The coming year is going to be a big one for me – planning a wedding, working towards my weight loss goals, becoming a Beachbody coach and managing house renovations… and this is the place where I'm going to document it all…
Plastering was the main focus of week two, and the amount of plastering needed meant this had a knock-on effect of when the installation of the kitchen units could begin. More plaster works were needed than anticipated. Once the ancient backing paper was removed from the walls in the new kitchen it revealed their true condition, which meant another three walls needed to be plastered. The builders attempted to remove the old artex ceiling, but they soon discovered that if they did that it would mean damaging the old lath and plaster. It was important to us to keep the coving that ran around the perimeter of the ceiling in the new kitchen, as it was one of the original features that had attracted us to the house when we bought it. So the builders managed to come up with a solution to save both the old ceiling and coving, whilst also covering up the hideous artex, by over-boarding the centre.
new kitchen ceiling is overboarded and skimmed
We took out the door that went into the back porch to open up the room but when the builders took the door frame out they discovered there was no lintel – the only thing holding the doorway up was the wooden doorframe itself!
We took out the door and doorframe to open up the room
Due to the extra plastering that was needed it meant that our the delivery of our kitchen units had to be delayed until Tuesday of the following week.
By the end of week three though, we could see the beginnings of some real progress and the shape of our new kitchen. All our new appliances arrived, along with a multitude of boxes, and the new units started to be installed. We chose our quartz worktops which will be templated at the end of week four and hopefully installed the following week. We also finalised our paint choices and a whitewash was applied to both rooms to cover up the old paint.
Kitchen is delivered – so many boxes!
The last few weeks though have been plagued by wet weather and high winds as three different storms hit the UK in three consecutive weekends. Luckily for us, only a small part of the job is outside – moving the drains over – but this meant that we are waiting for dry weather for out patio to be re-grouted and our outside wall repaired.
Outside tap is moved over to allow for new drainage
Next week the installation of the kitchen units should be finished along with the second fix of electrics. We will then enter into the final phase of he project when the new floors and doors are installed. We are itching to get back and plan where to put everything!
As 2019 rolled into 2020 it suddenly dawned on us that we wouldn’t have long left until our building work started. We needed to get organised. We spent our weekends sorting out, clearing out, chucking out and slowly started packing. We finalised the kitchen design (and in the process spent yet more money). An old bookcase went to the tip, our coffee table went back to its original owners from five years before, Ben utilised Facebook marketplace and sold our kitchen table and chairs and beloved grey sofa. My parents came bearing boxes and we packed, packed and packed. The whole of our downstairs was moved to our front lounge and we packed a suitcase and moved in with Ben’s parents.
Hallway floor taken up. We will have the same floor running the whole of the downstairs apart from the front lounge
The end of the first week has now taken place and what a transformation! In the space of one day the builders had completely stripped both rooms back to their bare bones. Original flooring and walls were revealed – there was no going back now.
Old kitchen which will become a study/utility room
By the end of Friday the first fix of electrics were in and plumbing installed. Everything seemed to go quite smoothly, and fingers’ crossed, only a few hiccups. As we were moving the kitchen to a new room it meant we had to move drainage and water pipes as well, something that proved a bit tricky, but luckily our builder had put enough in the budget to allow for it. An old doorway was removed from our old kitchen into the porch to give us more space. Once they’d taken the door frame out they realised that there was no lintel so that was another unexpected item.
Opening up old doorway into back porch
Next week sees the arrival of the plasterer. They will also do the first coat of paint. Our American fridge freezer – which I am so excited about, as it is massive (so big I can probably fit in it) and we will give us ice and filtered water on tap – arrives on Thursday and the kitchen will be delivered on Friday, ready for installation the following week.
Old kitchen
Our next big decision is choosing what paint colours to have. The kitchen units will be dark grey and there are no windows at that end of the room, so will we need to have a light colour on the walls. On Saturday we took ourselves off to a decorating centre – who knew there were so many different shades of white? But once we have chosen the paint for the kitchen, should we have the same in the office/utility room? Ben is set on having a dark grey feature wall on the wall where his desk will be, so the other walls will need to compliment. We came back from the decorating centre armed with six tester pots to add to the three that we already had tried previously – this was going to be tough decision!
Backing paper is removed in the new kitchen. How many layers of paint do you think has been taken off?
We have already seen how much has been accomplished in a week so we are so excited to see what will happen in the coming weeks!
This room will become our new kitchen. It will give us so much more wall space and will mean we can have a proper kitchen diner
After over a year of planning (and going through multiple versions of the plan, I might add) the time has finally come for our kitchen transformation to take place. It feels like the last year has been gearing up to this moment.
Three and a half years ago we moved into our four bed semi by the sea. When we bought it, we were slightly naive in thinking that all the house would need was a lick of paint but the new shutters and new deep pile carpet were covering up a multiple of issues. It feels like for the past few years we’ve been on one treadmill of fixing it. We’ve fixed the roof, re-pointed the chimney, fixed damp, decorated, landscaped the garden, fixed damp again, installed new gas pipes for the gas fire, insulated the loft, rewired, decorated again, installed a solid roof to the conservatory, added built-in bookcases in the lounge, decorated again, fixed yet more damp…But, despite all it’s issues and being a virtual money pit we love the house. It’s spacious, has a good-sized garden, is two minutes from the beach and station. We knew anything we did do to it would add value. Redoing the kitchen, though, was always a long-term goal and something we didn’t think we’d do for several years.
