I just kept getting up to press ice packs or cold towels all over my legs. Right now its 7am and I'm just waiting for this flare up to end so I can catch a few hours of sleep.

So I guess this could be my daily/nightly routine for a couple more weeks. HSP usually lasts about a month and clears up within 6 weeks. I should count myself lucky that this doesn't seem to be attacking my kidneys or bowels, but its difficult to count yourself lucky when you can't sleep during the night and are suffering with itching sensations that nearly drive you insane. I just have to hope this passes as quickly as possible and that maybe toward the last couple weeks of this the symptoms will become milder. Here's hoping and praying the end of this is near.

If you're interested, here is a good overview of HSP: http://emedicine.medscape.com/article/780452-overview

Summer is Here!

Well, summer is finally here. I know you are thinking that its July, nearly August, so I must be a bit slow. The thing is when you work with teenagers and have a middle-school aged stepchild, summer is defined by when school is out.

I can honestly say that English summer totally sucks. The past 24 hours my friends and I have been trying to arrange one weekend over the "summer" when we can go camping together. Here is the problem, instead of three luxurious months off like American kids, British kids get six weeks and actually for some students this year its only 5 1/2 weeks. When you sit down and look at it, it fills up incredibly quickly.

Leeimi finished school on Friday so we we are planning to do lots with her over her 6 weeks off. First of all Jason and I booked a holiday to Blackpool with her, our first family vacation together and something I'm really excited about.

Let me pause for a moment because Max just let out a fart so smelly that he must need to go outside and do his business and exiting the premises for a few minutes should allow me some time to breathe and air out the flat.

Back, I hate interrupting my writing. I tend to over-think things when its not "stream of consciousness" and I'm never happy with any writing of mine that is over-thought. Back to planning out my six week summer.

First of all, during the six weeks holidays Red Dreams is really ramping up its programs while the kids are off school. I am getting involved in a show choir. We aren't quite sure yet how many kids we will get interested, but we are hoping with the success of Glee it will attract lots of kids and we will have a good sized show choir. I'm really looking forward to it, although it is a bigger time commitment, another three hours a week on Thursdays for the next six weeks. Other than that, here is my summer schedule so far.

Next weekend: relax before the madness

August 6-11: The Tall Ships come to Hartlepool! This will be both an amazing experience and a headache at the same time. I'm trying to stay positive but the idea of tens of thousands of people swarming my "front yard" for 4 days makes me panic a little bit.

August 13-15: Blackpool! Not sure what attractions/events we're going to go to yet, but we've got the hotel booked and I'm researching some stuff to do. Blackpool is like a seaside resort with a big amusement park as well, think Cedar Point and Atlantic City rolled into one.

August 21-22: Red Dreams Pitch Invasion, this is Red Dreams' own musical festival. I'd love to attend if I can, especially since I've been helping one of my students plan her acoustic set for the past few weeks. They have been my favorite lessons, she comes in with her guitar and we brainstorm ideas for her set and she tries things out and cares what I think.

For now that is all I have planned, but there is quite a bit of stuff I want to cram in between it all, including *hopefully* a camping trip.

This past week has been interesting to say the least. Last week while I was watching a favorite show of mine, Question Time on BBC One, they mentioned that the following week they would be in Hartlepool. Question Time is a town hall style political debate show, they travel around the country and each week in a different city/town they assemble a different panel of 5 politicians that come on and the audience made of local people gets the opportunity to set the questions and challenge the politicians. Its a great show and I love it so I decided to apply to be in the audience in Hartlepool and was invited to come be a part of it. The experience turned into much more than I had expected, and my brief appearance (in front of a national audience of millions of people) became one of the highlights of the show (this is what people tell me, I'm not tooting my own horn here).

I'm writing more about it later this week in my Anglotopia post so be sure to check it out on Wednesday and get the full story.

As for this blog, I've had a few ideas about it. One idea is to dedicate more time to it (oh joy!) I'm thinking every other Sunday is a good target. Sunday nights are probably the slowest for me so I think that will work. I'm also toying with the idea of making the move over to Word Press. I use Word Press for my posting on Anglotopia and I love it, and I'm especially getting sick of all the Spam comments here on Blogger. Word Press does a better job of filtering this stuff out. I think I get about two messages a day to approve comments, and they are all gibberish in Chinese characters and its really getting on my nerves and makes me think much less of Google and Blogger in general that it doesn't have the capabilities to filter out these blatantly Spammy comments. Unless of course my blog has become wildly popular in China and my Chinese fans are writing back to me in their native tongue. Doubtful, so I'm going to chalk it up to a giant Google fail. Sorry Google, I'm sure you're crying your eyes out over this and wiping your tears with $100 bills.

