Still feel really sick today

I woke up earlier this morning to take my antibiotics and then went back to sleep as I just didn't feel very well at all - my sinuses are hurting me, my head hurts, my lungs hurt, my throat hurts, my ears hurt and it all feels really congested in my upper respiratory area. I still felt dizzy and nauseous and weak.

I have the "asthmatic cough" again, which means the bronchitis has been triggered yet again by last night.

I was also feeling hot and cold last night - just a bit of a fever too.

I have an appointment with my regular doctor today, so I will explain all of this to him to try to get an appointment with an allergy specialist.

When I went into the family room in the morning to take my antibiotic (I have to take one every 8 hours for the tooth abscess), my mother and step-father were there, she was kneading some dough and he was sitting on a chair watching television. I took the antibiotic with some water and on my way out of the family room, my step-father goes to slap my backside as I am walking past time in a playful, angry way. He's so inappropriate. I got out quickly and he didn't touch me. But he acted like he was about to - with my mother in the room too. Sick sick sick people!

At the doctor's appointment, I told him all about my super strong allergies to everything, that I have been getting so sick lately with upper respiratory viral infections almost non-stop since the beginning of the year and that I just feel so tired all the time. He told me he could hear the congestion in my voice, so that was validating. He also referred me to an allergy specialist. I told him about my idiot family and their inability to understand that someone can get allergies as bad as me and that all this sickness I have been subjected to has all the worse since I cam back from the coast in late-November 2009 and had to live in the same house as all of the abusive family I have around me every day.

When I finished there, I had a bit of shopping I had to do and then I went home.

I prepared some food for dinner. My step-father was in the kitchen and then LayZ boy came into the kitchen as soon as he knew I was home. He has this weird obsessive need to be around me and antagonise me when he knows I am here. He then said to me, "loser, are you going to ask me to take off my jacket?" as his way of greeting. I just ignored him and held my nose while I was in the kitchen. I took my food into the lounge room, away from them, to be able to eat in peace and quiet.

After dinner I went to my bedroom, as the television in the lounge room isn't very clear, plus I wanted to turn my heater on and get warm. I turned on the computer for a short while and then I had to have a lie down - I was exhausted from doing the shopping, making dinner and eating it, that I had to sleep.

I fell asleep for about 1.5 hours and when I awoke, I felt completely exhausted but I forced myself to get up because if I kept sleeping, I would wake up in the early hours of the morning and wouldn't get back to sleep for ages and wreck my internal body clock even more.

It's now 10pm and my head still hurts, my sinuses hurt, I still feel dizzy and nauseous and lethargic and weak. Hopefully I will feel better tomorrow!

Feeling dizzy and unwell again today

When I woke up today, I did so with great difficulty. I felt so exhausted and it felt very difficult to move my body. 

I had the alarm set for 9.45am, but when it went off, I changed it to go off at 10.45am instead and even though it went off every 20 minutes, I didn't get out of bed until about 1pm. So tired and feeling sick.

I found it very difficult to get to sleep last night. All of the nonsense with my brother upset me more than I realised and thinking about them all and the fact that I have absolutely no relationship with any of them upsets me a lot too. It's very difficult to live in the same house as people who are supposed to be your close family members, but instead who are totally unsupportive and unloving towards you.

Most of today I have been feeling hot and cold, have had the bronchial cough full on again and just feel really exhausted and lethargic. I just want to go to sleep. Earlier, when I was holding the cat in my arms and closed my eyes to rest them a little, I started to sway, like I was about to fall. My ears have been really hurting a lot since last night, so they are probably infected by a virus now too which is probably the reason why my lungs hurt again and causing me to cough. Ugh!

Because I feel so lethargic, I haven't really eaten much of anything today other than two cups of herbal tea (one peppermint, one rose hip), a row of organic dark chocolate and a packet of tangy chips. No wonder I am losing weight as that is not enough food!  I need to warm up the food I had yesterday to eat some proper food to provide me with some proper nutrition.

