On the up

I've had complaints about the lack of posting. I realise that having reached a zenith of posting frequency during last week then a sudden drop to zero may come as a bit of a surprise. I'm going to blame it on relaxation and an inordinate quantity of sleep.

It has definitely taken my two days to get over last week's trauma. I've felt as though I've been one degree under all weekend, almost a little feverish during the night, and completely washed out. I was quite worried about it, but I've just followed my body's signals and slept whenever it called for it.

I read a little about how to deal with sluggish innards and have been drinking huge quantities of water, eating apples and grapes, eating small and regular meals and avoiding too much bread, cheese. It has had the desired effect, and that has been a huge relief. The pain has subsided enormously, and this morning I feel absolutely tip-top, and really ready to get on with life again. The other great thing is that with no stretched abdomen, and having no more infection the whole pain level has reduced to a wonderful new low. In fact I have completely ditched the strong opiate painkiller that I was using (also partly because it almost certainly was the cause of the constipation), and have almost used no codeine as well, relying on simple paracetamol to cope with the residual pain.

That is a huge thing in itself, and something I am very pleased about indeed. What with no Oxycontin, no codeine, no antibiotic then my regular daily pill-taking (paracetamol aside) is now down to 16!

I'm going to try driving a very short distance today - probably down to the park then I'll have a little wander around, sit on a bench and read for a little while in the sunshine. I suspect it'll be fine, but I'm only going to do a short distance for starters to be on the safe side.

I'm also busy planning my year ahead now. I'm going to start booking some dance lessons for August as some of my teachers get ridiculously booked up and if I wait until I'm actually back up and dancing then I'll end up waiting for 3 or 4 months until the lessons get started.

I'm also considering what I want to do about living arrangements, and whether I want to think about moving closer to Watford. Then I'd have to consider whether to buy or rent, though unless there was a fairly spectacular deal I don't think I'd want to buy just yet.

On the work front I've got some interesting projects to get on with - the sort of things that I'm fairly uniquely positioned to do as it ticks all my areas of expertise with data analysis, programming, presentation/communication and assessment. I do feel that I want to get back and hit the ground running. I don't think it's likely that I will be doing much, if any, maths or science teaching until the start of the next academic year, so I'll really have time to sort out some of these other projects.