In which the Rodent reluctantly updates.

I recognise the signs. That urgh, don't wanna that says if I drop the blog now, I will never, ever, ever pick it up again and then I'll feel guilty, despite the fact that it's something I do for me and so far as I know there's a maximum of one other reader.

This blog is also where I talk about my migraines and health, an indulgence I don't allow myself as much rein on in Livejournal. This is a depressing blog about a depressing subject so a little urgh is to be expected.

Yesterday was bad. I woke up at 4am and went back to bed at 6am when the painkillers kicked in. Then I was woken up again at 8am, full of migraine. The migraines are a lot better if I am allowed to just sleep them off. Yesterday was another reminder of why I go to bed ridiculously early if I need to get up. I woke up because I got bronchitis which is a good thing, honestly.

If I exercise too much in cold weather, by which I mean to the point where I take in a nice, deep breath of cold air, I get a warning pain in my lungs which will invariably turn into a nice chesty case of sick-sheep-coughing bronchitis. This used to be a real problem when I was a child and a teenager, but it hasn't bothered me since I got ME because I haven't been fit enough to exercise to that level. Well, on Thursday I got my lungs seared climbing up Forest Hill Road in Nottingham carrying a week's clothes and my flute and laptop. This is why I woke up at 4am coughing sadly and unable to breathe well. A cuppa and some sitting up time made all better but it did not make me feel much better when I had to get up and start being active outdoors.

Yesterday I helped my sister move. Despite feeling very, very sick (nauseated) and bronchitic and with a pounding head moving between six and eight all day long, I managed to help my sister. She was upset because her landlord isn't getting basic things like her heating sorted out. I have been in crappy housing before. Her house is decent, but not when it doesn't have heating. I know how easy it is to end up just sitting in despair and when my mum said she'd been crying on the phone at the latest problem (shoddy workmen pulling cupboards apart to put in a fridge that doesn't fit) then I had an idea of what to do. I looked around and grabbed a few pretty things I knew she liked. My mum took her blankets and I greeted her at the door with a cushion she owns that has a very smiley happy yellow cat on. This got a smile.

We were sat in her sitting room all full of bags, lamenting how bad the landlord had been and how awkward it was not to be able to hang anything on any of the walls. It came to me that this was a miserable room but full of nice things and that it didn't have to stay miserable. I then got into bullying mode and spent a happy day mercilessly browbeating my relatives. I made her take all the rubbish outside which was a one-minute job she'd not bothered to do. I got a picture white-takked to a door and the blankets put away instead of dumped on the sofa, and suddenly we were off and the place was being put back together.

She said it was as if she was a junkie and we were running an intervention, because everything we made her do was so obvious and made such a difference but she'd just not been able to work out how to get started doing it.

The meter-cupboards had post and phone books dumped on top and looked depressing, so I made her put the phone books away and she white-takked album covers onto the white doors.

I had to argue with my mum about a fireplace behind the chair that the telly is currently balanced on. She told me not to decorate it because it was a depressing, dusty hole and half-hidden anyway. Now it has a little green dressing table (about eight inches high) my sister picked out, with a potter rabbit on top that sis had had on display in her old room and cheerful matching candles and it's a lovely little background note.

Her computer table has had a vintage scarf fastened to the front to hide all the wiring and I put her monitor-decorations back and cleared the table top but for her tiger-print mouse and pretty speakers.

The meter-cupboards have an album cover, a lot of pink tea-lights in stacks and a coloured tile. Her little tiled coffee table she'd stuffed into the corner is now on display, and the room-heater that was sitting on top of an old suitcase is now on her little table. There's a rug in front of her sofa. I hung up a light shade and covered the non-functional radiator. Suddenly the room is part of a home and not what it was before, which was a place to dump things.

Inspired by this, my sister did her room herself, unpacking everything and putting it all away. The task had seemed overwhelming to her, but we'd got things started and that's the hardest part, usually. When we struggled home at 8pm, it was all just about done.

Going home was awful. Since my sister was nearly done, we ended up staying in a house that was getting colder and colder, while we both got hungrier and hungrier and more and more tired. She did need us and I am glad we stayed, but I was crying with pain on the way home and threw up several times after I got back. I did manage to keep down some cocodamol and by 9pm I was back in the land of the living. It did make me realise how much better I've been recently. I felt so ill, but a few weeks ago that level of pain was normal living. I was also amazed at how well I functioned when in so much pain.

I read recently that slow release opiates should be taken for chronic pain (I mean, if you're going to take opiates at all) and quick-release for top-up. This accords with what I have worked out myself through trial and error, that if I take a single Tramadol in the morning of what looks to be a bad day, and perhaps another in the afternoon or evening, then I can top up with cocodamol and perhaps as a last resort have aspirin as well and I am unlikely to end up unable to cope with the pain.

Last year I was taking Tramadol as a last resort and of course I then needed more and often ended up unable to cope. The current regime suits me very well.

Today I've been out shopping and also spent a very happy time hanging my sister's earrings from a ribbon fastened along the top of a door. My migraine is at about a four after drugging up with tramadol at 4am and cocodamol at tennish. I feel so much better than last night.