willows

You should try applying in the UK ................I was refused at first because they said no such illness existed. I sent them loads of information and detailed sheets of what, when and why things happen to me. In the end after 64 weeks of arguing and papers going back and forth from my local doctor and myself they sent round a specialist consultant from there own team to see me. On the day he arrived he was so shocked to see the state of me he wanted to call an ambulance there and then, I was grey in colour and my heart beat was so low he couldnt find it , so hubby had to show him how to find my pulse as the doctor was convinced I was so unwell that I might be dieing !!!!! This consultant then contacted the DHSS and gave them such an earful about leaving me like this with no help, now when I have to renew my claim it goes straight to my local doctor and is approved right away, I'm on full mobility, care and carers allowance. Willows.

Thanks for your reply Jacquie.................dont think me thick but whats the TTT? I'm afraid at my age I've never quite caught on to those abbreviations , if its the 'time of the month' then no I have always stayed the same , I did however increase my sweats when I went from normal hormone level to full menopause in about 6 weeks, that was awful and for almost all this time I couldnt leave the house. I now take an HRT drug for this , BUT it still hasn't effected the sweats I get 'normally' ah ! normally that's a laugh how can anyone sweat as much as this be classed as normal that makes nonsense out of the English language doesn't it!!!!! I try not to let this sweating problem take over my life, but it can be so hard and at times soul destroying . When you have got yourself dressed up for something special , your hair has been done , you have make up on for once , so you dont look like Dracula's daughter before her supper ( all pale and pasty) and for once you feel 'I look good' ............. Then a noise makes you jump , someone knocks into you , the smell of food is very strong or someone hugs and kisses you ' a bit to hard' and off you go 'raining again'................clothes soaked, hair literally dripping down your back , make up running down your face making you look like a panda.................and everyone See's you !!!!!!!!!!! Trying to get other woman to understand thats it not 'the menopause' and being told the same old thing over and over again ............ ' You'll get over it soon, dear ' or...................... ' HRT is what you need dear, ask your doctor for some ' ................ I sometimes think a large sign on my forehead with the words .............' I have an Autonomic condition please dont stare' might be the answer !!!!! Mind you ,could I get one printed with little pink roses and sequins on , oh! and of course lace trimmed !!!!! Willows ...............making her own water to help the national shortage .

Well its fathers day here and my son and I have now given hubby his presents and a card , hubby's well happy as we managed to get him the DVD documentary on the DaVinci Code , a book about hit men and of course the normal supply of chocolate for hubby to scoff when he's reading !!!! Between us we have now lost almost a stone in two weeks . I have lost 2 lb's more making a running total of 7 lb's and Mike has now lost 2 lb's more making a running total of 6 lbs ................boy are we both chuffed !!!!!!! Mike my son is so impressed , he hasn't felt at all hungry or missed all the rubbish he used to 'pig out on ' he used to go to college and buy lunch from the cafetiere which meant every day he would consume cans of sugar laden drink, sausage rolls , bags of full fat crisps, bars of chocolate and 'other' munchies. Of course now its the mandatory packet lunch , which he helps prepare and so knows whats in it , a thick wholemeal sandwich filled with either lean ham, chicken or beef with low cal spread , low fat crisps and a low cal health bar , plus a bottle of a low cal squash that he makes up. He has said that in me saying to him ; ' Look mike , your stomach is hanging over your trousers , and for a lad of your age its not at all healthy or very attractive, especially to the girls '!!!! and then making him stand in front of a full length mirror in his boxer shorts to see his profile 'woke him up ' slightly ( to say the least ) So he now has that incentive to stick to it and is getting very good at picking 'healthy stuff ' over fat, sugar or just calorie laden foods............he's actually eating fruit !!!!!!!!! bananas, apples, grapes and he's tried pears !!!! So after a week of us both feeling rather 'yuck' we still managed to be good...........cant wait until August arrives now to be able to arrive at the wedding looking slim . Willows....................

