Feeling alone By Katie

 

 

 

 

 

 

Feeling alone

 

 

At the weekend my health messed up a family fun day Saturday which made me rather sad and couldn't help but feel alone! 

When you have chronic illness you feel so alone. When I say alone I mean because I have no one in my family that suffers with a chronic illness similar to mine so it's genuinely hard to talk out loud about my health as they do not understand. Alone because most family birthdays meals I cannot attend because I'm either in a bad flare or can't eat anything on the menu so I'm left at home alone and I end up feeling so isolated. The one thing that really upsets me about missing family occasions is when I get certain family members saying that I'm choosing to not go out and that I don't want to socialise which couldn't be further from the truth. Of course I want to go out, attend all family meals or events and socialise but I've realised that you HAVE to put yourself and your health first. I've spent many times sitting in a restaurant putting on a totally different mask and acting fine when in reality I'm sitting there with stomach cramps, my joints are in crippling pain and my eyes are wanting to close from severe fatigue. The smile I put on in those situations is totally fake. How can I smile when I'm in so much pain. Sometimes putting on an mask and a fake smile doesn't  work in my favour! Unfortunately It makes some of my family members think that I am absolutely fine and that I am lying about being ill. It leaves me thinking what is the lesser of two evils? Grinning and bearing the family meal in crippling pain or putting myself first and not going and facing the criticism of some not so understanding family members.

 

The weekend just gone, I planned to go to Battersea Old Windsor Fun day on the Saturday with Beth, my nieces and my brother, we planned this ages ago and we was all looking forward to it. The evening before I got ready to have an early night then all of a sudden my colitis really flared up big time to the point where I was on the toilet from 10pm until 7.40am so I was incredibly exhausted from just running back and forward to the bathroom. At 8am I thought lets get an hours sleep so I can have some energy for the day out but soon as I closed my eyes, my bowel had other ideas meaning I had no other choice than to cancel the plans and stay in bed instead. I was so exhausted and the toilet trips continued till Saturday evening and I was home alone so I felt even worse and more alone. 

Luckily I have my three dogs who drive me mental but they follow me to the toilet, cuddle me on the sofa, always by my side in bed and make me laugh. I am so glad that I live with my Mother, something I thought at 24 years old that I wouldn't say but honestly I couldn't be without her. 

I really hope that my health starts to improve as I hate missing out on all these family events, I will be sure to keep you all update on my health and my story.

until next time

Katie x

Where Have We Been?!?

 

What Happened To Us?

 

I suppose you can say us and our blog dropped off the radar. You would be right. We stopped blogging suddenly with no warnings, not even to ourselves. I know what many people will be thinking, what makes two young girls who are seemingly very happy just stop? If we were from the outside reading our blogs we would be thinking the same. But from personal experience we can both say there can be many reasons, some being life events that you just can't see coming. The reasons to our disappearing act will be explained in depth in future posts. But we can now give you some sort of understanding.  

 

 

Katie

 

 

As you would have knew before we stopped blogging Katie had a number of health problems, a couple being ulcerative colitis and Ankylosing spondylitis. In the past few months Katie's condition has not started to improve she has got a little worse. Katie has been on different painkillers for her increasing pain, she is trying to find the right pain relief to get to her pain. She is also having flare ups very often now. Near enough every night. Safe to say she doesn't get much sleep. The side effects from medication, her illnesses and her lack of sleep have made her have severe fatigue. This leaves her felling pretty poo! she cant pluck up the energy to sit and blog ect. As you can imagine due to her illness and the effects they have on her life it gets her down leading to an on going battle with depression, unfortunately until her health starts to improve her depression prob wont either. She is very much the second half of this blog so I wish her well very soon!!!

 

 

Beth

 

 

 

 

Now we come to me, Beth. The reasons for me were all pretty much new. I had moved to a new town, I have been trying to adjust and settle in both for me and my children. This became my number one priority. It wasn't easy, It was a whole life adjustment for a number of reasons which will be explained in a future blog post. I have now also been diagnosed with depression. This is very hard to talk about. I don't like talking about it, but I feel I now have to share my experiences to help both me and anyone else that have also got it.

