*dons apologetic cap*

Dear blog readers,

You can assume several things from the lack of blogging recently. Namely:

1)Health is good

2)I love my new job. Love it love it love it.

3)I am very very busy at said new job.

3)I have learnt so much already my brain is bursting with information which is making me a tad more dappy and forgetful than normal (yes that is possible).

4)It is a bit of a shock to the system working full days and I am subsequently exhausted (but in a wonderful "just need to sleep but ooh can still breathe so well" way)

5)I am sleeping quite a lot.

6)Blogging services will resume shortly, thank you for your patience.

7)Did I mention that I love my new job?

I feel so priviledged to be able to work....I know that sounds rediculous but it's true. I have always had quite a lot of energy and now I can challenge it.

Harefield appt on monday, will update after that, honest....

What a difference a year makes....

Monday of Half term - February 2007.

I am lying in bed in intensive care. i still have the ventilator attached via a tracheostomy. I cannot eat, cannot talk, cannot move unaided. I am in the middle of a vicious cycle of panic attacks (which will very shortly be greatly relieved by appointments with a psychologist but I do not know that yet). A close friend of mine brings my sister up to the hospital to visit, and they try to calm me down and make me comfortable, mopping my forehead and squeezing my hand. I am finding it very hard at this point to see that I will ever resemble my normal self again, that I will ever even leave the bed unaided let alone walk out of the room.

Monday of Half term - February 2008.

I am striding down the road towards the office, my first full day as a PR Executive. It's icey cold, wind whistling and smacking against my cheeks, I am grinning from ear to ear, teeth chattering in the cold. I can feel the sun on my back and the sky is a vivid blue. I am an independant, fully functioning, walking, talking eating, breathing woman doing everything a woman of my age should and could be able to.

It's good to be alive.

Exciting news time!!

(and no, for those of you which are scarily large in number with this guess no I am not pregnant...)

I have got my first ever real proper full-time job. As of Monday I am officially...a PR executive. YAY!!

It all started when I was talking to a friend of mine who has CF. She is so determined and dedicated that after completing 8 gruelling years of study she has opened her on clinic as a qualified osteopath. Since the inspiration was from her I'm going to plug her website which you can visit here. Hearing her talk about the work she was passionate about made something click in me. Since January I have been pretty nervous about thinking about the whole work issue, it's a scary minefield of a path littered with questions - what if I'm no good? What if I can't cope physically? What if the benefits people take away my benefits before I am financially secure? (wouldn't put it past them, I had to fight tooth and nail to proove myself ill enough to get incapacity benefit in spite of having been given 12 months to live already).

But I decided that I just needed to get up and to try. It's scary thinking you might fail but surely the biggest failure is never to have tried in the first place.

So I emailed a friend who works in PR to see if I could shadow her. She in turn got me a work experience placement with this company who liked me so much I was lucky enough to be offered a job.

I don't think it's really quite sunk in yet. I am totally over excited. I love PR, I've been doing it in my own special way over the past few years for Live Life Then Give Life but always wanted to persue it professionally, learn a bit more about the field I floundered around in. And now I have this amazing opportunity I am overjoyed to be able to leap up and grasp it.

Big, scary working grown-up world, look out: here comes something pink and sparkley and she's flying right at you....

It's been a very busy week. It has also been a totally head-spinning life-changing week and I have some quite exciting news....but I'm going to be mean and not blog about it till it's all signed sealed and delivered.

Thank you for all the fascinating input on my last post, both on here and emailed to me privately. I get a great deal from reading others' opinions and feelings, so thank you for contributing.

For a number of reasons, this campaign has been brought to my attention. As you know from this blog I love reminiscing so was eager to join in, however when I clicked on the page box to enter my memory I suddenly realised I couldn't narrow it down.

What is my favourite childhood memory?

Playing games with my sisters? (predominantly involving the stairs being a mountain and us owning an (invisible) pet goat)
Playing in the park?
A specific holiday with my family?
A birthday, christmas or celebration?

What I actually went for in the end was a vivid memory which comes back to me every November....of standing around a bonfire watching the flames leap and crackle, wind whilstling around me and feeling the heat on my face, holding onto an adults hand. I relished in the fact that everyone would congregate together, huddling in the cold to watch. I loved bonfire night (still do, in fact one of my first posts on this blog was about fireworks). Clearly the pink and sparkly attraction is there, but there's also just something rather exciting about being outdoors in the cold with the warmth on your face from a roaring crackling fire.

Interestingly, every memory I treasure most has something to do with people, and hardly any were of presents or other material things. Some of the happiest moments of my life have been the simplest; laughing till my sides hurt with my sisters or a friend, snuggling up on the sofa with the fire on with A, things like that.

Anyway, more participation please; what's your favourite childhood memory? I think I'm just getting lazy and want to read everyone elses thoughts...

I’ve been thinking a lot about religion today.

Various things have triggered it – there’s lots of talk about it on various (strong believers’) blogs talking about how their faith has got them through etc.

I am not religious. At all. As I think most people know. Not that I have anything against people being religious obviously, in fact I was at one point in my young teens a church server. I agreed to do it and ended up getting myself to and from the church on a Sunday (not being from a religious family). Thinking back to it I don’t think I got much out of it, not in the spiritual sense. But I liked the people and I liked helping out, and I did join in the prayers although never prayed of my own accord (unless I was really very scared).

