Thursday 4 November 2010

It's been a while

I've felt that I haven't had anything worthwhile to write for while hence the lack of posts last month. Time for an update!

I've started training with The Samaritans. The selection process was much harder than I imagined and I was genuinely surprised to get the phone call telling me that I was accepted. Now I have weekly training sessions until December. I've had 3 sessions so far, they're quite heavy and intense but I suppose that is to be expected when you consider the types of calls that The Samaritans receive. I'm not a fan of speaking up in groups so that doesn't exactly make for a fun 3 hour training session anyway! It's all good though, I'm looking forward to completing the training and moving onto the next stage :-)

My Xolair trial is going.... well.... I have very mixed feelings! I've had 3 doses but only 2 are being counted as there was such a gap between injections number 1 and 2. I'm noticing side effects that aren't pleasant. The worst is ulcers on my tonsils for about a week after the injection, I'm sure you can imagine how painful that is! I've had daily cold-like symptoms for about 6 weeks now which is making me feel horrible. The joint pain is variable, some days even the joints in my fingers hurt and other days I don't notice it at all. I've also noticed that when I get migraines, they don't respond to my migraine medication. The migraines themselves aren't new, I often get a migraine or two a month, but they used to respond really well to medication so they didn't used to have a big impact on my life. Now, they're lasting days and I'm having to spend long periods in bed. If you've ever had a migraine, I'm sure you'll appreciate that you try to lie down in the dark, in the quiet and stay still. Having a migraine and wheezing, sneezing, coughing etc is not fun!!
Buuuut, my asthma is defintely better than it was. It's not as brittle, I'm on much lower doses of Pred and it's been a while since my last hospital admission. Another buuuuuut, peak flows have taken a nose dive over the past 2 weeks and symptoms are on the increase. I should be having the next dose next week, watch this space.......

I'm still not back at work. The drama surrounding my nursing career is no further resolved. I've given up on that making any progress this year which makes me so sad, it took me 3 years of hard work to train and now I've been out of the profession for almost 3 years :-(
My 'temporary' admin job (temporary until the nursing situation is resolved) are ignoring my emails. I admit, I could be pushing the issue a lot harder than I have been, but I think it's their job to tell me that I'm allowed back (and have been since August) considering they're the ones who stopped me from working in the first place when I 'traumatised' my colleagues by having an life threatening asthma attack/collapse infront of them. I don't like the way they've treated me, I don't want to really go back there, so if they're willing to keep on paying me to stay home then I'm going to take advantage of it. Haha I know I'm going to have to bite the bullet at some point though and do something about the situation. I've fought long and hard to not have to give up working due to ill health, and these long periods where I'm not working over the past 3 years are not helping my fight!

2 comments:

  1. Hope you Xolair trial picks up and side effects stop or get easier.

    Wendy x

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  2. Hey

    I just stumbled on your blog today! It's great! My name is Emma I also have asthma related issues and i'm a 1st year student nurse... was wondering if you wanted to chat more about things asthma or otherwise? My e-mail address is: Littletiger21@hotmail.co.uk and my blog (thou I gave up a while ago with it not-all-right-half-left.blogspot.com)

    Emma

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