 

 

These reasons are the background of the fact we disappeared. I look forward into going into more detail. Katie still  isn't feeling 100% as I explained she maybe doing the odd post when she feels up to It, she is still very much involved in the blog just behind the scenes a bit more at the moment.

 

I can't wait to you are back doing regular posts Katie!!

 

 

WE ARE BACK!!!

 

LotsOfLove

Beth....xxx

Katies Health: Being On Steroids

For the past few weeks I was on Steroids for my Colitis which I have written about HERE. In March when I was diagnosed with Colitis, I never thought I would be on steroids any time soon let alone this year. I always knew about Steroids but didn't really know the side effects or that there was different ways of using them. I just thought it was a tablet but the one I was prescribed is something totally different.

So the steroid my consultant prescribed me was called Predfoam Enema which you can read about HERE if you want to understand more about what theses one do but without going into too much information, I had to basically place into my rectum!!! It wasn't a nice experience and it took be a few days to get the idea of it and still don't feel comfortable doing it. The first week of being on these I was in Essex so it took my mind being on this to be honest. I was told to do it the same time each day but I just done it whenever I could. I was only given a few weeks worth of the steroids and then got to go back to my Gastro consultant  to see what the next step of my treatment is. So far I haven't noticed any difference and my symptoms have got worse. The past two weeks I haven't been out of the house much apart from going to the Doctors as I feel so anxious about flaring up in public. I have now been put on a low residue diet which I have only been following for the past week and it has helped a little bit already so I will continue to follow it and will do a blog post in a few weeks to see if it has made any difference.

I am still on Asacol which isn't helping much but my consultant wants me to carry on with them until my next check up which should be soon. Hopefully will get my gastro appointment letter through soon as I just want my symptoms to settle down abit.

Anyone else with IBD reading this been on the same steroids? What is your thoughts on them? Let me know :)

Love Katie x

Girly Week In Essex

 

 

A few weeks back I went to Essex for a week and we had lots of girlie fun. Of course we went to Lakeside for the day and had the best time. Taco Bell feast, Primark spend up and of course Disney Store for the girls which is becoming an tradition for us now haha.

The picture about is of the girls wearing matching from Next and I brought them a few more matching items from Next as they actually do both of their sizes. The Leggings which Bella's were £2.50 and £3.50 for Ava, T Shirts were £6 each or 2 for £10 and Socks for 2 pairs were £3.00 for Bella and £3.50 for Ava. So all in total for two outfits came to £22.50 which I thought was bloody good value as the quality of clothes are amazing and Beth tells me Next clothes washes well. Since then I have been back to Next and got another colour of Leggings and different T shirt which I shall give to the girls Next week and I'm sure they both will look beautiful matching :)  



The two picture above are from when I looked after the girls for the day as Beth had a family funeral so it was Beth's first time without Bella. I might get Beth to write a blog post about it as she was really panicking but I thought she done well :) I still stuck to the girls routine that day i.e. Their lunch & dinner, Bella's nap and their bedtime but I also added in Play dough for Ava till lunch time then colour paper stamps in the afternoon and both of the girls are little angels. 

This picture is us four doing a selfie in a taxi haha. Beth had dentist then we went to Tesco for lunch and Costa then done some shopping and as we brought too much than expected we had to get a taxi home as we had too many bags to carry haha. As you can see the girls know how to pose like their mummy and auntie haha.

I travelled home on the Saturday morning so I had a good whole week spent with these perfect girls and next week I am going back to Essex to spend another week which I am so excited about as I cannot wait to take and pick Ava up from Pre School and watching Bella grow up each day and making me proud. Also love being around Beth as she is a mummy she kind of 'mummys' me if that makes sense without sounding weird haha. She cares and worries about me which just proves how much she loves me which is nice as she is my sister in law also my best friend. Just this weekend to get through then Essex on Monday :)

Love Katie xx