Getting My Mojo Back

Good Day Everyone,

I hope you've all had a great start to 2016. I am pleased to say that I am finally starting to feel like myself again. In fact, I feel like I'm getting my mojo back :o).

The last couple of months of 2015 were very difficult. My arthritis flared up severely and there were days where I felt like I couldn't carry on living with the excruciating pain I was experiencing. In addition, both my scalp and body psoriasis were also flaring and I was suffering from more migraines than usual, all whilst living in what felt like a building site! The despair that I felt at the end of 2015 was reminiscent of the despair I felt back at the end of 2011, when I made the difficult decision to give up my career so that I could work on my health full time. I felt like I was living under a dark grey cloud surrounded by a thick fog - I couldn't see where I was going, there was no shining light in the distance, and I could feel myself heading into a downward spiral of depression. If you've read my previous blog post (read here), you'll know that I slowly but surely started to take positive steps to move forward during the last few days of 2015.

Juicing again :o)

Over the past few weeks I have continued to make good progress with small positive changes to my daily life. I am now in a place where I'm starting to feel happy about my life again. My health is starting to improve and whilst I am still struggling with my arthritic shoulder, I have seen small improvements. I feel like I now have a better understanding of what I need to do to help my shoulder get better and accepting that it is going to be a long slow battle is easing my frustration.

Having a fully functioning kitchen has been a huge contributor to me getting my mojo back. I always feel better when I have greater control over what I eat, as I know from experience that what I eat greatly affects my arthritis. Living in a caravan for six months with a restrictive kitchen meant that we were eating foods that didn't take long to cook as the cooker wasn't particularly powerful, and foods that were convenient to store as we had a very small refrigerator. Basically, we lived of a lot of processed carbs like pasta and bread. We were eating some fruit and vegetables, but it wasn't as much as we would typically eat, and there were a few too many treats. My hubby is a sugar junkie and would often snack on chocolates and biscuits, whilst I relapsed on my crisp addiction (although to be fair, I think I was comfort eating as I was unhappy with my whole living in a caravan situation). Whilst hubby would burn of the calories from his vice due to all the physical work he was doing, I on the other hand, developed a rather rounded midsection due to my sedentary lifestyle ;o). However, all that is now changing. We have a fully equipped kitchen and a dining table with chairs, which means that we actually have something to sit on, other than our bed, and that has made the world of difference.

 Below are some of the steps that I have taken over the past few weeks that have resulted in me getting my mojo back;

• Exercising daily: I have made a conscious effort to get back into the routine of exercising daily. Exercising really helps with my arthritic pain and joint stiffness which in turn helps my mobility. Some days I will go for a brisk 40min sea front walk, other days I'll hula hoop or do yoga based stretching exercises at home if I'm too tired for a walk or if it's raining (which it has been a lot!).
• Baths: One of the side effects of suffering from chronic pain is insomnia so I am trying really hard to take regular bath soaks in the evenings to help me sleep better and help with my joint pain.
• Bedtime: To help with my insomnia, I am trying to go to bed at the same time every night and get up at the same time every morning, even on weekends, so that I can condition my body and mind into a sleep routine.
• Food: Now that we have a functioning kitchen, I am cooking from scratch and we are eating healthy, nutritious food again which makes me incredibly happy, oh and there are no crisps in the house! Breakfast toast is now replaced with smoothie bowls and we juice most days so I get a good chunk of anti-inflammatory ginger into my overly inflamed body.
• Cooking in bulk: Because I never know how bad my body is going to be from one day to the next, I have started to cook in bulk. I will often cook enough food to last us for two days and if it's freezable I will make enough so that a couple of batches can go in the freezer. This way there is healthy home cooked food in the fridge / freezer so that we don't resort to ready meals / takeaways. Plus, it means I don't have to cook every single day, meaning I can use that energy to write blog posts like this one :o).
• Medication application: To deal with my flaring scalp psoriasis I have resorted back to a routine of applying my scalp medication daily (read more here). This means having to wash my hair every single day which is an incredibly exhausting task when you suffer from chronic fatigue and exhaustion, but I am seeing such great improvements that it's keeping me motivated to continue. Hopefully, soon my hair will no longer look like someone has emptied a snow globe on it and I can temper the medication application down to just a couple of times a week. I am also doing the same with my body psoriasis.
• Drinking more: To help with my migraines I am making a conscious effort to drink more water. Aside from food / scent triggers, I know that being dehydrated can cause me to experience more migraines and lets just say that having to use a caravan toilet for six months wasn't the greatest incentive to drink more!
• Silence: This is slightly more on the meditative side but I am consciously taking time out of my day to simply be in silence. I sit without the radio or laptop on (we have no television and you can find out why here) and just listen. It is incredibly calming. Being surrounded by trees and public gardens mean we get a lot of birds around our house, especially at the back and sometimes I just stand and listen to / watch them. We also have squirrels at the back of our house and they are always fun to watch.
• Acceptance: I am actively accepting the things that I cannot change and learning to let go of the negative emotions they cause me to feel. One half of our house still looks like a building site and walking through it used to really upset me. The other half, whilst it's progressed significantly, it still isn't finished and not having a single room that is finished really grated on me, but no more. I have accepted that this house renovation is taking a lot longer than we ever anticipated and being upset about it doesn't actually change the situation. There's no point in wasting valuable energy in being upset. I just have to ride it out whilst appreciating all the things that are working, like the kitchen and having a regular toilet and bath. I am also accepting that getting my health back on track is going to be a long journey, but at least I am moving in the right direction now. 

