Up The Farway Tree

Here I Am

Thought I would do an update before the next week starts! It's been quite non stop for a few weeks and I am feeling really tired - although I think I am superwoman I have to remember I am not...and probably still need a bit more rest than the average person. I have possibly been doing just a bit too much of late but my mum likes to say 'a busy mind is a healthy mind'. Apparently.

I mentioned that last weekend I was speaking at Mass (the vigil and morning mass) in South Queensferry and the donations were so generous, totalling £700 for Team Jac. I was overwhelmed with the reaction and so delighted. After Mass on Sunday we headed up to Leven to have a look around at car parking, where the bus could park etc. There does seem to be quite a lot of car parking so fingers crossed that works out ok for people. I also spoke to someone in Leven bus station who gave me a contact to discuss using the bus station for parking our own buses. They didn't think it would be a problem so hopefully we will get that sorted out soon and I can give everyone some more information about the exact meeting point. I will be sending out teams imminently and hope to be quite organised by the end of this month. Caps are ordered and after a last minute run on grey (although this was rigged I think) I just decided to get half of each. Keep everyone happy I hope!! We were also going to walk up the only hill during the walk (Kincraig point, which is near the beginning) but when we got to Elie it was so windy we could hardly get out the car! So we just went to visit my friend in Fife instead :-) I hope we get nicer weather on the day...

I enjoyed work again this week and kept myself busy as usual. We did also have a team lunch on Tuesday which was nice as I got to know some of the nurses a bit better. I was also facilitating at the university on Friday, which again I enjoyed. The last time the scenario the students were looking at was acute confusion/dementia so I was familiar with the material but this week was digestion and absorption which I can hardly remember anything about, so had to do a lot more reading before the session. I only got the notes on Thursdsay night, because I had an appointment in Edinburgh for most of the day, so that was nice bedtime reading!

I also caught up with some other bits and pieces including making invites for Andrews Gran's 90th birthday - I made quite a mess and got glue all over the glass desk in the study. Mum and dad came on Friday and mum spent ages cleaning the desk for me, as well as helping me catch up with other chores as I was starting to feel a bit stressed with everything catching up. The CF booklet was meant to be uploaded to the CF Trust website last week but on proof reading they noticed quite a lot of errors - nothing major, just things like the wrong length of hyphen for different uses, which I didn't even know made a difference! So I have spent a lot of time fixing these problems but am now waiting to get some more information on the medical contributors and then it will be uploaded - yay! We can then go ahead with publishing 100 copies to distribute to CF teams in the UK. The printing costs are being covered by the Gary Torrance Memorial Fund. Gary was a very close friend of Emily's (who I am working on the booklet with) and he sadly lost his battle with CF a few years ago. It is very kind of the charity to support this venture but I am sure it will be worthwhile and prove helpful to many people with CF.

It is Andrews 30th birthday today so we had friends over last night for a race night (one of those DVDs you can buy with horse racing game). Some of them came to watch rugby during the day but I am not a rugby fan so I just pottered about getting dinner ready etc. We had a nice dinner and then played the racing game - I lost all my money so just as well it was fake! Quite a few people stayed over because his friends are all spread out now - coming from all parts of the country. It's nice that everyone makes the effort :-) Seb was getting a bit fed up because we had to use his tiny leather chair and his foot stool for sitting on - so he spent quite a bit of time padding up and down staring at people in the hope they would move. Not sure if I mentioned the tiny leather chair - dad sent it through for him! It was mum's chair when she was young and is basically a miniature leather arm chair. I must get a picture of him sitting in it. In his usual attention seeking behaviour he managed to get himself shut into the spare room twice during the evening (where he is not allowed) and had to be rescued.

Anyway my most exciting news is that we are going to Berlin on Saturday!! It is my present to Andrew for his 30th and it was a secret so I couldn't mention it until now. It will be our first holiday out with the UK since the transplant - we last went abroad in 2005 before I became more unwell. We are going for 4 nights so should have plenty time to take in the sights (we have never been before) and hopefully we will get some nice dry weather. Surprisingly I did manage to get travel insurance to cover my CF and transplant (and everything else) but it was really quite expensive and there was only one company who would even look at me! Costs should come down the further down the road I get and once I have been free of hospital admissions for a year. At least I got it though and we can go without worrying :-)

I will leave you with a picture of Andrew's home made birthday cake. I would never be good at cake decorating but the cake tasted nice which is the important part!!