Original kitchen – annoying pinch-point between cupboard and fridge
Our original plan was to build an extension which would contain one huge open plan space plus a study- the house already had come with planning permission to build an L-shaped extension, so we knew that what we wanted to do would be granted. However, the more I looked in to the more I came to realise how expensive that would be. It would mean remortgaging the house if we were to that, something, that realistically wouldn’t be possible for a long while. So we decided to put it on hold but our conversations always turned back to that dream kitchen.
Original kitchen -the wall we wanted to knock down was where the hob is
Then in 2018 I became ill and was pretty much housebound for several weeks trying to fight a cellulitis infection. To fight the boredom I started sketching out plans for the kitchen and worked out that maybe we didn’t need an extension after all – perhaps we had enough space in the existing house to achieve what we wanted. To get me out of the house and ‘cheer me up’ Ben took me to a kitchen showroom and on a whim we booked them to measure up and create a design for us. It was clear we definitely couldn’t make much improvement on the kitchen in the space it was. We were fighting two massive windows and an awkward doorway. That’s when the manager suggested we move the kitchen to the adjacent room and knock the wall down between the two rooms.
Original kitchen
Moving the kitchen to the adjacent room (which was open plan to the conservatory) was something we’d thought about before but we’d dismissed it as that would mean moving the drainage supply, which we thought would be costly. The manager did a good sales job on us though and convinced us that this was the only way to go.
Second lounge will become our new kitchen open to the conservatory
On a whim we put a deposit down on a kitchen and booked in fitting for September 2019. However, We obtained a quote through their builder and were shocked at the price. The wall that needed knocking down was a supporting wall so would need an RSJ. It wasn’t the few hundred pounds which the kitchen designer had told us but would be tens of thousands. Therein ensued months of obtaining further building quotes, and visits to an alternative kitchen supplier to try and understand if that was a reasonable price. Another quote came in and it was even more than the original one, possibly even double! I remember crying when I opened that email! Back to the drawing board. Luckily we were able to get our deposit back. The September start date would need to be delayed, which was just as well as we were due to get married six weeks before.
Second lounge – will become our new kitchen.
Ben then suggested that maybe we didn’t need to actually knock the wall down – perhaps we could still have our kitchen diner, although not as big. We’d still move the kitchen but then the old kitchen could become a study/snug. This would mean sacrificing the massive kitchen island and breakfast bar that I’d been fantasising about since I was about 12 but it would mean we could do the work in the next couple of years rather than in the next twenty.
This will become our new kitchen diner
With this in mind we asked our kitchen designer to draw up a new plan and ploughed on looking for builders. The new plan would solve all our storage and worktop dilemmas and would still be semi open-plan and I even managed to squeeze in a peninsular which was a compromise to not having an island. Finally we managed to find a builder, through recommendations of friends and it looked like it might be possible! By this point though, we were hurtling towards our wedding and we knew we had to focus on the plans for that, so we made the choice to delay until 2020. A February 2020 start date was secured.
It’s been a while since my last blog post. So much has happened since then, and the cliches of ‘never finding the time’ to write and ‘life running away with itself’ have certainly been true.
Push yourself, because no one else is going to do it for you.
In the space of a few months I’ve planned a wedding (and that wedding has now happened…more on that later); met with seven builders and two kitchen companies for the work we want doing on our house and changed jobs and company – 6 weeks before getting married. Up until a couple of weeks before the wedding, when the heatwave arrived and it became too bearable to even move, I was also working out for at least 30 mins every day.
The best day xxx
Our wedding was in the planning for over eighteen months. Before I embarked on it I never anticipated the time and energy it would take up, especially in the final couple of months leading up. We had several spreadsheets on the go, to-do lists coming out of our ears, a multitude of questions to ask and to be answered. Our house became like a wedding warehouse and I’d definitely over -ordered on flipflops, which came apparent when three boxes arrived and they had to go off to my parents’ house to be stored. We had last-minute stressed and panics, sometimes over such trivial things. Six weeks before the wedding I also changed jobs and company so that also didn’t help with my stress levels as I tried to appear as calm as possible on the surface but inside was a completely different story. There was the day, about a fortnight before the wedding that I had an almost complete breakdown over the fact that I’d forgotten to incorporate a sparkler arch (and we’d already bought said sparklers months before) in the schedule and there was no time to do it…but in the end it worked out well and we had a lovely day and both overcame our fears of public speaking. However, it went far too quickly and all those months of planning ended in a blur and we definitely didn’t get to speak to as many people as we’d have liked. Now we are on to the next thing to plan – our honeymoon to South Africa at the end of October.
