A New Family Member & Non Stop Craziness

So much for recovering from my lovely trip to London by the Willow Foundation… Over a week has past and I literally haven’t had one day of complete rest!! I’m constantly shattered and haven’t even caught up on my sleep as still trying to get used to the new sleeping pattern now Stefan is back to work during the day.

I’ll start with the good news first, we have a new addition to our family!Thunder came home with us last Wednesday, he is a young normal Burmese python. He needed to be rehomed from Aquator (Torquay’s reptile & fish shop, where our good friend Marc works) as they don’t have the space for particularly large snakes, and providing we could give him the space and a good home and set up a big vivarium for him we were able to take him. This was the icing on the cake to our amazing bank holiday. Kai & Cleo our boa constrictors are big snakes but nothing compared to what a Burmese could grow too. He is in quarantine anyway (as we do with all new additions that come into the home to check they don’t make the other babies poorly) but he has a room all to himself upstairs with a very big viv already and as he grows we can add onto it to provide him with the space he needs.

He is our biggest challenge yet as all our other snake babies are ridiculously tame and calm. They never bite or freak out, they aren’t viv defensive and they never hiss at us even when in shed. We named our new boy Thunder, because of his markings and his attitude. If you are to make your presence known to him he hisses and huffs and puffs like a grumpy old man!! Quite scary if you’ve never encountered it before and to people not so keen on snakes then I don’t think you’d like to set foot into the room with him, however, he is literally all noise! Burms are usually extremely hissy snakes but tend to be very docile and enjoy being handled. Once we left him settled in his new home for a few days (as he was literally fed the day we took him home and was in shed which was even worse as they have very poor eyesight and like too be left alone) we then decided to try and get him out and see how he would be. Now being the ’girl’ in this marriage I bet you thought I would let Stefan stick his hand in the viv whilst he was huffing and puffing like a goodun and try and get him out but no, I went for it. I started stroking him calling his name to calm him a little as he hissed away then when I felt he was ready took hold of him just a little way past his head and then the bulk of his body around the middle and brought him out. He was still hissing in my hands as I let him run through my fingers over and over stroking him as he went and eventually he just stopped all the noise and started flickering his tongue like crazy taking in all the new tastes and smells. I couldn’t stop smiling, the fact he hadn’t lunged at me or taken a strike I was chuffed to bits, he was a hell of a lot longer than I first thought now I was holding him but he was just purely beautiful. So stunning, his head is already bigger than our biggest baby Kai!!

Stef just stared at me open mouthed and said, ‘fuck me your brave, I love you so much’ which made me smile even more. The trick is to not hesitate with snakes like that. If you dart in with your hand in and out because of nervousness your only going to irritate them further. I handed him to Stef and took some pictures. He looks smaller when Stefan holds him but that’s because I’m such a midget!! He was out for a good twenty minutes or so and then we let him slither back into his new home and chill out again. Our plan is to do this every day (unless after feeding or in shed) for a good ten minutes or so to get him used to being handled and calm him down, he will proberly continue to hiss at first because it’s in their nature but he should then be settled in no time…. I have attached some pictures of our gorgeous ‘little’ boy for you to see!! I’m in my pj’s and looking rough so please excuse the state of me!!

Stunning Beautiful Head Shot!

Me & Our Burmese Thunder

Isn't he long?!

Now what with settling up Thunder’s new home and looking after our other beautiful babies, we rarely have a quiet day. But when things go wrong which they seemingly did last week it gets extremely stressful. I spent a small fortune on household items that seemed to pack up all at once and things we ran out of all at the same time but hopefully we have sorted it all out now. I had dentist on the Tuesday which went without a hitch and Wednesday was also the day of my hospital appointment at Exeter and my very first time up there on my own since Stefan had started days again. I travelled up by ambulance patient services, the co-driver in the back with me was really chatty and made me feel right at ease. Because I wasn’t very long with my cf nurse having my gripper changed and first dose of Tazocin, they also waited for me else I would have had to wait a further hour on my own with nothing to do for another crew to come and collect me so I was very grateful. It put my mind at rest that the journey was quite straight forward as I don’t like fitting into new routines at the best of times.

I did have a nice weekend with Stefan if not a little sleep deprived. On Saturday we had things to do and I was waking up at all hours with my chest and tummy being so crappy. The sun was finally shining so we managed to have some time out and grab a nice pint and shared a steak baguette in a beer garden for an hour. On Sunday, Stefan had a huge clearout of rubbish to take to the tip and spring cleaned the whole house. I tried to help in places obviously but there’s only so much I can do, he ran me a nice bath whilst he did the upstairs so was there if I needed him. We both felt so much better after a productive day and I just love having him home at weekends.

Then came Monday morning which I was just dreading, I think everyone for one reason or another hates Mondays don’t they? Stefan had the day off as I had an appointment at Exeter hospital for a hysteroscopy and biopsy on my womb. I am in so much pain from it and my time of the month is really very unpleasant for me and I know there is something just not right. The team were actually amazing, so supportive of all my needs trying to get me comfortable with my chest etc. The plan was to have a local anaesthetic injection into my womb so they could have a look at what was the problem and take a sample of cells however this just wasn’t the case and I howled in pain before he was able to go any further, I asked him to try again as was so angry with myself, and as he did the same happened again. I couldn’t help but shed a few tears as he refused to do it again and said we needed to come up with an alternative plan as soon as possible. The nurses kept reassuring me it wasn’t my fault and that I did well but I couldn’t help just feel angry and stupid. I hate my body at the best of times but I was so annoyed at myself because I was unable to go through with the procedure.

The consultant has made a plan to have a review for a heavily sedated or general anaesthetic hysteroscopy, polypectomy and mirena or ablation procedure. This all sounds like complete blah I know but basically they want me to go through it all with not having to feel a thing, they want to see what the problem is and take it away completely, maybe even stopping my periods for good. If I do have one of the treatments he suggested it means for certain that I will not be able to have children. Now I know if you have been following my blogs Stefan & I have resigned to the fact that it wouldn’t happen anyway, even if I have my transplant it still is a no go advisory due to the antibodies and rejection of my new lungs, but at least I know it could happen or could have happened if I wanted it to so badly, although I would never be so selfish to risk it or put my babies health in danger. If I do have to have this treatment I can’t help feeling I’m just a bit of a failure as a woman? I don’t know, it’s very hard to explain. I know there are a lot of women in the same position, and it’s a very sensitive subject for me to get into. I’m just going to have to wait to here from the gynaecological team and go from there.

This week is finally a lot quieter, I have my local nurse coming to me on Wednesday and a few friends popping up to have a cuppa. Other than that, some rest as my chest is misbehaving again, and lots of cuddles with my beautiful snakes babies and wonderful husband.
Just before I go, I have to mention that Smiler, one of Professor Green’s supporting acts last week when we saw him in concert retweeted my blog on Saturday night after Stefan sent it to him, this was just awesome!! So thank you sooooo much for that…. If only I could get Pro Green to do it too! A huge happy birthday to my fellow cfer and beautiful friend Kimmy Moult today, hope you have a great day, she is currently training hard to do a 6km run/walk in aid of the CF Trust despite being quite poorly with her chest so you go girl, total inspiration!!
　
Thank you for reading… xxx