The Joy of Discovering that You're Sick

Ever since Charlotte was born I’ve been tired.  I find it hard to recover when I’m sick and I’m sick often.  Despite trying to exercise frequently and have a healthy diet, my weight has crept up slowly and this makes me even more tired.

When James came along I practically turned into a zombie.  My head felt full of cotton wool most days and for the first time in my life my photographic memory started to fail me.  Sometimes I struggle for the right words to express myself and my coordination has gone through the floor.

To me all these symptoms were things you could attribute to being a very tired mother of two small children who still gets up in the night to breastfeed, who still works and who doesn’t have a cleaner.  Most of the time I thought I was being overly dramatic and I figured most mothers were in the same boat as me.  So I didn’t say much about it to anyone except for Charles. 

The next step happened six months ago when I started to get crabby and irritable.  My patience became a thin fuse and despite having the most gorgeous, helpful little girl in the world I was constantly snapping at her* and my poor husband.  I figured much of it was a reaction to the awful periods we’d been through while Charles was depressed and I still think that played a part in it.  But it certainly wasn’t the whole story.

Then a couple of months ago things finally became unbearable.  My tiredness became beyond not wanting to get out of bed.  I’d wake up in the morning and my bones would physically ache.  Despite the cries of my son looking for a feed it would take me a five minute mental pep talk to convince myself that I could get out of bed.  Many times poor Charles would simply go and get him for me.

Just walking out the door and to my car to go to work in the morning felt like wading through molasses.  It peaked one morning when I found myself thinking that if this was going to be my life from now on then it simply wasn’t worth it and I wanted out.  That’s about the point that I realised something was really, really wrong.

My mother died so young from cancer and left so much undone.  To me, life is the most precious gift you ever get so to think that I’d had enough and would be quite okay with going to sleep and not waking up again was a wake up call.  That’s when I decided I needed help.

Last week I went to the doctor and cried.  I poured it all out and told him how sick I am all the time, how tired, how crabby and forgetful, how much it hurts to just walk and how my brain doesn’t seem to work properly.  I told him I knew something was wrong and begged him to help.  He patted my shoulder, ordered every blood test known to modern medicine and told me to come back in a week.

The doctor was convinced he’d find something given what I was describing and he said his money was on an endocrine disorder – probably an underactive thyroid.  I went home and Googled my symptoms.  Dr Google was not as encouraging**. 

Today I got my results.  The doctor was obviously excited and pleased to see me when he called me in.  He was grinning from ear to ear and almost giggly.  We’re talking about a very sober 50-something man.  He doesn’t normally do giggly.  He asked me how I was feeling and I explained that I was sick (again) and he said he wasn’t surprised.  Then he said he wanted to ask me one question before going through my results.  Question, was I on any medication for cholesterol?***

Er.  No.  This made him really excited.  He flashed my results up on the screen and told me that everything he saw indicated that I’m quite a fit person who eats well.  My iron is fabulous (for a woman) and they rarely see cholesterol levels like mine unless the person is on cholesterol medication (normally bad cholesterols should be between 3.5-5.5 and mine are 3.6.  Good cholesterol should be over 0.8 and mine is 1.2).  He said he’d normally expect to see the sorts of results he was seeing on a very fit, active young woman and not an overweight thirty-year-old mother of two complaining of exhaustion.

Then he got to his big reveal.  I have a chronic B12 deficiency.  Meant to be between 200 and 600 mine are “under 50” which means they’re too low to test accurately.  Low B12 is responsible for a bunch of stuff that can masquerade as other issues which is why it hadn’t been picked up until now.  Plus there was the whole issue of my just soldiering on and not complaining about it.  Basically I have almost no metabolism, no immunity, no energy, neural issues and impaired cognitive function. 

By this time he was shaking his head in wonder and marvelling that I was even managing to get to work and go about my normal life.  Most people with my sort of levels have had serious health issues that land them in hospital.  The list of things B12 deficiency can cause is frightening.  He described me as a “stubborn little thing getting by on sheer bloody will” and claimed that in 30 years of medicine he’d never seen anyone with levels as low as mine.