An obstacle is often a stepping stone
When we first discussed the plans to renovate our house and move the kitchen to an adjacent room I naively agreed to pencil in the start date with the kitchen company we were going to use, to be in the middle of September. I am so glad that Ben put his foot down and said we should delay until next year. At the time I couldn’t see the point – I just wanted it done but the extra time is not only giving us the chance to save more money but the breathing space too. It has also meant that we have had the time to deliberate on our plans. I was well aware that the actual building process would be stressful – I have seen enough housing renovation programmes to understand that – but what I didn’t think would be so stressful was actually finding a builder to do the work – and mean that we’d need to sell a vital organ to do it. From December to June we saw seven builders and a structural engineer – but only four of the builders actually provided us with quotes. Two of them came out with astronomic figures that nearly made us both cry and it seemed to take an age to get anything out of them at all. We also changed kitchen companies and wrestled with numerous plans. And, in January we had our conservatory roof replaced – phase one of the work. We finally found a builder for the kitchen and have a draft plan in place – the build is scheduled for February 2020 and so I expect that after the honeymoon we will then turn our attention back to the building work.
In between all this I have been learning to live with my Lymphoedema. The exercise I have been doing has definitely helped but I do notice that I get tired more than usual. I have been trying to wear my compression stockings every day but when it is hot that’s just not possible. Once a month I’ve been having manual lymphatic drainage massage to help drain off the excess fluid from my legs. I’m due back at the Lymphoedema clinic in a couple of weeks so it will be interesting to see if there has been any improvement to the swelling. Finding nice shoes that will fit me is an ongoing uphill battle but I’ve discovered that quite a few shops now sell shoes for wide feet or I buy shoes in a bigger size, but that means I have to get insoles for my ‘normal’ foot. It took me ages to find my wedding shoes and ended up going with Rainbow as they sold wedding shoes in wide fit – but in the end the shoes I bought were standard fit, something I was over the moon about!
Make your life a masterpiece; imagine no limitations on what you can be, have or do.
Brian Tracy
Since becoming ill last year I have made a conscious and perhaps also unconscious effort to grab life by both hands and make life as busy as possible. My mum also became ill in May – something that really shook me up as she has always been so healthy – so that has also spurred me and made me realise how short life is and to embrace it while you have the chance. As well as our own wedding we’ve had many celebrations this year – one of my best friends got married in May and in the same month Ben’s older sister turned forty so we have had many celebrations around that. We have seen friends and reconnected with family, been to shows and had weekends away.
When I think back to all we have both achieved over the last few months – I can’t quite believe it, and the year is not yet out and we already have so many plans in the pipeline. I just hope that 2020 will be as busy and fun – although no doubt there will be stressful times along the way!
When I originally set out to write Well That’s Swell Then, I had no intention that it was going to become a series. But I found that I had too much to say and that I couldn’t cover everything that had happened in just one post. The experience of writing about my condition and the associated struggles has been so cathartic. I am overwhelmed by the response I have received from this series but most importantly I am so proud of myself that I have taken the courage to share and raise awareness of something so deeply personal and not that understood. I can only credit that to the workout and nutrition programme I have been following which has given me the confidence to speak out and come to terms with something that previously I was ashamed to let anyone know about.
Certainly, I know I still have a long way to go and my goal now is to try and manage the condition as best I can. I also know that I am likely to get Cellulitis again and again as it’s just something that will crop up seemingly out of the blue, but at least I know the warning signs to look out for and I will never risk delaying treatment again. I still have my worries. What wedding shoes will I wear? I want to wear something pretty but they will need to be practical and comfortable. Pretty and practical don’t really go together. We are due to go on honeymoon to South Africa at the end of October and I am worried about how I am going to cope with the long flight and the possibility of getting a bite or scratch out there which might lead to getting infected.
When I returned to work in January it was really nice that people were so pleased to see me back and they would come up to me and ask if I was all better now, but they didn’t really get it. They would look at me, expecting me to say ‘yes I’m all cured now’ because that’s the thing with Lymphoedema – from the outside, when my leg is covered up by trousers and I am wearing trainers I look perfectly fine. It’s only when you peer closer that you will see the difference. So they are quite shocked when I explain ‘I am much better than I was but I have a lifelong condition now which I have to manage.’ And it can be quite wearing to explain what that condition is over and over again, like I have to justify myself.
Some people ask, ‘what is it like to have Lymphoedema?Does it hurt?’ When I wake up in the morning my feet will almost look the same but by the end of day the right foot will be almost double the size of the left. After sitting or standing for long periods of time, and towards the end of the day I feel a dull ache in my right leg and it starts to feel really heavy. It is not necessarily painful but it is uncomfortable. But it is the things associated with it that I struggle the most with. The unsightliness of it. What to wear in the Summer when all you want to wear is shorts and flip flops. Finding and buying shoes that will fit. I have had to throw away so many pairs of old shoes because I just couldn’t get my feet into them anymore. The stressfulness of commuting and trying to get on a packed train, scared shit-less that someone is going to step on your feet. The constant worry of getting re-infected. Going for pedicures and having to show your feet to the beautician.
