The Yellow Orb of Positivity

Who else has a complete shift in mood the second the sun is shining? 🌞  I know I do and I have always been hugely affected by the weather. The second there is a sniff of spring in the air, it changes everything. It's always a sign of 'better days to come' for me.

As soon as I saw the weather was good this past week, I felt a pang of jealousy that I would be sleeping throughout the sunny days due to working nights. Whilst I'm talking about work, I'll give you a little update on my working life..... being a newly qualified midwife is so hard! I feel so overwhelmed most of the time and I was petrified of being on the delivery suite where I currently am based. However, I'm surprisingly enjoying it and I think once I feel more competent in areas of the care I am giving, I will actually like being on the delivery suite. Plus the team I'm working with are just amazing!

As soon as I finished nights on Friday morning, I had a couple of hours sleep and then waited to pick Noah up from school. The weather was still amazing at 3:20 and I just wanted a normal afternoon, doing normal things because it feels like forever ago since I've done anything normal. So we went to Riverside Country Park, got an ice cream and sweets and sat with the sunshine beaming onto our faces. It felt amazing and even Noah said he really enjoyed it. 

So, how else is the rest of my life going? Well, it's going 😂  That's all I can say about things at the moment to be honest. I have lots of things going around my mind often, but my life motto now is "things can only get better' (anyone who remembers the 90's can burst into a rendition of D-Ream if you'd care to).

I'm trying my hardest to get myself exercising and moving as much as possible, so that I can feel even better about myself than I already do. One of the midwives at work is a yoga instructor and offers a yoga class to us on a Sunday morning, so I have started doing that especially on the weekends I don't have Noah. Those weekends are still the hardest time for me and it is so important I keep myself busy, something which will become easier once lockdown lifts a little.

Again, the sunshine has given me hope for things to look forward to once lockdown lifts. Pretty much everyone of my friendship groups have messaged me to say let's arrange something for when we can see each other. So if it's not sitting around my chiminea in the garden with Bex and Amanda eating pizza, it's being in Keeley's garden having a garage brunch reunion or trying to arrange how a group of us can get out to Kel's place in Marbella later this summer for a long weekend.

I'll be honest, as the weather warms up, I'm gutted that our last hot holiday as a family was summer 2018 and that we will never do all the things we loved doing whilst on holiday together again. The early evening walks to the beach, exploring different routes, stopping for coffee whilst others would be stopping for cocktails, planning days out and laughing so much. Ohhh we had so many more holidays planned together......... sigh 😔  But I shall make new holidays with Noah that are different to before but will become our thing. I just have to pluck up the courage to book something for just us two and know that I can do it on my own.

So with a week off work booked in August, who knows if I will muster up the gumption to take Noah away somewhere on my own? Maybe I should start with somewhere in the U.K first before I feel brave enough to go abroad?

I hope you've all been able to feel the warmth of the sun at some point this past week and that along with the end of lockdown news, you all feel a sense of positivity and hope for the coming year.

We sure as hell all deserve it!

Sara xx

Parosmia and Phantosmia

I'm guessing most of you will have never heard of parosmia or phantosmia, but if you have, you'll know what this blog post is about.

Parosmia is a distorted sense of smell and taste. Phantosmia is smelling something that isn't there.

I had Covid back in March 2020, Mothers Day weekend. I didn't have mega symptoms. I felt achey, had a headache, sore throat, a cough (that I wouldn't call continuous) and just felt run down.

The following Wednesday I completely lost my smell and taste. When I say lost my smell and taste, I mean I could've bitten into an onion and not been able to tell you what I was eating. It was the worst thing I've ever known, or so I thought! (I mean I wasn't aware of what the rest of 2020 was going to throw at me at that point, but I still think my smell and taste was my biggest loss 😜).

Around June time, my smell and taste came back and I was so grateful it was over! But then one day I was sat on my sofa and I could smell smoke. Like cigarette smoke. Now, my house is quite far from the road, so it wasn't someone walking by, but it was definite smoke.

I then realised I could smell it no matter where I was and even at work whilst wearing a mask, the smoke smell was still there.

My taste then started to become impaired and has been ever since. Nothing tastes as it should with the exception of tea, smoked salmon, cherries and cheddar cheese (praise the lord).

I'll give you an example of how things smell.......

