Can I Tell You A Little Story?

In December of last year I had quite a strange experience.
While at my Hubby's  company Christmas party, a man who had been hired to read fortunes for the night, chose me out of a crowd and beckoned to me to sit with him on the sofa.
I was unsure at first as I really do not believe in all this pa lava but decided what harm could it do. 
It was all in fun anyway.

After he had a ten minute conversation with whom he said was my father (my father passed away nearly nine years ago),  I was beginning to question my opinion.
I sat stony faced and silent, not wanting to give anything away, as he relayed the messages from my Dad.  There were things that he said that were very particular and that could not have been guessed in a thousand years.

This completely freaked me.
Could this truly be genuine ?

Onto my cards then.  One by one he turned over my cards.  He said that he knew times had been hard for me and my family for quite a long time but that was all going to change.  By the beginning of the summer my life will have changed beyond recognition.  And it will be changes for the better.  I would get stronger and more confident.  This he repeated several times over because he said that it was important.

I walked away dazed. 

It had been a very strange experience.

Could this be real?

Only time would tell.

As the new year began, my life became a little bit more hectic as the hubby returned to college.

But just two weeks into January, my son Patrick fell sick very suddenly.  I had to rush him to hospital in the middle of the night and wait for hours outside an operating room while the doctors removed a seeping gangrenous appendix from my poor little boy.  He was so very sick and remained in hospital on three separate IV antibiotics for a week as I slept on a pull out chair by his bed holding his hand all night long. He had to remain home for a further fortnight while I tried to built him up again. My fun, chatty little son was too weak to stay awake for long and had lost so much weight in such a short time.

Just as I was getting Patrick back on his feet, I noticed that my mother's health was deteriorating rapidly.  She had not been well for quite a while but now it was beginning to get very scary.  

Eventually I just decided that we could not wait any more on doctor appointments and I brought her up to A&E in the Dublin hospital where her consultant was based.  Thankfully she was immediately admitted and her treatment began.

She was in hospital for two weeks and had some very intense surgery.

On her return home she needed constant help and was not allowed to do anything for herself. 

But this was like having an overgrown toddler in the house.

Every time I turned my back she was back doing something that was forbidden by the doctors.

It is very hard to keep a strong, independent person sitting down and taking the rest that she needs to recuperate, all day long.

Thankfully all is beginning to slowly quieten down and now I have time to reflect on the past three months.  

Has it changed?

Most definitely!

I used to always say that when one of my family needs me I could go into auto pilot and somehow be able to push my pain and tiredness to one side.  Then when all would be back to normal, my body would just stop and collapse.
This time the auto pilot didn't seem to switch off.

The weeks that my son were sick was very difficult, especially trying to sleep in the hospital and the pain was harsh but I got through it.

Before would I have never been brave enough to stay in the house alone with my kids for two months (when my hubby was in college before, we would go and stay with my Mum because I was too afraid to stay here on my own).

I have been driving up and down to the hospital to see Mum and bring her to appointments and I haven't even thought twice about the two hour drive. I've even surprised myself by being able to do it on my own.

It's been so long since I've had that freedom.

Every single day for the past ten years, I have slept for at least two hours during the day. I was always so tired that I needed this rest in order to be able to get through the rest of the day and be there for my kids when they got home from school and have the energy to do simple tasks like cooking an evening meal.  Now I can go most days without napping and I'm enjoying finding different ways to fill my day.  It was alien to me at first and scared me a little but I'm getting used to it now.

I don't want to jinx myself by saying this too early  but I think that finally after ten years I have a break in my fibromyalgia.
I have found a strength deep down that has helped me cope with the last few months.
I have found a confidence that I had forgotten ever existed.
I could spend time making memories with my family once more.



I have a lot of life to catch up on, a lot of time to make up for.

A New Dawn, A New Day

Well, that was one fabulous Christmas and I'm quite sad that it has all come to an end.
Being somebody who does not enjoy the stress induced panic attacks of last minute shopping, all of my shopping was completed by the end of November.  This left me all of December to relax and enjoy the important family traditions that make the most beautiful of memories.  And Oh Boy did we have a busy month, starting with the kids singing in a national choir with 3000 other children in Dublin.  We decided to stay over that weekend and had our first clumsy attempts at ice skating, heading home with sore bottoms and faces that ached from laughing.
We spent lovely afternoons baking with my mother (which we don't do near often enough), making decorations for the tree and knitting gifts for some relations.  There was the nativity play and the end of term play too.  Lucy missed the latter because she had both her big toenails removed just 5 days before Christmas.  She cried in the doctor's surgery when she found out about this, not because she was scared of getting the surgery but because she had the lead in the school play and would not be fit to attend.