I started to cry while he walked me through the treatment.  He was so excited I thought he was going to start dancing. I guess as a doctor it doesn’t get much better than this.  He described the treatment as a “magic pill”.  I need three injections of B12 and because my levels are so bad I need them a week apart for the next three weeks instead of the usually recommended three weeks apart.  Then we’ll retest the levels and depending on how they look I may need another three injections.  The beauty of it is that I’ll probably start to feel better within days.

I asked him whether I could correct the issue long-term with diet and this was where he sobered up.  There are three groups of people who tend to have B12 deficiency – vegan children, people who lack the ability to strip the B12 from their diet and absorb it (these people are generally diagnosed early in life) and, finally, older people.  He doesn’t know why my levels are so bad but he thinks it might be that I’ve spent my whole life not able to absorb B12 and it’s only now that the situation has become critical that I’ve been diagnosed. 

The upshot is that I’m going to need monitoring for a long time and it’s distinctly possible that I won’t be able to fix things with a supplement – I’ll probably need B12 injections at regular intervals for the rest of my life.

I am seriously okay with that and I told him I would do almost anything to feel normal again.  He laughed when I said that and told me that I probably haven’t experienced “normal” for my whole adult life.  My B12 deficiency has probably always been present and has just been slowly getting worse over the years.  He was almost crowing while he told me what a difference these shots would make and how it was going to be the best Christmas present I ever receive.

Now I feel like Alice at the rabbit hole.  I’m scared to dream about what these shots might mean but I know things won’t get any worse and that’s comforting.  In hindsight I realise that I should have realised how I was feeling wasn’t normal and insisted on thorough testing years ago.  But it’s amazing how much you’ll put up with when your life changes by degrees and, let’s face it, everyone is their own benchmark for normal.

I’ve been crying with happiness off and on all day now.  I’m fantasising about having the energy to be the wife and mother I want to be, to do the things I want to do without feeling like a 90-something-year-old Alzheimer’s patient.  I wasted no time after my appointment – I had my first shot of B12 this afternoon.  I’m going down the rabbit hole.  See you on the other side!

* Charlotte if you ever read this when you’re older I want you to know that I am so very, very sorry.  You deserve a patient, kind Mama and I’m going to do my best to be that person.

** Cancer, thyroid, cancer, cancer, cancer.  Cancer of the thyroid.

*** Last year my bile duct got blocked by a gall stone.  I found out when I turned yellow.  My blood work at that point showed a cholesterol level of 7.9 which is extremely high but the doctor assured me it was probably just my liver being all screwy because it was backed up.  I was supposed to have the levels checked further down the line but had never got around to it.  So I asked to have it included it in the battery of tests.

You call that a Water Baby? THIS is a Water Baby

Both of my kiddies are enrolled in a swimming school we feel reflects the kind of learning we want them to have when it comes to water.  King’s focuses not only on water safety and survival, but correct technique from their very first class through to the teenage swim squads.  They theorise that if kids learn perfect technique from day one there won’t be a need to undo bad habits and fix messy swim stroke later on should they want to go further and have a swimming career.

In high school I was very good at swimming and used to win swimming races quite a lot.  Unfortunately I had zero technique and did it on talent alone.  I clearly remember an exasperated friend who used to train with the AIS turning to me after coming second (again) and panting, “I don’t know how you do it Bec – you look like a drowning bloody chook when you swim but you beat me every time!”

Unfortunately while talent will help you win your zone, regional or even state carnivals, it will not get you to the nationals, let alone the Olympics.  Hence I have placed my children in a swim school that won’t just teach them how to swim but will teach them how to swim properly so they can go as far as they like with it.

Originally I thought Charlotte was the water baby in the family.  She loves bath time, adores swimming…well really she just loves anything at all to do with water.  Then James came along and I realised what a water baby really is.

