At the beginning of the year, my dad suffered a heart attack, we are very lucky that he is still with us but the heart attack has been very difficult for us as a family to deal with. My dad recovered pretty quickly but he was left unable to drive or work for at least a month. My parents live in a little village that hasn't got great connections, so I spent a lot of time helping out or keeping my dad company whilst my mum was at work, although it meant I had very little time to myself what with that, having to take Mr Badger to and from work and the chores of everyday life with a toddler in tow it was nice to spend some quality time with my dad.
Shortly after my dad returned to work I started feeling a bit run down and extremely tired, I put it down to having a cold coming but the cold never came. On the whole I rarely get ill, but there has been regular times in my life where this has happened. I was suffering from a Hidradenitis suppurativa flare up which can happen when I'm run down and just so happened to be looking into foods that could cause a reaction with auto immune diseases when I came across a girl who had managed to put her auto immune diesease into remission. She has Lupus an auto immune diesease that I wasn't at all familiar with, interested in how she put it into remision with diet I started to read, it was like a light switch turned on, as I was reading I was ticking off these symptoms that I'd been having on and off for years, things like the tiredness but also joint pain, migraines, but most importantly, the butterfly rash across my face. I've been to my previous Dr several times with these symptoms and every one has insisted I was tested for diabetes, every time the test came back negative. This time my current doctor was a lot more helpful, I explained how I had come across it and he was more than happy to order the tests. It's been a couple of weeks since then, my first round of tests showed that I am severely deficient in vitamin D which can, in itself cause fatigue, another part of the test showed that my ANA also came back positive and the way they are stained indicates Lupus but I have to have some further tests to confirm it. Part of me hopes for a diagnosis, just so I can tackle this head on, but we shall see.
Anyway, this is why I've been AWOL, but you'll be pleased to know I'm back and bloggier than ever!
Showing posts with label cold. Show all posts
Showing posts with label cold. Show all posts
Sunday, 16 March 2014
Saturday, 25 January 2014
Living with no heating.
Okay, I'm going to let you in to a little secret.....
We have no heating.
By this I don't mean out boiler is broken or we're waiting for an engineer, we just simply don't have central heating that works properly. When we moved into our new house it was the middle of summer and blistering hot, the thought of heating didn't even cross our minds, so when it started getting a bit chilly around the end of October we popped the heating on a few times, imagine our horror then our MONTHLY bill arrived and was £195! I did some research and it turns out that our storage heaters are not on E7 which means they don't run on a cheaper night rate, nor are they connected to a timer to make them come on at night, you have to turn them on manually, wait for them to heat up and then get your heating, extremely expensive if you forget to turn them off and they don't really kick out enough heat to get the room about 15C. Brrrr!
Since then we've been and bought an oil filled radiator for £25 and we have run two of these every day, sometimes all day and haven't had a bill higher than £90 and are getting less.
These last few months I've worked hard trying to keep the house nice and warm and prepare for when the temperature really drops in February and now have a little routine that is working well and keeping the house no lower than 18C with is quite comfortable.
One thing that I have found absolutely essential is when to open and close your curtains, if its still dark when you get up, don't open them! You will lose so much heat just from opening or closing them at the wrong time, as soon as the sun starts to go down you need to draw them, it really is that simple. Make sure all of your windows are covered, it's were most of your heat will escape, if you don't have curtains make them out of anything you can, we spent about a month with a shower curtain in our bedroom window, it might not look pretty but it will help keep you warm.
Another tip (which is a no brainer really) put on a jumper. You can't expect to be able to sit around in your underwear and be warm when you have no central heating, it just isn't going to happen I'm afraid, wrap up in your dressing gown, put on socks and just dress snugly.
I use lots of ways to heat up the house that I will cover in more depth in the near future but unfortunately I have housework to be getting on with *sigh* which, incidentally is another great way to keep warm!
We have no heating.
By this I don't mean out boiler is broken or we're waiting for an engineer, we just simply don't have central heating that works properly. When we moved into our new house it was the middle of summer and blistering hot, the thought of heating didn't even cross our minds, so when it started getting a bit chilly around the end of October we popped the heating on a few times, imagine our horror then our MONTHLY bill arrived and was £195! I did some research and it turns out that our storage heaters are not on E7 which means they don't run on a cheaper night rate, nor are they connected to a timer to make them come on at night, you have to turn them on manually, wait for them to heat up and then get your heating, extremely expensive if you forget to turn them off and they don't really kick out enough heat to get the room about 15C. Brrrr!
Since then we've been and bought an oil filled radiator for £25 and we have run two of these every day, sometimes all day and haven't had a bill higher than £90 and are getting less.
These last few months I've worked hard trying to keep the house nice and warm and prepare for when the temperature really drops in February and now have a little routine that is working well and keeping the house no lower than 18C with is quite comfortable.
One thing that I have found absolutely essential is when to open and close your curtains, if its still dark when you get up, don't open them! You will lose so much heat just from opening or closing them at the wrong time, as soon as the sun starts to go down you need to draw them, it really is that simple. Make sure all of your windows are covered, it's were most of your heat will escape, if you don't have curtains make them out of anything you can, we spent about a month with a shower curtain in our bedroom window, it might not look pretty but it will help keep you warm.
Another tip (which is a no brainer really) put on a jumper. You can't expect to be able to sit around in your underwear and be warm when you have no central heating, it just isn't going to happen I'm afraid, wrap up in your dressing gown, put on socks and just dress snugly.
I use lots of ways to heat up the house that I will cover in more depth in the near future but unfortunately I have housework to be getting on with *sigh* which, incidentally is another great way to keep warm!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)