Neglecting my blog

Oh dear I've sadly been neglecting my blog of late. Truth is the lovely sunny weather we've been having recently means I've spent most of time sat in the garden enjoying it ...can you blame me lol. But that also means there isn't a lot to write about on here !!

My mosaic making has been very low on the agenda oooops, I have almost finished the mosaic heart I started quite a while ago though. A couple of coats of varnish and it'll be heading off to the gallery, I seem to remember saying about the varnish just needing to be done about 10 days ago, ooops lol. Although the wood is cut for the African themed panels, the arthritis in my hands has halted me starting on those too, because they are too painful. I've also noticed the last two days that the dreaded arthritis is spreading to my right elbow as well as the left one. It's not a bad pain just irritating.

I went back to the doctors last week for the results of all my tests I'd had done previously. I was dreading this and the doctors had even written to me saying that I needed to go and see them, which I have to say scared me. I was most frightened about the result of the chest xray I had, especially as I'm a heavy smoker. But as it happened I needn't have worried, most of the tests were all good, in fact the only one that showed anything slightly wrong was the x ray and my blood pressure. However the x ray showed an angular shadow on my heart, which they said could be due to previous surgery, but they had no other xrays of me to compare it with. It just so happens that I had heart surgery when I was 4, so this is no doubt what the shadow is and the doctor agreed. The blood pressure is treatable with tablets, the trouble is I know I find going to the doctors or the hospital stressful anyway so maybe this is what pushes my blood pressure up.

The doctor also did a test on his computer which would predict what my chances of having a stroke or heart attack in the next 10 years would be. This involved using all the results of the blood test I had, and putting how much I smoke, my height and my weight. Before the results came up he told me for my age group the average is 10%, anything 20% or over would mean steps being taken to reduce this number ..... being overweight, with high blood pressure and a smoker I wasn't too optimistic about the results to be honest. But much to my surprise and even more so for the doctor my results came in at 14% !!! So that was really good news. The original reason for me having all these tests were because I was having weird feelings in my chest, which the doctor diagnosed at the time as my heart beating too many beats. He rightly diagnosed this as nothing serious at the time and the test were just to be on the safe side. Out of the 3 reasons he suggested might be causing this .... alcohol, drinking or stress, the stress option is the only one that it can possibly be the one. So he's decided not to give me any medication for it, and I'll just try and keep my stress levels at a minimum :o) If you manged to get to the end of this medical waffle blog post today ...gold stars for you lol.