One good thing about today was that I got to speak to my grandmother to see how she is. My mother called her and I asked to speak to her after she finished talking to her. My grandmother is still in the hospital getting monitored by the doctors because she did have a heart attack, even though it was mild, it still did happen. I told her I was sorry I couldn't come but I have bronchitis and it wouldn't have been a good thing if I came to see her as I was sick. She told me that she could hear my voice sounded congested and not to worry, to take care of myself, she would be okay. I told her she needs to eat what they tell her as her diet is the basis of her ill health in regards to her heart disease. She listens but I don't think she takes much notice. She hears the same thing from my aunt and her husband (who also had a heart attack years ago), but as my uncle said, they cant monitor her eating every minute of the day, they can only do so much, she needs to take care of and responsibility for her own health.

Very sore back muscles

The last 2-3 days I have had such sore back muscles around the middle of the back on the right hand side. So sore that I cant turn to my right without wincing in pain. I don't have full movement to my right and my whole right side feels very painful and sore.

My back is so sore that it hurts to breathe and sneezing, forget it! As soon as my lungs get filled up that much, it puts pressure on my back muscles and hurt so bad that mid-sneeze, my body gives up on it. This also means I cant breathe in too deeply because that also puts pressure on my back muscles and starts to hurt too.

The image here shows the exact muscle which is sore - serratus posterior. As you can see in the photo here, it attaches to the ribs at the back, which is why, when I breathe, it hurts. When you breathe in, your ribs expand to accommodate the expanding lungs and anything attached to the ribs also gets affected, so it hurts to breathe in.

It only really hurts when I try to do certain things that cause me to put pressure on that muscle, such as breathing in deeply, sneezing and even reaching around to my right hand side to do anything. Needless to say, I have been trying not to do the aforementioned, in order to prevent the pangs of pain. If I am just sitting there, not trying to breathe too deeply, it does not hurt much.

This happened because I had used several pillows and a v-shaped pillow to lie on so that my head could be elevated higher than my chest area, to help me breathe more easily, mainly due to the bronchitis, but also because of the pharyngitis, sinusitis and post-nasal drip.

During the night, while sleeping propped up on all these pillows, I must have twisted that particular back muscle somehow to cause the pain.  It happened a few weeks ago, due to the same reason (propped up pillows) and only dissipated when I started to do some stretching exercises.

I have been doing some stretching exercises today and yesterday to try to stretch that particular muscle (and surrounding muscles), to try to reduce the pain and make it better. It should be okay within the next few days, I think, as long as I continue the stretching exercises.

Grandmother is sick and in hospital

My maternal grandmother had a mild heart attack on the weekend and she's in hospital now.  She lives about two hours drive from here, so my mother decided to visit her and decided to take her son, LayZ boy with her. Of course she knows I wont go, even if I was well, as I wouldn't spend that much time with that idiot because all he would do is say stupid obnoxious things to me the whole way there and back, but when we were in the company of our relatives there, he would be so quiet and shy, which would only infuriate me more! The idiot. My mother knew that, which is why she asked LayZ boy to come with her and only half-heartedly asked me if I wanted to come, knowing full well that I wouldn't. If it was just me and her, it would have been different.

Anyway, I wanted to write another post about my grandmother as the last one seemed to go too long about what happened today and I couldn't fit in the stuff about my grandmother there, so I created a new post for that reason.

My grandmother is an old woman, who is in her 80's. She lost her husband (her second husband, who is not my grandfather, her first husband was) about two years ago to renal failure. My grandmother lives in a small house by herself, but she lives right next door to her other daughter, my aunt, so she has company as my aunt lives with her husband, her husband's mother (who is 96 and still mobile) and their son (my first cousin). Their daughter is married and lives a few hours away with her husband and their kids.  While my grandmother is alone, she has people around her for company, not just her family, there are also neighbours in the street that she socialises with too.

