Showing posts with label travel. Show all posts
Showing posts with label travel. Show all posts

Friday, May 28, 2010

Packed up, Shipped Out

So I'm now in sunny Portugal, very tired, slightly stressing about my chest, half a grand worse off, but keeping my fingers crossed for a week or so of being able to relax.
My brain is so smudgy at the moment, I don't know where I am or what I'm doing. Keep catching myself thinking thoughts which scare me. So hopefully this will be just the ticket to pull me outta my funk.


Can I just say that I am getting slightly concerned about my luck! I'm a bad penny.
And I have the most chaotic travel story to prove it to you :)
Please refer to the trusty bullet points, you may not know this about me but I am a compulsive list-maker. I feel lost and sick without a list, and the feeling of accomplishment when crossing off the simplest task is my heroin. I inherited this from mother hen, along with a host of other obsessive compulsive tendencies. We are the target for constant piss-taking in our house over this!
Well, in my packing haste I have ended up in a foreign country with only ONE notebook with me - one which has assigned content and so I can't multi-list-task - this techno-listing will have to sustain me.
But back to yesterday: (after a small panic over nto actually being able to work out how to DO bullet points on here!)
  • Slept for 2 hours before rude awakening for packing.
  • Hours spent sorting insurance, and packing in a panic
  • Two bad hypos from not having time to eat anything at all
  • Mothers other half throws away my travel snacks, thinking that we wouldn't want out-of-date food in the fridge when we got home
  • Taxi arrives, it's the wrong kind and fitting the family plus luggage in takes 15 minutes
  • Very uncomfortable journey to airport featuring both suitcases and heads pressed against car windows
  • Having arrived an hour and a half before boarding time, security problems with my oxygen cylinder mean we have to run to the gate
  • On arrival at Gatwick we are informed that our flight is delayed
  • After much boring waiting, our gate is revealed as being a 20-minute walk away. By this point I am so tired I can hardly stand, cue embarrasing wheelchair-assisted trek

(I will add a positive here, my brother very much enjoyed scaring me shitless LETTING GO of said wheelchair on slopes)

  • After boarding, passengers are told that we are further delayed by at least an hour, and no food, drink or toilet facilities before we air airborne
  • And 50% of passengers are in fact, screaming babies.
  • Longest, most claustrophobic flight imaginable concludes with discovery that car rental desk is closed because of the late hour
  • On sorting the first car rental problem, discover that they have cocked up and given our car away and don't have one big enough for us
  • Taxi drops us at wrong end of resort, though we don't realise until after 45 mins of searching for Apt. A-F, finding A-F, not being able to find the locked key box, a late-night phone call to the step-grandparents, and being told that there are in fact TWO A-Fs.
  • Arrival at the right A-F finds us unable to open locked key box because the code is wrong

But our story has a happy ending. After another call, we tumble into said apt. A-F after midnight, all complaining of hunger. On turning on the lights, it is revealed that a kindly friend has been round, left half a supermarket of food including chocolate and wine, and even made up the sofa bed.

Oh, and I bought Glee on DVD at the airport so we had a sleepy viewing sesh before bed at 3am :)

Today has been sunny, but windy! Though I am still verrrry tired, everyone has been doing their own thing and apart from the layer of salt that now covers me, (from lovely CF sweat) I have no complaints about my afternoon of lazing and iPod-perusal. Surprised? ;)

I'll stop my babble now, for today.

Two last things though: for anyone interested, lovely Gemma has written a post about what it feels like to have IVs, which I thought might clear up any queries about why something that is supposed to make me feel better always means me complaining about feeling crap! Take a look here...

And a quick shout-out to Tori, who is still doing amazingly after her Tx, and continues to dazzle me with her strength.

XX

Thursday, May 27, 2010

Excitement, then Disappointment, Worries and Decisions!

Well, first of all, wahoo for 20 followers!
Sadly yes, I am excited by this. Especially since Laura Sparling was my number 20 and looking at her beads and blog makes me drool :)

But. I need some advice, please, my head is all twirly.
Situation: I'm not well. I've broken out of the hospital wayy too early because I'm meant to be off to Portugal for ten days starting today (Thursday) lunchtime. I realised this afternoon that I don't have any frickin travel insurance any more. Spent 5 hours on phone and internet and found only two companies who will cover me now that I'm so much more ill than 3 years ago when I last needed it, for £520 or £770 for the 10-day trip, even using a list of specialist companies that I got from the hospital and from the CF boards. The holiday is already shaping up to be very stressful for me for certain reasons, this is adding even more to it! My mum says she wont take me if I dont buy the travel insurance, saying that she will be hugely disappointed in me if I choose not to go, because I have the money saved: Cue, slagging off to the whole family if I dont go. Thing is it's a huge chunk of my savings, which I actually have plans for, yes maybe my mum doesnt think I'll ever do the things I want to but I have to have something to hope for!!
I really don't konow whether just to pay for it and go along, or to refuse and let everyone down. Saying that it seems obvious that I should just do it. But I know my dad won't be happy at all, and I won't exactly feel thrilled...
Argh there's just so much stuff I can't even explain. I'm stuck.

Thursday, May 20, 2010

Majorly Violent Hiccups

...have plagued me the last two days.
But I'm breaking out of here! Wahoo :)
After an anxious day spent trying not to get my hopes up too much, the doctors finally came round and literally just said "Okay, so we're happy for you to go." All the waiting all day for THAT?! And I'd missed my usual flight by then. But now, after a very hectic hour spent panic-packing, I have just time to blog a little and munch my apple before I leave for the next flight. It's with a different airline to my usual and apparently the planes bear a resemblance in size to toy aeroplanes, so this should be interesting...

I am a very nervous flier.
HAha.

Anyways, slightly changing subject to distract myself from the shaking and sweaty palms I can feel approaching, I am so grateful that my dad squeezed a lot of my stuff into his bag to take back after he spent the weekend here... My case is bursting at the seams, and my big handbag weighs about as much as a small person. Oops! How could I have actually accumulated more stuff whilst being here? I sent the clothes I bought back with dad... And I would expect to have less than when I came over seeing as I brought bottles of Ribena and crisps and chocolate with me! Hmmm... I s'pose I do have a bunch of medications they've given me. Oh! I have a new neb! I finally got an eFlow wahooo :D Now yes, I know that it's tiny but when you first get it there is lots of extra bits and bobs. That must be it.


Ok, well, off to see if my toy plane can make it across the channel now :|
Wish me luck. xx
I can't wait to get home and do some crafty stuffs, I feel deprived of journalling and designing and making jewellery, I really do. I can hear my silver calling to me...