I'll let you know if I'm going to go the Word Press direction, but it does seem like something I would do doesn't it. I mean, I did switch to a Mac and an iPhone, so it would only make sense that Google should go the way of the PC.

Hello Again!

Wow, its been a long time since I have posted. Sorry, I've cut down on all of my blogging over the past month. I've reduced my Anglotopia posts to every other week and this blog kind of when I have something to say. I keep myself pretty busy, with about 15-20 hours a week at the radio station and about 10 hours a week at Red Dreams. Yes I know that still doesn't add up to a full time job, but its all spread out over the week so along with choir practice on Monday and Tuesday it ends up that the only evening I have free is Wednesday and the only morning I have free is Sunday. It's nice to stay busy!

The big news to share is that yesterday I passed my Life in the UK test! I had to pass the test in order to  apply for permanent settlement. It is similar to the test immigrants to the US have to take to become a citizen, and the test is the same for both settlement and citizenship. The test required lots of studying on a wide range of information from census statistics to the UK government and also culture and religion. It was only 24 questions and after weeks of studying it took me less than 10 minutes to complete the test. Now that I'm done I just need to fill out the application, pay the fee and send in all the necessary documents and wait for my visa to arrive, this one with no expiration date!

Vocal Coaching

Lately I've been keeping really busy, through my volunteering at Radio Hartlepool I was introduced to a local charity geared at giving teens an opportunity to express themselves through music and creativity. Red Dreams charity was started by Dawn and Ian McManus after their 16-year-old son tragically died in 2007. He was a musician and poet and his creativity inspired them to start Red Dreams in his honor to give local teens an outlet for their creativity. They also have a recording studio on site so all the kids who come in have the opportunity to make their own recordings, and they can also help bands and singer/songwriters create demo recordings.

Red Dreams mentors bands, singer/songwriters, aspiring recording artists and kids interested in theatre and other creative arts. They needed some new vocal coaches so I put myself forward to come on board and join the team at Red Dreams.

I started a few weeks ago with just two students, and now I've got 8! They are all teens between the ages of 14-17 and have a wide range of talents and abilities, but I really love teaching them and watching them learn and grow. They work mostly on pop songs, whatever artists they are interested in at the time, and when they have finished working on a song they get to record it and sometimes even have it played on Radio Hartlepool during Red Dreams weekly slot on Tuesday during the Morning Show.

Vocal coaching is really rewarding for me, especially in this environment where the kids are just there to have fun and gain some confidence. Working with teenagers is definitely challenging but Red Dreams is a place they all feel like themselves and its such an amazing place for them to come to.

I'm really enjoying my volunteering with Red Dreams, I'll keep you posted on the progress of my students and post any links to recordings if they get posted up anywhere on the internet.

Happy Adoptiversary Max!

Nearly a year ago on May 1st 2009, Jason and I drove to the Dogs Trust center in nearby Sadberge hoping we would be returning home with Max, a 2-year-old crossbreed who came to the Dogs Trust shelter as a stray. I still remember the feeling as we drove there hoping to pick him up. Over the couple weeks that we met with the staff at Dogs Trust and went through to process of applying to adopt Max I never allowed myself to get attached to the idea that we were taking him home. I didn't want to get my hopes up and risk having them crushed if something went wrong and we couldn't adopt him. The night before we were scheduled to go pick him up we went to the pet store to buy him some bowls, toys, a leash and some dog shampoo as he was still filthy from the time he spent as a stray. However, I wouldn't even let Jason take any of the tags off the new toys or packaging off the leash until the ink was dry on the adoption papers and I was sure we were bringing Max home.

It is a bit pathetic to say, and Jason still makes fun of me for this, but that day as soon as we had Max in the car and were pulling away from Dogs Trust I began to cry. It was a cathartic moment, he was our perfect dog and he was coming home with us. After a couple weeks of suppressing my emotions and trying not to get attached to Max I finally embraced the feeling that we were about to embark on a journey that would change both our lives and Max's for the better.

The first thing on the agenda (after a bath of course) was to fatten him up. When we brought Max home he was barely 40 lbs and so skinny that his ribs were clearly visible.

This was the first night we brought him home. Soooooo skinny! I can't believe how lean he was, especially his legs and chest!

Today Max weighs a bit over 50 lbs and our vet says he is at his ideal weight. As he gained weight we saw him transform into a completely different dog.