A water baby will stand there grinning a goofy grin of triumph after he manages to pull the dog’s water bowl down on himself because at least he’s wet.  Then he will sit in the puddle and turn blue from the cold while he splashes.  A water baby will spend the entire time his sister is in swim class trying to get into the pool himself no matter how many times he’s reprimanded, smacked or turned upside down and tickled until he is gasping for breath.  A water baby does not go to swim classes to learn how to swim – he goes there purely to maximise the amount of skin that’s touching water. 

From the moment we enter the sliding doors at the pool to the moment I strap him, protesting stridently, into the car, James’ singular focus is on being in the water.  He does not wait for Mum.  He doesn’t care if no one catches him when he goes in – you’d think he’s perfectly happy to drown.  It is exhausting. 

These days I try to time our arrival at the swim centre so I have just enough time to throw him into his swimmers before class starts.  Charlotte and I wear our swimmers there with dresses over the top for quick stripping purposes and our shoes are always slip-ons or sandals.  There can’t be a single moment where we’re delayed because in those supervision-free moments he will find a way to break free and throw himself into the deep end.

I am convinced that swimming classes boosting his water confidence is having the opposite effect to the desired outcome.  He is not learning respect for the water and how to get himself out of trouble.  He is learning how to jump from a great height into God-only-knows-how-deep water and thrash until he’s rescued.  It amazes me that he comes up beaming every time.

Now THAT’S a water baby.

More Secrets - Canberra's Forgotten Arboretums

So I promised you that if anyone sent me anymore “secrets of Canberra” I would publish them here and let you know.  Most of you are familiar with the controversy that is John Stanhope’s National Arboretum. 

I personally think it was a good idea.  I know there was a huge cost involved.  Yes, I’m sure we could have spent it on lots of other worthy projects.  No, it was not the smartest thing to attempt to establish in the height of a drought.  But, let’s face it, you don’t get a national asset like Commonwealth Park or the Governor General’s residence by pinching pennies and thinking small.  You need vision and you-know-whatsits of steel.

Anyways, tonight as we had dinner with the family the subject of Environa came up.  Most of the people present had never heard of it before but Charles’ Aunty Bev, who knows quite a lot, knew about it and she knew about Erica’s hidden Parliamentary Triangle suburb. 

As we discussed the things people don’t know about Canberra, Bev tossed me another one.

Stanhope’s arboretum is not Canberra’s first.  She claims that originally there were 52 or 53 – some of them out of town, some of them around town.  She’s even been into the bush where one of the original ones is still going strong, quite forgotten by the world.  Over the course of time many of them have disappeared through development, natural disasters or neglect. 

I’m on the trail now to find some of them.  So far we have:

* Lindsay Pryor Arboretum (burned out in the January fires)

* Westbourne Woods (still largely there)

* The Cotter Block Arboretum

* York Park Oak Plantation (still kind of there)

* Bendora Arboretum (still there and magnificent despite a bunch of fires)

* Glenloch Cork Oak Plantation (now the largest Cork Oak plantation in the southern hemisphere)

Know of any of the others?  More info as it comes to light!

Apparently Today was my "Day Off"

This morning right before I got up I was chatting away to my husband when this little verbal gem popped out of his mouth, “Well unlike you, I don’t get the day off today.”

Day off?  Huh?  Am I going to a day spa?  Have the Christmas elves come to do all my cleaning during the night?  Was I missing something?  Oh no – he’s referring to the fact that I don’t have paid employment on Wednesdays. 

Now normally as I go about my business on Wednesdays I don’t really think too much about all the chores I have to do while I have two kids in tow – I just get on with it.

But today I continued to seethe on and off all day about the “day off” comment.  While I washed, mopped, vacuumed, dropped off forms, wrangled my way through swimming classes with the kids and sorted washing I tried to work out how on earth what I was doing could possibly be referred to as a day off.

