Hello everyone I hope you are all doing well today. 🙂 Although my blog has been doing very well, some of you know that I recently had a family bereavement and along with that which has been difficult to cope with, I’ve suffered some long-term health problems. And despite everything that’s been happening I wanted to give you a quick update on what’s happening with this blog. (By the way, the above picture for this post, the happy dolphin staring at you while upright underwater, has nothing to do with this post whatsoever except for the fact that I like dophins and it appeared randomly when I tried searching for life update on a free picture site😂🤣🐬)
Health
Physically my health is a bit of a mess at the moment. I did mention before that my health hasn’t been that great of late. It’s nothing to do with the current situation that the world is living in, or maybe in a round about way it is because I am struggling with a lack of care from doctors lately. I’ve been suffereing some chronic pain which fluctuates from almost invisible to ridiculously painful daily which hasn’t been the best thing to live with. In the meantime I’m still without diabetic care ☹️ which is shocking considering how much emphasis there was on the importance of diabetic care in the past, so that complications wouldn’t arise. But it seems that the diabetic nurses and doctors have all disappeared (have they gone and re-trained somewhere else?🤷♀️), not even running any phone clinic where I live and so I’m expected to just get on with it and guess, sometimes, what I’m supposed to be doing even if things are going a bit haywire and wrong as they have been lately. 😦
Mentally I’m coping well and thankfully the recent madness of the pandemic and third UK lockdown hasn’t made me too depressed. I have my moments where I worry about things never returning to normal and worry about the damage things like lockdowns and distancing are doing to children and people’s mental health in the long-term (I know there’s worries of the virus but these issues worry me too😔), but I’m doing okay and most days I’m happy, except for when things happened with a recent family issue.
Bereavement
It’s hard to talk in detail about it but someone in my family recently died and it flipped my world upsidedown for a while. I’m having days where I don’t know how to feel or what to think as the death wasn’t just unexpected but it was a sad one too, which happened in a hospital bed after an emergency admission and it wasn’t expected and also was a sad end as the hospital abroad didn’t allow any visitors even in final hours😢. Coupled with that, the knowledge that we just can’t go abroad because of quarantine for the funeral made it an extra unpleasant experience.
I’ve had a death in the family before but some deaths affect you more than others depending on how close you are to someone and what circumstances their death happened in and this was one I found harder to cope with. As a result my whole blogging schedule has gone into a bit of a mess and I’m still just trying to get through each day and deal with the bureacracy of everything to do with the funeral happening in another country, which seems to be overly beaurocratic and sometimes a little ridiculous as it’s silly things like signatures needed to okay everything several times.🙄
#Febookary
My second annual book challenge has sadly been an epic fail this year 😭 with only one good friend of mine taking up the challenge, at least to my knowledge, which I really do appreciate , so in that context not a fail, but still I’d hoped for more input than last, not less.😔 I can’t say I blame anyone but myself for not being more proactive with all the Febookary posts I’d planned and without having written them, due to everything that’s been happening recently, the challenge just got forgotten about by most. 😦 I’ve done my bit though, I’ve managed to read some graphic novels which was my goal for Febookary. I’ll be sharing some of the reviews of them here soon and it’s sparked a general interest in reading more graphic novels for me in the future, so a personal win for me. 🙂
Although there is this last week of Febookary that I could still post Febookary related stuff, and I plannd on doing a spotlight post on a publisher and talk about other things to encourage reading, I’m just not going to be able to put out those posts in time for the end of Febookary on sunday. 😦 but I do plan on still writing them up, I have some fun ideas, so I hope you’ll want to read them even if they are not strictly happening in February. I could still make them #Febookary posts despite not being posted in February I suppose, leaving the hashtag out there as a reminder of the challenge for next year. 🙂
Blogging
Although I’ve had a few hiccups from everything that’s happening, it’s actually blogging and reading, reading especially, which has been my escape from all the bad stuff. I still plan to do blog tours, reviews and read and blog here, but I just wanted to let you guys know that when it comes to writing and blogging I might be a bit late in everything I put out. I’m good at pre-scheduling posts though, so most of you probably won’t even notice it, but I might have erratic posting like several book hauls at the same time (which I usually try to space out), posts going out at the weekend instead of the week(if I’m late to post something), or a bunch of old reviews I still have to transfer to this blog from my old one.
