health

LipZor Cold Sore Device (Review & Giveaway)

July 8, 2013 by TheBoyAndMe 25 Comments

I'm going to talk about something now, that's a shushed up and fairly unpleasant subject. Distinctly unglamorous.

Cold sores.

They're not nice to look at and quite frankly they're not nice to have.

They hurt.

And the virus which causes them is indiscriminate in who it decides to live with. Worse? They are a form of the herpes virus, and that's a horrible thing to acknowledge. The NHS website describes them as, "Cold sores are small blisters that develop on the lips or around the mouth. They are caused by the herpes simplex virus and usually clear up without treatment within 7-10 days.

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Cooking Italian For GOSH

November 21, 2012 by TheBoyAndMe Leave a Comment

My absolute favourite cuisine is Italian food. I've never been happier than sat in a restaurant on the Isle of Capri trying to choose between all the pizzas, pastas and risottos, let alone the sumptuous desserts and liquers.

And it stands to reason that if I can't be on the Amalfi coast, then if you hand me an Italian cookbook and put Dean Martin on, I'm going to be just as happy.

The ASK Italian Cookbook contains a variety of easy-to-prepare recipes straight from the ASK Italian kitchens. Over 100 recipes have been contributed by the chefs who work there, plus TV chef Theo Randall, author Carla Capalbo and plenty of other experts to create this new Bible of mine for starters, mains, sides and desserts. There are even ideas to make with children.

What makes this one different?

For every one of these cookbooks bought in an ASK Italian restaurant, £4 of the £15 will be donated to Great Ormond Street Hospital Children's Charity. If you buy it through a bookshop or another third-party retailer then a minimum of £1 will be donated. Over the past few years ASK Italian have raised money to build a ward kitchen and an adolescent recreation and dining room in the hospital's new Cardiac ward, they hope to continue to raise funds to help with physical and emotional support of patients and their family.

I've had a go at one of their recipes: ravioli di spinaci e ricotta.

Ok, so it's not ravioli because I've tried making that before and the results weren't worth a mention. However the sauce is straight out of the book and it took me a matter of a few minutes to cook. In fact, it took me longer to find the bottle of white wine than it did to make the entire sauce. And it tasted delicious. I can't wait to try the salads and puddings.

ASK Italian is just one of three companies who have chosen to support GOSH, The White Company and Disney are two others. Look out for specially marked products to help support the charity.

My son has spent four nights in a children's hospital, and it was the worst 96 hours of my life. He left there healthy and happy because of the attention given to him. I can't even begin to imagine how it must feel to have a child who needs long-term health treatment.

GOSH needs to raise at least £50 million every year to help rebuild and refurbish Great Ormond Street Hospital, buy vital equipment and fund research to pioneer new treatments and cures for childhood illness. Through donations and special product purchases, they provide hope to very ill children and their families.

For more information log on to www.gosh.org

I received this book free for the purpose of this post. I have since made a donation of £10 to GOSH.

The People Who Make It Easier

December 28, 2011 by TheBoyAndMe 4 Comments

It was about 5pm on Friday evening in late October. I was in my classroom alone; the headteacher, deputy headteacher and caretaker were the only other people in school, as we had just broken up for half-term. It was dark outside but I had all the lights on in the room, and I had just finished my English marking and was preparing to cut out some letters for display when my phone rang. Glancing at the screen, I saw my mum's mobile number and answered it with a smile.

The smile quickly faded as she told me news I'd never expected to hear; dad had bowel cancer. I found out exactly what had happened, where they were and when I could see them and then hung up. I packed my cutting out away, took the books back to my cupboard and as I opened the door and was temporarily hidden from the world, I burst into tears and sobbed hysterically. At some point, I managed to phone my husband and he came and retrieved me from the cupboard where I was still hiding, tears pouring down my face.

That was five years ago and he is in remission from that cancer, although last year he had an operation for liver cancer which he had successful surgery for, and is in remission from that too.

