Hello and how was your week? Mine was difficult—one of those weeks when you look in the diary, and wish you could zoom straight to next weekend. Which, given how short life is, seems a shame, but sometimes the whole week just looks horrible. I survived, fuelled by having had a lovely rest in Crete, and supported by my wonderful husband and friends, I have made it to the weekend and it was not as bad as feared. (Excuse the ** below, the AI censors won’t allow certain words. Don’t read this if medical details upset you.)

My main problem is my health, which I find very irritating. I feel like I had my ‘thing’ when I had the brain tumour, and now it should be someone else’s turn. But life is not like that. As you will know from previous blogs, I have haemochromatosis (my body stores too much iron) which means I have to have monthly venesections (they remove quantities of bl**d) with a bl**d test a few days before. I am a complete wimp when it comes to having things stuck into me, so it never goes well (though I am pretty much used to the bl**d tests now). But however much I pray/recite poetry in foreign languages/ breathe calmly, at about 300 ml my body goes into shock, decides it does not like what is happening, and I go all woozy, and the poor nurse who is struggling with my dodgy veins has to stop. Last month the nurse decided she needed help, so she pushed the ‘emergency’ button (I was in a separate room—usually I am just parked in the corner of the oncology department with all the patients receiving chemotherapy). Soo embarrassing! An alarm sounded round the hospital (Husband, in the waiting room, thought it must be a fire alarm which everyone was ignoring) and my room filled up with people. Really, I cannot describe how embarrassed I was. There were hundreds of people in the room—the ‘crash team’ had arrived, complete with trolleys to resuscitate patients, and oxygen, and monitors—the whole works. I kept apologising, telling them I was fine, but they told me I was completely white, and strapped an oxygen mask to my face (I think mainly to make me stop talking) while they checked my heart hadn’t stopped and things like that. Of course, everything was fine except that my silly body had panicked and sent all the bl**d to my vital organs, leaving nothing for the poor nurse to drain and not enough for me to remain vertical. They gave me a cup of tea and sent me home.

Therefore, this week, my first venesection since my crash-team experience, was not on my list of favourite activities. Monday was the bl**d test. The lovely nurse tried to use my left arm (because the nerves are damaged in the right arm, and it hurts my wrist, even when working at elbow level). Left arm is empty, so right arm it was. Survived. Monday night, the hospital phoned to say they could only see bl**ds for liver test (another thing that seems to be a bit broken, which my GP is trying to fathom) so please could I go back for another bl**d test on Tuesday. Tuesday, second bl**d test, in hospital, and clever nurse managed to find enough bl**d in left arm. Then I had two days off, hoping they would phone and cancel my venesection (like a child, hoping an exam will be cancelled). Friday, I went for the venesection.

All went well, no crash-team involved, clever nurse (a different one) managed to extract a full pint (which never happens). Yaay!

So that’s my week, fully survived and less bad than I feared. Life is often like that isn’t it—the things we dread turn out to be not as bad as we thought—and the absolute sense of relief when they are over is wonderful. I now have three weeks of ‘normal,’ spending time studying, and sorting the animals, and pootling round the house—these are my favourite weeks. My next venesection is on 21^st November, but I will be less worried next time—they are never fun, but at least I know the crash-team will not be a new feature each time.

I hope your bad weeks are less awful than you fear. Sometimes, we just have to get on with stuff we hate, knowing it will pass in time. But it’s never fun. Thanks for reading.
Take care.
Love, Anne x

My Tips for Coping with Bad Health:

1. The time actually being treated is relatively small, so use the rest of your time well. The journey to the hospital can be a fun chance to sing loudly to favourite songs or chat to the person driving. The waiting room is a good place to read a novel, learn a foreign language, write shopping lists—whatever you want to spend time doing. Don’t just sit and wait, that’s very dreary.
2. The time not taken with medical stuff is yours—so don’t waste it with constant worry/talking about health. (Not easy!) Decide what you want to do, and focus on that. If I have lots of medical appointments, I try to fit them round the rest of life, rather than living life around medical stuff. Most appointments can be changed slightly to fit round other events.
3. Plan a little treat for afterwards—and remind yourself of it when you enter the treatment room. A cup of coffee and a cake, a bar of chocolate, a visit with a friend—something to look forward to.
4. Pray—whatever you believe, this is always good. (There are examples in the Bible of people praying for things they did not expect to receive—and they didn’t![1]—but it’s still a good principle, because you never know what might happen, plus it’s good to dump your worries/hopes/wishes somewhere.) I am praying to be healed of haemochromatosis, which would be a miracle because it can’t be ‘cured’. I’m not expecting this, and I certainly don’t deserve it, but there’s no harm with asking.

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[1] 2 Sam.12:16-22.