Tigers Don't Cry

The Patient 

Years ago I went to a Chinese masseur in Joburg. As usual my back was a washboard of knots and it was  painful. As I cowered on the table the masseur said briskly to me  "Tigers Don't Cry" (my Chinese birth year) and it has sort of become my mantra since. I quite like the idea of being a tiger.

Tigers can however get a bit bored in bed especially when it's been almost a month. For the first two weeks I wasn't up to much as I was so ill,  but now that I'm slowly getting better I'm looking at ways to stay sane and productive, whilst remaining reclined.

Unfortunately my attention span is shot along with my central nervous system so I can only do things in small bite-sized chunks. I've watched vast amounts of daytime TV and read so much Daily Beast and Mail Online that I'm starting to think in the same ADDT kind of way (10 Reasons Why You Should Never Get Sick).

I know full well that this is dumbed-down schlebby journalism, but what the hell - it's about my level at the moment, so here are my '5 Ways To Remain Sane Whilst Recovering from GBS' which may come in handy one day, you never know:

Make sure you are well looked after

1. Pick the Right Medical Team

I have four gorgeous boys looking after me. I would have had to have been at deaths door to have gone to hospital and being at home amongst my own things and family has been my secret recovery weapon. Tyler gets to play Doctor Doctor too.

2. Get a VPN

We have a virtual private network account (with My Expat Network.Com) and we have downloaded the BBC iPlayer which means we can stream 'real' BBC all day long and watch as much Master Chef and Graham Norton as we like.

3. Start Pinning

Pinterest has to be the Platinum Award-winning Vaporizer of All-Time as well as a really sad way to live vicariously. Since I've needed to do both lately, I've indulged my vice with alacrity and have reinvented my wardrobes as well as designed and furnished new houses around the world and planned enough dinner parties to last us into the next millennium. Handy.

4. Write a book. In fact write three

I cannot make up my mind which one to start first, so I'm writing all three together. I am a tiger after all. So there's 'Family Food' the cookery book, 'The Bucket List' which is my Chic Lit potboiler which is going to make us our millions and an autobiography called "Baking in the Tropics". I hope to finish all three by Christmas. Ha ha. Anyone know any publishers?

5. Being Happy

Recuperation Chic

I've had a lot of time to think. Priorities have become priorities again. Therefore I've worked out that just about the only things we can control in life are (1) ones weight - so I'm going on a diet (2) fitness levels - so I'm taking up Pilates, Yoga, Running and now that I've seen that underwater iPods are available, swimming

Clearly recovery is also linked to emotional well-being and  I'm feeling strangely calm and quite happy really. I suspect it's all the rest.

I'd be even happier though if I could have a bed-jacket made out of pale pink ostrich feathers and some satin slippers.

A Teenager plus Zombie vs Anaconda

James, our eldest child has turned 13 today. He was the most beautiful baby (and I know we all say that, but he really was) but he also had ghastly colic and used to scream relentlessly between 2 and 4am every morning. Nothing would calm him down and so to prevent infanticide Tyler used to stick him in the car and drive round and round the block until he eventually fell asleep. 

Things have improved a bit since then and he's turned out to be a fine young man. He's an innate gentleman with a gentle sense of humour, but he's also fiercely competitive with a steely determination which will take him far. We're very proud of him.  

It's Easter weekend. We'll have a braai/barbecue tonight for James, some paschal lamb at some stage tomorrow and hopefully some warm sea and fun on Monday. We all need some lightness and air at the moment. It's been a tough few weeks.

I still remember the Christmas cards my mother used to order from the Foot & Mouth Artists every year. The inscriptions which accompanied the slightly garish paintings of poinsettia’s and nativity scenes always fascinated me as I marveled at how people had the fortitude to paint with their mouths and feet. My mother also never failed to remind me  'There By the Grace of God' and I always had a slight chill as I imagined it to be my worst nightmare.

So here I am with Guillain Barre Syndrome.  The acid test this week, to prevent the $24,000 (yes I havn't got a zero wrong) iv IG treatment, was whether I could walk across a room unassisted. I managed although I did look like a drunken Charlie Chaplin, thus saving the children's future school fees and putting me at the lower end of the GBS spectrum. 

I'm now into the first phase of recovery (hopefully) which is characterized by less pain but greater fatigue, as the body starts to repair the destroyed myelin sheaves around the nerve ends. I've basically spent most of the week either sleeping or navigating staircases, but have also enjoyed a good Jack Reacher novel and lots more Masterchef and Great British Menu. 

The medication I've been on is so strong that I've honestly felt like a Zombie wading through fog. I quietly stopped taking the Pregabilin to see what happened and after about 6 hours I felt like a big, fat Anaconda was slowly wrapping itself around my body and squeezing the hell out of me. Must have slithered up somewhere through the mists (POSTSCRIPT: The numbness had extended to my diaphragm after I started taking the painkillers, so I hadn't experienced it yet). However, apart from the Anaconda, the pain has receded dramatically - which is such a relief. The choice therefore of Zombie vs Anaconda is a no contest. Give me Anaconda anyday. The drugs have been chucked.

Since this is all going to take a rather long and tedious time to recover, I might as well embrace it all and order myself a chic walking stick for my upcoming birthday and start writing that book I've been thinking so long about. I'm also dabbling in expanding our website into more of an island foodie blog too, as well as starting the planning for our Christmas bakery and our upcoming Trans-Atlantic lives, leaving very little time to feel sorry for myself.

Plus we now have a teenager to contend with too.

Curved ball

I'm sitting here in bed two weeks after I wrote my last blog. In that short space of time, a lot has happened.

I'd already noticed that I had a numbness in my feet and hands even before the boys went away, which got progressively worse as the week wore on. I also noticed that I seemed to be walking peculiarly and every bone in my body ached, which frankly is no longer that unusual. 

The only thing that seemed to help the pain was to lie in a very hot bath, and so I spent 7 nights sleeping in the bath as I struggled to keep going with the bakery. By Thursday I had to concede that something was very wrong  and 'Googled' all my symptoms. I could immediately see that whatever I had was neurological, which in itself is pretty scary. By this stage the pain was phosphorescent and the numbness had become all encompassing and I was struggling to walk or lift my arms. Poor William the 8 year old, who was fortunately on holiday, was helping me up and down the stairs and doing all the cooking and Cessie the Wonder Woman was keeping me and the house going.

William and I snuggled up on the sofa and watched more television in those 3 days whilst we waited for the boys to come back, than we've done in the past 3 years. Thank goodness for our BBC iPlayer. I do think it kept me this side of sane, as my body burned up, turned to jelly and stopped moving. 

Long story short, after various trips to St Thomas, spinal taps and pints of blood removed - I've been diagnosed with Guillain - Barre Syndrome (GBS) which is a fairly rare autoimmune disorder in which the body's immune system attacks the peripheral nervous system. It certainly ain't a picnic, but it's curable and I start IV immoglobulin treatment next week. I'm already through the worst of it and plateauing out now, but recovery is a long process (months) and I'm left pretty weak and unable to walk unassisted although I'm getting quite good with a stick already. 

It's obviously a set-back but also life changing in a positive way, as I've been ordered to have 100% rest. "What's that?' I asked myself and nearly had to 'Google' that too.

Thing is that now that the pain is being managed with some Schedule A opiates and we have some sense of where we are going with this, I intend to make the most of all this mandatory rest. There's a lot I can do from our beautiful home here in Carrot Bay and I will slowly start picking up on my bakery work as I begin to feel stronger and get a bit more movement back. 

What a thing, eh?