I do have a lot of posts I’m looking forward to writing though including some about the world of blogging. Although this blog is just two and a bit years old, I’ve actually been in the blogosphere since late 2015! 😮 I know, shocking right? 😱😳 Some of you who’ve been around for a while may even have heard of my old blogs (they were semi-popular back in the day, at least I thought they were😅) although don’t tell anyone if you do know who I used to masquerade as🤫, I’d rather transfer all my old blog stuff over first before mentioning it although I doubt anyone would even care if they knew, lol! 🤣🤪 Anyway, I did have some bad experiences when I first started blogging, overworked myself silly, accepted some questionable behaviour from authors requesting reviews, and had a weird experience with a dodgy publisher, as well as just not knowing what the heck I was doing and I’d love to share some tips or stories about the stuff that happened. That might be a series of posts I’ll do in future. Let me know if it’s something that interests you? 🙂
Final thoughts
It’s not been an easy year for any of us and I think there’s been a lot of people who’ve suffered the deaths or hospitalization of loved ones. 😦 It’s been a tough year but it’s important to remember that we are still here, that life goes on and that we deserve to be happy. To that end I am going to hold on to the happy memories of the person I lost, I may even share a poem or something to help keep those memories alive. It’s important that no matter what happens in life we remember to be happy, to love and to live our lives free. Enjoy your day everyone ❤ 🙂
Have you had any recent life or blogging updates you’d like to share? What positive words would you give someone who’s struggling to cope? Let me know what you think in the comments below 🙂
The Strawberry Post 
I love your blog and I’m sorry you’re going through so much. Don’t be too hard on yourself about the challenges. It’s all in good fun anyway isn’t it? Take care! x
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Thank you so much! You’re right I shouldn’t be too hard on myself. I think I’m a bit of a perfectionist at heart so hate to see myself getting behind with anything, but of course it’s all supposed to be fun. Thank you ❤ 🙂
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I’m sorry you’re going through so much right now.
Don’t worry about the blogs and the things you planned for Febookary. Do what you can – and want to – and don’t worry about the rest. If you post some stuff late for Febookary, so be it. Like you said, you can always add the chalenge tag to them anyhow to keep it in the potential public eye for a while longer.
I’m disgusted at the lack of care you’re receiving for your diabetes right now, especially considering it’s not exactly like it’s something new for you, so you’d think you already being set up with doctors and nurses to treat that you’d be getting the care you need. Unfortunately, having experienced first hand just how ridiculous things are getting as regards medical care for anything these days, I’m not as shocked as I should be. I’m still trying to get properly signed up with the local doctor after moving, despite the fact I was registered with them before moving away from the area. I actually had to spend three hours trying to get through to my old doctor the other day to get my NHS number for the new doctor, since apparently I had to have that for them to register me. I’m not sure why, since I’ve never needed to know that number before, and even the old doctors surgery – when I FINALLY got through to them – seemed baffled by the request, but they wanted it, so I got it for them. Anyway, the point of this explanation is to explain why it is that the only reason I even have inhalers at the moment is because my old doctor kept giving me new ones every time I needed more iron tablets, and the hospital kept giving me new ones when they discharged me, so I ended up with some spare sets, which I thankfully decided to hold on to. I’ve been using them in the order I got them. Between struggles with getting through to doctors, and now issues with getting registered at the new one, it’s lucky I did hold on to them, or I’d be out of inhalers by now. I get that Covid is bad and everything, but it shouldn’t stop people from receiving care for other health issues.
The mental health impacts are something that concerns me too. I’ve been struggling from a mental health point of view myself – though not so badly so far this year as I was last year – and I know I’m not alone. A lot of people are struggling right now, and I think it’s going to leave lasting mental scars that will never heal. And the longer we keep ending up in lockdown, the worse those are going to be. Especially for the children growing up dealing with this.
I’m really sorry that not only are you having to deal with the loss of your family member, but you can’t even be there to say, “Goodbye,” properly. I struggled losing my Nan last year, and am still finding it hard, not helped by the fact she has yet to have her proper send-off. My Dad made the decission to have her cremated, and then arrange for us to give her a proper send-off when things go back to normal. Except they still haven’t, so Nan’s ashes are waiting to be properly laid to rest. I’m not even sure how I’m meant to feel about that. One thing I do know though is that every time I call my Dad’s house and it’s him that answers rather than Nan, it feels incredibly wrong, and every time I remember that she’s gone it hurts. Other than some poems I’ve randomly written, I haven’t been able to write anything but blog posts and such since she died. And it took me a couple of weeks before I could even write any poetry. The first thing I wrote after she died was this:
Goodbye, Nan
© 2020 ~ Victoria “Tori” Zigler
I remember Sunday afternoons
When we’d come over for tea
And you’d read Peter Rabbit tales
To my brothers and me
So many thoughts and memories
Flood my heart and mind,
Yet the words to express them
Are somehow hard to find
I’m trying, Nan, really
But the thing is, you see
Words don’t seem like enough
After all you did for me
I can’t express how I’m feeling
Now we have to part
So, I’ll just say, “Goodbye, Nan,”
And hold you in my heart
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Aw, that is such a beautiful poem ❤ Thank you, this covid thing really is getting too much, of course it's a scary thing for people but I think we've reached a point where we shouldn't be stopping all of life and ignoring so many other conditions. I've heard that so many have died of suicides and cancer, etc. it's simply horrible. I've never heard of needing an NHS number to register with a doctor, it's usually just your details plus a utility bill or something like that. That's very strange, and silly especially as you used to use that same GP before. I hope it all gets sorted out in the meantime, so lucky that you have those inhalers. My own GP keeps ordering everythign on my repeat prescriptions even if I don't ask for them which is lucky as I think we should always have a bit of a supply to cover weird times like this.