When I came home from the shops I called my aunt's house and my uncle answered and told me that my grandmother was in "special care", not intensive care, so that was a good start, as it meant that she was not critical. He told me she had a mild heart attack and that they were taking care of her at the hospital. He had been there most of the night before (I think she must have been admitted yesterday some time) and today it was his wife, my aunt's turn to visit with her. He gave me the name of the hospital so that I could call her. I told him I didn't go because I have bronchitis and don't feel so well. He agreed that it was a good thing for me to stay away when I was sick as it wouldn't do to infect grandma with a virus while she's not well.

My grandmother has coronary artery disease and angina. The angina is due to the coronary artery disease, which means the arteries leading to her heart are clogged with cholesterol and plaque, which makes it difficult for the blood to be pumped to her heart properly. This is probably what lead to her heart attack - the heart was starved of blood and therefore oxygen. Lucky for her, the blockages are not too major, otherwise who knows what would have happened! Lucky she's on a whole range of medications for thinning her blood, reducing blood pressure, reducing fats in her blood and reducing cholesterol, so she didn't have a worse reaction.

I decided to call after I had dinner, as I didn't eat much during the day - I had had my tea and left the house. Dinner consisted of a large rissole, some avocado on rye/seed bread and grilled tomato. I need the meat for the iron.  After dinner I sat down to watch television and rest, as I still didn't feel well and didn't manage to call my grandmother. Neither did my mother call me. She must have been pissed off with me for telling her again that she was being inconsiderate. In fact, she got downright nasty, by telling me that she wasn't going to take my brother with me, that she was going to leave him here with me, just so he could antagonise me. Isn't she lovely? What a mother I have? A bitchy, nasty, vindictive mother who relishes in making me feel bad!

Anyway, not having either of them around has been brilliant. The only problem has been that I cant enjoy it as much, as I am sick and am also worried about my grandmother, which both suck as they are occurring at the same time. Oh well, at least LayZ boy is not here, which is the biggest boon of all.

I think I will have to get me to bed soon as I do not feel well at all.

Feling like crap yet again today

My bronchitis is worse today as are my menstrual cramps, so I feel like crap again! It's hard to breathe without coughing that dry, almost asthmatic cough and my body feels just so lethargic and my mind isn't functioning that well either. A few hours of feeling good last night and then I feel like crap again today.

Earlier today my mother told me that my maternal grandmother is in hospital after suffering a mild heart attack on the weekend. My grandmother has high blood pressure, high cholesterol, high blood triglycerides and about two years ago had a blood clot on one of her organs and had to be treated in hospital with blood thinners until she got better. My grandmother is in her 80's and has been taking medicines for something or other ever since I have known her.  Apparently she wasn't feeling well on the weekend, her chest was hurting her, but she didn't do anything about it because, knowing her, she didn't want to acknowledge it and also didn't want to bother anyone. My aunt, her other daughter lives right next door to her with her husband, his mother and their son (my first cousin), so my grandmother has support close by.

My mother then proceeded to tell me she is taking my brother with her to see his grandmother in hospital and then as an afterthought, because it was after she told me how she found it about my grandmother, what happened to her, how she was, she then asked me if I wanted to come with them (very half-heartedly), knowing full well what my answer would be. A big, emphatic no! She didn't want me with her, she wanted my brother with her, which is how she likes it, because he's just as mental and deluded as she is and that's why they get along. I told my mother to call me when she was at the hospital with grandma so I could speak to her and of course she said she would do it, but of course she wont.

