Dances with DS

For many many months I have been driven by a secret obsession. Daily I stand with measuring beakers, ph strips, stirring away at seemingly endless concoctions.  I spend hours trawling safety assessments and learning about ratio’s and formulation.

It began with my hair & scalp reacting badly to regular shampoo.  Why? I cannot tell.  I was happily supporting all the major shampoo companies for many a year. I still don’t know if I had a cummulative reaction to ongoing use, or if my DS has made my hair as picky as my stomach. Same thing has happened to my skin. And worst of all lately if I use certain chemicals on my body, I get the weirdest thing ever - I taste the chemical in my mouth - what the heck this is I don’t know???

Anyhoo, I had devised a pretty good shampoo & I have to say it has done my hair more good than anything I have used to date, but as always  I can’t ever rest at ‘pretty good’.   I wanted more hair-nourishment. To complement it I worked on a conditioner one late night.  I don’t know why but the next morning I thought I should test it out all by it’s ownsome. My hair was a tad grimy so I did think about shampooing, but decided to just go ahead conditioner only - as I had included a fair % of natural surfactants (cleansers) in the formula & I was curious.

I massaged the conditioner into my hair - left it for a minute and washed it out. To my surprise it not only conditioned my hair (not perfectly but okish) and my hair was clean! A happy accident.

This lead to me thinking why on earth shampoo hair anyway?  If one could devise a conditioner that did the whole job - why not?

I surfed the web & saw more & more people are doing just that & using ‘no-poo’ methods. Quite wisely too imo.  It generally means a lot less chemical exposure, hair that is not subjected to the bruise & break of surfactants, just a much better more gentle way all round. I thought I might even buy a ready made ‘no poo’ type of cleanser - but most are fettered with chemicals too far away from mama nature and heavy use of silicones.  I want mine at least 60% closer to mother natures manufacturing plant.

And so I have been formulating for weeks on end. Researching and studying all the chemicals and natural actives like herbs, oils & butters that are possible players in my grand ensemble.

I read somewhere that even in a big cosmetic company it can take over a year to properly formulate a shampoo. I felt a bit better then. Until I realised they have a team on it & I am just a lone fart blowing about on a bat of my own!   

Still clearly I have determination if booger all else, and a cupboard full of motley chemicals & oils with unpronouncable names like : hydroxyethylcellulose & Bentrimonium.

I want this to be a quick solution, rub it in - rinse it off and go catch the day!   I want it to clean/condition/detangle/address my funny little hair regrowth factor that looks like feelers on top of my head/ nourish my scalp & smell delicious.   I think the little feelers are DS caused as I seem to have a rapid turnaround of hair loss & regrowth that I don’t remember having before my DS. Wonder if other WLS patients experience this too?My poor family have endured little sample pots in the bathroom & been guineas - bless them. Sometimes it has been disaster - like last week when my daughter tried one of my ‘experiments’ and semi hysterically asked me if it was normal to get a waxy coating on ones hair!   OMG  - it had worked ok on my hair the night before but on her hair it was a disaster.

I went back to my drawing board.

I think tonight I might have finally chipped it!  After a wash, my hair is clean. Not only clean - but soft like silk. (should be too as this formula does use silk amino’s for protein!) And shining with body. And flexible. My ‘feelers are not so standy-uppy. And not even a smidge of greasy feel!  YAYYYY!!!!

I know I keep singing that ‘I might have done it song’ …but I am soooo close.  Just a little stability testing & this might finally be the pillar of perfection I am striving for.

The rubbish thing is only time will tell. Will it work on all our hair types?  Will the emulsion be stable over the next few weeks or seperate out?  Will it cause build up or my hair to fall out??  Eeeek. 

Or will I stand with a luscious mane of vibrantly healthy hair in the next few months and feel all of this constant obsessing is worth the crazy persuit?

Please gods let me rest now. Let this be IT!  The happy end with a top result.  I want to move on & learn about creating other wonderful things.

Only time will tell if I am, finally,  a free hairwoman.

But enough now of hair matters. I am thinking next week I will begin to look at my nutrition - just what am I actually consuming daily in an analysis of my dietary habits?  Am I actually doing as well as I think I am or have I got ‘blind spots’ from too many years of not counting fats/carbs/proteins?   Do I really want to know?  Welll - not reallly, but it might be interesting!

My daughter has been feeling rotten. She has developed several infections  but the worst is a very infected ingrown toenail.  She feels stressed & low at the moment. She is off to Peru & Brazil for 6 weeks soon & is anxious about how she’ll cope with all the walking. Saw her GP who prescribed antibiotics & said she felt it was all due to her wisdom teeth breaking through and the infected gums there. Makes sense really.