All I could surmise is that the man is obviously deluded.  Staying at home to do chores and errands with two bored children is a tad harder than going to work and wrangling my way through legislation from the comfort of an air-conditioned office with a padded executive chair.  Let’s face it, if the stay-at-home gig was really such a picnic I’d be doing it full time. 

It’s 3pm now and I haven’t sat down all day until now.  I’ve got stacks more chores, dinner to cook, another batch of gingerbread to make and, if I get through all of that, I might have a chance to work on some of the Christmas gifts we’re meant to be making.

I don’t know what time the work will run out for me but I’m clear on one thing – the instant he gets home he’s going to apologise for the “day off” comment or he’s going to die.  The choice will be his.

*  Bliss.  I’ve just realised that he’s got all next week “off” while I work.

Did You Know?

It astounds me how you can live somewhere for ages, thinking you know everything there is to know about it and yet you can still have moments where you suddenly realise that you’re not privy to some of it’s most intimate secrets.  It’s a bit like being married to someone for 20 years and then discovering that he had a whole other family complete with wife and kids before he met you. 

I’ve lived in and around Canberra almost my whole life and she still shocks me.  I didn’t know anything about the 1971 flash flood and drownings at Yarra Glen until two years ago when people protested the sculpture that was raised there...and not dedicated to the victims.

Similarly I had no idea that there had ever been brickworks in Yarralumla, let alone that they still existed, until I saw a news segment about the planned redevelopment there.  

Further discoveries include;

*  The Weetangera Cemetery

*  A bunch of stuff about Commonwealth Park including the buried Flugelman sculpture.

*  The All Saint's church in Ainslie that used to be the Necropolis train station in Sydney.

*  The heritage listed CSIRO site otherwise known as Gungahlin Homestead.

Anyways, apart from all those lovely little historical discoveries today I discovered something that floored me.  I was checking out a friend’s address on Google maps when I noticed this;

Yup.  A whole suburb out near Hume called “Environa”.  And it looks like a really well laid out and planned place.  At first I thought it must be a new subdivision and I instantly went looking for property for sale there.  Nope.  Nada.  Almost nothing on Google at all.

Why?  Because Environa was a subdivision 80 years ago!  You can read all about Environa, the original plans, the structures that still survive there, how it died off thanks to the depression and how the family have preserved aspects of the suburb that never was here.  You can also see the original lithographs promoting the subdivision here. 

Enough of the infrastructure exists today that you can see geographical features on Google satellite photos which were obviously the original main roads of Environa.  I'm still not sure why this discovery shocks me, it just does.  Maybe because I was absolutely primed to buy one of those blocks because it looked like a thoroughly modern well-designed suburb from the safety of Google maps and I loved the sound of it.  Environa.  It sounds like something our current government would come up with upon the establishment of a "green" living suburb.  *sigh*  

Anyways, to discover more interesting facts about Canberra and her long-forgotten secrets I suggest checking out Dave's ACT.  Dave is a Canberran historian who has documented what he calls his "urban exploration" of Canberra in his blog.  It's a fascinating read.

One final note - my friend Erica has also sent me the link to another little-known Canberra secret - ironically another vanished suburb right in the Parliamentary Triangle that is now celebrated by the fossicker's delight known as geocaching.  Good job Erica!

Feel free to write to me with little known facts and I'll pop them up for others to wonder at!

Christmas Gifts - Gingerbread

Today’s sustainable Christmas gift project is …gingerbread men!  Or in this case, gingerbread trees because my kids have lost my gingerbread man cutter.  Nevermind!  Every year I make a huge amount of gingerbread for dispersal at Chrissy gatherings.  The concept is lovely – a folksy Christmas tradition that looks good, smells great and tastes like distilled essence of elves, tinsel and fairy lights all in one.

The reality is appalling.  It takes ages to make, I always have at least eleventy million moments where I think the dough is shot to pieces and can’t be rescued and all up it takes about three hours of my life and approximately four months off my life expectancy.  Yet somehow come November I’ve forgotten all that and I think, “Christmas is coming…I know, I’ll make gingerbread!”