I was so shocked by the diagnosis because he is not the parent that I'd expected to hear this news about; having lost every adult in my mother's family to some form of cancer, it was her that I had steeled myself for. Not the hulking man who is my father. Luckily, it was caught early and thanks to the wonderful treatment he received in our local hospital, he was out within a month. The nurses and doctors on his ward were amazing and dealt with everything, even the consultant would roll up his sleeves and muck in. None of us could ever say or do enough to thank them, but I hope they know how much their care was appreciated.

For my father we luckily never needed the help of the wonderful bunch of nurses who had previously nursed, cared for and provided advice during my nan's illness. Macmillan nurses do an amazing job caring for those suffering from cancer and their families, giving practical, medical and financial support.

For those who they help, there are not enough words to thank them.

This is a sponsored post. I have donated half of my fee to Macmillan to help them continue to do their work.

Dear So And So…

December 16, 2011 by TheBoyAndMe 12 Comments

Dear Mum,

I wish you hadn't ignored the pains in your breast that you've been having for the past few months. You know you should have gone to the doctor before now, especially bearing in mind our family history. I wish you'd told me rather than keeping this all bottled up inside for this time.

Love,

Your petalpot.

—

Dear NHS,

It is not good enough that the first date you can offer my mother a mammogram is 23rd January 2012. She has already waited a month for a doctor's appointment having mustered up the courage. You suck!

Regards,

An unimpressed tax and National Insurance payer.

—

Dear medical person who operates the mammogram machine,

Please be gentle and discover that there's nothing the matter with her.

Beseechingly,

A worried child.

—

Dear Lump in my Mum's Boob,

Sod off and leave her alone please!

from

Her angry daughter.

—

Dear Me,

Don't be so angry with your mum about this. She is an incredibly busy woman and was most likely scared stiff to discover the pains and then the lump, especially losing both her parents, and all other relatives, to Cancer. Get a grip and be supportive instead, she needs you.

Love from

Your rational self.

Apologies for the sombre tone on my first ever 'Dear So and So…'

Wednesday 2nd november 2011 – 'Bed Five' (305/365)

November 2, 2011 by TheBoyAndMe 4 Comments

Flashback

November 2, 2011 by TheBoyAndMe 21 Comments

This was the worst moment of my life, bar none.

So when I struggled to wake The Boy up from his afternoon nap today, I tried to tell myself not to panic. I failed. After a further ten minutes of failing to get him to wake up sufficiently enough to convince me that he was still just tired, I looked at my mum. She phoned the doctor back straight away and demanded that we saw the same doctor that we'd seen this morning.

He was lifeless; his arms hanging and me having to hold him upright. His lips were white, his skin deathly pale with huge purple shadows.

Carrying him into the surgery, the doctor was visibly surprised to see such a decline in the boisterous, polite, chatty toddler who he'd seen just six hours previously. The Boy was limp, clammy, pale, dazed with no energy. He looked over him, doing the checks (which thanks to reading various blog-posts over the past fortnight) I recognised as meningitus checks. He turned to me and said, "I'm seeing the same thing as you and I'd like you to go into the Children's Assessment Unit."

I almost crumbled to my knees there and then.

Coming back into the room two minutes later, he prepared and adminstered a shot of penicillin for The Boy and then made the phonecall warning them that we were on our way. We walked out, me carrying a floppy child and my husband rushing to get us into the car.

When we arrived at the CAU they were expecting us and assessed him quickly. The Boy had started to perk up a little, but looked so tiny sat in the middle of that adult bed clutching Oliver Monkey tightly. Big, hollow eyes with purple shadows stared at the nurse practitioner as she did the necessary checks and found he had gastritis and dehydration, hardly surprising as I'd been unable to get him to drink properly and he hadn't passed urine since 11am.

He was given some sandwiches to eat, which he wolfed down, and managed to drink 75ml of water. We were then discharged once he'd shown he could keep it down and had some colour back in his cheeks.

The Boy's sleeping in his cot now, and I have all my sense heightened to his needs. Will I sleep? Probably not. Have I cried? Slightly. The thought of my precious child limp and lifeless is too much to bear.