Well ...................the last few days have had my son at the doctors as he started coughing up blood in the shower !!!! He's now on a drug to cut down the acid in his stomach and is to be seen my a specialist, I do hope this isn't the start of it all as it was about his age I started having problems and he has already bowel contractions and is on drugs. I came of a drug for the sweats as it has been playing up ( basically I have become immune to it again) having weaned myself of it I then came down with the worst chronic pain I have ever had in my 35 years of this problems, on the scale of 1 to 10 it was off the scale !!!!! It left me unable to walk , crying my eyes out and rolling around the bed...........so I've had morphine and other pain killers. Son and I have still been good on our diets , I must admit son's 'pod' ( large stomach ) has flattened down something wonderful in the past 2 weeks. Tomorrow morning is weigh in for us both..............if we have both lost a pound each it will make us happy , given the week we have both had, even 1/2 pound would even make us smile ............you know what they say 'every little helps'.............back tomorrow with the weight lost, but for now having been up about 3/4 hour I'm now off to bed again as I'm very tired still............may be an apple to munch in bed ? or a pear ? ...........................mmmmmm strawberries and sauce ............. yes thats whats needed to get me back on my feet ............willows.

Hello all again, well I'm now off the clonidine and boy ,oh.... boy, do I know it. Unfortunately , although the doctor doesn't think its anything to do with coming off the drug , I've had the most terrible bout of chronic pain and had to be on morphine for the past few days, hence not posting. I started a couple of nights ago with pain in the right side of my face ( thats normal for me ) but then it spread to the left side, down my neck into my left arm and then my left leg , the whole of left side in fact was in agony and I couldnt walk . By 5 am in the morning I was in so much pain I was in tears, something I hardly ever do. Anyhow doctor said to start the morphine and when this didn't stop the leg pain even more pain drugs were added..............talk about feeling as high as a kite, but after 6 hours at least I could lay still. So I've been in bed for three days ( just up now ) it was so bad that just trying to get to the loo ( just 2 yards away) without bursting into tears was an effort with a zimmer frame to walk with and then on returning to bed the pain just increased again and had me rolling around in agony , I can honestly say I have never had pain like this before in all of my 35 years and childbirth to this is nothing !!! I'm looking like death at this time and have a rotten headache , but no pain as such...............yippppeeeee ! I've been up half an hour now so back to bed again now , I'll be in contact again soon . take care of yourselves in this hot weather.............willows.

Ice-cream is something I love as well......................... I discovered an easy answer for that , one of our local supermarkets that deal with only frozen foods make their own brand of mini ice -cream cones ( white chocolate & milk chocolate topped) they come in packs of 20 and are just 75 calories a cone. So when I get the urge for something 'wicked' I have one of these, at 75 calories it will not brake the bank and I dont feel so hard done by or guilty I also make up a low sugar whip with semi skimmed milk , I dont know what you call them in America but here its angel delight. Make this up then freeze it in 4 potions and 'hey presto' low cal ice cream when you want it. Son and I are still being good, its salmon today for supper; 1 large fillet ( bones & skin removed ) per person, squeeze on lemon juice and add black pepper. seal in foil and bake in hot oven 180-200 for about 20 mins. Add to this; boiled new baby potatoes , green beans and carrots. ( no butter added) I add a slice of lemon and a sprinkle of parsley to the fish . Dessert is my strawberries with sauce again..............still hooked on this yum, yum. Next weigh in Sunday morning, so keep fingers crossed that another few pounds have decided to vacate my person ..............preferably from my bottom or my thighs please !!!!!!!Willows.

Yes, I to get waves of the condition. If I do to much one day the next day is really bad , so I try to pace myself very slowly. I also have this over powering feeling of flu coming every four to five weeks aching joints all over, head-achy ( more than normal ) I run a temperature and then boy oh. boy its two days in bed . I just want to sleep all the time , taking very high powered pain killers ( controlled drugs ) as the pain just moving is horrendous and I shuffle about to the loo like a 90 year old............. Willows.

