#7

So.. I got my tongue pierced.

Honestly didn’t think it was too bad. The pain wasn’t half as bad as I thought and my tongue didn’t swell. That is until about 8 hours after.

I had the day off work and I promised my boyfriend I would make him a pie, so after the piecing I went to Tesco, got all the stuff and made the pie from scratch as soon as I got in. Of course, after all that effort, I wasn’t going to not eat it.. and my tongue was fine just with a bar through it that wasn’t there before. So I very slowly ate that pie and had this whipped cream and toffee desert thing that Tesco do. That is when the swelling started. My tongue doubled in size but it still didn’t hurt.. it was just huge.

The next day I still had no pain so when my boyfriend’s nan came round and gave me half her sandwich I nommed it down.. And nearly swallowed my tongue bar. When I pushed it back in I still didn’t have any pain.

My fat tongue and I thought we had escaped lightly. Until last night. Oh my god. My neck muscles hurt, the webbing under my tongue hurt, it hurt to talk, it hurt to drink.. So I just took some pain killers and went to sleep.

Now I’m fine again.. Still swollen but fine. YAY!

Lillian Catherine x.

#6

I work in a pharmacy.. let me tell you exactly why it takes a while to get your prescription ready even though we “don’t make the tablets from scratch” (that’s right, someone said that to me at work yesterday).

1. You walk in with your prescription. It’s only one item so it should be really quick to prepare. In the pharmacy there is a small child and his mother and an old man, but they are sitting down so you walk straight up to the counter and give your prescription to the health care assistant. She asks you if you pay or not – this is not a choice! You only don’t pay if you fit into a few specific groups. Also, this price is set by the NHS.. It will not be any cheaper if you go to another pharmacy.

2. The Health Care Assistant puts the prescription in a basket and puts it by the dispensing computer, but it doesn’t get started! How could this be? You walked straight up to the counter with out having to wait and it’s only ONE item! Well, do you remember the child and the old man sitting in the waiting area? The dispenser and the pharmacist are busy putting together the old man’s 14 item prescription and making up the child’s liquid antibiotics. And that lazy health care assistant? She’s just standing around.. why can’t she do your prescription? Legally she doesn’t have the training to do it so if she did she would be breaking the law.

3. Finally the dispenser is free to do your prescription. She logs onto the system and types your name into the search bar.. Your not on our system! Not a problem, she’ll just add you but it means that it will take a little while longer. After your all added and the prescription has been processed the dispenser goes to print the labels and the label roll has run out! She rushes around to find and new roll then finds one, puts in in the label printer and we’re away!

4. Now the prescription has been processed on the computer and the labels are printed, we are just missing the drugs. The dispenser walks over to where your item is kept and we don’t have it on the shelf! Luckily our order has just come in and the dispenser knows for a fact that your item is in it.. the only problem is all the drugs are all mixed up in 6 big tote boxes so to find your item she has to open them up one by one and rummage through all the other drugs to find yours. It just so happens that your item is the the forth tote box so it didn’t take too long to find. The dispenser takes out your item, checks it against the prescription, sticks the label on it and signs to say she has dispensed it.

5. The dispenser then has to get it double checked by the pharmacist, but while you were waiting someone came in the ask advice from the pharmacist so your prescription it just going to have to wait a moment. The pharmacist finished talking to the other customer and starts to check your prescription. He notices that the Dr has written that your item should be taken three times daily when it is usually taken four times daily. The pharmacist then has to call up the Dr to check if he meant to prescribe it like that. The Dr had made a mistake but is happy for the pharmacist to amend the label and give out the item now then send the prescription back to the surgery for amending later.

6. The pharmacist finishes their checks, bags up the item and gives it to the health care assistant to give out. You finally have your drugs and are free to go.

And that’s why it doesn’t just take a minute to get your prescription medications. Don’t take it out on the pharmacy staff, we have processes we have to follow and no amount of shouting is going to change that.

Lillian Catherine x.

#5

Tuesdays suck.

Well this Tuesday sucks.

It started when I woke up. I snoozed my alarm then snoozed my alarm then lay in bed facebooking. It was at this point I realised I have about £1 in my bank account and no lunch prepared so I leapt out of bed and ran downstairs to make my lunch, which then resulted in me being late out of the house. The traffic was terrible, my bus route drives past two secondary schools and so the bus was also packed full of obnoxious teenagers. I managed to get the train in time so I wouldn’t be late to work if I ran when I got off the train. Then came the highlight of my day.. Some random man grinned at me as I walked past him.

I then got into work where it alternated between being so busy I wanted to cry and so quiet I was bored out of my mind and doing stock counts to pass the time. Then the area manager came in to check up on how we were doing.. Blehhhh. Oh, and my boyfriend decided that he wanted to be a giant douche today and ignore everything I said.