But she needs more than just antibiotics. Aside from ordering more Udo’s chewables to balance her mouth bacteria plus her body while she is on antiobotics - it’s definately TLC time!

Last night I made her a healing anti stress bath salt with Copaiba oil (my fav at he mo for healing skin issues & the smell is gorgeous too!), a natural rose fragrance made from components of  essential oils for calming the emotions  & beautiful restoring frankincense, epsom salts, dead sea salt, glycerin (it moisturizes beautifully). I put rose petals into it for added pizzaz - it looked so pretty!

Then I transformed my pint sized bathroom into spa-land with fluffy new towels, sea sponges, candles, fresh flowers, an oil burner to scent the room with the same scents as the bath salts and a glass of herbal tea-juice in a champagne glass just for the final touch.

She came home exhausted  & while she was eating dinner I was doing the finishing touches in the bathroom  upstairs.  I lit the candles ran a deep hot bath & surprised her.  She was so over the moon.

I had to smile as she was up there soaking for well over two hours!!!

I thought how little it takes really to be attentive to our loved ones and to do something special just for them.   This is the stuff that makes Life a deep celebration for me. That at last I can do these things. This is the greatest gift my surgery has given me.

When I was severely obese I am still upset to say that life curdled in me. It was life with a small ‘l’. Actually it was more str-ife, with no small ‘l’ even.  I almost want to cry even now thinking about it.  It was enough to walk a few paces or to even lift my bulk out bed. Everything was EFFORT. Physical effort. Everything was me thinking about how I could do the simplest things without becoming finished with exhaustion. I won’t carp on about it but with this, I was extremely depressed. I was often thinking about how I could best end the whole misery of it.

Not all severely obese people are like this. Infact I know of some that are to my mind sheer grace & light. They gather up all those in need around them & transform others lives with kindness and compassion. They don’t let the obesity diminish them or their lives in any way.  But alas I was not one of them.

I was self obsessed but in a ‘need to survive’ kind of way. I had no energy for very much when it came to doing things for others. I did the basics - cooked and cleaned. That was about it. My family were just the best - they never complained. They never pushed me or made me feel bad. They did as much as they could to help me.  But even now I feel as if I was soooo selfish then. That’s maybe the hardest part to still swallow all these years later.

We often talk about ‘taking back my life’ in context with WLS.  It is one helluva thing for WLS to give one one’s life back, make no error.  To explore the amazing dynamics of fully functioning limbs, clothes that fit like magic, life bursting energy that allows us to persue our dreams and careers.  It is wonderful - very very wonderful.

For two years post op I jumped head on into life again….but it was still in many ways all about me. My family delighted in it all with me. If I close my eyes I still see Pete’s face & how it lit up with such joy - the day I ran up a massive flight of stairs and waved to him triumphantly, yelling down to him that I was not even a little out of breath!

I stopped visiting WLS forums a little time ago, just for a short while,  because I just got a bit tired of the ‘me-ness’ of it all.  My own ‘me-ness’ especially and to a much smaller degree the ‘me-ness’ of others. But before  you twack me on the side of my head - let me say that I totally understand it. I’m not judging - it’s just an observation & mostly of myself.  I was 100% ‘me-ness & DS’ for two years solid and I still have very full on ‘me-ness’ times…particularly when I get some issues due to my surgery. Besides my life is intricately interwoven with my surgery.  I’m very identified with my DS - as you can see by the vast blogging that I do on the subject!

It is natural - actually it is healthy too, it’s how we find support to move through the changes, to adjust to what cannot be changed, to survive the trauma of side effects, to solve our issues. And of course that is exactly why support groups exist. There is real evidence that WLS who are supported do better longerterm.  I think they are fantastic places and all WLS patients should belong to one or more.

However it’s easy in the heady rush or perhaps the less fun adjustments that WLS causes, to forget that to experience the greatest joy is to be able to begin afresh with ones family or loved ones.  It takes little really to think about how we can put a smile on the face of others & then implement a plan of action.

I have a dear friend, Bev.  We stayed with her in Switzerland for a night some time ago ( I think I blogged it!)   But to recap - when we opened the door to our room she had decorated the room with lot’s of photo’s of Pete & myself that she’d taken over the years. It was so thoughtful, so wonderful. To think someone would go to so much trouble for us! And the room was beautifully decorated with all the luxuries - chocolates on the pillows (yum!), a basket full of shampoo & cosmetic samples, fluffy bath robes and slippers.  I shall never forget it. We both felt so moved and cared about and we had the most wonderful stay with her.