My relative's already been cremated. In Poland her husband's already cremated and she wanted the same so they do this cremation that didn't have many people there and it wasn't a proper funeral, but instead they later do a funeral when the ahes are already there. It's so sad because they did briefly postpone the funeral but then they brought in the quarantines on both ends and it's just too much time spent waiting in quarantine that we wouldn't make it to the funeral in time and the cost of paying for it too, which I think is unfair even though I know the hotels need the money, it's just too much and so stressful so we can't go. I can understand how your family is choosing to 'wait' to properly lay your nan to rest, though I it can't be easy having to wait. 😦
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Thanks about the poem. 🙂
I agree: it’s fair enough things grinding to a hault briefly during the early days of the first lockdown, but we can’t keep putting everything on hold because of Covid. Covid is a bad thing, I get that. But it’s not the only health issue out there, and it’s clear we can’t just sit back and wait for it to go away. Anyway, that’s how I got all the extra inhalers… Everything on my prescription being renewed each time I saw a doctor or went to the hospital, even if I didn’t need it all. Oh, and I’ve never heard of needing an NHS number to register at a doctor before either. I’ve moved several times in my life, and never once been asked for my NHS number before. Mostly it’s just my name, date of birth, current and previous address, and the details of the doctor I’m changing from.
I’m sorry things happened the way they did, and you can’t even be there for the funeral. 😦
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Don’t know how I missed Febookary – I got caught up in my writing, I think. I’d be interested to read about your early experiences with blogging.
So sorry to hear you’ve lost someone you loved.
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Thank you ❤ No wories about Febookary, it's my own fault for not promoting it more, but I'm still hoping that it will be something bigger next year. 🙂 Thank you, I'd love to write more about my old experiences with blogging. 🙂
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I’m so sorry you have been struggling recently, Cat ❤ Losing someone dear to you , especially if you haven't been able to visit them before they died and then are unable to attend a funeral, is very hard to deal with. I expect it will take you some time to adjust to the fact of their absence from your life and you shouldn't expect too much of yourself while you are grieving.
I am shocked at how little help you have had with your diabetes, especially as you have had a number of problems with medication in recent years. I am not sure what can be done about it as so many of us are not getting the care we need with chronic illnesses because of the pandemic. With regard to the pain you are suffering, I think you should insist on being seen by a doctor immediately. It may have something to do with your diabetes or it may be completely separate but you need to have it looked into.
I am glad you've been able to get comfort by reading. To be able to escape from our current troubles is so good for us. I have not been able to read much through lack of concentration – what a bore!
Take care, Cat xxxxxx
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Thank you ❤ I want to write to you in an email so I can go into more detail I just haven't had much time due to everything and I keep meaning to write and then keep falling asleep randomly duing the day and night.
I think I'm prone to being annoyed at myself if things don't go according to plan due to being a bit of a perfectionist which is silly as so many years of blogging I should know by now that it's okay to take a break and not push myself.
I will look into it, I was even thinking of just trying A&E if I really can't get a doctor to see me. It's so sad that in the craziness ofthe pandemic other conditions are being forgotten about. My latest GP hasn't asked about my diabetes ever since I joined, not asked for any blood tests which was usually a yearly thing to ask and doesn't want to refer me to a diabetic hospital clinic which for type 1s is the norm especially when things are going erratic as they are for me at the moment.
I hope your own health is doing alright and that you haven't suffered too many problems. ❤ Thank you so much for all your support and I'll write to you soon just give me a few days to reply ❤ 🙂
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I’m very sorry for your loss and all the difficulties with bureaucracy, as if losing someone wasn’t difficult enough. You’ve done so much despite what’s going on. You have permission to be human too. I hope you get the medical support you need very soon, this worldwide craziness can’t go on forever… let’s just hope we are near the end of it. Sending love and healing :-*
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Thank you ❤ Yes I really hope that it will soon end, I sometimes worry it won't but then at other times I feel positive it will, lol. Thank you and I hope you are doing okay? ❤ 🙂
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I believe March will bring us some surprises on that matter. February was like a maze. March shall bring new inputs 😉 Let’s keep ourselves in the moment though ❤ I'm doing better today too, change of tides 😀 xx
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