Back from Sunny Greece!

Hey Everyone!

We are back from our holidays greeted by the best news ever, my friend Chantelle got her double lung transplant on Monday after only been on the list for about 8 weeks! This is how it should be for everyone and I’m so happy for her. She has a little boy and husband and I am so thrilled that once she recovers she can be the mum and wife she has longed to be. Please pray she recovers well and will be home in no time!

So yes we are back from our holidays and we had a great time!

We stayed on Pete’s parents boat, it’s a different one from last time we went, this one is bigger and abit more luxurious, hurrah! We sailed around the Ionian Islands in Greece. At first the weather wasn't too great, I was sea sick on the first day and vomited up a load of sputum into a bucket, nice! On Wednesday (I think) there was a storm including thunder and lightening and then the weather was great afterwards. One day dolphins swam by the side of the boat which was fantastic; sadly I didn't manage to get a picture!

I'm glad we only went for a week though as I find it a very tiring holiday, living on a boat is hard work and although I didn't actually help with much of the sailing what I did do, tired me out! When I say its hard work its just little things like flushing the toilet is hard as it’s a pump, and getting in and out of bed as the bed is really high up or going below and top of deck as you are constantly going up and down some steps. Then staying on top of my physio was hard work as my stuff was packed away everywhere (you cant leave thing loose on a boat as it goes everywhere when you sail if you do!) and the cabin was warm to do my physio in, plus my nebulisers took longer as they seemed to get clogged up even though I rinsed them with boiled water or bottled water.

So although it’s a fun holiday, it tires you out and after a week I ready to come home! It took a day and a half to get rid of my land sickness; this is where when you go on land you feel like the room is rocking because you are so used to being on a boat!

Just so people can get an idea of how much medication people with CF take, this is a photo of everything I had to take on holiday with me for one week. This photo doesn't include my food tablets though.

I had a problem at the airport for the first time ever with my medication. I always take all my medication in my hand luggage because if my suitcase got lost or delayed I'd be in trouble. Therefore I take all my nebuliser stuff in my bag which is liquid. I put them in a plastic bag like required, well two plastic bags as one wasn't enough and I wanted to keep them separate and the woman got funny with me saying they weren't labelled as medication and in future I needed to bring the labels for all my medication. I told her they came in big boxes and there wouldn't be room so she told me to cut the sticker off every box that the pharmacist sticks on. Have you heard anything so silly?! She then put them through a vapouriser I assume to check they weren't dangerous and insisted putting them all in one bag when I'd separated my tobi and pulmozyme from my nebusal as they needed to go back in the cool bag. As if I could keep all my medication in their original packaging, I'd need a bloody sack to carry it all! I have a letter from my doctor which she never even asked for, I know they have a job to do but its so frustrating when they are talking about something they don't know about.

If you remember I complained last year that I had some problems with suncream, well I tried banana boat and Hawaii tropic this time and they were lot better combined with my salty sweat so thanks for those suggestions!

Here is a video of photos we took. Warning! The song has ALOT of swearing in it, so if you are easily offended turn your sound down! I had to have this song though to accompany the video!

Bank Holiday Galore!

Whoops, sorry it's been a while! In my defence I have been busy and then too tired the rest of the time!

There have been what feels like a million bank holidays which really don't affect my life that much as I don't work on Fridays or Mondays! However Pete has been off work as he took the days off in-between, so we have had a busy two weeks. Back to normality now and a chance to rest!

We started off Good Friday by commencing decorate the living room. We started by Pete stripping the back wall and I did the borders for the paint. We finally finished on Tuesday after having to apply four coats of paint along with doing all the glossing and killing the mould on the wall, so that my mum could put up the wallpaper on Wednesday whilst we were away. I do not like decorating one bit, it's messy, there's crap everywhere, your house stinks and to top it all off we had to wear masks when it was really warm, I don't enjoy feeling like I can't breathe when I’m already out of breath from moving around so much! There are some pictures of us in our sexy masks on Pete's phone but I’ll leave that for another day.... Just a note to those with CF, when stripping wallpaper you should wear a mask as mould likes to grow under wallpaper (advised by my physio), I could physically see the mould growing under ours but even if you can't see it, there could be small particles. A normal dusk mask is not good enough as mould particles are so small they can still get through, you need to get a mask that is FFP2 or FFP3 (it's printed on the mask), and FFP1 isn't good enough. I found this out after researching on the internet, click here for the link.

Here is our living room before,


After!




On Wednesday we drove down to Kent as it was finally our trip to Hever Castle! We stayed in Tunbridge Wells on the Wednesday night and went out for a meal which involved me walking up a very steep hill on the way back! Then on the Thursday after a rough start as Travelodge just decided to turn the water off before Pete had, had a shower, we went to Hever Castle. Here are some photos from the day

Then on Friday it was the Royal Wedding of course! Yes I think I am a royalist, I loved it! How can you not love the fact the Queen is riding in a 100 year old carriage or all the beautiful clothes or all the tradition, I think it’s great! My friend came around to watch it with me as Pete went to the rugby; she brought some lovely cupcakes with her with Will and Kate on so I forgave her for being half an hour late and missing most of the ceremony!

She was planning to stay all day but I had to ask her to go home in the afternoon as I really needed to have a nap and just be by myself so I could relax a little, I was so tired I wasn’t being a very good hostess. She then came back in the afternoon and somehow I ended up dying her hair and we got a takeaway. I also got a text from Pete saying he was on Sky sports as they’d videoed him and his mates wearing masks of the royal family at the rugby. So if you were watching the Leeds Rhinos game and you saw some idiots wearing masks, my husband was the Queen!

We went to church on Easter Sunday and then to my Nana’s for a Sunday roast which was nice. Then we have also been to a barbeques at my mum’s and I also went out for tea with my friends on Sunday.

So like I say I have been very busy and as a result feeling very tired! I’m just going to try take this week easy as we are going on holiday soon and I don’t want to end up ill and spending my whole holiday sleeping and feeling exhausted. I think Alfie is due a few walks this week though as he has been neglected slightly and been very well behaved so deserves them! By the way here is a picture of our new fridge freezer, it finally arrived after lots of complaining by me and ended up being delivered in a car by one oldish man, I was very worried but it worked out in the end..!