Well that was fun!

Theo was ill for three days and then he felt fine. By Wednesday though Levi and I had started getting symptoms of the same illness. We didn't feel bad at first, we just had an annoying tickle at the back of our throats.

We were supposed to be going to Laura's Halloween party but when we woke up on the Saturday my tickle had turned into a bit of a cough and Levi's had become a sore throat. Mia's still only little and we didn't really want to give it to her so I phoned Laura to say we wouldn't be coming to the party.

I then spoke to Jeris who asked if we wanted to go to Ollie's Playland in Poole and as we felt well we decided to go. Big mistake. Levi ran round for about ten minutes and then started complaining that he was tired and wanted to go home to bed. We managed to stay for about an hour and a half then Jeris took us home.

Within about half an hour we were both burning up and showing all the symptoms of swine flu. I've had colds before and I've had flu before but this was bad. Lynda was also suffering from flu so we were spending lots of time sympathising with each other about how awful we felt and how nobody was looking after us.

Whenever I get a cold I have to keep a close watch on my asthma as having a cold often leads to me getting a chest infection and ending up in hospital. My asthma was fine until the Wednesday, then my peak flow started dipping a bit. I phoned the doctor and asked if he could do me a prescription for some steroids as I knew I'd probably need them in the next couple of days. Theo collected the prescription at 7pm and my brother drove him round trying to find a chemist but they couldn't find one open so I asked him to take it home and get my mum to collect it the next day.

My mum had been bringing food for us every few days. Because my dad has asbestosis we couldn't risk him catching what we had as it would probably kill him so my mum had to put the food on the doorstep ring the bell and then leg it.

Anyway, that night my asthma got really bad. I have a nebuliser at home but no matter how many times I used it it wasn't stopping my symptoms. I very quickly got to the point where I couldn't talk or get upstairs so I couldn't phone anyone or get the children to get help. Luckily Theo has to get up at 6am to get ready for college so when he got up we phoned the out of hours doctor again. He said I had to go straight to hospital.

I didn't really want to wake my mum at 6 in the morning so decided to leave it until 7. Theo helped me get upstairs so I could have a bath and get some fresh clothes on as there was no way I was going to hospital stinking (my temperature had been over 39 all week). Anyway I got out of the bath and got dressed at 6.45 and then the doorbell went. By some miracle my mum had decided to get up at the crack of dawn and drive all the way over to the big Tesco at Tower Park as soon as it opened to get my prescription.

She came in and I told her what the doctor had said. She said the hospital wouldn't want to take me in if I had swine flu and suggested I take the steroids and give it an hour to see if they worked. She then went off to do something and by the time she came back I was really struggling to breath and had turned a lovely colour. My hands looked like a corpses hands, they were all dark and my nails looked all yellow and nasty.

She phoned the doctor again and this time they said to call an ambulance. A few minutes later a paramedic car turned up. He came in wearing a protective mask and gave me another nebuliser with some oxygen. It didn't work at all so he gave me something else but that didn't work either so he called for another ambulance to take me to the hospital.

Levi really likes emergency vehicles so was very excited by all the commotion. They got him to hold the oxygen when they took me out to the ambulance and as he was walking along he said 'this is the best day of my life'.

They gave me yet another nebuliser in the ambulance again with no effect. When we got to the hospital they put me in a little isolation room and everyone who came in and out had to wear mask, gloves and an apron. They gave me all sorts of different drugs to try and get my airways open but nothing worked. My oxygen levels got lower and lower eventually hitting 71%. My heart was also very fast so they put me on a heart monitor. After a couple of hours the doctor came in and said they were going to move me to resus.

There were two other patients in the resus room and as you can imagine they were very unwell. Well because of the risk of infection from me they made the other patients put on protective masks and they had to isolate the whole resus room. All the doctors had to wear protective clothing and when the other patients were moved out of resus they had to be kept in isolation too. I even heard them talking about having to close the department.

As you can imagine I felt awful. The A&E staff have enough to do without having to spend all that extra time taking precautions.