To make the day even worse, I ran out of cigarettes so I couldn’t even smoke the stress away.

So happy to be at home in my tracksuit bottoms, dunking biscuits into tea and watching big bang theory.. I’m just trying to forget that it’s going to be starting all over again tomorrow.

Lillian Catherine x.

#4

Well, I’ve got these two guinea pigs and they are my most favourite things in the world, I like them more then most people. But I’m worried.. I got them together and they have lived together all their lives but my white guinea pig, Bilbo, is a bully. I think he’s stopping my grey guinea pig, Gandalf, from eating.

Yesterday I had to clean out their cage and they were getting a little smelly and so I gave them a bath. I picked up Bilbo and he is normal guinea pig weight and I could feel his belly bulge a little bit. Then I pick up Gandalf.. He is way lighter then Bilbo and I could not feel his belly bulge just his ribs..

Now so many things are going through my head. Is Bilbo just fat and Gandalf normal sized? Has Bilbo been stopping Gandalf from eating? (this has never in their whole lives happened before) Or is Gandalf unwell? This is the worst discovery and at the worst time cause I won’t have the money to take Gandalf to the vets until next week (I get paid on Friday) and so I’ve got a whole week worrying if I am going to walk in one day to my squeaky fluff fluff not breathing..

And if you read #2 you would know that I am no in the best health myself and so this is unneeded added stress.

If anyone has any ideas please let me know.

Lillian Catherine x.

#3

Right, so it’s 9.47 in a Saturday morning.. and I’m hiding in the kitchen with my laptop so I don’t wake anybody up.

Why the kitchen? I hear you ask. Surely there are other more comfortable places for you to hide when you arise early on a weekend?

My boyfriend and his friend and little brother were up until 3am playing zombicide so the front room is full of board game pieces, beer cans (and fizzy bottles from the little brother), and  one sleepy friend. Usually I would just waltz in there anyway, plonk my arse down on the sofa and turn on the TV but today I was feeling really nice so, hence why I’m hiding in the kitchen.

I think that I would like to take this opportunity to explain why I am doing this blog.

If you have read #1 you would probably realise that I suffer from depression. This is my therapy. I’ve spent the last two months going to a counsellor. She was lovely and really helped but she was £40 a session and I saw her weekly and, as a 21 year old working for one of the most underpaid jobs possible, I just couldn’t afford to fund it. So instead of going to see the lovely Nicola, I’m now doing this blog.

I honestly don’t give a shit what everyone else thinks of it.. if you like it great, if you hate it then you don’t have to read it. I’m not doing this for you, I’m doing this for me.

Lillian Catherine x.

#2

I’m not well..

headaches (constantly), heart palpitations, dizziness, vomiting, fatigue..

I’ve tried everything within my power. I have taking myself off all my meds (except birth control) and I have given up alcohol and caffeine.. the only bad thing I do still indulge in is smoking but I have cut down dramatically.

The doctors don’t know what is causing it and so I’m spending a small fortune on prescriptions trying out different medications that don’t have any effect.

It’s affecting my personal life.. my boyfriend is getting shouted at all the time now because my temper is so short. It’s also affecting my career as I can’t concentrate and have to go sit down at least 5 times a day as well as running off to be sick at least once every two hours.

Fuck being ill.

Lillian Catherine x.

#1.

You know when you don’t know where your life is going? That’s me. I was clever at school.. not the brightest, but definitely going somewhere. Actually, I could have probably been at the top of all my classes, but I was just lazy. I said I couldn’t study.. that I couldn’t concentrate on it but that was just an excuse to get out of it.

I did okay in my GCSEs with all B and C grades.. Apart from that one D in RE (oops). Then I went to college and decided that chain smoking and getting stoned was a hell of a lot more important then attending classes.. Needless to say I failed harshly, getting three U grades and an E in the first year and not being allowed back for my second year. I was lucky though. I got a job in a pharmacy and so I was put on courses as part of my job.

Again I became lazy.

My first course (HCA) should have taken six months to complete. It took me a year.. And my second course (dispensing) took me three years when, again, it should have taken me six months to a year.

So, you see, it’s not like I don’t want my life to go anywhere.. I can imagine where I want to be in five years, but I’m not very good at getting places.

I should tell you a little bit about myself..

Both my brother and sister where diagnosed as autistic when they were little so my parents lives where over taken by making sure they had the best opportunity in life.. which meant I got forgotten. I started cutting when I was 13 and didn’t stop doing it regularly until I was 19.. I still harm myself every so often but have developed better “coping mechanisms” so it’s not as much as an addiction as it once was. I have been off and on SSRIs for years and have tired to kill myself twice. I have also battled an eating disorder and have only recently won.. for now..

I don’t want to blame my shortcomings on these reasons, but it helps to believe my delicate emotional (mental?) state has contributed to me not achieving my goals in life.

Lillian Catherine x.