I have been poorly sick for a while now; and what I have mainly been poorly sick with is Stress.
This is annoying because, although moving was stressful, that is now behind us and I feel I should be 'over' it. Sadly, the signs are that I am not.
I am prone to stress and it has various ways of manifesting itself, but generally it chooses one way and does that to the nth degree, then gets bored and moves out for a while. Obviously the whole moving thing threw it into a whirl of confusion and it decided just to go for gold and hit me with everything.
So I have very red itchy palms just now. This is a genetic thing that my mother and at least one female cousin of mine suffered from ; the cousin concerned is a doctor and she did tell me the medical name for red itchy palms. I can't remember what it is, but I do know it's a pain.
I have a patch of something nasty and itchy on the sole of my right foot. I'm not aware that this is genetic, but it is stress triggered and I need to start treating it with a steroid cream soon or it will just spread.
My restless leg syndrome is very present just now, especially at night, and to add to the joy of nations it has been joined by restless hand syndrome. The latter tends to kick in at about 8.00 in the evening and settles down at about 11.00, when the legs take over. I literally cannot describe the feeling of either of these things, except to say that it's basically an irresistible urge to move the leg or hand affected, which sounds like nothing but is in fact extremely unpleasant. Especially since moving the affected part does not in fact take away the sensation of needing to move it.
All of these I have had off and on for years ( although never more than one at a time until now ) but 10 days ago they were joined by shingles. This is a first for me and I sincerely hope it is also a last because it is not fun. A very sore and itchy rash, which occasionally prickles, accompanied by pain in places the rash doesn't reach. It was diagnosed in time for me to be given antivirals - 10 pills a day for 7 days, which was horrible in itself as I hate the physical process of taking tablets - but I still felt rubbish. The best thing to do apparently is to rest and relax until it's all over, but no-one tells you how you rest and relax when you've just moved house and are surrounded by a multitude of unpacked boxes. Nice trick if you can work it.
So that sort of explains why there hasn't been a blog post for a while, because I really haven't had the energy, but possibly I am really on the mend now because here I am typing away.
I don't suppose anyone wants to see a picture of the truly horrible shingles rash that I had on my back, because why would they, so instead here is a photo of one of the recently purchased lavenders at the front door. Because lavender is supposed to have soothing properties, yes?