Over the years that I've lived with Arthur (aka arthritis), I've been forced to learn (and accept) that things are just going to go at a much, much slower pace for me, compared to others. Having a mind that is fully functional, but a body that is not, causes a great deal of internal conflict and frustration. I have so many ideas of blog posts that I want to write, content that I'd like to create for my YouTube channel and photographs that I want to take, but alas I barely have enough energy to shower and cook most days. My life now is so different to before Arthur invaded my body. I often reminisce of when I used to have a career that led me to travel the world (well Europe and the US), work crazy hours and always be on the go socially. My world has shrunk so much, as has my identity, but nonetheless, I have learnt to treasure the days when I can cook and shower for I have experienced days when I haven't even been able to do that. Having an attitude of gratitude (and acceptance) is definitely key in learning to be happy whilst being chronically ill.


Love Sheen xxx

Why Today Had To Be Different

Good Day Everyone,

It sure has been a while since I sat down to write a blog post. The past few weeks have been incredibly tough, primarily on the health front, although the house renovation has been another source of stress, and therefore a contributory factor to the aforementioned. I'll do a separate blog post updating you on the house soon as a lot has happened, and not always in a good way!

Coming back to the health issues, I've been firing or rather flaring, from all cylinders. I've been experiencing more migraine attacks than usual, and my body and scalp psoriasis has been going crazy. On top of this, my arthritis has flared up quite badly and I've been struggling with severe shoulder pain, as well as intense fatigue and exhaustion, despite doing very little physically. Things got really bad a couple of weeks ago and after several days of wallowing in teary self pity of "Why? Why is this happening to me?" I realised that I actually knew the answer to why, but more importantly, I took the mental step of acknowledging that no-one could put this right other than me (even though I already knew this too). You see, the thing with chronic illnesses is that you are battling those illnesses every single day, in fact it's every single minute of every single hour of every single day. The battle is continuous - there are no breaks, and it is absolutely relentless! With hindsight and some reflection (after all what else was I going to do when I'm in bed day after day), I can now see that I simply got tired of battling. I had no more fight left in me. I had surrendered, not only to the disease demons, but also to the temptations around me, which I fight on a daily basis.

So with the realisation and acknowledgement that I, and only I, had the power to change things, I...  started to change things ;o). Initially, the changes were all in my head as my body physically wasn't well enough to do anything, but over the last few days, I have started to turn those mental changes into physical action. They started of small, like me taking over juicing duties from hubby or being well enough to accompany him on a supermarket shop, but hey a step in the right direction is a step in the right direction, no matter how small, and slowly I'm moving on to bigger achievements.