Thanks again for all your replies , I am about to have a look at the site suggested and see if I can come up with something to show my wonderful local doctor, who is always ready and willing to seek out and read stuff on my behalf. I had a touch of the giggles in the night, if my neighbours could hear me through the wall ( we are a set of four terraced cottages ) by now they will think me as ' mad as a hatter' ( English for a mental case ) I kept trickling..........trickle , trickle, down my back, trickle , trickle into my ears . Stood up and flapped my arms about trying to cool myself and stop the stream from running all over me , I might add I'm in total darkness and slightly without clothes at all , and to top it all I'm as blind as a bat in the dark Flap, flap, trickle, trickle is this what my life has come to ? .............oh, well back to bed. BANG !!!!!!!! Bed no longer where it was left, bed must have moved over slightly while woman here was flapping arms and trickling away , bed must be trying to cause havoc to rest of sleeping household Now I'm full of wind!!!! great rumbling, painful balloons of the stuff lodging itself under my ribs , I feel if this continues to build up I will suddenly lift off from the ground with the amount of gasses in my poor system.......Gaviscon........... thats whats needed and a couple of weights tied to my ankles ' just in case'. Willows ..............starting to think I may need more medication or possibly a straight jacket !!!!!

WOW..................thank you all so much for your replies. It would be a great help if anyone can remember what this TV programme was about or called . My sweats are really bad at this time, I have, when its been as bad before, fallen asleep in bed ( bedclothes at bottom of bed ) then woken up with the feeling that I have 'legged things' running about in my pubic hair! only to discover that I to am sweating so much its trickling down my thighs............not nice. My hands and feet sweat when I have Raynard's and they get so wet that I leave footprints on the wooden floors and if not careful can slip, slide and fall . I was told by Dr. Battle, the doctor who diagnosed me, that this horrendous sweating is one of the main diagnostic criteria of Autonomic Nerve Dysfunction, along with falling blood pressure, headaches and either brachycardia or tachycardia ............may be he was talking about 'the pure form' which is a bit more 'over the top'............becuase this is definitely an 'over the top' symptom. I'm so tired and heady today , last night was awful, what with the heat from the day and then the sweats all night long I didn't know what to do with myself at this minute, think I need to try and catch up with some sleep now ...............as long as the phone, door bell, next doors dog just keep silent for a while ...............PLEASE............. Willows.

Thanks Nadine, it is pretty hard trying to come up with meals that are low fat , low calorie and interesting each day, especially with a teen age son to cook for . Today for lunch I had some fresh carrot and coriander soup and burnt my tongue that will teach me to be in such a hurry , plus for dessert some wonderful fresh pineapple with raspberry sauce all dripping on...............yum, yum, Willows.

Today has been so bad that I feel I want to go and sit in our fish pond and stay there ..........forever. My reason for this ? well if I'm as wet as a fish I might as well go and live with them all, it would save the clothes washing...............mind you dont know what the postman would say finding me naked with the goldfish I take clonidine tablets ,3 morning and 3 evening, not to keep my blood pressure down, which I believe is what a lot of others on this site do , but for the sweats.....................oh! the sweats. I can sweat out more than I take in each and every day and if not very careful get dehydrated very quickly. But my sweating is often triggered by things like; dog barking, car starting, someone makes me jump , phone ringing or the big one FOOD and DRINK !!!! If I smell food the sweat runs down my face and drips off my chin , in other words 'I rain' my whole body becomes soaked and it's just so horrible as I go very pale and my hubby gets worried. My clonidine are now no longer working , which means that I have to wean myself of them, then stop taking them for about 4 weeks , then restart them again. It's like I have to re-boot my system every 5-6 months ............. I dont know what to do, where to go and dread the next few weeks, soaking myself and the bed , not being able to go anywhere, being afraid if the phone rings or the door bell does ............or any noise that is just that little bit above average..........and off I go 'rain, rain, rain' why, oh... why, can't some manufacturer somewhere come up with a drug that actually works . Willows. very fed-up as sitting at the computer with a towel around her neck and cotton gloves on to 'catch the rain'............................... .......... umbrellas offered to son and hubby!