Before I had my Duodenal Switch I made a (very long) list of everything I wanted to do.  I have fulfilled every dream & wish I had on that list. YAY!!!!

This year I have made another very list - it’s really different - it’s of everything I want to do for others.

I don’t get where the time goes!   I am still catching up with e-mails - long overdue replies which I feel really bad about, domestic matters and basically myself!

I got over my flu quite quickly but then found I had the driest skin ever.  I wrote an entire long and self obsessed post about it which I have scrapped due to embarresment!

Long and short of it - nothing was moisturising my skin effectively.  It soaked up my homemade creams & balms and butters and 2 hours later was feeling tight again. This despite plenty of internal fatty acids and the like.

I have had to face my disgustingly low water intake,  which has been a mission!

It never ceases to amaze me how adaptive I am. I think that since I got back to the UK I have lived with a subliminal dehydration. Not enough to prompt desperate thirst, but enough to wreak fair havoc on my skin as a warning.

I drank a lot of water in Africa as the weather was hot, but once I got back to chilly climes this stopped.  On the very day I arrived!

So for over a week I have been drinking plenty extra (with great difficulty & much forcing ) and my skin is back to it’s normal happy self.

Made me realise in a very real way just how important water intake is.  Thing with me is I always have to actually experience a crisis to take action. Unfortunately.

Intellectual knowing is kind of vague - like something out there. But the dry skin from hell that itches and feels taught, has been a real motivator for action. I have had to revisit the old wisdom that what is put into the body is vitally important and that unless ‘inside’ issues are addressed, one can do what one wants by applying creams etc. They might help but they can’t be optimal.

I’m looking into ordering some of this to help with keeping myself well hydrated:

(This link will open in a new window).

http://www.eletewater.co.uk/index.php

I do take something similar - but have only used it for leg cramps before and it is nearly finished. Now I am thinking of using something like this a little more frequently. I read the research pages on the site & found it very interesting.

That aside I am still playing about with diy cosmetics making.  Someone asked me the other day why I do this. It was hard to answer.

My reasons are multiple.  Firstly it horrifies me to see the abundant chemicals used  in commercial manufacturing. I had developed several allergic type reactions to most commercial products - nothing severe - but most things stressed my skin & hair rather than helping it.  I often felt itchy after applying face creams for example.

I’m not a full blown organic girl … not every chemical is a disaster - some are quite safe and work to make a product optimal - but I wanted to understand all this better.  Making my own stuff has put me on a broad learning curve where I decide what I put on my body.

I have seen some pretty amazing things happen using only natural oils and infusions. My dog regrew all his hair (blogged about this before)…my mum was able to resolve her rosacea, my sons girlfriend had severe ringworm that a prescribed cream was not doing anything for (it was getting worse) & after 4 days of using appropriate essential oils in a salve it has cleared up by 99% already.  I don’t want to sound like I’m a green hippy in jesus sandals (…maybe I am! :-?  ) But one has to see these things to believe them really. And I have.

Once one does, it engenders a strong respect for the healing abilities of carefully researched and formulated oils & herbs.

Also,  I need more than most mainstream cosmetics give me.  I malabsorb and as my DS years have passed so my skin needs extra nourishment.  I am my own best guinea pig.

Aside from the recent dehydration which I had neatly overlooked as a major cause of my dry skin, overall my hair & skin have dramatically improved since I embarked on this.  I’ve never had a truly great skin - it is scarred with old acne pits and is sensitive. So I am not seeking a miracle cure - just an improvement…and so far so good!

Since sorting out my fluid intake I’m moving forward again on the skin front and today I made a gentle face mask to slough away the last traces of dry skin build up. I didn’t want to use anything strong like clays as my skin has just come right. So I chose almonds & oats instead. The oats has beta glucans in it which soothe the skin even as it’s being exfoliated.

I was pleased to see my skin resuming a nice glow again. I just used kitchen ingredients to cobble it together but it had a lovely clarifying yet softening effect.

And on our hapless postie it also had a ’surprise effect’! 

Typical that I get a delivery just when I am looking my very best! Nothing as glam as standing at the door with oats paste sliding off ones cheekbone!  lol.

Here’s my recipe:

Clarifying Face Mask Remedy:

Couple of slices of cucumber washed with skin on

(If no cucu available, I think a peeled apple would work as well!)