Having been stuck in a bit of a negativity rut towards the end of this year, I didn't want to start 2016 on a negative note, no matter how bad my health maybe. And this is why I woke up today after a relatively decent night's sleep with a view that today had to be different. It just had to. I didn't want today, the last day of 2015, to be like the past few weeks. The same mundane routine. There had to be something new and there had to be some sense of achievement, no matter how small.

So the first thing I did was to check the weather forecast as it has been raining almost every single day this month and seeing that rain wasn't forecasted for a couple of hours, I suggested a sea front walk to hubby. We used to do these walks most mornings in Japan and found them to be very therapeutic mentally, as well as physically. Despite living next to the sea we haven't actually done many sea walks as hubby starts to work on the house as soon as he is up in the mornings. There was something very inspiring and awakening about today's walk- I started to feel like a weight was being lifted off my shoulders as I took in the crisp morning air and marveled at nature's beauty. The walk turned into a little breakfast stop off, and hubby and I used this rare quality time (we've had a great quantity of time together these past few months but it hasn't been of good quality) to reflect upon 2015, and discuss what we would both like to get out of 2016. Walking back we did get caught in the rain but it was worth it.

Once back home I took my first ever bath in our new bath tub to help my sore joints and whilst it only made them feel a little better and only for a short period of time, I think bath soaks will start to help the more often I do them. After my soak I made our daily juice and then set to work on doing some cooking. We very recently got to a stage where we have a fully functioning kitchen and yesterday hubby got our dining table and chairs out. This has made such a huge difference to the quality of our lives. So even though I was feeling quite tired physically, I decided to push ahead using my mental energy which was buzzing after the walk and bath, to be productive in the kitchen. I made fish pie, for the first time ever. I even made my own butter and parsley sauce, and it tasted great (even if I do say so myself ;o)). I made a batch of them so some can go in the freezer, and I'll be taking a few to my mum's this weekend as she's recovering from knee surgery (cue good daughter points lol).

I did a few more things that I won't bore you with but suffice to say, as I sit here typing this at 10.30pm on new year's eve, that today has been different to all the other days I've had lately. I have felt positive and got a real sense of achievement with today. Even though tonight is a quiet night for us, I feel excited, inspired and ready for 2016 to be a year of positive change for hubby and I. And on that note I shall leave you. All that remains for me to say is, thank you from the bottom of my heart for reading this and all the support you have given me, and I hope 2016 is a fabulous year for you and your loved ones :o).

Happy New Year Everyone! 

Love Sheen xxx

Living With Migraines

Good Day Everyone,

Today I’m going to share my experience of living with migraines. 

A quick disclaimer to say that I am not a medical professional and that you should not make any changes to your migraine treatment without discussing it with your doctor first. Whilst I will be talking about the treatments that I have tried, I am not recommending that you try them too. This is simply my personal experience of living with migraines.

I was first diagnosed with migraines when I was 13 and hence have been a sufferer for most of my life. A migraine is a very severe and excruciating headache that is often associated with or follows on from other symptoms such as nausea, vomiting, increased sensitivity to light, sound, movement and impaired vision to name a few. Migraines can last from a few hours to 2-3 days. The exact cause of migraines is not known but genetic, hormonal and external factors are thought to play a role. Migraines can run in families, my mum also suffers from them, and women are more likely to suffer from migraines than men.

I typically suffer from two kinds of migraines and these are just my own categories, not medical classifications. The first type is a migraine at the base of my skull and the other type is behind my eye (typically left eye for some reason). I can almost always tell when I’m about to get a migraine either because I’ll have been exposed to a known trigger or even without a trigger, I will develop certain symptoms that warn me its coming such as;

• Developing neck stiffness
• My head will start to feel too heavy for my neck to hold up 
• I get a lot of tension built up in my neck and shoulders
• I start to yawn a lot 
•  I get very nauseous (but I’ve never actually vomited)  
• I get very sensitive to light especially bright white light that you get in offices or on computer screens

If I'm developing a migraine behind my eye then I often get a flickering light in my vision... it's hard to describe but basically it puts a strain on my eye. Once I’m suffering from a full blown migraine attack I get the most excruciating, pulsating pain in my head where it becomes very difficult for me to move because any form of movement makes it feel like my brain is sloshing around in my skull, being battered, and that causes the pulsating sensation to worsen. Often it feels like a pressure is building up inside my skull making it feel like my head is going to explode. I feel like I want someone to drill a hole into my skull just to release this pressure (apparently that’s exactly what they used to do in the olden days... no joke!).