Christmas week was just as relaxing.  Full of lazy mornings watching tv with the kids, going for walks in the afternoon and knitting while listening to my favourite audiobooks.  I've thoroughly enjoyed getting back to my needles after hooking for the past year.  I hadn't realised just how much I had missed them.  Now I have a long list of makes just waiting to be cast on.
I even managed to get out a few times over the holidays with my Hubby, having dinner with friends and going out on New Years Eve for the first time in 10 years!! To wind up the season, last weekend there was a huge party for my Hubby's 40th birthday and I made the most of the night and boogied my (not so little) behind off.  It was such great fun with lots of laughter and long chats people there that I hadn't seen for a while.

Looking back over the last month has made me realise that major changes need to be made in my life.  The past year I became too tied to my little hidey hole, the house, reluctant to come out more than once a week and quite happy to stay that way.  But I now see that even though I might be content with this, I've been missing far to much of the life that is going on without me.  I love meeting people, whether they are old friends or new ones and I'm never going to do that while I'm stuck here in my rut.
My resolution for this year is simply to get out of the house more. To meet up with friends, go out for dinner, go shopping or simply to go for a walk with the dog.  I want to fill my day the best that my body allows and be able to go to bed at night tired and satisfied that another day has not been wasted.
So for me this is a new start, a new dawn and a new day.  And who knows just where this tiny little change will bring me?

Hope to catch up with you all very soon,
Rosie xx

Things That I've Learned From My Kids

The other morning when the kids and I were staying in my mothers house, my son and Mum were sitting in the kitchen while I was watching some kids telly in the next room....  It just happened to be on. Honest!  They could hear me laughing uncontrollably at the program that was on.  My mother, giggling, said, "I really don't know who is the biggest kid in this family?  Your mother is just a great big baby".  My son looked at her smiling and said, "but Nanny that's what I love most about her.  She is just like us".

This absolutely melted my heart when my Mum told me later and it got me thinking a lot about how my kids have changed my life completely. " Well doh obviously!", I hear you say.  Well no not really.

My own childhood was marred by bullying at a young age and this left it very difficult for me to form friendships or even talk to people at times.  But when I had my own kids it felt like I had a chance to relive my childhood.  Not through them but with them as my best friends.  Like the ones that I always wished I had growing up.

My kids have taught me how to laugh and by that I mean real laughing.  The type that comes from right down in the pit of your stomach and leaves you breathless and with a pain in your side.

They have shown how to be fearless.  They don't worry about what other people think of them.  They just enjoy being who they are and living in the moment.  I realise now that I've wasted far too much of my life caring about others opinion of me.  So now I've been known to skip happily down the main street in town or sing (very badly I must admit) at the top of my voice while pushing the trolly around the supermarket.  Singing songs that we have changed the words of so that they make us laugh.  Even though Patrick’s favourite songs all involve poo and bottoms!

I found that the kids really bring out my creative side. I love sitting on the floor with them building things out of Lego or play dough.  And it is amazing how many really great things that can be made from these if you take the time to do it.  The kids may say to me that maybe I should try making a certain design out of material and they may even tweak it just a little so that I can see what they mean.  For me hearing “Mammy will you knit me this” or “Mammy will you sew that for me”.  Is music to my ears because they often come up with ideas that I've never even thought of.  I may love to feed their imagination but they also feed mine.

Patrick and Lucy have shown me how kind and understanding people can be.  Through my worst days they make me laugh or just make a bed out of blankets for me on the sofa.

I love to sit and watch cartoons with them when I can or go for an adventure in the forest with them.  Their words paint images to help me to see the world through their eyes.  And I love it!  My Mum might think I’m a big baby but I’m one happy big baby.

Sorry about the soppy post today but this has been on my mind the last few days.  AND tomorrow I'm off to Germany for a week.  So I know I'm going to miss them lots.  

Hopefully I'll get some nice piccies for you at the Christmas markets in Salzburg and Munich.

Rosie xx

PS I hope that this makes a bit of sense and not like some mad ramblings.  What have your kids taught you?

Can I have a bun please?

Now that the kids are back at school I'm able to spend more of my time on crafting.  And as I spend a very pleasant morning sewing I realised that there is one thing in all of my crafty possessions that I use the most.  A little felt bun that my sister-in-law gave me two Christmases ago as a present.  I use it as a pin cushion and it is permanently beside my sewing machine.  Quite often  I can be heard asking one of my kids "pass me my bun please".

This got me thinking about other crafty things that I have that mean a lot to me.  At the moment I don't have my own craft room so these are dotted around the house and the first that I laid my eyes on is my Dad's old cigar box with a weavers knotter, vintage buttons and zips inside.  He was a weaver by profession but of all the tools and sample button cards that he had this is all that is left.

My button jar which is loved by my kids and whose contents are often spread all over the kitchen table.  And in this picture is a drawing that my daughter did when she was five of herself, my mother and me.  So cute!!

My mothers old sewing box.  A little worse for wear now being about forty years old.  I have memories of sitting on this as a little girl beside the fire while my mother brushed my hair.  I may be a bit battered but I love it.