Just after that, I went to the kitchen to make some tea, to try to soothe my lungs and coughing a bit and she was making cafe latte. She only turned the exhaust fan on just before I came into the room, even though the coffee had already been boiling and when I asked her why she didn't turn the fan on earlier, she of course told me she did, even though I heard it being turned on just before I came into the room. Then she got angry with me, as usual. It's my fault for asking her to be honest with me. It's my fault for asking her to respect me. The thing with the hot milk that she boils is that it makes me feel really sick. I cant handle the smell at all. The smell of hot milk, combined with coffee makes me dry retch - my body just reacts that way to it and just about always has. I am lactose intolerant, so if I am around any butter, milk, cream or sour cream that are being heated up, they all make me feel that way - really nauseous, like I am about to projectile vomit. My mother of course, thinks that if it doesn't affect her, then there is no reason why it should affect me either, not realising that we are not the same person and that she is not lactose intolerant and can eat anything. That thoughtlessness and dismissiveness of hers towards me is really irritating.

In amongst this, Lay-Z boy was having a shower and using all of his products, which are so cheap and nasty and full of strong, synthetic perfumes that make it hard for me to breathe. He's been given alternative products, but wont use them, he continues to use his own things and continues to buy replacements for his products when he runs out, when he's been told that they make it difficult for me to breathe properly, especially when he prances around the house, up and down the hallways and stays in the room where I am. Then if I leave, he goes to his room and puts more product on and stands in the hallway near my room, to try to get more of his perfumed products into my room and make me more sick.  God he is so sick!

I told my mother that it was very inconsiderate of them to not think about me when I cant breathe properly right now and his perfumed products make me worse. Her response: "I cant smell anything". Man, it is unbelievably frustrating to hear that. She is so dismissive of me and my illnesses. She cant seem to understand that we are not the same person and that I get asthma-type reactions to a number of chemicals and am allergic to everything, when she is not and neither is anyone else in the family. No amount of reason or sense seems to convince them to have a little bit of consideration and decency. None.

As I had to go to the shops to get some food, I just left without saying goodbye to any of them. There was no point as far as I was concerned. I had to go to the shops to replenish my food, as I had run out. I buy my own food and my mother buys food for the three of them - we don't shop for food together and don't cook together either. We are the fractured non-family.

Stress is taking a huge toll on my health

The constant stress of being around these chaotic, manic, obnoxious people is taking a huge toll on my health, to the point where I have been sick almost every day from a viral upper respiratory infection, almost every day for the past three months! I have had sinusitis, colds, the flu, pharyngitis and bronchitis, as well as allergies. The bronchitis makes it very hard for me to breathe properly.

My face looks terrible too. The stress is starting to take a huge toll on my looks lately. Even I can see how terrible I am looking every day! My skin tone looks bad, I have dark circles under my eyes, my hair looks limp and I have lost the sparkle in my eyes.

The viral infections mean I get hot and cold chills and fever, I feel totally lethargic and exhausted. My energy levels are so low.

I also don't sleep very well. I have really bad quality of sleep, often waking up many times during the night because I get sleep apnea - with my nasal passages completely blocked and then my mouth being closed too, I stop breathing, at which point my body realises that I am not breathing, wakes me a little to make me conscious and then I start gasping for air and wake up with a startle. It freaked me out the first time it happened and took me ages to convince doctors that it was happening (I don't fit the regular profile of a person with sleep apnea as I am not obese or even overweight), but now it happens every so often, I know what it is and I try to calm myself down after I wake up with the gasp for air and try to get back to sleep again.

With the insomnia, it means even if I do get to sleep and stay asleep, I don't feel at all refreshed when I wake up - sometimes I feel even more tired that when I first went to sleep!

I am a right mess at the moment and I just want someone to show me some kindness and gentleness.  But I think I will have to comfort myself with the cat's love as he is the only nice, sweet thing in this house. He tends to sleep in my room every night, at the foot of my bed. When he's ready to go out, he gets up from his sleeping position and walks around and makes a little purring noise and let him out. It's because I am such a light sleeper at the moment that I rouse immediately as soon as the cats wakes up. At least he loves to cuddle with me before going to sleep and before leaving, so that is the only time I get some loving and even though it's only a little bit of love from an animal, at least it's something and at least it's unconditional love and comes without any strings attached. The cat loves me for me and that's nice! At least someone does!