Lasagna smells the same as any roast meat, which smells the same as Arthur the dogs poo. But none smell like lasagna, meat or dog poo 😂 But they all smell absolutely disgusting.

The list of foods that are a complete no go are:

• Eggs
• Meat (anything with meat in)
• Bread
• Chocolate
• Fatty food (including all fried food, pastry, chips etc)
• Onion
• Most fruit (especially citrus)
• Nuts (including peanut butter and nutella)
• Most sweets
• Fizzy drinks
• Coffee
• Tomatoes
• Yoghurt

I think the list goes on, but that just gives you an idea of how difficult eating has been for almost a year 😩 It is physically impossible to eat some of the things on that list without heaving.

There is no known cure and the hope is that the nerves will rejoin at some point to allow my brain to decipher smell and taste correctly again.

I have recently found a facebook group that has over 7000 followers worldwide of people who are suffering from the same thing, although I am certain it has affected more in some way. It sounds like such a ridiculous thing to moan about, but you don't realise how much enjoyment you get out of food until you can't taste it as you should.

If any of you are suffering from the same thing, I shall link the facebook page here so that you can join it and get advice from others in the same situation:

AbScent Parosmia and Phantosmia Support

I also bought a smell training kit from the AbScent charity as research has proved it can help speed up the recovery programme. So far I haven't seen any improvement apart from finally being able to smell my mother's day perfume from last year! At least it was worth the wait!

So this past year I've not even been able to enjoy food to console myself..... good job really because there was a lot of consoling needed and I've at least found the uni weight gain even easier to lose with no real variety of food I can eat.

So when Boris re-opens the country (come on Boris, please let me have a life), you'll find me somewhere eating cheese and forcing a gin and lemonade down my throat in the hope that it will begin to taste nice after a few 😂

    Much love,

    

    Sara xx

The Joy That Comes With Hope

I've read somewhere that when you feel despair, it unfocusses you from being able to motivate yourself and achieve what you want in life. Whereas hope, apparently does the complete opposite of this. That is until the hope is taken away from you.

The thing with hope, is that it is supposed to be something that is made up by the person feeling it due to the circumstances they are in and that actually there is no truth behind what they are feeling. 

However, when you are actually made to believe that the hope you are feeling is real, the despair you feel when it is taken away feels 100x worse.

So, I admit life is a little up in the air again at the moment, with everything I thought was happening now very quickly not happening and the realisation hitting me that I have allowed my heart to make decisions when I should have listened to my head instead. But what else are you supposed to do when you love someone so much that you cannot imagine your life without them and you would have been willing to do anything to fix everything that went wrong?

The 'Visualisation of my Hope' - Boxing Day

So I'm now ready to start the rebuilding of myself again and this time I'm going to do it the right way!

1st thing: I'm currently watching First Wives Club so that I can channel my inner Goldie Hawn 😂 Gosh she's bloody gorgeous isn't she? And it is just the best film for reminding me of why these things happen in life! Men and that green grass on the other side of the fence 🙄

2nd: I'm going to be more directive about what I want going forward, rather than being submissive to pacify the situation and keep that false hope alive. I'm going to stop hanging off of every word and believing everything. I'm going to attempt to gain some control.

3rd: I'm going to keep working on myself. I'm going to keep improving all areas of my life so that I am the best version of myself and therefore I only attract what I fully deserve (which, by the way, is the world).

4th: I'm going to be the best mum I can be. I'm going to ensure I provide for my son, I'm going to be the best role model he could possibly have and I am going to make sure he knows that no matter what happens, I love him more than anything in the world.

5th: I am going to continue improving in my career and using the busyness it creates to take up some of my thinking time. That's the thing with this pandemic, it gives you too much time to sit around thinking and becoming almost neurotic with my actions.

Today was the first sunny day that actually felt warm on my face when walking the dog and even Noah had a spring in his step. We loved getting out today and this time the feeling initiated the right kind of hope.

Hope for the summer, the end of lockdown, the end of loneliness and sofa sitting, the end of tears at least once a day and the end of wishing I could go back in time rather than hoping for the future.

The Future

So, as always, no slagging off of anything mentioned in this blog please. Yes, I'm hurt but I only want messages of positivity for me and my future left for me to read!

Love to you all as always and stay safe 💛 

xx