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Still at home!

What have I been up to the last couple of weeks? Living is the answer! I’ve been able to take the kids to school, do the food shop, have family dinners, see family and go out with friends. And it’s been bloody brilliant! 

That’s not to say that everything has been hunky dory. I’m on a reducing dose of steroids and 10 days ago my dose reduced from 30mg to 25mg. Within 2 days I was in agony, going to the toilet all the time and passing blood. So I rang the IBD nurse, who spoke to my consultant and back up to 30mg I went. The plan now is to taper off the steroids really slowly so instead of reducing by 5mg every week the reduction will be every 3 weeks. Hopefully that will give my body time to adjust to being less reliant on the steroids and stop me from flaring when the doses get lower. 

I think the adalimumab injections are definitely helping. Since being on these weekly I have felt soooo much better. But to get 5 good days a week I have to have 2 crap ones. I inject every Monday and for some reason the injections give me awful insomnia every Monday night. I literally get no sleep, so every Tuesday I’m exhausted. The injections also leave me feeling like I have flu for the first 24-48 hours so I’ve learnt not to plan anything for Tuesdays so I can just rest and feel sorry for myself! But it’s definitely worth it because before beginning the injections I was only getting 1 or 2 good days a week so for that to have flipped and it’s now only 1 or 2 bad days a week is bloody brilliant. 

I’m having to have weekly blood tests at the hospital to check my phosphate and adalimumab levels. So far these have all been ok so fingers crossed it stays like this. 

We’re starting to get ready for Christmas. Hubby has gotten all the decorations down from the loft and started putting the lights up. We always have a real Christmas tree so we will go and buy that on Friday when the kids get home from school and then decorate it on Saturday when all the branches have dropped. The last few years I’ve been really poorly in the run up to Christmas so it feels really strange to be feeling reasonably well. I did quite a bit of online shopping on Black Friday- all my nieces and nephews are sorted and so are the kids main presents. This year I’ve agreed with some family and friends to not buy gifts though as it can get daft me spending a tenner and them spending a tenner, often on stuff that nobody needs or really wants. And with everything being so much more expensive I would rather people save their money. I would much rather spend time with people, making memories, than have more stuff. 

Talking of stuff, I’ve been having a HUGE clearout and have finally gotten on top of the mess in my bedroom. My room had become a dumping ground for all the things in the house that nobody wanted or knew what to do with. And because I wasn’t there most of the time it didn’t really matter. But now I’m home (and planning to stay home) I wanted to get it sorted. It started out looking like this…


And ended up like this after a LOT of work…


I’ve been ebaying lots of the kids clothes they’ve outgrown and various other bits that were in my room. I’ve sold quite a lot of stuff and become quite friendly with the staff in my local post office! 
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