Ok, we will start with the good news first, the UKS cybercrop was a great success and everyone seemed to enjoy the class and the entries were fab. So much so that at some point I am going to redo the class using some of the things I picked up from other people's pages, that I would never have thought of. The other classes and challenges were also really good and some were just outstanding. There are certainly a lot of very talented people over on UKS. I did get a couple of classes done including the following page I made with the mystery kit.
The contents were way out of my comfort zone and I really didn't use very much of what I received as a result. I am not sure I would buy a similar kit again, in fact this was my first ever mystery kit purchase. I think it will depend on how busy life is the next time. I also managed a digi challenge using a template, my first digi page in ages as I am still sorting through the huge amount of stuff I have accumulated over time.
Anyway, now for news about the leg. It is my leg but due to the months and months of problems I have had with it it has become 'the leg' as though it was a separate entity, something not quite belonging to me. When I saw the consultant at the hospital I was told it was lymphoedema, there was no cure and I was to wear surgical stockings and lead a normal life. That was it. The first thing I did when I came home was to read as much as I could about the condition while the medics made the arrangements that were needed re stockings etc. If you are reading this and are easily grossed out then don't google lymphoedema, as the images you may well end up with are far from pretty.
Luckily I was still seeing the fantastic nurse at my local health centre as I still needed regular dressing changes after my op. She knew about lymphoedema and also knew that there was a specialist nurse nearby so she organised a referral to him. It then took about 4 weeks for the letter to get from the hospital to the health centre, a distance of less than 3 miles! In the meantime I was wearing 2 different sized crocs and a stretch bandage while I waited to be seen at the lymphoedema clinic. The pain in my foot and ankle got increasingly worse and my mobility got less and less.
I finally got my appointment at the clinic last week and the good news was that I didn't need weeks of compression bandages on my leg as the lymphoedema isn't that bad. This meant that the very funky kerrapod shoe that had been delivered for me to wear while I was bandaged was no longer needed, which was great as it was quite uncomfortable to wear.
The bad news was that I had primary lymphoedema in both of my legs! I really hadn't expected that and to make matters worse in my left leg aka 'the leg' the lymphoedema was up to the top of my knee, not simply in my foot and calf as I had thought. It was a bit of a blow and is taking a bit of adjusting to not least as I know have to wear a full length compression stocking on my left leg and a knee length one on my right. I also have an ankle wrap to put on 'the leg' in the evenings, which is like a huge strip of super strength elastic that gets wrapped tight around it to continue to reduce the swelling.
In the last piece of good news I should be able to wear my normal shoes, on both feet, in a few weeks. Getting the stocking on and off is fun due to the tightness but I have found that rubber gloves help, that and something akin to an extended shoe horn for getting them off, which is the hardest part. I will spare you pictures of that, mainly because I have never been brave enough to take any yet :-) For now it's best foot forward, which is currently the right one. Take care x x x
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