I hadn’t intended to vanish off the face of the Earth, but life happened. Job changes, a long-running illness and sadly the loss of a close family member in January kept me busy in ways I hadn’t anticipated. Grief is a strange and unwelcome presence, I’m discovering. It’s still early days so things still feel very bumpy but I’ve missed writing the blog and have only just responded to the many, many questions you’ve been asking so it’s definitely time to get back on it!
Still alive…and still kicking!
So in terms of health, my shunt is still behaving itself which is fantastic. The fact that in every other way my life has felt a bit all over the place but my shunt hasn’t really done anything other than keep me going is testament to what an amazing little piece of equipment it actually is. I came down with ‘flu (proper, knocks-you-sideways ‘flu) after forgetting to get my ‘flu vaccination last year. Rapped knuckles for that one…having ‘flu at any time is horrible but with hydrocephalus it is officially ten times worse (I can safely say that having had ‘flu both before and after hydrocephalus!). It ended up turning into a bad chest infection which ended up with x-rays at the hospital but now it’s gone and I’m feeling back to my ‘normal’ self. ‘Normal’ will always be written in inverted commas when applying the term to myself; I don’t think what I feel day to day with hydrocephalus is ‘normal’ in relation to the rest of the population but I’m used to it…so it is normal for me.
One of the very positive things that has happened is that I’ve started rehearsing with my band again. I have sung in many bands over the years (being a singing teacher and all that) but my favourite band, the country and Americana-based one called Family Nash, split when we just became too busy with our schedules.
Terry (guitarist) and Jo (or Banjo Jo as we call her!) at our first rehearsal for years. We eat apples during our breaks. We’re not very rock and roll.
I was in and out of hospital an awful lot at the time so couldn’t really be relied upon too much when it came to gigging…which is a not very helpful when you’re the lead singer. Anyway, Terry, Jo and I decided it had been long enough and gathered at mine the other week to see how many songs we could remember. Quite a lot of them as it turned out! We chugged out some tunes by the Dixie Chicks, Dolly Parton etc. and had a good catch-up in the process. We aren’t planning to gig soon but just playing and singing the old tunes (and some new ones) is enough for us at the moment. If I can work out a way to post up a video or tune on here, you can have a listen for yourself!
In terms of the work with the shunts…well that’s been keeping me busy too so I’ll cover everything regarding that in the next post!
Keep sending in your questions and I’ll keep doing my best to answer them. I’m thinking of starting a forum on here (or elsewhere if it’s not possible to add one to this site) so you can all talk to each other as well as me. What do you think?