Tag Archives: histamine issues

Health Diary Week 95: Bittersweet

Image: Beautiful but menacing sunset, Bolivia, 2008

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Hi, welcome to another weekly instalment of what’s on my plate: health updates and smile-provoking experiences. This is a late post I’m afraid – I’m a week behind (again) – I’ll will get caught up…

Staff Wellbeing Hub Admin: Week Two

My second week at work disappeared too quickly to learn everything I wanted to learn. I was only onsite one day, so I still need to complete my understanding of the different Counselling referral processes. On my other day, I completed loads of online training from home – I passed all the assessments (phew):

Image: Online training modules completed on Thursday

Histamine Reaction – Elbow Rash

I’ll be working from home for the admin job, so Dad kindly helped me increase my desk space. We’d purchased a wooden top from Ikea, which Dad secured neatly onto my current desk (there’s a photo in my What Made Watson Smile section). Within an hour of sitting at my desk, I noticed my elbow was itching – the skin reacted to whatever chemical was on the wood even after a good clean with soapy water. I’m annoyingly sensitive to what feels like everything at the moment. Thankfully, the rash cleared when I stopped leaning my elbow on the desk (a bad habit anyway):

Image: My itchy, sore, rash-covered elbow (it doesn’t usually look like that!)

Positive Thinking: What Made Watson Smile

And, of course, here’s a few smiles for you – the last one somewhat unexpected…

My new working from home desk:

I used to spend a lot of time studying from home – the lack of desk space was always a nuisance. Dad suggested securing a top to my current desk, making it longer and wider – a simple £15 fix. We had an amusing visit to Ikea: Dad drove around the car park for ages looking for a space, refusing to go up a level, I took us on an unnecessary walk around the shop trying to find the lifts and we got stuck in the car park, creating a queue of cars when we were trying to leave – we did chuckle afterwards though. Dad attached the desktop while I was at work and as a bonus, fixed my filing cabinet drawer so that I no longer need to use a doorstop to keep the drawer shut:  

Image: Top: My new desk set up (before I tidied it up nicely). Bottom right: The doorstop I used to keep the cabinet drawer from sliding open. Bottom left: The simple hinge solution now keeping the drawer closed – why didn’t we do this before?

A lovely leaving card:

I had my last day of work at the Covid vaccine centre – I will miss that buzzing atmosphere. The amazing Admin Shift Leads pulled together a lovely leaving card for me, despite only finding out that morning that it was my last day. I’m eternally grateful for my job at the vaccine centre – it was the doorway into my new dream job as an NHS Health and Wellbeing Coach:

Image: My leaving card from the Covid vaccine centre

The 100 club:

I received a WordPress notification informing me that I’d reached 100 posts – it took me a while (21 months of blogging), but I got there eventually – go me:

Image: 100 posts on WordPress notification

A family get together (under sad circumstances):

We went to my cousin’s funeral. Understandably, you might ask why a funeral made me smile. The situation and funeral itself didn’t make me happy at all, but it was nice to see family I hadn’t seen since before the pandemic started. The Wake was in the countryside, in my cousin’s garden. We were fortunate it was a gorgeous warm and sunny day, making outside socialising particularly pleasant. Also, this was the furthest I’d travelled since before the pandemic started – it was lovely to see all the pretty countryside whizzing by on our journey there and back again. A bittersweet day, one might say:  

Image: People in silhouette against a sunset (kholisrevenge, Pixabay)

I hope you enjoyed this week’s ‘What’s on Watson’s Plate’. Please feel free to follow my bite-sized updates on Instagram or Facebook. See you next week for another catch up.

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Health Diary Week 83: Food, Exercise and a Positive Mind

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Image: Noupload, Pixabay

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Hi, welcome to another weekly instalment of what’s on my plate: health updates, meal creations and smile-provoking experiences.