Of course then like any well-balanced teen I swung from being involved in church duties to “there’s definitely nothing out there I know it for sure as why would such horrible things happen”. This was triggered predominantly by the death of a young friend of mine. And when I say young I mean young; he was just nine years old.
I like to think that by now, in my old age (ha) I have developed a slightly more balanced perspective on it. I am most definitely not religious, but I would no longer vehemently argue against people that there isn’t anything out there, for two reasons. Firstly I don’t consider myself to be knowledgeable enough (the world’s a pretty big place, let alone the universe) and secondly, I now realise there is no positive by trying to convince someone that their belief system is false. After all, I had belief systems that got me through my wait for transplant, it just so happens that they weren’t anything to do with God.

I had faith in people, and I blogged about it all on here. I have faith in people wanting to give, people wanting to help (not everyone I’m not that naive) but that someone would choose to do so and it would in turn help me. I had faith in the doctor’s care for me, and my family’s love for me. And it was things like that that got me through. So rocking someone else’s belief foundations can’t really be that helpful.

One of the things that has really got me thinking about what faith does to us is this blog here. I managed to get myself to have a look (I haven’t been able to as I find it hard as I will explain) and I am thrilled to say both mum and baby seem to be doing well at the moment. I urge you to pop on and send good wishes if you can.

The thing is, all of their decisions were made, not according to the doctors, not according to what’s best for each other or what would have the most likely good outcome, not even what they both desired most of all, it was made because they felt it was God’s will. Actually rereading that I suppose that is what they both desired most of all. I hesitated on talking about this incidentally as I by no means want to offend anyone but when I did look at Nate’s blog he seems to be very level headed and able to explain his feelings and beliefs well so hopefully if he reads this he will understand I am just thinking out loud rather than making disparaging remarks.

There is never a right path, but if it was me, in my head there was the clear safe option and for me it would have been a different choice. Perhaps that’s because I pondered on worst case scenario more (loss of both lives) and the possibility of having a child post transplant, but of course then we go into the topic of abortion and that’s really another blog. Point being doctors’ advice a lung function of no lower than 60% to have a child and so this cannot have been medically advisable. But then that must be where faith comes in. I have faith that I should listen to the doctors and listen to my heart (I’m quite strict on myself and decided at 16 when my lung function crossed the 60% boundary that I wouldn’t have children pre transplant as I wouldn’t be able to be the mother I wanted to be and the mother I felt they deserved) and they believe in God.

As I say it’s not a personal attack – if you read Nate’s blog they seem like a really lovely couple, and clearly have a massive support network of family which is fantastic. I am just talking to myself really to try to understand better, as I just can’t no matter how hard I try.

There was a philosopher called Descartes. Most people recognise him from his most famous quote “I think therefore I am”. He wrote some fantastic philosophies but unfortunately they had one key flaw; because he believed in god, the answer had to be that God was the cause and the root, they rhyme and the reason, which in turn made his philosophies convoluted and he ended up contradicting and confusing them more than once, and his arguments, which started off on solid focused tracks seemed to deviate and loop to ensure they came back to the answer he needed to find.

The one thing I know I will never get my head round is the belief that some religious people hold that your life cannot be good without a divine presence in it. That makes me a bit annoyed really but I think only because I have such a strong belief (ah even I am using that word) that you are the maker of your own destiny. Perhaps it’s because it makes me feel like I have control even at times when I don’t? If any of you have read Satre (Existentialism is a Humanism) you may know a bit more what I’m talking about. I don’t accept everything he says but I do agree with a lot of it.

I don’t think its depressing thinking you are the only one who can make life what it is – I think it’s liberating. Perhaps that’s why that’s the belief I choose to hold, after all I am a self-confessed control freak. I think personally if I felt I had undergone what I had as I was being punished for previous sin (as one Christian friend once told me) I’d go mad. Perhaps I need to not believe equally as much (and maybe even for the same reasons) as they need to believe.

This is a really really long waffle. I have been sitting here for about 20 minutes deciding whether to post it or whether it’s too risqué, but I think I’m just going to post it and see what happens. Chat away on the subject if you want (the world would be a boring place if everyone agreed with each other) but please be nice to me...and each other.

I have had the most exciting couple of days ever. A friend managed to secure me some work experience with a rather good PR company in London and amazingly they said they’d love to have me come and give it a go!

Everyone there is so lovely, they’ve all been extremely welcoming and eager to show me how things work, what to do etc. It is absolutely shattering and I am crawling home by the time I leave but I’m loving every second and soaking up anything and everything they’ll throw at me like a thirsty sponge.

Very short entry tonight (self explanatory from above) but I do need to tell everyone that I may or may not have taken my mobile for a swim in the bath this evening. Consequently when I switch it on it merely flashes brightly at me, whining whilst doing so. So that is why I am ignoring calls/texts – I will also have lost all my numbers (most were on the phone memory) so please drop me an email with yours if I should have it.

In fact I have had a disastrous evening, where I have also left a pan on the hob till I realised the room was getting rather hazy and rescued a smoking blackened mess (first ever time I’ve done that believe it or not) and dropped a jar of honey on a wine glass smashing both.

I think that it’s fair to blame all this on A as he is away for work and clearly I am not old/responsible enough to be left to my own devices.

Oh and I should be in the Times tomorrow. Don’t say I didn’t warn you!