Woah...April...

I began this post...well just the title some days ago before another wave of OMG overtook. Life has been anything but plain sailing here the past couple of months with a multitude of illness and injuries befalling us/me in particular. Today hopefully is the very last day I will be off work sick, however my back is far from recovered, and though I hate to admit it I feel this is partly my fault. When I originally felt the elastic band like break in December my first thoughts after ouch were how to keep moving and working...so I took ibuprofen...I wore a clip it all in petticoat and away we went. Yes it hurt sometimes, well most times but I was able to do my job. When it further went at the end of February, just a few days before Covid struck us all down I was doubling up on pain killers to keep moving. Then after Covid shuffled off away from my body I paid a visit to the doctor who gave me some lovely extra strong medication to take the pain away and once again keep me moving. However...Naproxen...anti-inflamatory...can keep you awake at night, makes you feel awful generally, and can quite literally bust your gut. Codeine...bungs you up, sends you to sleep in the day so you're not quite as  mobile anyway. Straining to go to the toilet whilst suffering with a torn back muscle is not a happy event. Then Lansoprazole, which you need to take to protect from the effects of Naproxen, well basically it dries your mouth out and in my case made the centre of my tongue sooo sore. Early one sleepless night/morning I was downstairs reading about the effects on injury of trying to override natures way to heal with inflamation...where nature rushes blood and nutrients to the injured site and pain stops us from overusing the affected body part so reducing any further damage. Not a comfortable read when I know I was happy to be given a large packet of drugs from the doctor originally. The next morning I took nothing but paracetamol...if I can't manage on paracetamol it's a sign I really should not be doing it anyway. 

That really hasn't been all of it though, after Covid came the most horrendous chesty cold...I still have the lingering bits of it and after a night in bed it takes a while to clear out all the tubes! However I was determined that I would let my body do it's thing and would not be resorting easily to antibiotics which I have had a few times in the past couple of years. Then on Saturday a water infection started. I tried so hard to flush it out, but yesterday I did ring and plead for some help, which arrived in the form of Nitrofurantonin.  A three day course. I had caved in. No more ...please...I return to work tomorrow on a mercy mission for a part shift before doing all day on Thursday. I will take it steady. I will be tired...I will learn to say no...hopefully.

So April, you have brought us some lovely sunshine, but accompanied by winds that literally have felt contained little chips of ice. Many showers and some gradually lengthening evenings. You have dried my washing on the line most days, and many plants are putting on fast growth in the flower beds...we did our best to protect the blossoming fruit trees when nights were really cold and the wind blew from the North East. Eldest grandson calls ghosts ghoosters and we certainly had one of those in the garden for a few days!

Protecting the pear harvest...

Anyway, I need to prepare today for my return to work tomorrow, I am going to be working mid afternoon to early evening so making a large cottage pie for today and tomorrow seems a good idea.

Sincerely hoping not too many of you have succumbed to the awful heavy cold/chesty thing I had.

Blessings, J. x