Anyway they gave me a drip with magnesium in it which worked wonders and they put me on some high pressure oxygen so by 6.30 that night I was well enough to go up to a ward. They did an x-ray and told me I had pneumonia and if I hadn't come in when I did I might not have seen another day.

The next day the doctor said how much better I looked and he decided to turn the oxygen down. Within a couple of hours I was struggling to breath again. They then moved me down to the acute admissions unit where I continued to have breathing difficulties. When the doctor came round on Saturday morning he called an intensive care doctor to come and assess me. Needless to say that was really scary. She walked in dressed in a dark blue uniform and said she was an anaesthetist from intensive care. I had visions of them saying they'd have to knock me out and put me on a ventilator. They'd called her because my breathing was so fast and my oxygen levels were getting really low again.

Thankfully she decided I hadn't quite reached the point where I needed their help and that I'd be better off where I was. She then put me back on the high pressure oxygen again. The doctor came back later to tell me I didn't have swine flu after all.

I've been in hospital loads of times before with my asthma but I've never had an episode like this where the drugs haven't worked and where I've needed constant oxygen. It was rather frightening, I kept thinking about what would happen to the boys if I didn't make it home. I also thought about my faith and how sloppy it is sometimes. I'm about to start temple preparation classes but my life is far from temple worthy at the moment. As I lay there realising that life really is too short I decided to put my life in order.

On Sunday evening Bishop Kenchington came to give me a blessing. As soon as he put his hands on my head I felt a great sense of peace and knew that everything would be ok.

When the doctor came in on Monday I was feeling much better so guess what..........
he took the oxygen away. He was about to leave the room so I asked him if I was ok with no oxygen at all. He said 'no you'll be fine' but then he thought about it for a minute and decided to check my oxygen levels again. I'd only been off the oxygen for about 5 minutes and they'd dropped really low again so the doctor made the very sensible decision to put me back on the oxygen again.

Later that day they moved me up to the respiratory ward. I was put into a bay with 4 other women and a short while later we were joined by another nice lady. We all got chatting(as much as you can when 4 of you are oxygen dependant). It was quite funny at times listening to our coughing chorus. 2 of the ladies had the same rare lung disease, me and another lady were the asthmatic representatives, one lady had a heart problem and had had a chest infection and the other lady Angela had lung cancer and was waiting for a chest infection to clear so she could be moved upstairs to start her chemotherapy.

They were lovely ladies and as the week went on we built up quite a bond. Then on Wednesday night Angela began to have difficulty breathing, the staff were in and out to her all night but by the morning she seemed to have stabilised. At 8am on Thursday she was sat up in bed chatting to us then all of a sudden she started having trouble again. We all sat in shock as the crash team arrived and tried to resuscitate her. We heard them say she had stage 4 terminal cancer and there was no chance of recovery. Then they decided to let her go.

We then had to listen while they brought her husband in to see her.

The staff were really nice. They kept coming round to check we were all ok and they brought the chaplain up to see us. He spoke to everyone individually and then led us all in a prayer for Angela.

Thankfully by Friday I was off the oxygen and by Saturday I was well enough to come home.

I've been at home for a week now and I'm feeling much better. The doctors have said it will take me a while longer to completely recover but I'm making good progress. I even managed to go out today.

I'm really grateful to all my lovely friends who visited me, sent cards and gifts and phoned to see how I was. Most of all though I'm grateful to my wonderful mum. Not only did she look after the boys for the 10 days I was in hospital but she also brought me fresh clothes nearly every day and she cleaned my house from top to bottom.

Out of hours GP services

I went to Birmingham yesterday for an EO meeting. I was supposed to catch the 18.14 train to come home but got to the station in time to get the 17.14 instead.

I thought I'd phone Theo before the train arrived to let him know what time I'd be home, he sounded awful when he answered the phone so I asked what was wrong. He told me he had a really bad headache and had been about to go down the stairs when he'd gotten really dizzy and fallen down them. This had happened at lunchtime and he hadn't bothered to tell anyone!

