I’d planned to do loads of things in July. What I hadn’t planned on, was getting ill and having to cancel pretty much all of them.
At the beginning of the month I had my penultimate tattoo appointment, at least for the near future. Valerie, who does my tattoos won’t be working from September for 3 months at least, so with a few intensive 4-hour sessions, it brought to a natural conclusion the work we have been doing over the past year. My sleeve is nearly finished, just one gap to fill and a few touch-ups and embellishments to do on my back and we’re done. I didn’t set out to have a full sleeve, but once the tops of my arms were done, it seemed like a natural extension – and I love it. More about that once it’s finished.
I had the tattoo on the Friday and started feeling under the weather over the weekend, and right into the week, getting worse as the week went on. I had a working dinner with colleagues at Iberica on the Wednesday night, and just thought it was a touch of flu/general under-the-weather-ness. By the time Friday came, I knew it was more than that.
I had tickets to the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition on the Friday afternoon, and despite feeling pretty rotten and having developed a hacking cough, I took myself off for a look round. However, by then I knew that I was ill so I cancelled my plans for the weekend, as I was due to attend a two-day course and I knew there was no way I could get through that. I’d booked an Introduction to Coaching course with The Coaching Academy and was really, really looking forward to it so was pretty upset to cancel. Luckily they’ve let me rearrange to a date in August, so all is not lost.
I was also booked on a British Red Cross First Aid Course for last week, a 3-day intensive training session that results in an accreditation as a registered first-aider. We needed someone at work to volunteer and I figured it’s a valuable skill to have. Not only that, it might help me with some of my squeamish issues about the body! However, by Monday morning it was clear all was not well. I could barely leave the bed or sofa and had no energy and a worrying cough.
Looking up all the symptoms and advice online it seemed that I had viral bronchitis. The advice is plenty of fluids, ibuprofen/paracetamol and rest – oh and that you don’t need to see the doctor for a viral condition. So I stayed on the sofa for 3 days flat. Well, not flat actually, as the cough meant I couldn’t actually lay flat without almost choking to death. At one point, I was really worried that I couldn’t breathe and although in some ways I felt a bit better, by Thursday it was obvious I needed to see the doctor. A phone-call to the surgery got me a telephone consultation and a same-day appointment. It’s the first time in all the time I’ve lived here that I’ve needed to use my local doctor and I was mightily impressed with the speed. The phone consultation is such a good idea to triage people.
The doctor pretty much immediately diagnosed a chest infection and prescribed antibiotics. She scared me a bit saying if it got worse over the weekend they’d look to take me into hospital for IV antibiotics, but by Saturday morning I was feeling better than I had all week – coughing less, though still badly at night – and was even up to a trip outside the house, my first in 8 days other than the cab to the doctors. Never has a trip to the supermarket seemed so exciting!
But there’s one other thing I had to cancel. Today I was meant to be doing the Race for Life with my two friends Mel and Katie. I was really looking forward to it and was sure I’d be fine by then. But all I managed today was a brief trip to Rottingdean to get some sea air for an hour and more resting on the sofa.
I’m desperate to get back to work and get back on with life. The First Aid course has been rescheduled to October, so I haven’t lost the opportunity and there’s always next year for the Race for Life. Hopefully, if I can now recover properly with the drugs doing their job, I’ll at least be able to go to the Friday Summer Party for a few hours at the end of the week. Fingers crossed.