A handful of raw peeled almonds

Teaspoon of yogurt

Blitz the above in a blender

Then add oats cereal to make it tacky but spreadable

Add 1 teaspoon of honey. Manuka if you have it.

I added 1/2 teaspoon of coconut oil as my skin still needs oils - but omit this if your skin

is oily by nature. ( If you have no coconut - virgin olive oil is fine.)

Leave on the face for about 15 mins

Use a bit of water and rub it around a bit to exfoliate gently. Rinse off.

Viola! Much better skin!

This will keep in the fridge for another day or two…or you could try freezing any excess. Not sure if this would work but might be worth a try.  Don’t use it after 48 hours as nothing is worse than smearing bug infested matter on ones skin!

So this is yet another reason. I adapt my cosmetics to my & my families needs.

And more than that -  well it is just good fun cooking up something different in the kitchen!  

I cannot believe it but I have the flu. Dayum!  It kicked in, full force, yesterday evening. It must be a virulent little virus as my son & his girlfriend have it, my youngest son has it and Pete has it too. We are a house of sicko’s at the mo.

This is a very rare goat since my DS and as I have been the recipient of loads of sunshine borne Vit D in Africa lately, I’m a trifle miffed.  I doubt it is a deficiency but nonetheless I have just swallowed a great big whack of Vit D 50 000iu’s in a desperate bid to try to diminish the flu-ish effects which are gripping my body faster than I can write. I’m also pushing up my Vit C & zinc intake right now.

It’s possible all the travelling on a stuffy virus laden plane has been the cause.  It might unfortunately be the swine variety as I have nausea and a sensation of being hit by a bus in my bones and muscles. My keyboard appears strangely elongated and it is an effort to write.  I’m fighting it…I detest being ill. I hate lying in bed at the best of times and right now the thought of bed is not pleasant.  Problem is my fuzzed up mind is hyperactive.

Last night I made up a cough brew of licorice root, lime juice, star anise, satsuma peel, a good sprig of homegrown thyme, cloves and marshmallow root with Croatian lavender honey (Manuka honey would be great too) and it seems to be helping as an expectorant and soother for the old gunged up chest and sore throat.  I’m not all au natrel though - I believe in good old paracetamol too.

The best thing though was a bath salt soak I made - after using it last night I felt almost recovered, deeply relaxed and slept very well. But alas it is temporary. This morning I feel shite again.  Like all alternative approaches it will need to be used often to maximise the effects,  so I might go and take another soak just now.

Here’s my ‘Flu-fighting Bath Salt Soak’ recipe. 

(Make it up before  flu starts to hit anyone in your family so it is on standby, as it was quite a mission to get it together while in the grip of flu - but it is so worth my effort. My family think so too as I notice the big jar I made is fast diminishing!)

3 cups Epsom salts

2 cups Sea Salt

1 cup Bicarb of Soda

1 teaspoon (5ml) of eucalyptus essential oil

1/2 teaspoon lavender oil

1/2 teaspoon rosemary oil

15 drops of Cajeput Oil

10 drops Black pepper essential oil (Tip - if you don’t have black pepper eo you could try adding 3 tblespoons of mustard powder instead…I think it would do a good ‘warming’ job & plan to try it soon!)

Total essential oils (eo’s) = 12.5 ml.  If you want it stronger you can safely add another 2.5 mls of oil, but I suggest leaving the black pepper as it is! You could add more of the other eo’s & admittedly I do - but please use your discretion as eo’s are powerful stuff. If unsure, research & work inside usual safety eo limits.

Glycerin 3 teaspoons (get from your local pharmacy or Tesco’s pharmacy- moisturising)

Optional: 1 tablespoon of oil (if you have a dry skin) - almond oil does the job well but olive will do too!

Optional: Polysorbate 20 - around 1 teaspoon (this disperses oils evenly in the bath)

Optional: Food Colouring. I used green food colouring. Use only a drop to start with as this is pretty concentrated stuff. Less = more.

Mix all the oils into the glycerin plus polysorbate if you are using it.

Add to the salts mixing well.

Add food colouring & mix well until the colour is even.

Use 1/2 cup in your bath and soak in a hot bath for at least 10 mins.

If you have flu I hope you feel better soon!

And  sooo after all of this… and a nice hot soak in the salts, it looks like I might be reluctantly resigning myself to my bed after all,  as I am totally knackered now.

After a very long and exhausting flight back home via Dubai - I hit the ground running in the UK on the 23rd!

