Winter Blues

So far this year has felt really hard going. The run up to Christmas was a little more stressful than usual. I stayed with my daughter in Cardiff for 2 weeks in late November/early December. Then we heard that an elderly relative had died so I came home, had one night here and set of to Walsall for the funeral. My Uncle Trevor was almost 93 and had finally succumbed to prostate cancer. My Auntie Joyce, who is 91 herself, and her daughter and granddaughter had nursed him at home. The funeral was sad but beautiful. They had been married for 68 years! They were unable to have children so they adopted their daughter Judith 51 years ago. They were a lovely couple, always helping people. The crematorium was full, later Joyce said that even the man from the garage came.

So preparations for Christmas were a bit rushed, but we got there, even managed to find a proper tree at a price we could afford at a Christmas tree nursery. I was looking forward to getting some things done early this year. I don’t go out into the garden much in the cold weather so had hoped to complete some household tasks, sort out our spring holiday and get on with writing the second volume of my autobiography and look into getting the first volume published.

Then on New Years Day I caught a cold. It wouldn’t be a big deal but colds always give me more frequent and intractable migraines and I just couldn’t seem to shake it off. Then I got conjunctivitis. That was clearing up when, 2 days ago, I had a really bad nose bleed. I had these 2 years ago. The cause was infections in the nose but they were made worse because I was taking quite a lot of aspirin and Ibuprofin for migraines and sciatica. I finally gave these drugs up in the summer when the doctor blamed them for chronic nausea and the nose bleeds were’t so severe, so I thought I’d killed 2 birds with one stone. Unfortuantely the migraines were more frequent because aspirin can often stop them and paracetamol doesn’t work so well. This nose bleed, however was really bad and I haven’t taken any aspirin or paracetamol.

I know there are people a lot worse off than me but it has all got me down and I am starting to feel depressed and not wanting to get up in the mornings. I’m fighting it but can’t get on with writing or sorting out things as I can’t concentrate. I hope spring comes soon as I know that will lift me up. I’m waiting for the first snowdrops to come out. Then I will know that spring is on the way.