The needle pot that stands on a shelf in my kitchen is one that I bought in a little pottery shop in Easkey on one of our first ever visits to the village.

And last but not least, my tablets.  Knitted by my friend to cheer me up when i was sick and going through a hard time changing all my medications.  Always hanging from my bookshelf, it cheers me up whenever I see it.

Why Me?

With a condition like Fibromyalgia it is very difficult not to ask the question, Why Me?  Especially on days when a simple task like doing the grocery shopping leaves me feeling like I am being eaten from the inside out.  An army of monsters with steel claws and sharp teeth gnawing and tearing at every muscle and joint in my body, leaving it hard for me to move or even to breathe.
The body deceives me sometimes, getting my hopes up by giving me days where the pain is bearable.  Bearable enough for me to enjoy a walk in the forest with the kids or a day in the garden but then suddenly like a bolt out of the blue the pain once again rises up on me.
But on these days I have to keep reminding myself that a mere 9 months ago I was incapable of driving anywhere, cooking a meal or even reading a book and it was so for the two years previous to that.  I'm slowly finding my way out of this dark and difficult time but the monster still lives within always ready to let it's presence be known.
On my bad days the Why Me? question follows me everywhere I often look at people my own age and wonder what it is like to have a full busy day, going to work and having a career or studying and not feeling any pain at all.  It has been seven years since I have been able to do any of that and it often feels like I have sometimes been cheated.  Cheated out of a proper life.  Incapable only of being an observer and not a participator as life seems fly by the windows of my house, like some weird episode of Dr. Who.  But I must not let self pity take hold because it will not be friend of mine. It will only crush me and steal my soul.
Something that took me quite a long time to learn is that I am not my pain and my pain is not me.  It is only a part of me.  And this realisation hit me like a streak of lightening.  Illuminating the massive mistake that I was making.  Before this I would it feel like the pain had taken over so much of my life and controlled each and every thing that I did and I had really forgotten all about me.  I became my pain in a way.  Incapable of imagining life without it.  I once said that I thought that I would be lonely without it because it had been with me for each and every day for seven years.  Like a person you don't like but always seems to be around.  It took me a month doing EFT every day with Karin in Germany to make me see what was really happening.  I was being smothered by this terrible condition. And now I realise that we are two seperate entities living in the same body.
Even though I still have my bad times, I'm grateful that I have come so far in the last 9 months.  I am Rosanna once more and I make the most of each and every break that I have from my chronic pain.  

Fibromyalgia and Medication

It is very hard for me to describe the relationship that I've had with my medication and the feelings that I've had towards it.  It began with a longing to be free from the agonising pain that is associated with Fibromyalgia (fibro) and the need to finally bring to an end years of insomnia.  I was willing to try anything that the doctors would give to me, if there was even the slightest chance at all that it might help.  But this too brought with it, its own problems for me.
Firstly when taking new drugs, it would take weeks, sometimes months, for my body to become accustomed to the chemicals involved.  The side effects of many of the tablets were extensive.  Some caused me to gain 3st in weight.  My hair thinned out so much that I looked like I was trying to grow a bald patch.  My short-term memory became so bad that I found myself incapable of following a conversation.  And my eyesight was so severely affected that I had twice as many children as I should have had, I could no longer follow the words of a book to read and driving was definitely out of the question.  My house was no longer a home but a jail.  I was too anxious to leave and too self conscious to meet people outside of the family.
Oxycontin is a certain example of this.  For the past two years I have been on a high level of this drug but in January of this year I said that I had enough of the ever increasing side effects of this medication.  It may have given me the best pain relief that I ever had and a break in the pain is what is required for fibro in order that the pain pathways may be changed but it caused stunted speech and worsened my already poor memory.  It has taken me over four months to slowly come off this drug and it was very hard going at times.  But it was worth it as for the first time in years I now feel like I have the possibility to get out there and start living my life even if I still have some residual pain.
Watch out world here I come.

The Old Magnolia Tree

The old magnolia tree was planted by my mother in the year that I was born and now each spring it is flushed with blooms indicating that the summer is on the way, the first promise of warmer weather and long sunny days.  To me it not only signifies strength and beauty but also it reminds me of my family and my childhood. And it delights me to see that my children too love to climb to its top and play under the shadow of its wide embracing branches.
I've been struggling with the chronic pain of Fibromyalgia for the past eight years now.  Even though it has stolen a lot of time away from me, with the support of my family I've somehow finally found the strength to fight back. I'm beginning to build a new life for myself and it's quite exciting. For even though I resent this horrible condition that has battered and bruised my body both physically and emotionally it has made me appreciate so much more what life has to offer and I've learned to enjoy the little things and moments in life and to treasure them.
And that is why I've called this blog after that old magnolia tree in my parents garden because now my life is blooming after a long hard winter and now I'm looking forward to the brighter summer that lies ahead.