We traditionally celebrate on Christmas eve with a candlelit dinner and all the trimmings so time was very short. Shortly after arriving I went  to Costco to gather supplies for Christmas dinner and a few christmassy odds and ends. Then a swift decorating of the mantelpiece and a  mini tree to put a bit of Christmas spirit into my home.  Spent the 24th cooking and cleaning for our evening celebration plus many moments in the day spent on bended knees cuddling my two little dogs who I have sorely missed.

My daughters boyfriend made us a wonderful ‘Cerviche’ (?) with lime marinaded fresh sea bass as a starter. We followed this with a huge hock of mustard & pineapple ham and a roasted fillet beef replete with sweet potatoes, buttery nutmeg parsnips and asparagus.  Dessert was rich chocolate sauce, ice cream and berries.  So quite a simple meal, but delicious if I say so myself!

We caught up with each others lives, pulled crackers, read silly jokes, exchanged gifts, laughed  and  I felt at peace and extraordinarily blessed.

Christmas day was a lazy day - I finally got a chance to do a bit of reading and pottering around the house. Mostly we just lolled about in a relaxed fashion eating leftovers, mince pies and dipping into chocolate boxes!    Not the best diet for a DSer but Christmas comes but once a year and I felt no guilt about eating so profoundly badly! lol

I have in recent weeks not thought much about my DS. It is so much a part of my life that aside from times when I’m shifting out of routine (like on the recent Truck trip through Zaire, Botswana and Namibia) I don’t feel the need to focus on it.

It goes like this in these ‘longerterm’ years. There are long periods of time when I don’t think about it. There is no need really.  I’ve long forgotten how difficult it is to adjust to a wls initially and what I live with now is generally easy for me. I say ‘generally’ because there are times I’m desperately aware of my bowels shortcomings such as when I was running across a campground deep in the night with my torch & bum clenched,  frantic to get to the communal toilets in time.

My DS did play up to a degree while out in the African bush.  Usually I have a bowel clock that wakes me around 8 am for the usual hummungous deposit in three parts. Suddenly I found myself needing the loo at 4am.  Which was not such a bad thing as most mornings we left our camp at 5.30 to 6 am, and the prospect of needing to do the biz behind a bush was not a pleasant one. It is very strange how my metabolism and ds clock adjusted itself and it convinced me that the DS certainly does have it’s own intelligence all over again!

The big prob is that this intelligence did not right itself for 3 weeks after the trip!  I’d awake at 4am with uncanny precision & then find there was no camp and no truck waiting after all!

I found the toilety side of DS life bearable after all my pre-trip fretting.   I’ll always detest communal toilets as a matter of course but I coped. What I did find hairy was the lack of privacy sometimes. Some showers left one with no space to undress except outside the cubicles in full view of the female public. I devised a complex process of undressing under a sarong as no way do I feel okay with baring my 120 year old looking body full of saggy boob & skin publically.

I also got the bloats again - which I think was partly down to less time to eat meals.  Meals were often rushed affairs during the day as we had to hit travel deadlines. I’m a very slow eater since my DS. My food often goes cold on me and I can be seen still chomping through my mains long after others have finished dessert. Eating fast is not good for me, but there was no choice.  Also I admittedly ate a lot of crappola en route. With 8 of us on board the chocs, crisps and biccy snacking never seemed to end.

By 4 pm most days  I was in true bloat looking 12 months preggers. I was also in dire pain trying to hold my wind so as not to cause pandemonium among fellow travellers.  And the truck had no suspension so I was jostled and bumped about to further cause discomfort.  Once or twice in the first week I thought I would start to cry with the pain of it. I thought I might have made a big mistake doing such a trip as I convieniently blotted out the fact that this misery was self caused.   I started to take Beano & Lactase twice a day and this combo worked brilliantly. Too brilliantly really … as I continued to snack heartily on junk between my meals.  There are times I don’t understand it - why did I eat this crap given that I don’t even like it much and given it’s side effects???  It’s still a mystery to me!

Still, amazingly I did not gain any weight at all.  A little gain might not have gone amiss in reality,  but then again I seem to be stable at around 54 kilo’s -55 kilo’s which is okay. When I think of my recent lapses into bad eating practises, I have to say this DS is a seriously incredible weight loss surgery and I do love it to bits still!

Aside from a bad reaction to the anti malaria pills ( I think - or is it a deficiency of some kind rearing it’s head…Zinc or Vit B12 maybe?) which resulted in me getting raised blister like bumps all over my hands and arms plus a weird de-pigmentation problem after the blistering subsided - I had loads of energy and felt well.

I’ve not had time to assimilate my journey yet, what with Momli’s death, travelling home  & Christmas preparations. But it was an incredible time full of beautiful landscapes, happiness and warm sunshine. I’ll write more about it soon. 

