Hi everyone,
Sorry to drift in and drift out...
MissP many, many congratulations!!!
Zany - sore in relation to lumps of most varieties is actually a good thing (ie. usually means infection rather than something nasty) - I am qualified to say this btw (though the less revealed, the better I think) but from personal experience, I was sent urgently to a haematologist when I was 21 with weight loss and non-tender lymph nodes everywhere (neck, armpits, groin, etc) - until he examined me and the way he put pressure on them, they did hurt (GP too nice and gentle maybe!) and it turned out to be a fairly unusual presentation of boring old glandular fever and not lymphoma as I had myself convinced. I hope you have a similar dull but desperately reassuring diagnosis.
Mouse great news on Manchester Childrens' - I worked on the CMMC site during it's rebuild (in various locations! - and saw the theatre DD was born in demolished :( but most of the demolition was for the better!) and have worked with some of the paediatricians there too - it really is first class but more importantly it is being first class for you which is far more important than any hearsay. You mention them working with you on Nemo's eating which is fab, what about his sleeping? (as that seems to have the biggest effect on you... and hardly surprisingly).
littleblue - hello, I saw your other thread, it sounds like you are going to get this before it has got too bad - well done you. Once you've bought something, throwing it away is bloody hard, well done.
thurso you are such an inspiration to me especially with your honesty. If you do that tour, you can find me abt half way from Mouse's to Indie!
Golly - me too lately - on the relapse - been 2 weeks 2 days again now after 12 weeks but MIFLAW is right it's not down the drain, though I feel like it is too, I still know that its not really iyswim. It was the first time I'd ever made it past that month mark - not sure if it was for you - I'd stopped counting in days! I think too much though. I need to "keep it simple" as AA would say I just don't know how - if you do then enlighten me.
So, yes, confession time - grief played it's part but it's just an excuse. I just haven't learned other ways to cope. And I'm still a self-centred, frightened, attention-seeker that has no idea what to do with the attention once I've got it. And, I'm an alcoholic and it is a chronic, progressive, thinking disease (IMO). However this last 2 weeks - since I put the drink down again, I'm crying, talking, writing, crying,.... learning, I guess, how you do this feeling thing that I never really got before. I had a really rocky time when my grandma died, I was 12, she was 70, but I think I was healthier then because I did just cry (until my mum told me not to, now there's a cycle I have to break) and express the unexpressible.
Just for today if I don't pick up a drink I'm in with a chance (doing an hour at a time though).