Weight loss, hospital and upcoming excitement!

I've had a bit of a rough time of it since my last blog post. My abdomen started swelling more, my breathless got worse, I couldn't eat and I had zero energy. After a few days spent entirely in bed we decided to go to the hospital to sort everything out. The main problem was I didn't eat so the weight was dropping off me and bare in mind I my swelling problem meant that I should have been gaining weight. You can really see how the weight has gone from my upper chest and shoulders. I've found bones I didn't even know existed. They didn't really do much at the hospital. I'd already doubled all of my water tablets but perhaps they took a long time to kick in as I started feeling better after being admitted. I started eating a bit better and they decided to let me go home after a few days as it would be a lot easier to eat lots of fatty foods at home rather than in hospital. They've threatened me with a feeding tube if I loose more weight. I'm just hovering over a severely underweight BMI at the moment and even though I've been stuffing my face since I left hospital and eating between 1,800 and 2,200 calories every day I haven't actually put on any weight. Although I haven't lost any either. According to my dieting app I should be gaining 1.5kg a month so fingers crossed that happens soon!

I'm feeling really insecure about the way my body looks now. I suppose if I was big and everyone kept saying "oh my god you've put on so much weight" and "have you lost weight yet?" and every time I tried to eat people said "why are you eating that? Don't eat!" I would feel the same way. I guess it's enivitable to feel self conscious about something everyone keeps talking about and you have to keep thinking about in order to accomplish weight gain or loss. I feel exceptionally angry at those posts that crop up every day on Facebook. Those "before size zero there was something called beauty" and "no one wants to hug a stick" posts. I find these really horrible. I wouldn't say, "no one like a fat person" or "oh these plus size models are disgusting". But FYI models are skinny because it's cheaper to make sample sizes of clothes in smaller sizes because it uses less fabric. Models all have to be the same height and size as the mannequins so that fashion designers can make clothes and know that they're going to fit whatever model they employ to wear it. It wasn't like an industry got together and decided to define beauty as skinny. There's no need to be cruel to thin people! I know people say they'd kill to have trouble gaining weight but I assure you if you were in my position you would be complaining too! 

I'm slightly concerned that I'm going to look like a drug addict after my transplant being so thin and with the medications making your hands shake. At the moment I look like some kind of child refugee who's got some serious bloating issues. Practically I'm constantly really uncomfortable with my bones being so close to the surface of my skin. I'm sleeping on a foam mattress and I still wake up with either my shoulder bones or my hip bone feeling seriously bruised. Size zero isn't all it's cracked up to be. I have a renewed sympathy for people with eating disorders. 

On to some good news, I have actually been feeling loads better since leaving hospital. I've had a run of really good days, which is brilliant. As long as I have a reasonable nights sleep I can pretty much garentee that I'll be able to get out of the house if someone invites me somewhere or I make plans, which is a huge improvement. Of course I will have the odd bad day but at the moment I'm enjoying my run of good days. 

My upcoming excitement is that I'm going to have my Hickman line fitted next week. Okay, so I'm weird to be excited about this but just the act of doing something that might possibly help my disease is much more preferable than sitting around waiting for the next lot of bad days to land me back in hospital on a feeding tube. Although I swear I'm going to be so annoyed if the new medication makes me sick cause I can't be not eating again! Mostly I've heard good things about it and hey it's something to do, mixing up medications and changing dressings, which is much more exciting than sitting breathing into a machine every two hours. Even though the medications is continuously pumped you only have to refill it every 12 hours and change the dressings on the line once a week so it's a lot less effort on my part. Sure having the line fitted isn't going to be much fun and I've heard they're really painful and bruise up a storm when they're first fitted but I'll deal with that. I've had a lot of catheters in my time and I can't imagine it being more painful than that. They both involve sticking tubes into arteries at the end of the day. 

The only annoying thing is that because it's changed every twelve hours you have to go to bed and wake up at the same time every day because if you suddenly stop the infusion your body can go into shock and people have died from sudden withdrawal. So I think I'm gonna go for 11am and 11pm as I like a good lie in because I wake up a lot in the night and although I go to bed early I don't get to sleep till 12 usually. I'm never going to stay out later than 11 so I'll always be home. The morning one might be a bit more problematic. I'll probably have to get up at 10.30 to mix up all the meds in time to change it over at 11 but if I have to go somewhere. Most likely a hospital appointment I'm going to have to change it on the road, in a cafe or at the hospital, which might be a bit annoying. But I don't think there's going to be a good time to do it really. If I did it earlier in the morning I'd have to do it earlier at night, which might interrupt meals out and visiting family and friends, which will probably be more annoying. 