Meantime I hope you have had a happy Christmas and I wish you all the Very Best for the New Year. x

Our Mother 

( in loving memory of Jean Colman)

Our Mother

Who remains forever in our hearts and memories

Hallowed be the Love you gave us

In every Joy, in every Truth, in every Breath

Your life is sung by all of us

in unfurled flowers,  in silent rock, in brightest stars

and in our children

We remember that when all is resolved in deep acceptance

the need to forgive, or be forgiven,  no longer exists

May we always be led into compassion

and delivered into the Light of  Understanding and Insight

by the Shining Grace of your example

and in Loving memory of your Being.

On the 10th of December  our Momli went to a better place surrounded by all her loving children.

It was a befitting date as she went on the exact same date that her beloved husband, John died two years ago.

Today we collected mom’s ashes. I was struck by this small box sensitively and somewhat poignantly wrapped in wrapping paper depicting clouds in a blue sky, that I held on my lap.   I was struck  by the wrapping paper design as I often refer in my life to clouds that cover blue sky as a personal metaphor that puts me in touch with the idea that even when times are difficult and one has suffering, one should try to remember the bigger, often unseen picture in one’s life. The same goes for the psyche. When the head is adrift with ‘clouds’ of thoughts that make one feel negative and depressed, it helps to know that this is just a passing state and that one’s Being, one’s true essence, is unaffected by the shennagins of one’s thoughts.

It is strange to think all that remains of a precious body is a small box of concentrated grey ashes. A body that bore 5 children, that loved them, that held many grandchildren in it’s arms, that always had a smile on it’s face and a kind word to give to many people. A body that tended to flowers and animals. A body that lovingly and carefully knitted bright squares to make warm blankets for our African Aids babies. A body that knitted all of us together too.   It was a body that mattered greatly and the vessel of a beautiful spirit.

So I don’t know why, too often, on bad days, I can’t get the meaning of my own body. Why can’t I accept that even if my skin hangs like a hundred and twenty year old’s, even if I am scarred from top to bottom and that my wrinkles are happening el rapido,  I should not negate all that my body allows me to express.  Looks matter little where real Love exists. I know this as surely as I know when rain is falling on my face. But somehow I forget it and I lament my body instead of honouring it.

  We live in & through our bodies in an intricate & wonderful vision of synergy between flesh & spirit. I need to learn to come to a full acceptance of this and to remember it!   Another life lesson and one that seems to peak and ebb in my life, alas!

I miss momli’s body. I can almost hear her saying in my ear (as I write this) that actually she does not miss it at all!  She so wanted to leave all the pain & suffering of her body behind her in those last emaciated weeks of endless discomfort.

But I miss giving her a hug and a kiss hello - or goodbye.  I miss delighting in her joyful body movements  - she used to quite often break into a ‘happy little jig-dance’ when she heard of something that made her feel happy.  Sometimes she would do this to cope with her encroaching dementia too. She’d lose a thought and then do a funny little dance and we’d all laugh  and jig arms around her waist, to a song she would sing and end up forgetting what she was going to say anyway!  I always thought there was serious latent genius in this diversionary tactic.  

I don’t miss her presence because spiritually I feel her energy all around us.  Before she died we spoke about how Love continues across the ether, through all dimensions  and that this is the one thing that is eternal. Therefore if her time to go had come I tried to assure her that she should try to hold this close and not worry, because we’d  both draw comfort and peace from this after she had left her body.  We affirmed this for each other as we held each others hands with a deep unified knowing.

In her last weeks her dementia seemed to fade and she often had very lucid times. Later she’d forget these moments but somehow it did not matter because the process of dying is uncannily timeless.  We lived very much in the moment and that was all that mattered really.

I will be back in the UK on the 23rd - just in time to celebrate Christmas with my children.  It will be a humble christmas this year as there has not been time to prepare for much other than our traditional christmas eve dinner and a few wee token prezzies.  There has been no time for putting up a tree or a big shopping spree and tbh I am glad, because it is a great feeling to release all the commercial baggage of Christmas and just celebrate the real gift of spending a happy  time with my loved ones.

I have not yet arrived.  In England that is. Metaphorically too!  Right now I am in Cape Town after the Truck trip through Zambia, Botswana and Nambia.  And it was just the most incredible journey which I hope to write about soon. However journeys take many forms and sometimes one gets a ride on the unexpected train of life.  Right now, my mom in law is dying and so this is all that matters right now.