I try to look at it this way............................ I may not be able to control the way my body behaves ............................. but I can control the amount of food I 'shovel into it 'and keep my weight at an acceptable limit to reduce the amount of pain I get from the arthritis in the hips........................ This morning I had a bowl of bran flakes with sugar substitute and semi-skimmed milk, lunchtime its a tuna salad ( in brine or fresh not oil based) and a dessert of fresh pineapple & low fat yogurt. Tonight son and I are having chicken breast ( no skin at all) with a huge plate full of carrots, cabbage, green beans, broccoli and mangetout plus a very light chicken gravy ( 2-3 tablespoons ) and that strawberry & raspberry sauce thingy I do...............plus loads of water!!!!! My son takes a wholemeal sandwich to school ( low fat spread) made with very lean ham or chicken , a packet of crisps ( under 100 cals) and one of those health bars ( under 100 cals) plus a litre of low cal squash..........he eats the lot and is happy and not hungry. Its hard sorting out his school lunch as you dont want to make him 'stand out from his peers' so his school diet is done 'carefully' to look just as the rest of his mates!!! Son's happy and has remarked ............... clever mum here !!!!! Next weigh in on Sunday so we will see if I can stick firmly to it. As I have a goal ( wonderful cream chiffon suit with pale pink roses on embroidered with sequins and bugle beads and matching hat, shoes, bag ) and I have a wonderful weekend to look forward to..............so its up to me now..................and I am NOT going to let myself down. so there!!!!! Willows...........in need of her afternoon rest now so bye, bye all XXXXXXX

I dont have your symptoms , but if I get stressed in the car I sweat and sweat and then have a rather nasty angina attack , which leaves me in the car waiting for an ambulance to come to my assistance ( had this three times now ) so I have to at all times 'stay calm' which as you know is not an easy thing to do with some of the stupid drivers that are on our roads now a days. But I do have other not so good problems with driving which I am finding upsetting . Now when the sun goes down and the lights come on, be it street or car headlights , since 2002 I just cannot see more than 5-6 yards in front of me let alone the edge of the road or oncoming cars. I do not have problems with my eye sight, I just wear glasses to read with ( old age) and my distance is 20-20 if not better than this according to the doctors. But since my last flare up I just cannot see at night , this applies if I'm walking out as well. Very strange and quite frightening at times, especially if the sun goes down before you think it will .

Hello nadine, a stone is 14lbs in UK weights. Son and I have just weighed in, and as expected the first week is always the best for loosing weight. Son has not 'nibbled ' once anything he shouldn't have and stuck 100% to his diet and has now lost 4lb's. I have been just as good and have now lost 5 lbs. With 10 weeks to go until the big day we now hope to loose about 1-2 lb's a week each which will total up to 24 lbs for son and 25 lbs for myself . I know we can do this together , he supports me, I support him. So we are on our way now and this first loss will give son and I an incentive to shift more. My doctor has said that loosing the rest of my weight will help my hips and other joints as I have arthritis in them . So its out with the strawberries and low -fat yogurt again for us ................willows.

We , that's hubby, son and I are all off to a special wedding in August. For most people its a walk in the park , but for someone like myself it's not. The wedding is 70 miles away from our home, so I've had to book hotel rooms for the night before and the night of the event , so that I can rest before and afterwards. Now having tried on the suit I wore last August for another special wedding we went to , I'm finding its a bit 'tight' tight to say the least!!!!!! Hubby has just reminded me that I had a course of steroids earlier this year , which accounts for my weight gain....................... So last Sunday , having weighed my son and nearly fallen down when I saw how much he weighed as well , both son and I started our ' fit for the wedding 'diet. My son is 15 and 5 feet 11 inches tall and one and a half stone overweight !!!!! Me I'm 5 feet 2 inches tall ( good things come in little packages ) and almost 2 stone overweight. Having cleared it with my doctor first we are now off............................................. Loads of fruit, veggies, wholemeal stuff, chicken, turkey etc, etc. First weigh in this Sunday.................keep your fingers crossed . Willows