So you'll probably be hearing from me after I've had my line fitted or before if I have any more thoughts. Thanks for reading! 

Body Confidence: Be Proud of Your Battle Scars!

Dealing with new scars on your body isn't easy for everyone. I've had scars for as long as I can remember and they've never bothered me a huge deal but during my teenage years I did start to feel a little insecure about them, especially as I was dancing during that time and my dance uniform showed them off quite a lot.

I realised last time I did a blog post about scars I didn't actually put in a picture of my own scars, which was a bit naughty of me really when I was telling everyone to not worry about them. These are the best pictures I could get while still preserving my modesty! The first one is my pacemaker scar, and as you can see the pacemaker is pretty visible as a lump under the skin, in the second one you can see my heart surgery scar, which you can see in the third one goes all the way down to my belly button because I had surgery on my abdomen after my heart surgery so they carried on with the existing scar.








(You have no idea how weird it feels putting a picture of your belly button on the internet!)

It does surprise me how much people stare at my scars when I'm talking to them. I don't really think about my scars much so the only time I'm aware of them is when they get stared at. But I definitely think the staring was worse when I was a teenager and was around other teenagers. So if you're that age and becoming insecure by your friends and classmates staring, trust me it does get better as you and the people around you grow up. I think people stared at my scars, if not everyday, every other day, but now it's quite unusual for it to be as common as once a week. Everyone starts feeling insecure about themselves at that age so it's natural for everyone to be looking at each others bodies to try and figure out what "normal" is, so don't just assume they're thinking something mean. The thing about people is, they're far more likely to be thinking about themselves and how they're acting and how they look and their own insecurities than they are going to be judging or thinking about you.

Scars are an inevitable part of living, whether it's a little mark from a pimple you picked at a little too enthusiastically, a scar from falling down some stairs when you were a kid, or a huge open heart surgery scar, they're all a part of you and a part of your story. You can't and shouldn't wipe out a part of your history just because it's unpleasant. That goes for stretch marks too, I have stretch marks over my hips and bottom because I was really underweight as a child and I didn't have much of a bottom at all, so when I went through puberty, I grew outwards really fast and the stretch marks appeared (Yep, stretch marks happen to petite people too!). Even though they haven't got nearly as interesting a story as my scars, I still don't dislike them, to be honest I'd completely forgotten about them until I thought about writing this blog post. We should just be glad our skin is able to stretch that well, it would be much worse if it started cracking and bleeding! The same with scars, they're not painful or unsightly, besides people pay hundreds and sometimes thousands of pounds to scar their body with tattoos to remind them of their past, you've got an awesome one for free that will always remind you of that operation you survived. Just because scars aren't as fashionable as tattoos doesn't mean they aren't as meaningful or beautiful. Not to mention giving you a bit of a head start when it comes to dressing up as a zombie for Halloween and coming up with awesome stories about your scar actually being from a shark attack for your nieces and nephews. And girls, don't worry, most guys find them cool, you're definitely not going to be missing out on any dating opportunities because of your scars. Men aren't idiots, they know the beauty industry is not an accurate representation of female beauty better than most of us do!

I never think about my scars when I'm buying clothes or choosing what to wear. I don't feel any less uncomfortable when they're on show and when they're not. Even when I was choosing dresses for my school prom, my scars weren't something I was considering. Although, I remember when I was reading Harry Potter for the first time (probably around the age of 8) I had a dream where I walked up to the mirror of erised and I saw myself without any scars, so maybe I was more aware of it than I remember but that's pretty much the only memory I have of wishing I didn't have scars. When I was a teen my best friend had scars too and we chatted about it. So, if you're a teen and feeling uncomfortable about your scars, just chat to your friends about it, I promise you that no one cares about them as much as you think they do and you might find out that someone else has a scar too.

I'll be putting my pictures up on my Instagram to show everyone that scars are nothing to be ashamed about or self conscious of. (check out my new instagram feed on the side bar, and there's a link to follow me there too!)

I hope this has helped you to feel better about any scars you have!