I told him to get straight back into bed and then I phoned my mum and asked her to go straight over. I then got on the train and spent the whole time worrying about what was happening as my phone signal always dies as soon as I get on the train.

I eventually got to speak to my mum who told me that Theo had a really high temperature and a very sore throat. She said he was fine and that he'd gone to sleep so she'd left him to it and gone home.

I finally got home at 21.40 and went straight up to check on him. He was really burning up so I made him get in the bath and gave him some paracetamol. I started asking him questions while I changed his bed and he told me he'd fallen from the very top of the stairs and hit his head several times. He said he hadn't blacked out when he fell but he was unable to get up for a few minutes and afterwards was violently shaking, seeing double and feeling sick.

I then got quite worried so I phoned the out of hours doctor. I called at 22.10 and when I explained what had happened the woman said she'd have to call an ambulance. I said I wasn't really sure that was necessary and would prefer just to talk to a doctor. I said that I would be happy to have an ambulance if the doctor thought it was necessary. She was quite insistant that she'd have to call an ambulance but eventually she gave in and said a doctor would call me as a matter of urgency.

When they still hadn't called at 00.45 I phoned back. I was again told someone would phone me which they did at 01.25.

You've got to laugh haven't you, one minute it's so urgent they're insisting on sending an ambulance and the next they're leaving you for three and a quarter hours before they call you back.

It's a good job it wasn't anything urgent!

Life since the move

Apart from the quick post about Grampy the other day I haven't been able to blog for quite a while. We moved house at the end of August and although we had the phone connected within a week of moving in, it took almost 2 months to get the internet back on. We've also been really busy trying to get the house sorted and finding new activities for Levi as we're too far from Boscombe to continue with what he was doing before.

So far things are working out really well, he joined a new Scout group which meets about 300 yards up the road. He also started gymnastics and trampolining, he hated it at first but I told him he had to give it four weeks and thankfully by the second week he was really enjoying it. We found a new music teacher to give him cornet lessons and I'm hoping to get him into a new band now that he's no longer involved with the Salvation Army or the Coda fiddle orchestra. He didn't take too kindly to the idea of not going to his church on a Sunday and reacted very badly to having to come to my church.

In fact he didn't really cope with moving at all well and life was pretty unbearable for a while. He was in a foul mood all the time and most days were taken up with trying to reassure him and deal with the almost constant meltdowns he was having. He'd got it into his head that when we moved in the house would already be decorated and all the carpets would be down. We couldn't unpack most of his things until his room was decorated as we didn't want to have to move everything again so nothing was familiar and he hated it.

Thankfully my brother gave him a TV set and a playstation 2 for his room so he was able to sit and play with it which kept him occupied most of the time. And the bishop also arranged for two brothers to come round and decorate Levi's room. My mum bought him a Liverpool duvet set and matching curtains and I got him some Liverpool posters, a football shaped Liverpool cushion and a funky football lampshade. We don't have any carpets down yet but having his room looking nice (and full of Liverpool things) has helped him feel more settled.

Now that we're in a bit more of a routine we're going to get back into a few more educational projects. We started with these cakes which he made for my mum's birthday.

Another major thing which I should probably mention, we finally had our appointment with the paediatrician. I was really freaking out about this as we had been offered a late cancellation appointment which meant I only had 48 hours notice so my head wasn't really ready for it. Thankfully I was able to phone Sandra and Ann to talk it through. In the end it was ok. The doctor seemed really nice and she gave us a provisional diagnosis of Aspergers Syndrome. We now have to wait to see various other specialists for a few more in depth assessments which will give us an official diagnosis and a full picture of what his difficulties are.

More EO videos

While I was away from the internet the rest of our EO information films were put onto youtube. Theo is featured in a few of them and I think they came out really well.

Our garden

This is our lovely new garden. As you can see from the picture it was a bit overgrown so we had a lot of work to do. My mum brought the lawnmower over so we could cut the grass. We filled 5 large sacks with the grass clippings. I got my friend to come over and clear the veg patch which you can see on the right, she filled 23 large sacks with the weeds.