Comparing these recent photos with the photos above you can see how he has filled out in the chest and legs and no longer has ribs poking out!

Oops, someone forgot to tell Max he's no longer the dainty dog we brought home a year ago!

Early on we also learned a very important lesson, Max was going to require more than your run of the mill toys. He was on a mission to destroy every toy we gave him. Luckily he focused his energy on the toys and never on our furniture or belongings.

He was able to gut this stuffed penguin in a matter of seconds.

We had to opt for only tough rubber toys, and his favorite is his yellow ball which you see in nearly every photo of him on the beach! That is no tennis ball (he can easily shred those in just one trip to the beach) this is a solid rubber ball and the best £6 we ever spent since it seems virtually indestructible.

If you have been reading my blog for the past year, you probably feel like you know Max. He has a very unique personality and he endears himself to all he meets. 

He also has some peculiar sleeping positions. Like this one...

... and this one...

Yes, it seems wherever Max goes a bit of comedy seems to follow

Furry, fast and funny but above all Max's favorite thing is to be close to us.

Happy Adoptiversary Max!

Over this past year you have made our best moments even better and our worst moments bearable. You know when it is time to play and when I need a snuggle and kisses. You have brought so much energy, laughter and love to our home.

Kitchen Remodel = DONE!!!

Wow, this has been such a big project and I am amazed with the results. Here are some before and after photos.

I didn't take a ton of "before" pictures but here is one photo I took while Leeimi was helping us paint. You can see the old cabinets and the old blue walls. I love blue, and actually the paint color we chose "frosted steel" is slightly blue but the old blue was just a bit too much. The old cabinets were a really cheap vinyl covered chipboard and they showed every finger print and the finger prints were impossible to wipe off.

Ta da!!! I love the new color and the cabinets make such a difference. We also removed a cabinet that was to the left of the oven on its own, it kind of got in the way and made the wall a bit closed off. I think it looks so much better without that cabinet and since we gained another shelf on each of the overhead cabinets we made up the space there.

Here you can see the new cabinet doors on the left, and one of the old doors on the right. They didn't even have nice handles, just these plastic slats across the top to pull out.

The old drawers and base unit doors, and that shade of blue

The same area shown above with the new drawers and cabinet doors!

The new doors weren't going to fit our old cabinets because the old cabinets were much shorter, so we bought new wall units and installed them ourselves. 

Here is a closeup of the new wall units. The area on the far right of the photo is where there used to be a single cabinet, I think it flows much better without it there.

I also got some new canisters for the counter, I wanted something with a bit of color but nothing too bold or modern. I love these little crocks with their green lids!

We had an empty wall so we decided to put in some shelves to create a bit more storage. Its a great place to display my nice wooden salad bowls and to keep pasta, flour, sugar, olive oil and of course a candy jar and Max's cookie tin there on the bottom shelf.

I am so thrilled with how this turned out and even more proud that we did all of the work ourselves. It was kind of an intimidating project but we learned a lot and feel like DIY experts now!

East Candy Gripe

I love Easter candy, especially Starburst Jelly Beans, marshmallow Peeps and most importantly Reese's Peanut Butter Eggs.

Here, Easter candy is all chocolate. Instead of Easter baskets, kids get Easter eggs from friends and relatives which are big hollow chocolate eggs that usually come with a piece of candy in the box. They come in a ridiculous amount of packaging that is twice the size of the actual chocolate egg. Usually they have a couple pieces of candy or a little toy or prize in the box as well. I think they are a bit ridiculous. I could never eat that much chocolate.

This is representative of typical Easter candy in the UK. The large boxes are the Easter Eggs, then there are of course Cadbury Creme Eggs and Cadbury Mini Eggs. I can eat maybe one creme egg, and I'm definitely a fan of the mini eggs (you can get the creme eggs and mini eggs in the US) but every supermarket in the UK has at least one entire aisle stacked floor to ceiling with boxes upon boxes of various Easter Eggs from all the major candy companies. There are Mars bar eggs, KitKat eggs and Cadbury's makes several different kinds but the big eggs themselves are pretty much all the same, just a milk chocolate shell. The only thing that changes is the extra little pieces of candy that come in the box or little toys and trinkets. At least they are cheap, right now ASDA is selling most of their Easter Eggs for £1 each.

I am really missing American Easter candy this year, I really should have had someone ship me over some Starburst Jelly Beans, Peeps and Reese's Peanut Butter Eggs. I miss the vast variety of chocolatey and fruity candy available at Easter time in the US.