I love my momli, as I call her. She has always been just the best mom in law to me.  She has taught me a great deal about patience even though I am still crap at it. She has been there for me at all times during the phases of my life. She makes people laugh and has a kind word for everyone always. Even now - ravaged by cancer she has time and kindness for others. Once, after a day of gut wrenching pain and discomfort she told me that she thought of others in her position. ‘ How do they cope all alone? I am so sad this happens in our world…’ Her inherent goodness of being is unaffected by dying. In fact her being has become amplified and Divine in the true sense of the word, even as her body is reduced to skeletal bones and a pain that is currently kept in check by large doses of morphine.

I am so sad that she is going soon, but this is just my sadness playing out it’s tune.  Momli, on the other hande is in a full blown fragrant acceptance about her imminent death. ‘When I pop my socks….’   she says and then proceeds to inform us about what is important in one’s life.  Not to fight over trivial matters , to hold to the truth at all times, to stay together as a family.  It is all the more touching because she does this with such love and despite hardly even being able to drink water to slake her thirst and to be able to speak as her mouth is so dry, despite our puny efforts to rinse and swab it.  Morphine has not affected her lucidity.

All her children are here from various places in the world. My son and daughter are also here. We flew them in on a rushed flight from the UK to be with their granny.

We don’t deny her process even though sometimes we go home and cry and wish she could be here forever. We acknowledge that death is close, that it is not seperate from life.

Actually,  we are blessed. When death is slow, even though it cracks one’s heart open in the most awful way and thrashes it on rocks, there is time to express one’s love, to throw what is not needed out of the junkbox of one’s being, to reach a here-now way of being and acceptance. To say the final goodbyes and give back rubs, hugs and kisses.  We redefine what truly matters.   Every minute she is here is precious. Her children and grand children are just beautiful with her. Her room is a shrine of love and peace.

She told me a few days ago that a very big angel came and sat beside her. ‘I have no fear anymore’ she said. Bless her. In my life she has been my very big angel and so knowing how comforting this is and that her angel is beside her all the way, I let my darling momli go in terms of the wishing she could remain.

In between the waiting we went to the beach yesterday. Walking has a way of being a clearing house too and we needed to look out over the ocean, to feel wet sand under our feet, to breathe in fresh salt air a little.  I found a gorgeous chunk of top grade ambergris, white, and scented with sea, musk and leather. I had been hoping I might be lucky enough to find some as my learning of perfumes continues and there it was!  An alchemy. White ambergris lying on white sand! I had to look several times at it before it sunk in that I was actually looking at a chunk of the real mcoy.

Ambergris originates from the sperm whales gut. Some call it whale vomit, which it is in it’s first form upon the ocean. After this people lose the plot and baulk at the idea of it.  Yes, indeed, it is foul smelling in this new form, but later as it floats in the sea it undergoes transformation. Baked in the silent hot sun and sterilised by many tens of years of salt water, the smell becomes a bouquet of it’s environmental journey.  In a perfume it performs magic, shifting the ordinary to the extra-ordinary.  It is the amplifier of all that is beautiful. Even  that which is not so beautiful in a perfume has no choice but to reveal it’s innate (if hitherto hidden)beauty in the presence of ambergris. It benefits all the other fragrances in a blend, bridging them together, softening edges, breathing a new dimension into them. Dissolved from it’s original solid form it is all the more potent and tangible. Nothing is lost …only refined, redefined and amplified.

Finding a chunk of this incredible rare substance on my first visit to the beach in South Africa  is pretty amazing and great good fortune.  It is also a very apt and potent metaphor for what I currently experience in this capsule of time I am living in.  For me it represents some of the essence of momli.  It is funny how in my life, usually at times I am soul searching,  nature often throws me a full blown gift and metaphor to mull on.

For now we just sit in the global waiting room of earthly departure. Soon momli will be with John her beloved husband, soon she will not be in a broken body. Death is not all bad.

I think the green algae I swallow daily is at last having a noticeable effect on the stinkies. I can’t profess to liking it but when you are an experiment in progress - you just hold your nose & swallow right?! And before you think it’s just that I have finally pinged right off my small sane rail - if you are a youngster in WLS world beware - you too are an experiment in progress. A GOOD one!

I think sometimes I have a dash of something in me that is possibly related to something of a mental-chemical nature. I don’t get extreme high’s and lows, I just get elevated days.     Maybe I am in denial or something but I have such a drive in me to grab life and squeeze the last drop of this vast magical elixir into my own much smaller life.  So many adventures - so little time…and I am forever on some personal mission or other.

