Richard and Josie's Wedding

Last Saturday my brother Richard married his lovely girlfriend Josie at Birmingham Registry Office. It was a very small ceremony of just immediate family and was such a lovely day. Sophie was fantastic throughout and gurgled along with the vows! They very kindly asked me to be a witness and I managed not to make any blots or mistakes on the certificate-thank god...  After the ceremony we walked the short way (via all the fountains) to Bank restaurant for a fantastic lunch.  Even more food followed later at the Regency Club at the Hyatt Hotel and the wedding cake really was amazingly delicious and gold! It was made by Josie's step mum, Elizabeth and I am definitely taking a leaf (no pun intended) out of her book with the edible gold leaf topping.  It was also a double celebration as Saturday was my Mum and Dad's Ruby wedding anniversary. I'm sure Josie and Rich will manage as many happy years together, and I'm hoping to manage a few with Mr EB!

One of the funniest parts of the day was Sophie chewing Mum's gold locket- I don't think she was trying to test the gold's authenticity, but even with only one tooth she has still left a rather good tooth mark on the back... I think I will try and get the locket engraved with the date and Sophie's name for posterity!  (As usual all these photos were taken by Mr EB as he is just better at it than I am!)

Crashing and burning....

Well I can't say I am surprised, but I am back on the IV's.... Going by my annual review results and my CRP levels (the level on infection markers present in your blood) for the last few months it is pretty clear that I have been harbouring some nasty lurking infection for quite a long time and never quite completely squashed it with past antibiotics.  Last Wednesday was my annual review results and whilst some things were good-liver and bones are in particularly good shape, my lungs are definitely on the decline and Dr Barker suggested we recheck my CRP levels and then consider IV's this week so that I would not miss Rich and Josie's wedding.  My levels were indeed up to 33, which is not that high (below 15 is ok) but it has been at that level for ages and it is not a good idea to let it linger.  Sadly, my lung function today was down to the lowest it's been ever, which is not that surprising as I am feeling really rather rubbish at the mo.  Today my tests showed that I have less than 50% of what I should have (both the FVC and FEV1 tests). That's  sort of like saying I've only got one working lung!  This is really not good!!!

The Doc's seem to think that I should recover back to my usual 65%, but I am not happy at all about this drop-to put it mildly...  So now I have the dubious pleasure of trying to do two IV drugs, Tazocin which I've had before and Imipenum which is a new one for me, but has to be taken four times a day!!! This means every six hours...when am I going to sleep! Combined with the fact that tazocin is three times a day, so every eight hours...well you try making those two fit together without ending up permanently being attached to a drip stand! I'm going to have to cheat a bit and try and stretch the numbers to make it bearable and so that I get more than four hours sleep in one go-wish me luck!

Another button hat!

Well it has been such a busy weekend, I am shattered... My brother Rich married his lovely lady Josie and we spent the weekend celebrating their marriage in style, with lots of food, up in Birmingham.  I'll post photos of this later when I have actually managed to organise and edit them. I'm so pleased for both Rich and Josie and had a fantastic day. Sophie was such a good girl throughout and even gurgled at appropriate moments during the ceremony!

Anyway, the hat for this post was actually finished before the weekend but I did not have time (or the money) to organise an outfit to go with it so I wore my lovely silver rose hat and matching ensemble again. I have not decided yet if I am going to keep this hat or sell it, but I am really pleased with the curly wire and bead decoration. I've not used it since the first hat I made last year, but I think I may use it lots more as it is such a fun decoration that moves and sparkles most pleasingly! I also really like the colour combination or pink and black, a bit different from my favorite black and white.