Yep, mornings are bad for me to. I know its because laying down at night causes my heart to slow down rather ( cough, cough to 38-40 beats a minute ) so when I try to get up ......................mmmmmm well , lets just say not nice I dont get up until 9-9.30 am after I've taken all my meds and had coffee ( nectar of the gods ! ) I then wander around upstairs for about an hour to get my stupid body working correctly, attempting the stairs before my joints are moving freely leads to me kissing the carpet again......... I'm stiff and in rather a lot of pain in the mornings , this then wears of at about 11 am . But by 1-30 to 2 pm I'm tired out again . Willows.

I dont know if I'm one of the 'lucky ones' or 'unlucky ones' as far as this goes My hubby is also disabled and has chronic pain problems as well as mobility, so in a way its like the blind leading the blind, we now lay in bed at night giggling about 'having a go' !!!!!!!!! but then remembering just what happen 'the last time'...............you see what with his back problems, knee, hip and head problems ( and only one hand ) and my hip, knee and hand problems ............well its a case of dream on. Up to 2000 it wasn't 'to bad' but then I seemed to get worse very quickly and my pain level jumped from about 4 /10 to 8 /10 most days. So when my hubby and I married in 2002 it took us 16 months before we could 'consummate the marriage ' loads of pain killers, fans on top speed and a bucket by the bedside............not what I'd call 'very romantic or on the spur of the moment ' So now we have decided that how ever much we love each other , care for each other .......adore each other , it is not worth the effort , pain and following discomfort to 'partake of nuptials' so we giggle away at night thinking up various devices to 'assist us' like ropes from the ceiling , etc. We love each other so much that even with no intimacy , life is still wonderful each and every day we are together, and for a 50 year old who's falling to bits , well...........that isn't bad in my books. Willows

I have been anemic on and off for years without them finding out why. I'm anemic at the minute to and am on iron tablets , but only one very other day as I cannot cope with to much iron, I also eat loads of spinach, broccoli and at a push liver ( mmmmmmm ) Willows.

Thanks for your reply Michiganjan...............unusual name ? You must be in the USA as we dont get cops driving around here like that, we are lucky , being such a small village if we see one in a blue moon..................except..................when they want to make some money for police funding. Then they sit for hours with a speed gun hiding on the outskirts of our village just before the national speed limit of 60 miles an hour, waiting for someone to be 'just ' over the speed limit. Our local vicars daughter came out of the village in her 'little car' doing 32 miles an hour...........the speed limit is 30, she was ticketed which in my book is just so stupid. If they can afford police to stand and do this for hours on end why cant they have a policeman on foot patrol every few days going around our village. Well hope your house is safe, ours is like fort knocks here now. Willows.

So sorry that you have had a bad time , the problem is that most of our friends are what I'd call 'normal people'............they go out to work, eat out, and go shopping without thinking, where as you and I get excited just at the thought of 'doing something different' other than sitting in and staring a four walls. For us to go out is a wonderful pleasure that we plan for and make sure we are well rested in the hope that we dont become unwell and have to cut this opportunity short ...........again. It takes a really special friend to totally understand just what it is like to lead this sort of life . Look if you get fed up I'm here nearly every day, all day.............natter to me, rant and rage at me, after over 30 years of disappointments and being let down by 'so called friends' nothing hurts anymore. Kind regards and keep you chin up ...................Willows

Peace heavenly peace, is now once again in the willow household as hubby is out in the jolly old garden with his 'new replacement camera'..................Ah Now I'm wondering what he will do with it tonight at bedtime hope he doesn't bring it to bed with him. Last time he brought something to bed I woke up with the handle of the toilet stuck to the cheeck of my bottom He sleep walks at night and had been up to the loo , broken the handle off the system and somehow he managed to bring it back to bed . Not the sort of thing you think you'll find at 4 a.m. in the morning stuck to you MMMMMMMmmmmmm we'll see...........willows.