Through it all though I have found some positiveness. I have discovered what real love is. Real love should not be measured by how things are in the good times. Candlelit dinners and romantic weekends are all very well but what matters, what really matters, is how things are in the bad times. Even when I was at my lowest Ben was there for me, not just in helping me with my practical recovery and doing his nursemaid chores, but emotionally too. When I looked my worse, living permanently in jogging bottoms, unshaven legs, hair not brushed, wearing my bandages with my foot in the state it was, he would tell me he loved me and found me attractive. I think our relationship grew stronger than it ever was before during those days.
The other positive thing I found was the strength in my own convictions. I know now that I know myself and my own body well enough to seek the help I need and not be fobbed off at the first attempt by someone who thinks they know better because they are better qualified.
It’s also taught me to not take my body for granted. Only when something goes wrong do you really stop and think about everything your body does for you and how you treat it. It’s why I am starting to eat healthier, think about what I am putting into my body to give it the right fuel it needs and have a consistent exercise routine which will not only help me lose the weight I want to shift but will help with managing the condition too.
In my previous blog post I’d just spent seven hours at the Southend Hospital Ambulatory Care Unit, for what was meant to be my final outpatient appointment. Instead, I was sent home with dressings and bandages for my leg and foot and told to return in two weeks’ time.
The next two weeks I got myself in to a routine of waking up when Ben got up for work as he needed to help change my dressing and bandage, and then falling back to sleep for a couple of hours. I was still unable to leave the house as I couldn’t wear anything but slippers and I think for the first four weeks since being discharged as an inpatient the only times I left the house were to go to either the hospital or the GP. So, I’d spent my days alternating between watching TV (I binged watched an entire season of Brothers and Sisters), reading books and magazines, doing jigsaw puzzles and thinking. Ben’s mum would pop round to see me, which I was grateful for because between 7:30am when Ben left the house and 6:30pm when he came home I didn’t speak to another human except for my daily phone call with my Mum. I had a lot of time to think. I planned what I wanted to do with the house, how I wanted to remodel it and the extra time meant I could get ahead with a lot of our wedding preparations. During this time I was conflicted between a sense of agoraphobia and a desperation to want to leave the house and break the boredom.
Because of my illness I had had to cancel lots of arrangements with friends. There was one appointment that I was still desperate to keep though, that was my wedding dress accessories appointment. I had bought my wedding dress from a beautiful shop on the outskirts of Brentwood back in June but I needed to go back to get my veil and other bits and pieces. There were still no shoes which I could wear over my dressings and bandages so I ordered a rather attractive blue velcro sandal designed for post operative care. Finally, it meant I could leave the house!
Post operative wound shoe
On 7 November 2018, I was due back at the Ambulatory Care Unit (ACU). Ben had to attend a conference that week so Mum came back to help me change my dressings and take me to the appointment. She stayed for four nights and it was the longest time we had spent with each other, just us two, for ages. Despite the circumstances it was really nice to spend time with her, although I did have to fight her off clearing out my cupboards!
It was another long wait at the ACU to be seen. I was told I was next inline but still the doctor did not come to call me through. It transpired later that my name had been rubbed off the board by mistake. It made me think, if we hadn’t said anything I could have sat there all day and no one would have noticed. Finally the doctor called me in to see him. He examined my foot. I explained that for the past few days it had been emitting a pungent odour, similar to gone off cheese. It was also leaking pus-like fluid and had gone scaly. He explained he thought it was a reinfection and I would need more antibiotics, this time oral. He tried to take a swab from the foot to get the sample analysed but it wasn’t playing ball. I would also need to see someone from the wound management team as he was concerned about the state of the foot. He told us to go and wait in the hospital Costa Coffee (a place which buy now we were frequent visitors of) while he tried to speak to someone from that team. We returned from Costa an hour later and the doctor explained that there was no one from that team available to see me so I might need to wait another few hours. I explained that I had a GP appointment to get to later that afternoon as I need to get my medical certificate for work renewed. This was actually a great solution, he said, as he would write to the GP to ask them to refer me to the community wound management team so they could come and visit me at home. He would also ask them to refer me to the Lymphoedema clinic. It was all done on email so they would see it by the time we went for the appointment.
It was an hour’s wait at the hospital pharmacy for the prescription which meant we only had twenty minutes to turn ourselves round at home before going back out to the GP surgery.
