It's been well over a year since I last posted! Wow how time flies, and how life changes!
Since my last post, life has changed quite a bit for me! First off, I lost all my crafting mojo. I couldn't bear to look at my craft stuff, it caused me to feel stressed. You wouldn't believe how many times I nearly. Threw every thing into the bin. But something inside me stopped me being so rash and knew I'd regret it later. So I just left it and ignored it.
We put our house up for sale, it took AGES to sell, changed agents etc had lots of viewing but we thought we'd go on holiday, our first ever family holiday, and Sod's law... We had a phone call on the first day that we'd sold our house. So even the holiday was overshadowed with consent "oh my god, where are we going to move to? There's no houses for us out there!" So a week later, I spent a whole day viewing about 10 houses and none felt right. The last one on the list was literally a stones throw from our house but viewed it anyway just for sake of it and OMG as soon as I stepped through the door, I was in love, it felt SO right, I could see the boys playing outside and friends sitting around the large dining table. Fast forward a VERY stressful few months, and we finally got to move in in November.
Back track back to July, I had been volunteering at my local primary primary, the head teacher approached me and offered me a full time post as a one to one teaching assistant with an Autistic boy in mainstream. It felt a dream come true, I jumped at the offer.
August came and that's when the illness hit me.
I had been running on fumes for far to long, years in fact. My weight declined, I was barely 6 stone, I couldn't eat, then I had a full blown panic attack when playing cards with my boys. I had no idea what was happening, thought I was dying, so called for an ambulance. They took me in to be checked over, fast forward a few weeks, it was discovered I had a premature ventricular ectopic heart beat. Nothing serious, something I just have to live with. But I still wasn't eating. Saw a dietician in December, who couldn't help, so was referred to a stress management therapist. That was in February 2014. Wow, that is certainly an eye opener. He instantly diagnosed me with Chronic hyperventilation syndrome, (I over breath), it's caused by stress. Which in turn causes the ectopic heart beats and anxiety I'd been feeling along with it all.
So basically, my life of stress and worry has led me to ill health. It was caught in time, and to be honest I don't think I was that far from death, especially adding the fact I wasn't eating and could barely get off the floor some days. But now, I am weighing just under 8 stone, and eating like a horse and don't eat chocolate any more! I find it gives me palpitations.
I owe SO much to my therapist who has helped with breathing exercises to overcome the chronic over breathing and stress reduction, and helped change my thinking to live in the present, not the past. Not the future. To stop worrying about the small things.
BUT the best part is.... I have my mojo back!! And I have a craft room!! Which was a half finished porch when we bought the house, now it's kitted out with new paint, new skirting boards and. A big big cupboard, all done with my own fair hands.
I'm still in the process of unpacking my zillions of boxes and sorting my craft stuff but I will be doing a blog post soon showing my craft room makeover.
I'm still recovering from the chronic hyperventilation, it's very much like having chronic fatigue syndrome, in fact, as far as I'm aware, I think the two are actually linked! Talking really takes it out of me, I'm currently working on breathing properly when I talk. As does posture. If I'm hunched over I feel dizzy, wobbly and faint.
Moral of the story? Don't stress about little things, breath calmly and from the diaphragm, think about your posture, don't go one holiday and sell your house, don't also have 6 weeks off with 3 hyper boys and then go to work full time with a stressful job, then move house just before Christmas and freeze to death over winter because we couldn't get a chimney sweep to come until March!
So many new things to look forward to over the next couple of months, I can't wait.
