the glange.

Ask my mother, and she will tell you that I don't tend to do things by half. Unfortunately this also seems to extend to my health. Over the years I have had mysterious viruses, broken a myriad of bones and suffered from migraines and hayfever galore. And now I can add Glandular Fever to the list.

I always considered "the glange" to be something you get as a teenager and I can vaguely remember people at school disappearing to recover. Weirdly enough I don't think we were ever warned about it, Meningitis was the big warning disease then. My friend Anna and I made up a song about it - "Meningitis - look out! Meningitis - watch out!" it sounds way better out loud. Trust me. Anyways, turns out you can get Glandular Fever as an adult (much like Meningitis) and as luck would have it, when you do get it as an adult, you get it worse.

Hmph. Guess who got Glandular Fever in the Christmas holidays?

Perhaps this is why I'm starting to blog again. The glange has sucked me back in to a vortex of infantile slash elderly behaviour... naps are paramount, late nights are out, and the strongest thing I can have to drink is a good strong cup of tea. If you had asked me at the end of last year, I probably would have said that this would be great! Naps! Tea! What luxury! Ah dear. Take away the luxury factor and these things, dear reader, become a trial. A necessity.

Anyway, part of the bummerness about the disease is that I'm on part time wages, so I turned to the interwebs rather than a whole host of specialists for help with my recovery. There are ebooks written on the subject! Nuts! One woman recommends an organic vegan diet, but then that would go against the advice I got of eating an egg a day, as the yolk has all sorts of goodness. Then I heard no dairy, no gluten, no sugar. And then I read a whole lot of supplements including some very pricey glandular-fever-specific ones...

And that is when I made up my own ideas on what I can realistically handle! I'm eating as much wholegrain and fruit and veges as I can; no caffeine; as little sugar as I can handle (but wow Hot Chocolates are great!); and a host of supplements - Vitamin C, echinacea, Olive leaf, and I am on the hunt for something called 'astralgus'. Oh, and lots of water. But we should all drinks lots of that stuff anyway.

And then lots of rest, which is actually the hardest thing of all! Let's see how I go...
Any other hints you can think of?

third time lucky

I was on the phone yesterday to one of my best friends, Louise. I make this a statement in itself as we hardly ever talk on the phone, and everytime we do talk it is great. Now, I always know what Louise is up to thorugh her blog, and little comments on Facebook and the like, but she bemoaned the fact she doesn't have the same deal with me. So here we go.

This is (embarrassingly enough) the third blog I have tried out for size and I am sure you can look up my other ones through my profile. Needless to say, I hope this one has a bit more longevity...