GP surgeries can be stressful places to deal with. Usually, however, the stress stems from not being able to get an appointment, or Receptionists on power trips, but this was the first time that the stress was caused by an actual doctor. I relayed to him what I’d been told at the hospital and that he should have an email asking him to refer me to the wound management team and Lymphoedema clinic. He looked in the system and said that there was no such communication. I asked if he could do it anyway, as presumably it was caught up in some central system and hadn’t been logged on my record. He then proceeded to berate me about not being a ‘secretary’ – it wasn’t his job to do referrals. Southend Hospital, he said, had been written to before about passing on referrals to GPs to do, and it should be the hospital doctor who made the referrals. We went round and round in circles, and although he said ‘I’m not having a go at you,’ it definitely felt like it. I was only following instructions, after all. I invited him to examine my leg (the original purpose of the appointment was to extend my medical certificate fork work) and this time he declared he was ‘not a nurse’ implying that he wouldn’t get involved in such trivial things as uncovering bandages and actually looking at the wound! It took all my strength to remain calm, and luckily Mum was there as otherwise I would have either shouted at him or become hysterical. He left the room, muttering something about phoning a colleague and when he returned his demeanour changed and he became more sympathetic. Perhaps he had realised that his attitude was not professional, or maybe he had a talking to from a colleague. He agreed to do the referrals and would ring me to update me the following day (of course that didn’t happen) and he gave me the medical certificate. I had thought that I would be signed off another week but instead he signed me off for four weeks. Another four weeks off work, that would take me to the beginning of December!
We returned home that evening having gone via the chemist to buy a waterproof sheaf so that I could wear it in the shower without getting my foot wet (I had been told not to get it wet whilst I had the infection and my previous attempts with a plastic bag and masking tape hadn’t really done the trick). We were tired and emotionally drained, and then, just as we were cooking dinner, the oven decided to break down and trip all the electrics. The gods really weren’t smiling down on us that day.
Plastic wound sheaf
Two weeks later I was back at the ACU for another long wait. This time Ben’s mum came with me. I am really grateful to her for taking me and sitting with me for all that time. I had my bloods taken again and once the results had come in saw the doctor, yet another doctor. I don’t think I ever saw the same doctor twice in all my visits to the hospital. My infection markers had gone down and having explained the situation with the GP’s reluctance to refer me to the Lymphoedema clinic, said she would refer me again. However, she was concerned about the state of my foot and wanted me to see the tissue liability nurse. Here we go again. Yet again there was no one available from the Tissue Viability/Wound Management unit and I didn’t really want to hang around yet again. Luckily one of the nurses at the ACU said she would take a look at my foot having had lots of experience with Cellulitis. She said she wasn’t concerned and that it was healing slowly. I asked how long I needed to keep the bandage on as I was desperate to try and get into normal shoes – and shave my leg – which by now resembled something akin to a rainforest! She said I would need to keep it on for a while as I had a lot of raw skin where the old skin had come off. But I could come back at the weekend to have it checked over. At last I was going in the right direction.
Two weeks later I was ready to return to work. However, I was still not wearing proper shoes and wearing my velcro overshoe so I was petrified of how I would cope doing my daily commute which involves a train and two tubes and the possibility of people trampling on my feet (including the horrific central line). Luckily, my boss was very supportive and agreed that I could work from home for a month whilst I recuperated.
It’s now been two months since I’ve been back in the office and I try to work from home two days a week as it eases the stress and worries about getting on the trains. I’ve also had my first Lymphoedema clinic appointment, which romantically was on valentines day, and now have my compression stockings on prescription.
I know that Lymphoedema is a life-long condition for which there is no cure but I am learning to manage it and the exercise programme is helping, not only with the physical side of things but the mental side too – and has allowed me to come to terms with it, which is why I’ve felt I could tell this story.
In the previous instalment of this blog I’d spent two days in hospital with severe Cellulitis and had just been told that they were ready to discharge me home on the Cellulitis pathway.
World Lymphoedema #sockit campaign
The hospital discharge process is lengthy, this is where hospital bureaucracy gets in the way. No wonder there is a shortage of beds in hospitals! From telling me I was going to be discharged to actually being able to leave the hospital, it took over four hours. This was mainly down to trying to get the prescription sorted out for all the paraphernalia I had to take home with me to allow the nurses to do their jobs. In actual fact I was sent home before the prescription was finalised on the understanding that Ben would return later that evening to collect it.
It was amazing to be home but was weird at the same time. Usual everyday tasks (like going up and down the stairs or getting up from the sofa), I couldn’t do. Every time I needed to get up from the sofa (a place where I would spend most of my time for the next six weeks) Ben would need to be nearby so I could lean on him and then the wall to get from room to room. Mum stayed with us that evening and waited the next day until the nurse had been.
My foot was still very swollen, so much so that I had to order slippers in a larger size. Not only was it swollen, it was also covered with multiple blood blisters which had turned the majority of the foot either blue or black. Over the next few weeks I was like a snake shedding it’s skin as the dead skin started to peel and flake off.
Saturday, Day 3, we returned as instructed to the Ambulatory Care Unit (ACU). I was unable to wear shoes as none of my shoes fitted me so Ben had to leave me in the car park and find me a wheelchair to go the few paces to the hospital building.As it was a Saturday we were whizzed through relatively quickly and my blood tests came back in hardly any time at all. The nurses seemed to be demob happy as they chatted to each other about the weekend and didn’t hear me when I said that I thought my canula was leaking and needed to be changed. The head nurse carried blithely on injecting and the pain was so excruciating that I leapt about two foot in the air out of the seat and became hysterical with tears.