Pass It On: A Chance to Grow

May 21, 2011 by TheBoyAndMe 8 Comments

I chose to start a family; we wanted a child. When The Boy was born I vowed to myself that I would do everything in my power to protect him and keep him safe, if not forever, then certainly until he grew up into a happy and healthy adult who could care for himself and his own family.

And there in lies the crux of the matter.

I am able to do this; I am able to ensure that he is healthy, well-fed, vaccinated against illnesses which could otherwise kill him. I've read two blog-posts this week about vaccinations, one of them (Reluctant Housedad) was centred around receptionists' attitudes, and the other (Thinly Spread) is focused on a child's right to not die from a preventable illness.

Last year, I ranted and raved to a friend of mine when she was considering not having her child immunised with the MMR vaccine. Quite frankly I cannot understand why anyone would not have their child immunised against these three diseases. This friend wasn't sure if she should or not, but was unable to provide a valid reason why she shouldn't. I think she was afraid of saying "because of autism" and quite rightly so. There has never been a proven link between the MMR vaccine and autism, and the doctor that suggested it (for his own gain) has since been struck off. In 2009 more than 100 people (mostly children) contracted the measles virus in mid and west Wales. How many of those children hadn't been vaccinated? How many need not have suffered?

We live in a country where we are fortunate to have free healthcare on tap, and where our children are vaccinated against the world's deadliest diseases as a matter of course. It is our responsibility, as parents, to ensure that our helpless offspring are protected and able to grow into healthy and happy adults.

What about children who live in a country where there is no free healthcare? Where there is no little red book dutifully listing weight, height, head circumference and immunisations? What about them? Don't they have the same right as The Boy?

On June 13th, one day after The Boy's 2nd birthday, there is a Vaccine and Immunisation Conference in London. We have a chance to persuade world leaders to save 4 million lives in 4 hours. Twitter has been in the news a huge amount this week, all based around silly little superinjunctions. But what if we were able to use twitter, Facebook and our blogs for a more important message: that all children deserve the chance to actually grow up! Linked to the Save The Children campaign is an online petition which takes about 30 seconds to complete, please do so.

Now I have been tagged by the lovely Christine from Thinly Spread in a meme, started by Maggy at Red Ted Art and Josie at Sleep Is For The Week. This meme gets my contribution most definitely. The very simple idea of it is:

If you give a child a chance to grow, what will they be?

Now Christine reckons that the challenge is simple. I would like to point out to her that her youngest child is a lot older than nearly two like The Boy. However, she tagged me and I can't refuse because it's Christine and she is a goddess.

1) Get your child to either draw or craft a self-portrait of themselves now or in the future. Check out Maggy’s self-portrait post for some tips to get the littlies interested!

Now, I do not hold up much hope with The Boy's contribution. I suspect if he understood the question then he would say i-time-Pod tester (yes he means the iPod) or landscape gardener (he loves playing outdoors). I could waffle on about what I want him to be but that's not the point. So I had to get him to draw a picture of what he wants to be when he's older. This has proved interesting (he may have had some assistance).

I helped him to draw the circle and pointed at the areas where to draw the eyes, mouth and hair; he did the rest. I've no idea what he wants to be when he grows up and neither does he. He doesn't even know what 'in a minute' means, let alone in 20 years. However, it does show that he will have a well dodgy haircut.

2) Sign the Save the Children petition and then pass it onto your friends

Did that earlier in the week when Christine blogged about how she has been chosen to follow 'The Cold Trail', a route that a vaccine takes once it has left the city and reaches its destination in a rural community.

3) Write a blog post about it as soon as possible, including info about Save the Children and the petition. We want as many people linked up AND signed up the petition by Sunday 29th May 2011.

You're reading it.

4) Tag 8 fellow blogger friends

See below.

5) Link up your posts up below to the blog-hop or to RedTedArt or Sleep is for the Weak

Done.

6) If you have time, visit each other posts and say hello!

So, I'm tagging:

The Blog Up North