When I’m in the midst of a severe migraine I have minimal awareness of what’s going on around me as the pain is so debilitating and completely takes over my world. Where possible, I will seek out a quite dark room (preferably my bedroom) where I can lay still until it passes or I eventually fall asleep. I have found through experience that heat can have a soothing effect on my migraine and so I will use a hot water bottle to heat up my pillow which I put on my neck or the side of my face with the eye migraine. Sometimes I will actually place the hot water bottle wrapped in a towel on my neck / face. I also find that certain smells like fresh coffee, tiger balm and anything menthol or minty-ish helps to ease the nausea. When I have a migraine behind my eye, it makes my eye very sore and the affected eye doesn't open as fully as normal. Just by looking at my eyes, some work colleagues could tell that I was suffering from a migraine. 

Things I use to help with my migraines

The migraine can last from a few hours to a couple of days and afterwards, once the pain has passed, and I’m back in the land of the living I usually feel incredibly exhausted, like I've just ran a marathon. I’m also usually starving following an attack for some reason and recovering from a migraine is one of the rare times where I actually crave sugar.

When I was 13 my GP (family doctor) asked me to keep a food diary so that we could identify any dietary triggers as well as a diary of when I developed a migraine, what I was doing at that time, where I was etc to see if we could identify any external triggers. This was one of the best things I ever did as after a few months of this somewhat tedious task, we were able to identify my triggers and these have remained true my entire adult life.

There are several types of food and drink, which if I consume, can quite quickly cause a migraine. These include;

• Cordial juices such as Ribena and Robinsons 
• Fizzy citrus drinks such as Sprite, Fanta or 7-UP
• Cheese  - too much will trigger a migraine so whilst I do occasionally eat cheese I know there is a limit and I've gotten quite good at sensing when I’m getting close to that limit

There are also certain smells that, for me, can trigger a migraine such as;

• The smell of alcohol especially red wine (my worst nightmare is being stuck on a long haul flight next to someone drinking red wine!)
• Petrol and diesel
• Paint 
• Strong smelling perfumes especially the sweet vanilla variety

In addition, if I don’t get enough sleep, go too long without eating or get very tired then I know I’m at risk of getting a migraine, especially, if I’m in an artificially (brightly) lit environment such as offices and shopping malls or working at a computer screen. So when you add all of the above combined with a crazy career where I worked long hours and travelled overseas, it’s easy to see why my career was plagued by my migraines.

As a teenager, my GP prescribed me pink Migraleve tablets which I would take when I could sense a migraine coming on or as soon as one had started. After a few years my migraines eased dramatically for some unknown reason and I rarely suffered in my late teens, but then in my early twenties, they came back with a vengeance!!!

In my twenties there would be times when I would have 4-8 migraine attacks per month. I went through phases of my life where I literally felt constantly drugged up (I can assure you I wasn't but that’s how I felt). As a result of my migraines I've missed nights out, had to cancel dinner plans and even spent entire weekends bed bound. They really did rule my life at times! As the migraines were so severe and frequent my GP put me on a preventative medication called amitriptyline. I would take this on a daily basis to prevent a migraine from happening in the first place. However, as I avoid taking medication as much as possible I didn't feel comfortable taking amitriptyline every single day for a condition that did not affect me every single day. Amitriptyline is also an anti-depressant and has quite a few side effects so I was concerned about the effects of taking this long term. I soon found that I wasn't taking it daily and thus it wasn't able to work as a preventative treatment.

