I'm Buzzing - My Tinnitus is Back!

It's back. The incessant buzzing in my ears. My Tinnitus is back. Who knows what triggered it. The usual suspects could be caffeine, red wine, chocolate, aspartame or sudden loud noises. The hairs in my cochlea could be bent. It could be too much ibruprofen. The buzzing has reduced slightly today after a good night's sleep (thank you amitryptyline) but in the name of silence how come so little can be done for a complaint which affects thousands in the UK?

Source:  www.idailymail.co.uk

That is the number one question asked in the Facebook tinnitus forums - and the question that has no answer.  There are trials being conducted - nebulous trials involving implanting iPod like devices in the sufferer's body.  There are drug trials - apparently anti-epilepsy drugs have shown positive results in preventing tinnitus in mice.  Great for the mice but useless for the rest of us.  Is that the choice? Listen to the endless cacophony in your ears or wander round like a zombie, zoned out on medication?

It is very difficult too, to describe to someone what it's like and thus sympathy tends to be short lived and advice focuses on the "well you'll just have to live with it and pull yourself together".  I am pretty sure my tinnitus developed as a result of listening to music too loudly on the Sony Walkman (in the days of cassette tapes) and I worry about people today who play their ipod tunes so loudly that the bass or treble can be heard by everyone else in the railway carriage or the length of the bus.  Then there are those who, as we walk to school in the morning, play music in their car so loudly it sounds like someone is beating the side of their car with a mallet or worse, those who take in-car telephone calls at a volume which ensures their entire conversation can be heard miles away.  "She did what???" - speak up love, there's someone in the Outer Hebrides who didn't quite catch that.

I am going to have to bite the bullet and start wearing my hearing aids.  I'm told it will replace the buzzing with sound at the frequency my ears are missing and so I'll gradually notice it less and less. Reports on whether hearing aids are effective in masking tinnitus are equally mixed on the forums but I will give it a go.  I did try them a few weeks back at a children's party.  This was obviously completely the wrong occasion to try them out and the sound volume was so loud, they were swiftly removed and hidden in my handbag.  

I have heard good reports about Tinnitus Retraining Therapy (TRT) which uses cognitive behavioural techniques to change the way you think about your tinnitus.  I am not sure that it is available in Cardiff or the Vale though.  

In the meantime, I'm trying to take my mind off it and if you're suffering with it today too, you have my heartfelt sympathy.  

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Silent Sunday - 07/09/2014

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A Year of Beauty & Health? I Wish!

It is 4 pm and the Husband has taken the kids to their swimming lesson. I am sat in blissful silence, save the now permanent sound of house renovation taking place in our street and the monotonous drone of an outsize lawn-mower chugging across the postage stamp of a lawn in one of the houses backing on to our garden.

The day is unseasonably warm with the kind of heat that leaves you drowsy and heavy-limbed. I briefly tidy up the house and, in a fit of domestic fervour, whip up a blackberry and apple cake in tribute to what promises to be a golden autumn.

As I wait for the cake to bake, I ponder all manner of things, particularly my various ailments, the latest of which is a strange tension headache which grips me either side of my skull at odd moments. I worry, given the presence of epilepsy and numerous brain tumours on my mother's side of the family, that I am potentiallly a goner. Then there are the back exercises I am supposed to do to strengthen my lower back. And the hearing aids I am supposed to wear to help my tinnitus.  The week after next I have one visit to Llandough Hospital and another to the Heath Hospital scheduled. Let's put it this way, I am no stranger to the gynaecology department.

So it is with no small irony that I recall a book I once read many years ago by Beverly and Vidal Sassoon entitled "A Year of Beauty & Health".  It was written in 1975 and since that time I have had approximately a year of beauty and health!  Actually the one piece of advice I can remember is that, when shampooing your hair, you only need a dollop of shampoo the size of a 10p piece.

This was before celebrity hairdressers realised that, in order to sell your product, you had to encourage hair washing on a daily basis, together with conditioner, mask, conditioning spray, straightening balm, hairspray and a small payday loan with which to purchase said items.