So while the recipe is below I’ve decided to jot down a few important gingerbread-related pointers first as a reality check.  In no particular order;

1.)  It cooks quickly.  By the time you’ve cut out the next tray of gingerbread, the first one will be ready.  It takes about eight minutes which means you’ll be on your feet for at least an hour rotating gingerbread in and out of the oven.  You can tell that it’s ready because the edges of it are turning brown.

2.)  Gingerbread is pretty malleable when it first comes out of the oven and it sweats as it cools.  So use a sturdy egg flip to shift it and make sure it goes onto a flat wire rack – don’t stack them on top of each other to cool or the upper layers will be misshapen and the bottom layers a bit soft.

3.)  If you make it when there are people in the house you need to resign yourself to the reality that not all the gingerbread will survive contact with the enemy.  The very sternest of death threats will ensure that 90% of your biscuits survive until morning but that’s all you can hope for.  You can improve the odds by rolling the last little odds and ends out and baking what I like to call Picasso biscuits which have no discernible shape.  Let the marauders take the Picassos – save the Rembrandts for your Christmas function.

4.)  Take your time making the icing and when it says add the icing to the egg white slowly, we mean s-l-ooooo-w-l-y.  The test to see if you made it right is to tilt the bowl onto its side.  If the icing doesn’t move you made it properly.  The pay off for taking ages to make is of course that gingerbread icing is the easiest icing to work with and goes on beautifully.  Free form any design you like – all these Christmas trees took me ten minutes maximum to ice while Charles applied the “baubles”.  It’s pretty hard to make your biscuits look bad.

5.)  Caveat to #4 – there are no guarantees and sometimes your bikkies will look terrible.  Somehow my snowman started looking like Orko from He-man as I iced him.  

Then Charles got the giggles and gave it eyes.  It was not an improvement.

Please note people that I doubled the recipe below and it made the quantity you see in the photo minus a few test pieces identified for quality control purposes by Charles and Charlotte and, of course, the Picassos.

Ingredients:

125g butter

½ Cup brown sugar packed firmly

1 egg yolk (save the white for icing)

1 teaspoon bicarb soda

3 teaspoons ground ginger

2 cups plain flour

3 tablespoons golden syrup

Icing:

1 egg white

1 cup icing sugar

Method

Cream the butter and sugar until they’re fluffy.

Add the egg yolk and beat well.

In a separate bowl sift the dry ingredients and mix together.

Gradually add the sifted dry ingredients and golden syrup to the butter mix.

Mix well and knead lightly.  If the mix is too dry, add more butter and syrup.  Add more flour if the mix is too sticky.

Rub flour over your rolling pin and then roll your mixture to a height of 3mm.

Cut the biscuits out and place them on a tray lined with baking paper*.

Bake in 180°C oven for 8-10 minutes until gingerbead goes golden brown.

Icing:

After the biscuits have cooled, it’s time to ice them. 

Beat the egg white until stiff peaks form.  Place icing sugar in sifter and add gradually while you beat.  One or two taps of the sifter against the beater at a time slow, people, not a quarter of a cup a go. 

Once mixed put it straight into an icing bag and start drawing.  This icing literally “dries out” so the sooner you use it, the better.

For an awesome look add some lollies using the icing as glue.

Om noms people – enjoy your gingerbread!

*  I like to roll the dough out onto baking paper, cut the biscuits and then lift the surplus dough from between the shapes.  I am nowhere near good enough in the kitchen to move raw gingerbread dough from the rolling surface to a tray.  But best of luck to you if you want to give it a go.

How to Counterbalance Study with Brainlessness

A frequent TC blog reader friend of mine pointed out today that for a while there not so long ago this blog went through a bit of a drought and now, suddenly, I’m back to regular posts.  Any reason for that?  Well I’d have to say that it’s got a lot to do with the insane decision to return to study before all of my course credits expired.  Let me explain.