The treatment that did work for me was a drug called Zomig (zolmitriptan) which I take when I sense a migraine coming on so it’s not a preventative medication like the amitriptyline but a reactive treatment. I have taken Zomig for several years now and most of the time, if I take it when I first sense a migraine coming it usually does work to stop it from turning into a full blown attack. When I initially started taking Zomig, I would often try to manage without the medication or take a ‘let’s wait and see what happens’ approach. What often happened was that it developed into a full blown migraine, I would take my medication, which wouldn't work as I’d left it too late and missed that window of opportunity of preventing the migraine and would then spend the next day or two in agony cursing myself and taking very strong prescription painkillers! I was prescribed Co-Codamol which is a combination of paracetamol and codeine that I would take when the Zomig didn't work. I soon learnt that it was better to take the Zomig at the early signs of an attack rather than trying to ride it out without drugs and then ending up on prescription painkillers that made it very difficult for me to function due to how woozy they made me feel.

Given how frequently I suffered from migraines, I actually didn't take many sick days from work at all. I learnt to take my Zomig with me everywhere I went and even when I did have a migraine, taking time off work wasn't an option due to deadlines so I would grab a coffee (to smell) and just muddle through until I could get home. I also started carrying Vicks VapoRub, a menthol balm, around with me to smell as it eased the nausea. There were times when I would have a long drive home from work meetings and if I was having a migraine attack, that was the one time where I did stop, especially if I was driving at night where the glare from oncoming traffic headlights would make my migraine worse and affect my vision. In such circumstances, I would pull up into a service station, grab a coffee, text my hubby to let him know where I am and curl up with a blanket on the back seats of my car, waiting for the medication to kick in. Sometimes I would actually fall asleep and wake up a couple of hours later feeling a bit groggy but better able to function. As a result, the drive home would be much longer but as my mum always says, its better to arrive late than never and I would never risk putting myself or others in danger by driving when I know I’m not well enough to.

Nowadays I am more or less migraine free – yippee :o) Since giving up work at the end of 2011 (due to the progression of my arthritis), I have only had two migraines and they were both triggered by a combination of fatigue, hunger and stress. Whilst I was incredibly gutted to have to give up on a career that I’d worked so hard to develop, I also realise that I’m in a very fortunate position where I can now take it easy and concentrate on keeping myself as healthy and feeling as well as possible. Looking back, I genuinely believe that my lifestyle and career played a big role in causing my migraines. My eyes have always disliked bright artificial white light and every office I've worked in has had such lighting plus I've always struggled with the glare from office computer screens, combine that with working long hours, travelling long distances, eating irregular meals, being stressed and not getting enough rest and sleep probably took a toll. Now that’s a lot of factors there and at the time I kind of knew my lifestyle and work life balance was probably the cause of most of my migraines but giving up work wasn't an option. 

Unless you or someone that you’re very close to suffers from migraines, it’s difficult for most people to understand and appreciate just how debilitating they can be. If you suffer or think you suffer from migraines then it’s very important to get the correct diagnosis and medication for you. A doctor may also conduct tests to rule out other causes of head pain. I've had brain scans twice in my 20s to rule out anything more sinister. During one particular attack I became incredibly sensitive to movement, light, sound and even touch. I actually thought that I was suffering from something else as the pain on this particular occasion was off the scale. I seriously felt like I was going to die from the pain! I ended up being admitted into hospital and put on a morphine drip whilst I had various tests and scans. The doctors concluded that it was indeed a migraine but of a different nature than what I’d had in the past. Luckily a migraine of that severity and magnitude has only ever happened twice and its not something I would wish on my worst enemy.

There are lots of different types of medications available to treat and/or prevent migraines so if something doesn't work for you then there are other options. As well as medication, there are other things you can do to reduce your chances of getting a migraine and steps to manage the migraine itself. Based on my experience I have found the following most helpful;

• Keeping a diary to identify potential triggers - food, drinks, smells which I can then avoid
•  Eating regularly and keeping hydrated
• Not delaying taking medication when sensing a migraine is imminent
• Ensuring I get enough rest and sleep
• Make time to relax my mind, as well as my body
• Heat compresses like a hot water bottle help ease the pain for me, but for some people, a cold compress works better
• Laying down during an attack in a quiet and dark room (avoiding movement, sound and light)
• The smell of coffee or menthol eases my nausea

About eight years ago I also started going for regular head and neck massages which I've found to be really helpful in relieving the tension in my neck and shoulders which in turn has helped to reduce the frequency of my migraines.

