End of a long month...
January seemed to be the longest month ever and I am glad we are finally into a new month! It's been quite a difficult month.
Losing Emily was very difficult and we had the privilege of attending her funeral, which was beautifully fitting. Emily had left instructions for her funeral and her family worked hard to make the service absolutely perfect. Her family is very musical and Emily herself was a choir mistress and music teacher, so the service was overflowing with beautiful music. Her own choir, her husband and grandfather playing the piano, her sisters singing.....it was everything Emily would have wanted. Afterwards everyone gathered in celebration of her life and it was lovely to chat to people I know through Live Life Give Life and to her family. Despite the sadness their was an air of celebration of the mutual love everyone had for Emily.
Probably the most beautiful moment for me personally however was Emily's mum giving me the present Emily had bought for my Christmas, but had been unable to deliver. It was a pair of tiny silver unicorn earrings. These will be my magical earrings and they represent a friendship which had that magical quality. Perfect.
Unfortunately on our return to Scotland both myself and Andrew started to feel quite unwell, with what has turned out to be the flu virus. I kept telling Andrew we just had a 'wee virus' because "we would know about it if it was flu". I think my perception of being unwell if very skewed by my experiences pre transplant. I kept saying "well I have felt worse than this before and gone to work" therefore I must just keep going and not lie down to it. I sometimes forget that those times where I felt more ill represented me being in respiratory failure waiting on a transplant. I have no clue about normal illness! I did take a couple of days off work this time though as I had a fever so knew I wouldn't cope. Poor Andrew kept trooping and other than coming home early one day he didn't actually phone in sick - eejit! In hind sight had we known we both had flu we would have stayed off and not spread our germs! I am struggling a little to fully recover - the immunosuppression makes it more difficult for my body to clear the virus so the symptoms seem to linger a lot longer and I am pretty exhausted. The CF team gave me some antibiotics last week as my chest was started to sound a bit rattly, but really its just going to take some time and rest. I have been at work this week as its just so stressful cancelling clinics and having to rearrange it all when I got back. It's not like medical clinics where another doctor will just cover it - they are my patients and I have to reschedule the appointments into an already busy diary! I know in an emergency of course someone else would step in and review the patient, but in many ways its more stressful for me to stay off than to just go in and get on with it. This weekend I have no plans and will just rest up and chill out :-)
On a much more positive note however we are booked on an amazing holiday....we are going on an Alaskan cruise!! Mum, dad, aunty Rose and Uncle Kevin were already booked and there were 2 places still available. We thought it would be a great opportunity to see somewhere you would never normally consider. I am so excited at the prospect of the amazing wildlife we might see and the stunning scenery - we are going to get a new zoom lens for the camera to try and capture the experience :-)
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