Serenity at last

How on earth I get anything done is a complete mystery to me. I work my ass off during the week - normally 7-5.30 Mon-Wed and Thursday and Friday mornings. Then I spend my Thursday and Friday afternoons attending medical appointments, physio, Doctor, speech pathologist. Sometimes it takes an hour to get from one side of town to the next. Then if i get a chance I wait 20 minutes on the phone to centrelink, almost as long on hold to the insurance company, other medical practitioners making other appoinments. I need to come home every so often to my mum's house and have some rest from the world outside. She lives among the trees still, about 45 minutes away from the city. Which is where I am now. It's so nice to escape to this place. There are no sirens going past every five minutes here, no planes roaring loudly overhead. There is the chirp of birds and the sound of the humidity so it's mostly very silent. I can sit here and listen to my thoughts. I can sleep. I can play with my puppy. There are not many of my friends living out here anymore. Lots of them have moved away to the city near where I live or overseas. I know I don't have to see anyone when I come up here. Sometimes the choice to come up here is a lonely one. My mum works and sometimes she goes out at night, so I am lucky to see her. But at least I know I have the place to myself and I am so lucky that I am so welcome here and I feel so peaceful. It's the only consistency I have in my life. If only I could share it with someone special because it truely is a wonderful place to be.

Rose Tattoo (not the band)

Seeing as the marketing for Cystic Fibrosis is completely useless, I decided to take matters into my own hands and make MYSELF the poster girl for CF. I decided on a good marketing strategy to get the message out once and for all! It all stems from the rose, being the elegant and meaningful symbol for Cystic Fibrosis. It's meaning comes from the small child who mis-pronounced the words Cystic Fibrosis and instead said 65 Roses. This turned into a poem which turned into a song, which turned into something that Angry Anderson of Rose Tattoo stood up and said, raaahhhh about, jumping on the very small and crowded band wagon of people who know someone who has CF and wants to help. Let's get a bigger wagon, I say! CF Australia could certainly use the exposure. So I am offering to expose myself. Right here on this blog. I have taken the symbol for CF and had it tattoed on my back.

How it all began...

My brother has many tattoos. One night, not too long ago, we were out together and I was asking him which tattoo he was going to get next. He has CF too. He's the type of guy who wears it on his sleeve and so he said he'd like to get 65 roses tattoed on his arm. I thought it was a beautiful idea, so I told him I would get it too.

So there I was, sitting on the tattoo chair, having my back prepared. It was my first tattoo, and instead of 65 roses I got two Roses (there is plenty of time to add the other 63 later on). My brother took me to see his friend, a tattoo artist at Wicked Ink, who did a really great job.

It felt half way between a bee sting and that feeling you get when you're sunburnt and someone keeps slapping you on the back. I thought the pain was nothing compared to what I've put up with during all of my hospital admissions. It took three hours. As my brother watched the birth of the artwork on my back, he told me how great it was coming up on my skin and later told me how well I sat for it, saying I didn't even flinch.

Now I have two roses on my back. One represents my brother and the other represents me...we are both proud and enduring people, marked and now tattoed with CF.

Tampon truck

About 6.30 this morning, something occured. That's a bit early for anything to happen I hear you say...

Well it's not too early to get hit by a pink truck on your scooter. Yep. I got hit. By a stupid pink tampon truck as he crossed two lanes. He didn't look at all - just turned into me. I ran into the side of the truck. Lucky for me I was going very slowly and had some time to slam on my brakes, he was also turning very slowly. I almost thought for a second that I was going to come out of it without getting hit, but he continued to turn, not seeing me, until he hit me. I'm not even sure he realised he hit me until he heard the bang, as he made his left hand turn. My bike wasn't even knocked over and I didn't fall off. My shoulder slammed into the side of the stupid pink truck.

I was ok, the bike is undamaged. I hope there is a big dent in his truck though, coz the stupid jerk drove off then slowed down and then drove off again. Meanwhile a guy waiting in a truck at the lights saw the whole thing, wound down his window and called out to me. He said that guy who hit me didn't even look. He asked if I was ok. I seemed to be alright, nothing was hurting and the bike appeared to fine... So I continued to ride to work.

Anway now at work I had a bit of a de-brief session with my boss - he's rad. He told me a story about an accident he had on a motorbike when he first moved to sydney. He said he was unconcious, broken knee caps and all and spent two weeks in hospital after a lady ran head first into him. I'm thinking, I've been in hospital before - i know how shit that is but this is one hospital story I hope I never have. He said they pumped him with opiates when he was unconcious to help him with the pain, which turned out to be really bad becasue at the time, he just got back from overseas where he'd been using a lot of opium and he was trying hard to get off the stuff.

At first I thought it's bad enough, as a woman, I have to get periods, now a tampon truck hits me when I'm on my scooter. But after the good sharing sesh with my boss I felt much better about my close run in with the pink tampon truck.