I’ve come to accept that these posts may have to be briefer nowadays to fit with my work life. But honestly, I still love sharing my diary with you all. Also, I hope you benefit from my posts, whether you find them helpful or just interesting. So let me update you about this week’s occurrences…

The Histamine Struggles

The histamine saga is ongoing. Here’s the latest…

Stinky people:

During lockdown I’d almost forgotten how much of an issue I have with people’s perfume products. Over the past two weeks, this has been a particular struggle at work – I’ve had a constant burning and itchy sensation in my nose, despite coating my nostrils (inside and out – yea, yuck!) with loads of Vaseline (it helped) and wearing a mask. This suggests to me that my mast cells (histamine releasers) are being over-dramatic, reacting unnecessarily. To enable me to function, I took an extra dose of my antihistamine, Loratadine (once in the morning and again in the evening) – I will inform my Doctor in case she has any concerns about this.

Our Border Collie boy, Shep, making friends with a goat, or perhaps they’re just intrigued by each other’s whiff (1988)

No-go prescription:

You may remember, I was excited last week to report I’d been prescribed a mast cell stabiliser to help with my histamine issues. Unfortunately, I haven’t been able to obtain this medication and I don’t know why exactly – the Pharmacy seemed kind of cagey. I went into the Pharmacy on three days to try to collect my prescription and was told it was on order and then when my Mum went while I was at work, they told her they could no longer obtain it from the supplier and that I had to go back to my Doctor. So, I completed another e-Consult form requesting an alternative. To be continued…

And… My Back

I swear I’m falling apart! I woke up on Friday morning in agony with my back – I haven’t had this happen before. It felt like a combination of a trapped nerve (radiating from my back through to my side and ribs), a muscle knot and a tender bruise-like feeling. Even breathing hurt, until the pain eventually eased a bit. I somehow made it out of bed, but I couldn’t bend down to carry my laundry to the washing machine. I thought I was over the worst, until on Saturday afternoon the pain started increasing again. It got unbearable when I was in the shower – I struggled to seat myself on the side of the bath and was stuck there for about half an hour before I could move again. I’ll let you know how it progressed…

More Easy Meals

Once again, I had no energy to spend time in the kitchen creating new dishes. Instead I opted for easy options like simple fusilli pasta (with sweetcorn and onion), filled pittas (e.g. burgers) and leftover freezer options (e.g. roast). Once, Mum cooked me up some fennel steaks and homemade chips/fries – always a treat:

Some of my easy meals. Clockwise: Quinoa & rice burger (from freezer) in salad pitta. Simple pasta (fusilli, sweetcorn, red onion, Italian herbs, turmeric, sweet paprika & cold-pressed rapeseed oil). Mum’s fennel steak and homemade chips. Leftover roast items from the freezer (roast & sweet potato, courgettes & stuffing)

Positive Thinking: What Made Watson Smile

Here’s a few things that made me smile this week…

Interesting people:

I know I’ve already said this, but I’m particularly enjoying the social aspect of being back at work. And the thing about where I’m working (Covid vaccine centre), means that you get to meet a wide range of different people, with one great thing in common – wanting to support the community and reduce the spread of Covid-19. This includes quite a few retired health professionals (including a skateboarding former WHO medic, and retired midwife vegan of 40 years), loads of people furloughed from airlines or cruise ships, a wedding photographer, lighting engineer (working for bands touring the World) and even a Baroness opera singer – amazing! Who knows who else I’ll get to meet…

Me ready for work (Week 81)

A good excuse:

I was feeling a bit sorry for myself over the weekend because of my painful back. But then I decided to appreciate having time to myself in the cosy house where I was cat sitting during this rainy weather, along with a decent excuse not to move much and just binge watch Netflix – it could be worse, right?:

Netflix binge. Image: Tumisu, Pixabay

Peculiar cats:

My friend Tina likes me to cat sit for her “fur baby”, Buddy, when she’s away – apparently, he likes me. It’s been a long time since I’ve spent time with this guy, so I wasn’t sure how he’d react when I looked after him over the weekend. On the first evening, I couldn’t understand why Buddy was sat outside on the window ledge glaring in at me and ignoring my offer for him to come back inside (via the door). I messaged Tina, who explained he wanted to come in via the window and would therefore refuse the door option. Cats are so peculiarly funny:

Buddy cat glaring at me through the window

I hope you enjoyed this week’s ‘What’s on Watson’s Plate’. Please feel free to follow my bite-sized updates on Instagram or Facebook. See you next week for another catch up.

>>>Week 84
<<<Week 82
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