We returned to Southend Hospital the following Tuesday evening as I had a CT scan. Mum had arrived earlier that day so she could attend my ACU appointment on the Wednesday morning. I don’t think I’d ever had a CT scan before. It’s a weird experience trying to lay still and breathe on instruction. We were at the hospital a couple of hours and then came home, ate dinner and got ready to return to the hospital the next morning, for what was meant to be my sign-off appointment.
This time we had to wait much longer to be seen. A doctor was meant to be seeing us to formally discharge me but she had so many cases on that we had a long wait. The nurse was going to discharge me herself but I showed her my foot, which by now looked like something akin to Frakenstein’s monster, and examined my blood trackers. No, I definitely needed to see a doctor. The doctor examined my foot and said she was concerned about the blisters on my foot so wanted the Tissue Viability doctor to take a look and I would need to be kept in overnight. I remember by heart sinking and panic taking over at the thought of having to stay in hospital even for a few more hours. They found me a bed in the ACU so I could rest and elevate my leg. Eventually the doctor returned and explained that the Tissue Viability Doctor was tied up but a nurse from his team could examine me. Her prognosis was that it wasn’t anything serious but just the normally healing of blisters from a foot that had been through so much trauma. However, the blisters on the back of my lower leg were the cause of the way I had been elevating my leg – the leg had been pressed up too much against the cushion rather than hooking the leg over it. It is amazing how something simple can cause so much damage. I still have the scars on the back of my leg to remind me.
Her diagnoses meant that I didn’t need to stay overnight at the hospital – hurrah! But I would need to wear a dressing and tubular bandage on the foot and leg everyday until it healed. I would need to come back in two weeks’ time for another check-up.
We left the hospital later that day, after being there for seven hours, tired and emotionally drained.
Find out what happens next, in part five of my blog, coming next week.
At the end of my previous blog post, the doctor told me that I needed to be admitted to A&E and I was found a wheelchair as I could no longer walk due to the severe pain in my right leg owing to the Cellulitis infection.
Ben wheeled me to the A&E building and signed me in. The wait wasn’t going to be too long, apparently. I think we got there about 11:30pm and at around 2:00am we saw the triage nurse who took my obs. My temperature was over 39c, but I was still freezing cold. About 4.30am the nurse came out and said they’d found me a temporary room. But it was just a glorified cupboard with a trolley, a chair and a huge beeping machine. A doctor came into check on me and asked a load of questions and put in a canular in my arm so I could start my IV antibiotics straight away. Different medical staff came in and out of the cupboard-room for the next couple of hours as we tried to get snatches of sleep. Ben was in the chair using my coat as a pillow propped up against the wall.
Just before 7am they said they were moving me as a bed had freed up in the the Acute Medical Unit. I was wheeled up on the trolley and then transferred to a bed where they put me on a drip. Ben saw that I was settled in and then went home to try and get a few hours of much needed sleep. By that point we had been awake for over 24 hours. I tried to shut my eyes but any sleep I was hoping to get wasn’t going to happen as shortly after 7am the lights were switched on and the ward nurses changed shift.
In case you don’t know the Acute Medical Award (AMU) is basically a holding pen before they move you to the ward you need to go to. In my case, I seemed to have been put with all the old men. The only thing that separates you from the other patients is a very curtain, so there is zero privacy to be had. I heard everything, from filling up of bedpans to graphic descriptions of genitalia issues and need for enemas. One old lady would wander up and down the corridor speaking to anyone she could, her adult nappy hanging down, whilst she tried to listen in on medical consultations. The poor healthcare assistants kept having to ask her to return to her bed. She was harmless but I’m afraid when she tried to speak to me I rolled over and pretended to sleep. One patient further up the ward was throwing things around his area chucking the Sharpsbox at the nurses. Luckily he didn’t stay very long and was moved to the mental health ward.
As I was hooked up to the drip I would have to ring the bell for a health care assistant to detach me so I could use the toilet. As I still couldn’t walk I had to have help getting to the loo but I absolutely refused to use a bedpan which is what they kept offering me – I would rather crawl to the loo than have to use a bedpan.
Ben came back to the hospital around 12:30pm with his mum and my overnight bag. When I’d arrived at A&E the night before I’d bought nothing with me, not even my phone charger. It was such a relief to see them, after what felt like a lifetime of waiting. Shortly after they arrived a junior doctor came over. We asked how long she thought I would have to stay in the hospital. When she said ‘two weeks’ I went hysterical and cried so much that I vomited. The thought of staying in hospital that long was unbearable.
Various medical staff came to take blood tests throughout the day to monitor the infection, they were taken from the artery so were quite painful. Some had to be repeated as they hadn’t drawn the blood properly.
Ben went home around 6pm. Just after 8pm I was told they were moving me to Estuary ward. I was given my own room, which although decorated in a drab salmon pink colour with a view of the tower block did mean that at last I has privacy! That night I tried to sleep but I was still hooked up to the drip and it would beep constantly, especially if there was a kink in the line so I barely got any. Ben and his mum returned the next morning. I hadn’t washed since Tuesday morning, which felt like a lifetime ago so Ben took me to the wet room to help me shower.
