Monday wasn’t the best day I’ve ever had. Having driven into work after dropping off the boy at nursery and him not wanting to go in, I discovered that my meeting had to be cancelled. It was no-ones fault, but it really threw me out as I suddenly gained time that I didn’t have everything with me I needed to fill productively.

I was also annoyed because I’d driven for an hour to get to work, and would have to leave early for my dressing appointment – so lost time in my day that I could have spent working from home. I took out my anger on an early lunch at KFC.

Let’s give this a bit more context. I’m currently having my now 19 month unhealed chronic wound where my rectum and anus were removed treated with a PICO dressing – a vacuum dressing with a small portable battery-powered pump that I’d previously last year – I blogged about it here. Because of that, I’d had to cancel my involvement in the bubble football activity on a stag do I’ve just been on. As it turned out, the dressing had become overwhelmed anyway, having been changed on the Wednesday (there are only two dressings in a pack so it can only be changed once a week, whilst the pump lasts 7 days). So it’s still wetter than we thought it would be. This is still having multiple dressing changes each week, and at this point is starting to get me down. The disruption is the thing, plus the fact it has been going on for quite so long – well chronicled on this blog!

What that looks like for me is a struggle with motivation – so less blogging for example, no poetry writing. I eat badly – not main meals but snacks. I drink more (not excessively, but more than I probably should) and fritter money away, or buy things I don’t really need.

My focus is reduced at work too, so I feel less satisfied with my job, and probably could be doing more. The ongoing saga has meant I have not been able to exercise as much as I would like, and coupled with the extra eating that has led to weight gain – some was fine, but I am now the heaviest I have ever been at over 14 stone, and so am now clinically overweight, and that starts to have an impact too – because I have always been pretty skinny. But can’t exercise to lose some – pass the ice cream!

I had decided today after that heavy stag weekend that I would speak to my GP and try and get some kind of deadline for progress with the wound. I haven’t managed to get an appointment yet, however the Community Tissue Viability Nurse is pulling out the big guns and I’ll be getting a larger vac pump next week – so that at least should move things forward.

I’m still going to talk to the GP though. I recognise in myself that things are not right, and whilst I don’t believe I am depressed, it feels like I am in a period of low mood, which I have had a couple of times before. We are just coming out of a reorganisation at work, and I think I attributed much of my feeling to that, but now it is over the feelings are still there…

So, there you go. A wound update, a mental health disclosure and an insight into how I deal with anger. I should note that I was not the only person in KFC at 11.30am…

I shall try and update more often, in the meantime, why not treat yourself to a badge via my FB page store?