I hate higher level learning.  Even as you sit through your classes you know that you’ll store the knowledge you’re meant to be soaking up into the “3 months max” mid-term memory centres.  The instant you finish your final exam, 90% of the semester’s efforts will be dumped from your hard drive.  Of the remaining 10% it will break down like so – 4% retained because it’s actually useful, 2% retained solely for trivia nights, 2% hidden in random memory centres and only ever used to win an argument when your chips are really down and the remaining 2% is the stuff that, while thoroughly useless, refuses to leave of its own volition and must be eradicated over time mainly through the consumption of alcohol.  Much alcohol, mainly vodka.

During periods of study I turn into a total zombie.  I withdraw from society and exist solely for work, kiddy-related activities and study, study, study.  All other intellectual pursuits fall by the wayside.  I have a theory that you are only given so much smart to work with.  If you use it up during semester trying to turn a recipe into biscuits or read a map, you will be rendered totally incapable of understanding the long term implications of Commercial Bank of Australia Ltd v Amadio no matter how many times you read it.  You can, however, counterbalance the drain on your brain power with the application of brainlessness.

Observe.  Bec’s usual activities – unguided study on topics that interest me, building, craft, cooking, etc.  Bec’s activities during study?  Well let’s see.  My accounting diploma gave me insomnia (which weirdly seemed to afflict all accounting students) and we all found ourselves watching some awful soap opera thing called “Sunset Beach” – the only program available on television at two in the morning apart from infomercials*. 

Sunset Beach was something like Days of Our Lives on a beach where the total implausibility and continuity of the plot and characters had been ratcheted up to within an inch of it's carefully contrived life.  Looking back now I'm convinced it was a bizarre sort of quasi-experimental test either to see how much tripe the public might swallow or to see just how cheaply bad television could be made.

During semesters we were all thoroughly hooked (and I do not mean just the women.  Even the guys were watching Sunny B and shuddering, “Oh my gawddd” over the juicier plot devices).  We’d gather in the CIT canteen over coffee to discuss Annie’s shock return from the dead** and whether Caitlin would ever reveal the loss of her pregnancy to Cole***.  If one of us was managing to sleep at night the other insomniacs would dutifully relate the contents of each night’s episode.  Even being temporarily banned from the cafeteria for re-enacting a particularly moving scene using the fried rice and awful spring rolls as props**** did not clue us in to the fact that we were way out of control.

And then something weird would happen.  Come holiday time and every single one of us would be back to the Financial Review and Four Corners.  Obviously Sunset Beach was our mental escape – a mindless distraction to counterbalance the mind numbing pain of audit control procedures.

Law was a similar story only this time we’d gossip over WHO Weekly and watch crap exposés on Today Tonight or A Current Affair.  You’d plow your way through as much Garcia v National Australia Bank as you could and then read something refreshingly vapid about who had been caught with whom celebrity bed-hop-wise.

With two kids, a husband and a job these days I have no counterbalance for the mental strain of study other than sleep.  And that’s okay but it means that semesters are like mental marathons. Now that it’s all over I feel like I’ve just been let off the leash.  I’m gorging myself on socialisation, building projects, craft projects, cooking escapades and snuggling up with my small family unit in bed.  And blogging.  Always with the blogging.

So there you go – expect much December and January and then nothing through until June!

*  And there are only so many steak knife sets you can own before you realise that, while using a steak knife is incredibly cool, a can opener is a much easier device to open cans of dog food with.  Faster, too.

**  Wanted for a crime she didn’t commit Annie hid in the coffin of a dead guy who was being flown across the country for burial in order to escape.  Unfortunately for Annie the widow of Mr Stiff decided at the last minute that it would be cheaper to cremate him before shipping.

*** Lost the baby in a car accident but was afraid she’d lose her man if she ‘fessed up because she thought the baby was the only reason he married her.  It wasn’t.  Aw.

**** Snow and search flares if memory serves.