Purple Love

My head has been a little cloudy for a couple of days so I'm sleeping quite a lot and concentrating on some therapeutic little art projects to help me focus. 

Here's some purple love xx 

1 click and help save a life?

Pretty, pretty please can anyone that might read this click on the link below and vote for an incredible small charity to possibly win some much needed funds. These funds can literally be life saving!! You can vote once every day too :) 

LINK

Epilepsy Sucks is small charity set-up by two mothers after watching their children go through their lives living with Epilepsy. One of whom sadly lost their life at the age of 22 due to suffocation during a seizure. Epilepsy Sucks aim to provide anti-suffocation pillows to both children and adults who suffer from seizures during their sleep. They work tirelessly to raise funds in order to do this along with running an amazing Facebook page to offer support and a place for other in the same boat to meet and share there experiences and gain invaluable advice first hand. I can safely say that I have learnt about 90% of what I know about seizures and the condition through this page as opposed to meetings with my doctors. I also have one of their pillows and I am certain it has saved my life on more than one occasion and would not be without it. Without the help from Epilepsy sucks theres no way I would have been able to buy one for myself. 

All it takes is one click to vote for them from the link HERE. There is no signing up to anything just literally ONE CLICK. 

Thank You SO much xxx

Hot pipe tip.

The other day I was given a tip that I really should have thought about before! It's a simple thing that can be found in many homes. Hot radiator pipes. 

If you were to fall against them (even when the radiator is off as they often remain hot) during a seizure or remain unconscious next to one then you may gain some level of burn to the area of your body that is in contact with the pipe. This could be during the seizure itself be it gripping the pipe or lying against it and/or contact may also occur during the post-ictal phase following the seizure. 

I'm not entirely sure what I can do about it at the moment I rent my house off a private landlord so I can't change it's appearance permanently in any way. The lovely lady who pointed it out suggested I give my awesome door-stop owl a new job and place him against the main piece of piping and the radiator tap. He will then be guarding the tap with it being a rather pointed object to hit on the way down and off course provide a barrier between myself and the hot pipe. This is the plan for now and if I can find something to cover the rest of the piping that runs along the bottom of the radiators in my bedroom I'll sort that out as well.

Hopefully this will now be one more injury I won't be adding to the list!

An Improvement!

It's the tiniest of improvements but some of the most brilliant news I can hear right now.

I've been having some problems with my field of vision on the left hand side I believe it's called a left-sided Quadrantanopia. This basically mean I'm missing vision in the top left hand quarter of my vision. I found it out over a year ago by chance when I went to try and find out the cause of a persistent headache by visiting a high street optician. The day I went for the test the optician handed me the results in person and told me to take them straight to my GP myself instead of waiting for them to travel through the post. Not good. This is my original post with the results. It is immediately obvious that something isn't right. 

Anyway I've been seeing a opthalmology consultant since then for various tests. This time around when I went to see my hospital ophthalmologist on Monday after some more visual field tests the results show that there is slight improvement in my vision!! I couldn't believe it, I've had visual field tests many times over the last year to check on progress and each time it has some back the same with the longer it went on leaning towards it not improving. Best surprise ever. I have more tests booked for in a couple of months to see if there is further improvement of whether it has stayed the same. 

Whilst I was at the hospital I bumped into a couple of old faces as well one a fired from university who has taken up a placement as a medical photographer and happened to be in the department. Then another fabulous girl I met on a ward when we were both admitted together a year ago and we were the youngest on the ward by a long shot, she happened to be walking down the corridor as I was leaving the department. 

So believe me I was (and still am) one happy bunny! x

Reunion

This weekend was amazing. I spent two whole days with my beautiful friends with whom I lived last year. One of them is one of my oldest friends and another three who until I moved in with them a year previous to them graduating as doctors I had never met. If you were to see us altogether now you wouldn't have a clue that we were complete strangers not so long ago! I love them dearly and they have stuck with me through high and low since the day we all met. Through the seizures, hospital appointments, mid journey on the motorway stops because I'm seizing once again, the too poorly to make myself anything to eat so they cook me dinners, visiting me in hospital to put a smile back on my face, the trips out that make everything feel "normal" again. Very happy and safe times. 

Since leaving university in June this year they have all split up and live in completely different areas of Britain. It is a massive shame but they are living their passion as doctors and Britain is a surprisingly small place and in just a matter of hours on a train one or two of us can meet up. This weekend however is the first time we have all been back together in one place and it's like we never split. Despite being between the ages of 23 and 30 we all act like children... refreshingly carefree. 

We each travelled to meet in mid Britain to the city that Rasha lives in to celebrate her belated birthday together. We stayed in a lovely hotel high street level looking out over Birmingham over three sides. It was also Diwali over the weekend as well so right across the landscape beautiful fireworks sparkling in the sky. Hours were spent talking about each others lives and laughing over memories. We ate out in lovely resturaunts and returned to an amazing restaurant we visited the last time we visited Birmingham when we went to kit ourselves out with Asian attire for one of their weddings. Previous trip to Birmingham plus we went to see a Bollywood which was hilarious! 

We gave our gifts over to Rasha to open whilst we sat down to dinner and afterwards presented her with this... Check out this cake!!! It was amazingly detailed and absolutely delicious... it didn't last long! 

It really was a great weekend and I felt very emotional leaving them behind again but we're already planning our next meet up and even a holiday... once we've saved up the money! 

Three years today.

Three years have passed since I heard the words "you have Epilepsy" come out a neurologists mouth whilst looking at me. 

I didn't react that day but I always tell people that if I knew then what I know now in terms of what life would hold from then on, I would have reacted very differently. In fact I don't think I have the words to explain how I might have reacted that day. 

This blog has been my release since that time and will continue to be so. I will continue to try my best to raise awareness to whoever will listen, so far I blabbed on through here, Facebook, on the TV, radio and of course in person! 

I'll be forever thankful to everyone who has held my hand both physically and through kind words and thoughts.

x 

Epilepsy Awareness Month

Flying visit post due to being away but...

The 1st of November is not just a day you get to pinch and punch a person with no returns (before noon of course), it's also the beginning of Epilepsy Awareness month!

With events taking place everywhere there will be vital funds and awareness raised all to aid fight  against the condition. If you see someone wearing a particularly large amount of purple who knows they could be doing something for Epilepsy if they are not, it still made you think :D

Happy Epilepsy Awareness month all <3