Sign here for ME

Please sign this petition on the government's website to help publicise the great injustice done to ME sufferers in the UK today.

I was gearing up to do something similar along with my friends Greg and Linda Crowhurst but whilst I was taking care of things in the Midlands someone did the job for us. Good on them!

This is a good chance to get everyone you know in tune with ME and to give the government a poke in the eye with a sharp stick to see if they are listening. Please do it and tell all your mates too (only available for people with a valid UK address).

Thanks.

It's all over

My Mother died one week ago today.

I am home.

I am recovering.

That's all I'm going to say.

Away with the fairies

I'm going away again. At least I get to see my sister!

I have 4 weeks to find my mother a new care home and then I have sell her flat. I was hoping for a quiet spring. Doesn't look like I'm going to get it.

I could be some time.

Just to whet your appetite

There is something Mega going to happen on the ME front soon here. No.... not my imminent visit to the Lyme doctor but something much bigger than that. I'm keeping you in suspenders for a while but I promise you it will be well worth it. Just don't ask until I am ready to tell. Keep watching and I promise you it's something to shout about.

Aside from that, life goes on as normal, well as near normal as I can get having still got this dreadful virus, Mother going slowly crackers in hospital and my sister in the Midlands where I am unable to visit her. I may try and see her later this week, after all I haven't seen her for 18 months. Oh and WH is sunning himself on the ski slopes too. Look out for those egg-yellow legs. He certainly picked an outfit to be seen in.

I'm Back

after 4 days of not being able to use this site. Blogger has been playing up big time. Not going to write much in case it all goes again.............

But we are here, we are alive and even though we're not kicking too much it's nice to be somewhere.

Not much to report other than we may have to move my Mother to a permanent home later in the week so I'm pretty tied up with that right now. My sister is here from NY and NO I have not seen her yet and not sure if I will be able to as I am banned from travelling just now. Fingers crossed something will turn up.

And fingers crossed this post will work too.

Here is the news

I said in a previous post I had some news. Well this is it. I have been investigating the possibilty of having had Lyme Disease for all these years and guess what? My GP agrees and has positively encouraged me to go and see a prominant Lyme specialist who has trained under the best in world, Dr Joseph Burrascano of Long Island. I go in 2 weeks time. Even if we are correct in our thinking it's notoriously difficult to treat but at least I would have some answers.

There is more about Lyme here although the most up to date stuff is at Eurolyme. One of the leading researchers is Dr Sam Donta and you can read some of his ideas here.

Other news is that my Mother is now in hospital suffering from a severe chest infection. I have been banned by my own medics from visting as my immune system is almost non-existent right now, so my sister is arriving from NY on Sunday. I haven't seen her for 16 months. The problem is now that I can't travel, WH is away and so it looks like we will not meet up at all. Maybe I'd just better contact another famous doctor, Dr Who, and see if I could be beamed up in my wheelchair and land in Mother's flat just in time for my sister's arrival.

The last pages of 2006

Over the last two weeks I have read loads, partly due to it being Christmas (and what nicer way to spend the time?) and partly due to me having been even more under the weather than usual, so I had lots of time to read in.

First up was A Complicated Kindness by Miriam Toews. I was amazed to read that Miriam was brought up Mennonite, a fact I hadn't grasped when I read A Boy of Good Breeding. Although told from the angle of the feisty, teenage daughter of a disfunctional family, it was still brilliant and would certainly make a good read for those much younger than me too. The insight into Mennonite customs was a revelation.

Next and in a similar vein was The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd, plucked from my mother's bookcase. Previously unread, she had received it as a freebie with a magazine and deemed the typeface to small to look at. Exploring racial tensions in South Carolina in the 1960s this too was a learning curve for me. I can't believe those things still happened in my lifetime. Time for a history lesson methinks. The teenager in trouble in this work was also trying to find out why her mother had left her but this time the ending was not so inevitable.

A third troubled teen struck out in the next book I read, Gods in Alabama by Joshilyn Jackson. Again the protagonist had secrets which were not so secret as she believed but it took the whole book to find that out. A gripping read but somehow I didn't enjoy it so much as Between, Georgia. Maybe because the themes of all these were vaguely similar.

A complete change of scene then and Good in Bed by Jennifer Weiner. This was a much more adult theme but almost cringemaking in it's tale of a girl whose sex-life was spread over the local newspaper by her journalist ex. I have to say I spotted the boyfriend to be as soon as he was introduced and was waiting to see when they would get together. The ending, too, was a bit twee with Cannie's salvation in the new bloke, a new baby and finding out that 'thin' wasn't neccessarily 'happy'. Not like real life at all.

Lastly was Nice Girls Do It by Sarah Duncan, the only one of my Christmas reads to be set in the UK. This was a simple sort of no-brainer, just right for passing fluey hours in bed. The sub-title Sex, Lies and Gardening had taken my eye but really there wasn't much gardening at all, more a tale of historical investigation with a twist. Essentially a classic tale of woman has flash boyfriend with everything and gives him up for the handsome stranger who appears to have nothing. Just like eating candyfloss.

Which I suppose was as good a way as any to end the festive season.