This is probably why I have a cupboard full of shampoo and conditioner remnants - the latest include Brazilian Macademia Oil shampoo and Elvive's Fixology, neither of which have given me hair like the late Farrah Fawcett.  I truly don't understand how the Hair & Beauty Industry survives because it takes me an age to finish anything - from shampoo to cleanser and lipstick. I suspect that the houses of the United Kingdom are stuffed with half used beauty products whilst we all dance to the tune of the Pied Piper that is Beauty Industry marketing and walk zombie like towards Boots and Superdrug in a state of fervent anticipation.This is also probably why the annual beauty awards tend to go to the same products ad nauseum. Liz Earle, YSL Touche Eclat, Clinique Chubby Sticks, you know the ones.

I wish I could remember what I've done with the Sassoon tome. Given the state of the old bod, there are probably things more important I should have been doing than rationing my shampoo usage.  Like drinking 8 glasses of water a day.  And exercising.

That's never going to be as exciting as a trip to Boots though, is it?

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Where's Roger The Shrubber When You Need Him?

Early Autumn and, given that the kids are wound up like tops ready to rejoin the rank and file of sticky fingered and over-excitable school pupils, and the now deflated paddling pool has completely ruined the lawn, I feel it is time to pick up the secateurs for some gardening. I use the term "gardening" loosely because, although my friend The Sybil (she of infinite and random wisdom) introduced me to the pleasures of horticulture and I now can almost see the point of Alan Titchmarsh, I must confess I'm still not altogether sure what on earth I'm supposed to be doing.

Fuchsia Mayhem

The previous owners of our house must have had a thing about Fuchsias because their purple tendrils reach everywhere, no matter how often they are trimmed (hacked!) back. They have totally swallowed up the sunshine along one length of our small walled garden which consists of raised beds along two sides of a square and a long garage running the length of the third. The shrubs I have planted there have wilted in the constant shade.

The garden is reached either through the kitchen or, primarily via glass french doors at the end of an extended lounge outside of which is a small patio.  The potential for mud and mess as the kids run through the lounge is, as you might imagine, considerable.

I have tried to add some shrubs and some herbs, mostly procured from Morrisons or our local garden center on SWAT missions with The Sybil. These generally involve her pointing at plants and me putting them in the trolley. Some I can recognise, roses, lavender, rosemary, pansies - all the easy ones are in my "Dummies Guide to Gardening For the Peri-Menopausal". Sadly, despite recognising them, their fate is very hit and miss.

Geraniums (I think)!

I have managed to grow some strawberries and last year had a bumper crop of tomatoes and beans which, shamefully, mostly went to waste.  I am afraid my vintage housewife score dropped radically through failure to produce a batch of spicy tomato chutney or anything vaguely inspiring involving runner beans.  I may try again next year when I am better prepared and armed with a full chutney kit!

If in doubt, use the old statue and wind-chimes disguise...

I have cunningly pruned this, erm, plant to resemble a triangle

The biggest problem I have at the moment is the whacking great bald patch on the lawn where the paddling pool sat. It looks like a monk's tonsure and I'm praying the grass grows back quickly.

My bald spot

The husband is campaigning to fill the raised beds with chippings and replace the plants with things in pots. He may have a point. If he does, I shall take a leaf out of the Knights Who Say Ni's book and call for Roger the Shrubber. Does anyone have his number?

Roger the Shrubber from Monty Python & The Holy Grail

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Silent Sunday - 31/08/2014

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Caitlin's Play house - It's a Grand Design

When Sir Robert McAlpine started building houses in 1869, I think it's safe to say that there was little provision made in the blueprint for a 'fairy room' or a WC with enough headroom to comfortably house an enormous pink bow suspended from the ceiling.  