A couple of hours later my mum arrived, having gotten the train down from Buckinghamshire that morning. I was so happy to see her. All you want when you’re ill is your mum, after all. Immediately she was sorting out the doctors and nurses, asking them questions and chasing them up on things. The Consultant and his team came to see and explained that they would be discharging me on the Cellulitis pathway that afternoon, which means that a nurse would visit me once a day to administer my IV antibiotics and I would need to report to the Ambulatory Care Unit (ACU) on day 3 and day 7. Amazing, I could get out of there!
Find out what happened next, in part four of my blog, coming later this week.
In my last blog post I gave you the background to my condition, Lymphoedema, my struggles with getting diagnosed and my battles with constant infections of Cellulitis. But little did I know then that I may have fought the battles but I was yet to face the war.
As I said before, the period between June – mid October was Cellulitis free. I was starting to get fit for my wedding. I’d hired a personal trainer, I was starting to eat healthier, I was moisturising my foot daily (part of managing Lymphoedema is keeping the skin moisturised as possible) so even now I still don’t know the real reason for what happened. That’s the bitch about Cellulitis, it comes out of nowhere.
It was a Monday evening in mid October. We’d had dinner and then Ben left to go to swim training. As I had the house to myself I indulged myself by watching the trashy TV that he usually scoffs at. Suddenly I felt a pain in my upper leg and then stated to feel cold. I wrapped myself up in blankets but still I couldn’t get warm. I was freezing. I took myself off to bed and put thick socks on snuggled under the duvet. Still I couldn’t get warm and the pain in my upper leg was getting worse. Luckily Ben came home early from swim practice – and thank God he did – took one look at me and said I needed to get an appointment with the out of hours GP. I resisted at first, convinced it was nothing, said I would ring the doctors tomorrow when they reopened. But eventually I saw sense and managed to get an appointment at 11:30pm.
I suppose it was pot luck that I saw the duty nurse and not the doctor. ‘You’ve got sciatica’ she announced, ‘there’s nothing medical that we can do, you just need to see a physio.’ Although she had examined me she had ignored the other symptoms – the fever, the high temperature, the vomiting and wetting myself prior to leaving the house. But you believe what the health professionals tell you, don’t you?
We are fortunate to have a physio centre close to our house and I was able to get an appointment with them the following evening. But by this point it was a struggle to walk and I was beginning to feel the all too familiar sensation of my right leg over-heating and the streaks of red creeping up my calf. I admit it now, I was stupid and ignored it for the rest of the day. After all, I’d been told it was sciatica right? But really I knew the Cellulitis had returned.
The walk to the physio was unbearable. I think it took about twenty minutes (it should have taken five) and we had to let people overtake me as I was going so slowly. The physio examined me and shook his head ‘This is medical, you need to go back to the GP and if you can’t get an appointment there go to A&E.’
It was too much for me to walk back to the house so Ben walked back to pick up the car and then drove me home. I phoned again to see the out of hours GP. The day before I’d managed to get an appointment easily. After going through all the assessment questions the receptionist at Southend Hospital rang me to let me know the appointment time. But this time there was an intermediary call. I was challenged on whether I actually needed an appointment and was being pushed to call my normal GP the following morning. It was very distressing to try and justify myself to this faceless voice on the phone. Luckily I stood my ground and was able to get an appointment later that night.
My right foot had swollen to three times it’s normal (already swollen size) as I tried to stuff my feet into my biggest pair of trainers to attend the appointment. We were back at the out of hours GP the second time in two days. It took 45 minutes to be seen but this time I actually saw a doctor. He clearly knew something was wrong. Not only with the signs of cellulitis on my leg but my not being able to breathe properly. He asked to examine my foot. It took all my strength to yank the trainer off my foot that had been stuffed into it, and what it had become was truly awful. It looked like the heel of my foot had been surrounded by a massive blue tyre. Needless to say I couldn’t put my shoes back on. The doctor tried to get hold of some of the other doctors in the hospital and explained the situation. He advised that I was to go to A&E and this doctor who he had spoken to would meet us there. By this point I could barely walk two steps let alone across the car park to the A&E building, so they had to find me a wheelchair. I remember sitting in the wheelchair feeling the most vulnerable I’d ever felt before.
Just as we were about to leave, the nurse that I had seen the previous evening came out of her room. She saw me, sitting in the wheelchair and said in a condescending voice – ‘Oh dear…worserer?’ as if I’d come back to complain of a cold. I don’t know what offended me more her patronising tone or her poor grammar execution. It took me all my self-discipline not to get up and punch her then and there.
To find out what happened next read part three of my blog, coming later this week.
I’ve thought long and hard whether to write this post, to pluck up the courage to talk about something so deep and personal. I went to an event at the weekend where we were encouraged to share our stories, and it made me realise that everyone has their own personal demons they are dealing with. No one has that seemingly perfect life that we are all striving to achieve, despite what their immaculate Instagram profiles are trying to portray.
