Looking up in suburbia

Easter didn't quite go to plan. Saturday I pushed. As a result, Easter Sunday was spent trying to differentiate between passing out and sleeping. I slept though most of our family phone call to our eldest who was having his first Easter away from home. I was at least there on the couch slurring some words in the general direction of the phone. And today I woke up with tired on top of my tired. And my stomach in rebellion. Oh and did I mention a bladder that has shrunk to the size of an M&M? Drink. Pee. Drink. Pee. Drink.... Dysautonomia, the gift that keeps on giving.

The weather has been grey and my mood matched. But today there was sun. So I dragged my protesting body outside to take in it's warmth and cleanse my spirit.

The garden has always been my bliss. But since the move that has taken a dive. The move from temperate rainforest to sterile suburbia has been a hard change to wrap my head around.

This was my world before our move.

Now it is this.

And serenity is hard to find.

But today I was determined to find a small piece of bliss.

I decided to look up....

....and found my back neighbour's flowering gums.

 And blue sky.

And the gums reached out. Filled with squawking honey-eaters and bright red blooms.

 I put up my red umbrella. And laid out my blankets and pillows.

And I watched the clouds.

I had company in the sun.

And snuggles when it became too warm.

There were Great Dane footrests when my head started to spin.

And company whilst I searched for new books to read.

Now as the sun goes down I am just as exhausted, but happy. Sometimes you are stuck in soulless suburbia and sometimes....

....it is where you set your gaze that matters. 

Michelle

Don't forget to head on over here and donate to Dysautonomia Research here in Australia, at The Baker IDI. Lots of exciting research occurring currently and more projects on the way.

You could also head on over to the Australia Writers' Centre and vote for the blog in the Best Australia Blogs Competition.

 

Garden VS Swiss Cheese: Update On "My Boob Is A Garden"

First I'd just like to say a big "Thank You", to everyone for their kind messages, emails and comments on my last little vent about my decrepit boobage. They were very much appreciated. I think I'd just reached the "you have got to be kidding me" point and needed to let it all out.  Probably with a touch of too much information but hey, it''s not like it's the first time I've gone down that path.  Just once I'd like to see a medical professional who says, "your [insert body part] is perfectly normal".  Just once.  Is that really too much to ask?

Apparently the answer to that question is a big fat, "YES".

I have decided I need to send an official letter of complaint to my parents to chastise them for their piss poor procreation efforts. I've said it before and I'll say it again, perfunctory sex is bad. Look at me. This is what happens when you put a decided lack of effort into your boudoir shenanigans. Yes Mum and Dad I am talking about you. I am the product of meh sex. Really that's the only explanation for a body which is dodgy at every level.

I went back to my GP today to get the formal results. Picture the scene. Nice clinic. Picturesque scenery in the beautiful moutains surrounding Melbourne. Tree ferns at the window. Rosellas and King Parrots flying through the air. Lovely GP, who I'd recommend to anyone, grabs the ultrasound report. Puts it on her knee. Looks up.  Stares me in the face and says incredulously, "Oh my God".

Yep that's right. "Oh my God". Always a good start. Why yes my boobs have been busy as the long paragraphs of Time New Roman size 12 now officially report. Not content with one weed, or two, or three. My booby garden has popped out 10, yep 10, new and exciting varieties of weeds, not including my escapee bits of boob inhabiting my body from my knee cap to my ear lobe. Yes, yet again I am a reject.

I am grateful that they are not of the particularly noxious variety and can thus stay where they are for the moment. But geeze Louise, is it really that hard to have a normal body part? Apparently once more my decrepitude is of the gold medal variety.  I have declined the kind offer of being poked with multiple needles in the boob and taken the "keep and eye on them" approach to management.

She did laugh when I said the radiologist had told me that my boob was a garden. Though she thought it had more of a "Swiss cheese" quality. I shall never look at a block of Jarlsburg the same way again. "Garden" or "Cheese", these are my choices. 

I was also given more of a tsk tsking, and have been told that I need either 6mth or 12mth ultrasounds from now on. I also get to start the joy of mammograms at age 40. Though, as I have decided to stay 35 and will have "30faux" birthdays from now on, I may never have the joy of seeing my piklets squished between the vice of the mammogram.  She did take the time to point out that the girls were of the more petite variety, because of course I hadn't noticed, and may be difficult to scan.  Small, weedy, Mini Babybels, who aren't even up to the task of being squished.  I am beyond expletives now, and am on the path of resigned sighs of acceptance with a side of defeat.

So yet again I am a resident of the quaint town of Freakville.  If anyone knows where I can buy tequila by the gallon let me know.  Home delivery would be a bonus.

Thanks
Michelle

My Boob Is A Garden

It's been one of those days.  One of those days where you just say "fine", sigh, assume the position, and brace for the pointy end of the pineapple that you know is coming.  Today I was told my boob was a garden.  Yep.  A garden.  How do you respond to that?  I knew they could cause earthquakes, bring men to their knees and fill out a training bra nicely.  But a garden?  No.  That's a new one.

Today was yet another fun scan day.  Not an MRI today, for which I gave praise to every deity known to man.  Today was boob ultrasound day.  YAY. 

 

(photo)

I have bodgy boobs.  I've always had bodgy boobs.  Over the years I have had many a cyst or suspicious fibroadenoma either biopsied or whipped out.   So when I felt something whilst I was doing my daily ablutions I just said meh and kept on scrubbing.  Hence it has taken me a while to get my butt into action.

When you're chronically sick you pick the most pressing problem and forget the rest.  So I may be a year, or five, overdue for my yearly ultrasound.  Oh and haven't my boobs been busy during that time.  They have been fruitful and multiplied, like randy little rabbits.  If nothing else at least I know I don't have lazy boobs.


Fantastically, I had the joy of the student radiologist feeling me up.  Apparently I am a fantastic teaching tool and provided a community service today.  My boobs are both Einstein and Mother Teresa all rolled into one. 

I got to lie there exposed to the world as the radiologist and her learner driver rolled goop all over my petite mammaries.  All the time going "Ooooh", "Ahh", "Look at that", "Wow look at that".  I did get a little miffed when they started to say "Well that one could go either way".  You know, that's not what I want to hear as they are looking at the girls. 

So I found out today that I have multiple abnormalities growing away happily.  Should be a bumper crop in the garden this year.  I also found out I have ectopic boob tissue.  So not only was my uterus not bright enough to keep itself in one place (hence the endometriosis) apparently my boobs are equally inept. 

I have boob tissue growing everywhere from my arm pit to my knee cap.  Okay the later may be an exaggeration, though not by much, and it would explain why my knees are so perky/knobbly.  It's mixed up in my lymph nodes and in my muscle tissue.  Basically my boobs are dumbarses.  As, Mr Grumpy said, "if it's growing everywhere, you'd think at least some of it would grow in the right place".  Ha ha Mr Grumpy.  You are hilarious. 

The experience was also punctuated with me making mad dashes to the loo to throw up and evacuate my nether regions thanks to Bob.  Tops!  Mind you the radiologists did end up putting on their jumpers and turning the aircon on for me so that's a bonus right?  So now more waiting for results.

My body is officially one of the fish that John West rejects.

Pass the tequila.

The gardening Michelle.