There are also various support groups and websites that can offer support to migraine sufferers. It’s always interesting talking to other sufferers to find out what things help them cope with their attacks and comparing notes. But it’s also important to remember that we are all different and so what works for one person may not work for another. Ultimately, it’s about trial and error to find out what works for you.

I hope you have found this post interesting and that it’s given you a bit of an insight as to what it’s like to live with migraines (if you’re not a sufferer yourself). If you are a sufferer then I hope that there may be some tips here that you might find helpful. If you have any tips or strategies of how you cope with migraines then do let me know. I’m always interested in other people’s experiences.

Below are some websites where you can get further information and/or support on migraines;

Migraine Trust
Facebook Migraine Support Group
Daily Strength

The National Migraine Association

Love Sheen xxx

Living With...

Good Day Everyone,

After my mini-series of ‘DIY Wedding’, I've decided to write about another mini-series based upon my personal experience. This one is going to be called ‘Living With...’ and in each post I’m going to write about my experience of living with the three chronic health conditions that I suffer from;

1. Migraines
2. Psoriasis (scalp and body)
3. Psoriatic Arthritis (including psoriatic nails)

I appreciate that this may not be of interest or relevant to all of you but I think that could be said for any post (and as this is my blog I guess I can write about whatever I like ;o)). I want to put my experience out there in case there’s anyone else that suffers from any of these conditions who wants to connect with / hear from someone that can understand what they’re going through.

I've never really had anyone to talk to who also suffers from the same health conditions as me, or rather, it may simply be the case that there is someone in my life who does suffer from one (or more) of these conditions but I just don’t know about it. You see, until a few years ago, I never used to feel comfortable talking about my conditions, not even to my friends, because I was so incredibly embarrassed by them, especially my psoriasis. I spent the best part of 10 years trying to hide my scalp psoriasis from the world as I was so ashamed of it, like it was some dirty secret. So I guess if I felt like that then it’s possible that others may feel that way too.

So you may be wondering what changed? Why am I all of a sudden willing to talk about it? Well, first of all, with age comes confidence and with confidence I've grown to be more comfortable in my own skin. I no longer care whether people know what I suffer from or not. Nowadays I don’t care if people I meet stare at my deformed fingers or discoloured nails or the psoriasis patches on my elbows. I no longer go out of my way to hide what I suffer from, partly because some things like my fingers and nails can’t be hidden but primarily because I’m comfortable with who I am and what I have.

Aside from confidence, I learnt to put things in to perspective because what I suffer from, as terrible and painful as it is at times, it isn't likely to kill me. This is quite a recent achievement because I did use to have a lot of thoughts along the lines of ‘Why me?’, ‘What am I being punished for?’ etc etc but then when I saw people I knew go through health issues that could kill them, it kind of put mine into perspective. For a while I swung the other way, thinking ‘Well why not me?’, ‘What’s so special about me that means I shouldn't suffer?’ or ‘If someone has to have this damn disease then why not me?’. Now I don’t have any of those thoughts, not the ‘Why me?’ or the ‘Why not me?’, now I just accept it for what it is and try to deal with it as best as I can – acceptance of things for what they are is something else that I've learnt to do recently and it’s amazing how much inner peace that has brought me. Acceptance doesn't mean that I've given up or that I’m not going to try to improve things, it simply means that I've re-focused that energy and voice in my head that was always asking ‘why’ towards a more constructive direction.

I've also redefined my definition of true beauty. To me, true beauty is no longer about what the eye can see but what the heart feels. This is not an easy concept given the superficiality of the world we live in and how ‘beauty’ is defined in our society. It’s certainly not a concept that I as a teenager or even in my early 20s would have got my head around. I wish I had because I might have been a happier person. In my 20s I spent so much time hiding any physical signs of my psoriasis that I missed out on a lot of 'living'. My psoriasis and arthritis may affect how I look, my outer beauty so to speak, but it doesn't change who I am as a person and it doesn't change the way I can make people feel or the way people can make me feel.