So…here goes. In 2017 I was formally diagnosed with Lymphoedema. Lymphoedema, according to the NHS website, is a long-term (chronic) condition that causes swelling in the body’s tissues. It can affect any part of the body, but usually develops in the arms or legs. It develops when the lymphatic system doesn’t work properly. In my case, my right leg and right foot is much more swollen than my left, although I actually have the condition in both legs.
Since I hit puberty my right foot has always been slightly puffier than my left. My Mum took me to see a doctor when I was about fourteen to see if it was anything serious. She was a locum doctor who didn’t know me or my family history at all and I still remember the look of derision on her face when she spat out, “it’s because you’re over weight. Once the puppy fat goes it will go down.” So, that was that. Over the years I suppose I just got used to it. Strappy shoes would always dig in a little bit more on that foot and leave an indention but we had other things going on in our lives during that period so we didn’t take it any further.
Then in March 2017 I fell off a chair and everything changed. Being vertically challenged I either have to ask Ben, my fiance, to get things out of high cupboards for me or stand on a chair/ladder/stool. In this case I had stood on a chair and was putting a glass dish away when suddenly the chair gave way and I fell to the floor and twisted my ankle. Strangely enough the dish survived unscathed! The ankle felt fine so I went in to work the next day and all of the following week until I started to feel a twinge. Something wasn’t quite right so I booked into see the nurse, who confirmed yes I had sprained my ankle and I should do all the usual things – rest, elevate, ice etc, but it was nothing to be concerned about.
By Thursday there was no improvement. In fact it had gotten a lot worse. Red patches started to appear on my leg, it felt hot to touch and the foot was even more swollen than before. Luckily, Ben’s mum popped in to see how I was. I rolled up my jogging bottoms to show her and she knew straight away that it wasn’t just a normal ankle sprain, but was Cellulitis. She wouldn’t leave until I had booked an appointment with the doctor. I thought she was overreacting, it would just go away of my own accord. But when I described my symptoms to the Receptionist she booked me in for an appointment that day – completely unheard of at our GP practice, you’re lucky if you get can get an appointment same week, let alone same day!
The doctor confirmed, yes, it was indeed Cellulitis – a bacterial skin infection that occurs when certain types of bacteria enter through a cut or crack in the skin. It is extremely difficult to trace back to the original cause. Symptoms are listed as:
pain and tenderness in the affected area
redness or inflammation of your skin
a skin sore or rash that appears and grows quickly
a tight, glossy, swollen appearance of the skin
a feeling of warmth in the affected area
a central area that has an abscess with pus formation
a fever
Some common symptoms of a more serious cellulitis infection are:
shaking
chills
a feeling of illness
fatigue
dizziness
lightheadedness
muscle aches
warm skin
sweating
I was signed off work for a further three weeks. I went crazy with boredom but got myself into a routine and cycle of sleeping, watching crappy TV, reading, doing jigsaw puzzles. Hanging out the washing became a treat because it broke up the boredom. I’d time my nap to wake up just before Pointless came on the TV. The end of an episode would signify that Ben was coming home soon and that was all I looked forward to. In the first couple of weeks it was painful to swing my leg around, so trying to get up in the night to go to the toilet was a challenge.
I returned to work in early April, my foot was still very swollen and I was having to elevate it as much as possible but the infection had subsided. Certain boots and shoes didn’t fit me anymore as I could barely get my foot into them but I still kept them as a challenge. A few months went by but still the swelling had not gone down. Looking at symptoms online I was pretty sure that I had Lymphoedema. I went back to the doctors and they decided to run some tests. I had countless blood tests (some had to be repeated because they couldn’t get the right reading) and was sent for an ultrasound on my groin to rule out DVT, Diabetes and other diseases. Finally in October after seeing a third doctor, he agreed that yes, I probably did have Lymphoedema. I’d read about a Lymphoedema clinic I could be referred to and asked if he could refer me there. He said he wanted to send me to a vascular surgeon to confirm the diagnoses first. The waitlist would be long and it could take several months before I would be seen. Luckily, I was fortunate enough that my parents paid for me to see him privately, so lo and behold I could get an appointment (on a Saturday too!) within three weeks.
So in November Ben and I went to see him. I thought he would provide me with all the answers to my questions. Why do I have this disease? How do I fix it? Can I be referred to the clinic? But instead I was left deflated, probably with more questions than answers. He didn’t think I would need to see the Lymphoedema clinic. I was just told to buy compression stockings online and if I needed to see him again I could (though obviously that would cost money).
I duly ordered the compressing stockings off Amazon and diligently wore them. Until the hot weather came and they became unbearable to wear not only from a comfort point of view but from a vanity point of view. Who wants to wear a pair of shorts and flip flops with thick black stockings? I think between my initial bought of Cellulitis in the Spring and October 2018 I had a further two or three bouts of the infection (though not as serious as I’d managed to spot the infection signs early) and was regularly taking antibiotics. The thing about Cellulitis is once you’ve had it you are much more susceptible to get it again. One Doctor said it might be my razor spreading the infection so I bought disposable razors. I was trying to do anything to avoid getting it again, but it wasn’t enough. All was fine between June and October 2018, but in mid October my world came crashing down…
To find out more read part two of my blog, coming later this week.
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