Caitlin's vision:  some day all houses will be built this way

These are just two of the items my six year old daughter, Caitlin, deems a prerequisite in the des res of any young lady in this brave new millennium.  She has designed this, by the way, as her entry into a competition to design a dream house by Tigersheds.com, the prize being a marvellous wooden hideout for the garden. Quite why the toilet features so prominently in her design has more, I suspect, to do with the general state of the family waterworks, than it does to any architectural whim.

Were Grand Design's Kevin McCloud (MBE) to don his leather jacket and wander round, he'd no doubt be stunned by the room filled entirely by a fridge containing nothing but ice cream.  Instead of marvelling at the quality of glass and aluminium, he'd be awe-stuck by the room filled entirely by a table for water and sand play.

There are rooms for 'art' (more Tate Modern than National Portrait Gallery) and 'dressing up' on a scale which would make Kim Kardashian clap her hands with glee.  Like many 6 year old little girls, Caitlin thinks nothing of accompanying me to the supermarket in the guise of her favourite Disney princess - the identity of whom changes on the hour.  There is a TV room with a screen worthy of our local multiplex and a mysterious 'secret room' - presumably in which to imprison her little brother. The house can also be exited by an emergency pole.  

It is clear that sleeping does not appear highly on the agenda since there's no bedroom - which bodes rather ominously for her teen years and food is provided out of the ether by mum's incredible catering / reheating service.

I quite fancy living there myself.

This is Caitlin's entry into the #TigercubHideout competition run by www.tigersheds.com inviting children to draw a picture of their dream home.  

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My Front Door Gives Me Superpowers

Ours is a pretty unprepossessing, some may say scruffy, front door. It does not, it has to be said, rank in the top ten front doors of history. These include (in a straw poll conducted in the queue at Tesco) the residence of master sleuth Sherlock Holmes at 22l b Baker Street, 10 Downing Street, the wardrobe entrance to Narnia (N.B. not supplied by IKEA) and the bridge doors on the Starship Enterprise in Star Trek. Then there are the doors to the Big Brother House (most likely IKEA) and, as voted for by Ieuan (aged 5), the doors at our local Pizza Express.

Is it our front door - or a portal to a different space / time reality?

Over the centuries, man has always had the urge to protect his home and property and though we have dispensed with a moat and portcullis, alarms, mortice locks, chains and CCTV systems are important weapons in our armoury against burglary and vandalism. Indeed these items are insisted upon by many insurance companies. Some Tory MPs even still have moats.

Our front doors stand sentinel 24 hours a day, being dressed up only for Halloween or Christmas - the latter being the only time when we actively encourage callers.  I have, however, noticed a very strange phenomenon that takes place on a daily basis, whenever I enter through our front door.

From mild mannered and slightly harrassed wife and mother of two, I become ......SuperMum..... a creature forced to inhabit a different reality spanning numerous time zones all at once. My weapons are not, to quote Monty Python, "fear and surprise" (nobody ever expects the Spanish Inquisition), rather a collection of displeased facial expressions running the gamut from apoplectic to zen (the latter required a serious amount of vino to achieve).

When I step through the magical portal that is our front door, I acquire the ability to multi-task.This may often involve heating up a pizza whilst shouting but it's still more than one activity at once, isn't it?  I am caterer, chauffeur, laundress and moneylender. I am seamstress, psychologist, tutor and nurse.  I am regularly called upon to inspect malfunctioning body parts and required to mend toys with the speed of a ninja.

 Working on my 'Supermum' look is very time consuming

It is a job whose description expands constantly and which tests my Supermum mettle to the full. And yet another, equally curious transformation occurs when I step back through that same front door on a Saturday night en route to our local hostelry.  I become - incredible! - an adult (well, grown up) once again. The husband and I are able to talk about things occurring outside our four walls, knowing that our trusty front door will be keeping the kids and babysitter safe and warm.

I suppose given the protection our trusty front door gives us, an extra special Christmas wreath and possibly an extra Halloween pumpkin are in order.  Now that's a job for Superdad.

This is my entry into the Yale Door creative writing competition.

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