Guess what I'm sitting here with right now ? Yep.......... a glass of strawberries and sauce for breakfast ! Here just a thought , I wonder if its all the strawberries that's making me turn orange .............. Well in UK a punnet is somewhere in between 225g and 500g.............a 225 g makes me 2 glasses, when I say glasses I dont actually mean glass.............illogical I now But as I sometimes drop things ( cough, cough, shuffle , shuffle .........its my hands they dont close all the way, so the grips bad ) So I went out and bought myself a set of 4 clear ( well pale green) plastic stumpy tumblers , the sort you use to take on picnics or at a BBQ. I find these are great as when I have a day in bed I dont have to worry about dropping the glass onto the floor and it breaking or laying on it in bed accidentally ( yes done both ) Dont store the made up dish in the fridge for to long as the sauce makes the berry's go mushy. Its really hot here today , so we will have this for dessert later tonight at supper as well................the fruits are full of vitamin c and the fibre ( what there is of it) will help with any constipation problems. WARNING; dont eat this if you are Diabetic............. Well I'm off to enjoy a nice new book, happy cooking guys Willows.

With summer almost upon us I thought it might be nice to exchange some summer food ideas, quick, easy , yummy foods for us to have over the warm period, stuff thats easy to get, easy to make and quick to disappear .................... Here's my easy dessert idea; I get my food for this from a rather well known English store with a food hall that's always on the telly advertising what you can get free if you spend a certain amount of money with them. YOU NEED; 1 punnet strawberries. 1 pouch of raspberry dessert sauce ( this is a fresh raspberry sauce ) 1 large extra thick vanilla yogurt or cream or ice cream ( as liked ) springs of mint & small ice cream biscuits ( optional ) frosted tall glasses if you feel adventurous ( dip rim of glass in egg white then fine sugar and leave to set hard) TO DO; Hull strawberries ( take stem off) cut in 1/2 or 1/3 depending on size. Place in tall frosted glass and tip raspberry sauce onto them. Top with cream, yogurt or ice cream and spring of mint + a whole strawberry. Place glass on a plate and add 2 small ice cream ( thin sweet ) biscuits + 1 whole strawberry. Serve. This can look really 'posh' for a dinner party if you use something like crystal cocktail glasses to eat from or tall wide wine glasses, you could also place the glass on a gold doilies and sprinkle the topping of your choice ( ice cream, yogurt or cream ) with chocolate curls. I'm afraid I'm hooked on the strawberry + raspberry sauce thing at the time and keep buying punnets and punnets of this fruit , breakfast, lunch , supper ..............Yummy . It really is quick , easy and the taste................OHHHHHHH you have got to try it . Willows.

Hubby ( oh wisw one ) has been looking into the door alarms so I'm not sure what he is doing at this time as I seem to be one of these sleep, sleep and more sleep weeks.............. But thank you kind person for the information on the subject Personally I think a 12 foot crocodile on a chain in our pond would be a better preventive measure for would be burgerlers , but the cost of the food for the thing excludes us from getting one .....although I hear that 'man traps' are now on the increase and I've just dig a huge pit in the garden and covered it with sticks and leaves. I'll get the next one who thinks they can take our stuff. Willows.

Hello................. I do sometimes get a reaction to dairy products, but I have to have been a bit of a pig eating stuff I know I'm not supposed to .........like I once eat a huge Devon clotted cream tea and ended up in A & E with my throat closing up and my face twice the size , gasping for breath , interesting reaction from the lady on the front desk I seem to recall................and the A & E doctor............cant think why But at this time I am being as good as I can and eating very little ' cant eat that or else foods' if you get my drift. I still think Hubby has this secret plan to send me round the twist ( English saying for mad) by painting bits of my body while I'm asleep at night or slipping sleeping tablets into my cocoa in order to get a bit of peace from my constant running around the house at full speed, hoovering, washing windows and cutting the lawns each and every day ( I wish ) ................but dont you worry I have this plan next time he tries anything I've got my GTN spray ready and waiting for a quick blast up his nose ..............Willows.