Life Lately - Weight Loss, Chronic Fatigue, Illness And Family

When I first started my blog nearly 9 years ago now I talked a lot about myself, my family and my illness - I used to write regular goods and bads posts and I often used my blog as a bit of a place to whinge. Over the years though my blog has changed and maybe I've changed!  For various reasons I haven't felt comfortable sharing certain aspects of my life and my blog has become my happy place, a place where I can escape and take time out of my daily life. I always wanted my blog to be a part of me though, so every once and a while maybe it's good to share.

To say my posting has been flaky lately is probably an understatement, I seem to have a really consistent spell and then I seem to disappear for a few days or a week. There shouldn't be any pressure to blog but I do feel a bit guilty every now and then when I can't get as many posts up as I would like. Life over the last 3 or 4 months or so hasn't been kind to me in a lot of ways and that's reflected in my blog so event hough there probably isn't a need I thought I should at least give you some sort of an explanation. 

I don't want to go into too much detail but as you know I'm quite close to my family, and unfortunately my illness curse seems to have struck them too. I'm not going to go into too much detail to protect them and their privacy but two of my closest family members are having a very rough time of it at the moment. It's awful seeing people you love struggling on a day to day basis, and facing their own mortality and it's probably affected me more than I've realised, both physically and mentally, something that I could probably have done without.

Chronic fatigue syndrome is a funny thing, I don't mean funny haha, I mean strange, one minute you can feel relatively "normal" and the next minute you can feel as though your on deaths door, yet you'll still look okay. You can have good days and you can have bad days and this year for whatever reason I've definitely had more bad days than good days.Throw in a long awaited, and presumed Fibromyalgia diagnosis and it's now pretty clear why I've been in so much pain and felt so wiped out.

If that wasn't all after a routine dental check up I was told that one of my wisdom teeth needs to be removed! Fury didn't quite cover it, I brush, I floss, I use mouthwash, I visit the dentist every 6 months - why!!! and why wasn't this picked up sooner! I know some of my medications can affect my teeth and my saliva (yuck, sorry!) but still!

A visit to an oral surgeon confirmed that the tooth needed to come out, and I was put on the waiting list to get it removed. Oh and in the meantime I was told to eat a relatively soft diet as the damaged tooth would potentially start to break off - hmm I wondered what that small creamy, white hard thing was in my risotto!! 

Yeah - not good but unfortunately the worst was yet to come" before any form of surgery you have to undergo certain tests to rule out any complications and after some simple tests low and behold they found a couple of issues. I'm not going to bore you with the details but I have a pile of new medication to take and I have to see a health care professional every fortnight for monitoring!

So here I am, waiting and waiting for that appointment letter to get this godforsaken tooth removed, I swear it caused me no pain or irritation until that bloody dental check up. Thankfully avoiding anything to hard or chewy, painkillers, Corsodyl mouth wash, and Anbesol liquid are making it a bit more bearable but I'm still having the occasional swollen hamster cheek moment!

At the moment finding something to eat and eating without discomfort is hard enough, without watching what I'm eating so I've made to decision to at least postpone my weight loss journey, till I get both my teeth and my heart sorted. I'm annoyed, ashamed and more than a little disappointed to give in like this, but I need to focus on improving my short term health before I start thinking about more long term concerns. It's a shame because I really think I was starting to make progress with the XLS Medical Max Strength system* - I'd lost around 12lbs and I was feeling really positive about the whole thing but it can't be helped. I'd already bought some more capsules when they were on offer so I'm ready to get back on it hopefully in the new year when I get myself pulled together.

I really hope this hasn't come across as an oh woe is me post, although I suspect it probably has, but I just wanted to let you know what's been going on and why posting has been a bit erratic and why I haven't been posting as many recipes or weight loss updates.  Knowing that you guys are there on the interweb really keeps my going at times and it gives me something to focus on when real life is getting in the way. If you're a new reader I don't write posts like this that often so I hope I haven't scared you off! I'm making no promises as to the regularity of posts at the moment but all I'll say is I'll post when I can. I have quite a few post ideas floating around that will hopefully come to fruition before Christmas including some long overdue press sample reviews, some festive gift idea reviews, some hauls, a recipe that I might not be able to eat but I can assure you is amazing, and my usual big festive giveaway.so I hope that you'll stick around and be patient with me. Thanks for reading and of course thanks for being there x

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