Over the last couple of years I've taken ‘active’ control of my health conditions. I must admit, this was primarily forced upon me with the move to Singapore and dealing with a completely different type of healthcare system. In addition, towards the end of 2011 I hit my lowest point ever regarding my health and realised that I could no longer carry on with the way things were and had to take control. One of my biggest regrets of my 20s was not taking active control of my scalp psoriasis and just letting my GPs (family doctors) fob me off with one treatment after another that made no difference and I eventually just gave up hope, hope of ever getting better. Looking back now, I know I should have been more proactive – hindsight’s a wonderful thing, isn't it?

Finally, I guess the other significant thing that changed was that I met my darling hubby and he gives  me so much support and encouragement and makes me feel beautiful despite my scaly skin, discoloured nails, wonky fingers and that really does work wonders ... for me, my confidence, my self esteem and especially my emotional health. Unconditional love and support can do amazing things!

So there you have it, those are some of the things that did change and I’m sure there are others but I’ll cover those in my posts on each condition over the coming weeks. For those of you not interested in this mini-series, don't despair there will be my regular mish mash of posts alongside this mini-series.

Apologies that this is quite a text heavy post and I imagine the ‘Living With ...’ posts that will follow will also be text heavy but I’ll try to include the odd pretty picture in there ;o)

Love Sheen xxx

Sunset on Langkawi island (Malaysia)

Sunset on Langkawi island (Malaysia)

My Journey To This Blog

Hi there, how are you? Good I hope! Let me start by introducing myself. My name is Sheen. I am a British expat wife currently living in Singapore with my hubby. 

After ten years in a career that I was lucky enough to enjoy, I've been forced to take a career break due to health reasons :o( About a year before we moved out to Singapore I was diagnosed with my third and most debilitating chronic illness, arthritis (psoriatic arthritis to be precise). Having suffered from psoriasis and migraines since my teenage years I was now faced with a condition that affected me in a way that the other two had not. Whilst I suffered from quite horrific migraines, I wasn’t suffering from them continuously (although it did feel like that at times), and whilst the psoriasis was there all the time there were times, albeit very occasionally, that I would forget about it, but this arthritis was there all the time and there was no way this disease was ever going to let me forget who the boss was (not me that’s for sure!).  

Eight months after we left all our friends and family and everything that was familiar behind to begin our Asian adventure I hit one of the lowest points in my life. My arthritis was very aggressive, I was in constant pain, I gained so much weight due to the steroid medication I was taking that I no longer recognised myself in the mirror, I was suffering from regular migraines that were so severe they prevented one of my eyes from opening fully, my psoriasis was going nuts again but most alarming of all, I felt complete and utter despair – I was sooo unhappy! So at the end of 2011, with the support of my amazing hubby, I made the decision to give up work so that I could gain some sort of control over my life and most importantly my health – both physical and mental. 

I spent 2012 getting healthy again and it sure worked a treat :o) My migraines have practically disappeared (more on this later). My psoriasis is the most controlled it’s ever been in the last 17 years and my arthritis, whilst it’s still very much ‘alive and kicking’ it is no longer making me as miserable as it did in 2011 (even though I now have more joints affected). You see, I’ve learnt to live with it in a more ‘harmonious’ manner. It no longer feels like the ‘boss’ of me, rather we have developed an understanding, and now it feels more like a long term ‘companion’.

This year (2013) has been spent exploring and contemplating about what I want to (and can physically) do with my life now that going back to my old career is no longer an option. And so here we are! I’ve decided to use this blog as outlet for my lifelong passion... colour, in its many different manifestations, because colour is the one thing that has ALWAYS made me happy and I want to be happy because life’s no fun otherwise! No doubt I'll also be talking about the ups and downs of living life with chronic illnesses, especially arthritis. I will probably throw in a few other bits and bobs for good measure like aspects from our lives in Asia and anything else that takes my fancy. So why don’t you come along for the ride for you never quite know what’s around the corner –ooooh how exciting!!!

Love Sheen xxx

P.S. I love looking at photos on blogs (it makes them so much more interesting) but in inevitably there will be posts where photos are not really relevant, in which case, I will probably add photos of nature / sights (like I've done here) just so that there's something colourful to look at ;o)