The Best Laid Plans...

Given that both my physical and metal health are a bit shaky at the moment it seemed a good idea to take the week off after my daughter's wedding to rest, relax and recuperate. However things didn't go as planned as this happened:


This, to be precise, is my daughter's car, a 21 year old Rover Metro. Now on the Sunday before the wedding it had decided to die outside our house and, despite several attempts to fix it, it was still standing in my garage on the day of the wedding.

In the end I spent most of the next week working on it instead of resting despite having a chest infection. I think I was running on pure adrenalin and almost worked myself into the ground. All it took was a new carburettor, distributor, coil and cylinder head - the wonder is that it was running at all before!

The odd thing was the feeling that I was meant to be doing this despite several setbacks along the way - in particular when a sheared bolt meant taking it all to bits again. If it was going to die the best place to do it was where it did so we could push it into the garage, the new carburettor had been on the shelf for so long that it was 1/3 the price of re-conditioned unit, a long search on-line and phone ended by locating a cylinder head within driving distance and all the time I seemed to have just enough energy. I can honestly say there were times when I was aware of God with me in the garage up to my elbows in grease.

It's as if God was saying 'I know this has got to be done and it's got to be done by you even though you are hardly in a fit state to do it. But don't worry I'm here with you and I'm making sure it doesn't get too much for you.'

I just hope I can carry a bit of that into the rest of my life.

Steroidnightus

Steroidnightus - yes that's right I'm suffering from steroidnightus even though I can't find it listed in any medical dictionary. As I mentioned in the post 'Mrs Newman' I woke up on the day of my daughter's wedding with a chest infection which, like a lot of people living with bronchiectasis is not an uncommon occurrence. To clear these infections I not only need antibiotics but also a course of oral steroids to dampen the inflammation in my lungs and let them clear.

Now oral steroids, even though necessary for me, are not something to be taken lightly because they are powerful drugs that can have all sorts of odd side effects. The ones that cause me most problems are thinning of the skin, a particular problem as I have always cut easily, and disrupted sleep; in particular being awake from about 3 am to 6 am. Whenever I'm on steroids for more than about 5 days I find I can't sleep at night and I can't stay awake during the day. I listen to a lot of radio via an earpiece (so as to not disturb my wife) during the night and then spend the next day walking round like a zombie. I have tried taking the steroids in the evening and the morning, sleeping in the day, not sleeping in the day, reading till I fall asleep etc but none of it makes any difference. When I'm on steroids I have trouble sleeping.

Now oddly I was never warned about this when I first went on steroids or have I noticed it in the enclosed patient information leaflets (although I haven't bothered reading one for years - all those listed sided effects are enough to make you ill) but I only found out in conversation with my GP. S I'm posting this just in case someone else thinks they are going crazy when taking oral steroids.