Most recently my mission has been to obtain a relatively hard to get essential oil. Oud. Or Oudh. It’s not cheap stuff and when you have a set budget (and a lonng list of ‘wanna-haves’ and booger me - have already spent too much the past month) you gotta work at finding a reasonable price at the very least.  And hope you are not buying something so dilute it has lost it’s essence.  Oud seems to originate from many places & those who love it say it varies.  After trawling the internet intensively I found some Oudh at a very reasonable price. Dilute-yes, in sandalwood yes,  but I thought I could live with that. I know nothing about perfume. Nada. I just dabble & play.  It arrived today.

Oh my. At first whiff I laughed out aloud & somewhat hysterically. My first thought was thank the gods this is dilute as I think full strength would have knocked me right off my feet!  What the  # &*%$????!!!

Then I was very pleased indeed that I had not opted for civet musk (which I was considering albeit, probably a synthetic variety.)

It erm, basically smells of shit. Then if one is curious enough (and brave enough to take another nose hit) it allows you to smell it’s other side. Deep deep and ancient… indigo, almost like night. For once I am at a loss to decribe it verbally. I saw the colour indigo flash in my minds eye. Sometimes when I can’t speak something, I see colours instead.  I forgot the shit smell, although it still hovered around in the ether it became irrelevant.  I thought how appropriate the name ‘Oud’ is for it. In my other language this means ‘old’.

I think if I was to describe it I’d say it reminds me of ‘the shadow side’ - something we do not usually display nor regard as gold in our beings…and yet it is the alchemy of this our human shame, our fallibility, our forbidden and taboo, that eventually brings us into an awareness and honesty and perhaps most importantly it is facing this, that brings to the human being an authentic compassion towards others. And I am not talking this pseudo crap political correctness either that prevails like a false perfume in our world. No - this is not synthetically fabricated out of some set of moral beliefs or deep seated need to present oneself as a ‘nice kind’ person. For that one can buy synthetic white musk - the sort of mass smell every other perfume holds dear.

I’m not saying white musk is not nice - it is. It’s just that it is generally not authentic and is far divorced from nature’s musky smells. Still it is clean and modern, it has some merits. And it’s popular.  Oud is shocking. I think that is very clever of it - it has a built in defense mechinism for those who have not acquired a smell for it through years of living by it’s side, as is the case in India for example. I very nearly wrote it off as something I was soooo not going put on my skin. I nearly rejected it outright.  But then it lured me…that strangely familiar ancientness of it kept drawing me back to the little bottle on my desk.  All day this smidge of sniffing went on until my curiousity got the better of me.  What would happen if I did something with it?  What could I think of to put with it?  In the end I settled for rose absolute. I thought it somewhat fitting that if rose was symbolic of the flowering of the human heart - it & oud should be together, at least in this perfume. I was desperate for some comfort tbh.  I had stepped into a smell that scared me in someways.

To extend the rose and to give it a little ground I added a teeny drip of clove and some rosewood. Then I applied it to my wrists  and blow me right over - the shit smell had vanished. Just like that!

Instead in it’s place came the soft slightly buttery smell of wood smoke & ashes.  Past the wood, spice and rose - an ancient invocation. Something primal but intangibly beautiful like when I used to visit Credo Mutwa many moons ago and in his hut built of clay and wood, this smell would be there. It was never unpleasant - it was just ‘of the earth’…a smell of cooking fires, pots, grinding stones, of laughter and tales told and time would warp into something unknown. I’d call it a void of fullness because I can’t explain it.  It was amazing. We would gather there in the small room in the morning- it was packed, it was boiling hot as the african sun beat down on the hut and he would tell us the history and tales of his tribe.  We neither ate nor drank. (It was the only time I can recall that my then vorocious appetite did not start on me.) He would end…’and more than that my brothers and sisters, I cannot say…’  And then we would see that not just one hour had gone - no, the entire day was gone & night was falling on us all as we would stare in bewildered disbelief at our western watches!  Oh Tata but I do miss you. I wonder where are you? Are you well? Has life been kind to you & have the sangoma’s reached peace yet?  I want to tell you that I am still bobbing about rootlessly - just as you saw in the bones of my destiny.  I am longing for a place to call home now. Where I can center myself and finally relax.  It would be so nice.  Damn this Aloeswood for it’s memory provoking qualities and for unearthing my loss and my missing!

The other name for Oudh is ‘Aloeswood’. When my vision and loss of a bygone time faded I could smell the aloes of my homeland. Even though Oudh is not extracted from the the same Aloes - it is from a tree that has fungi - still I thought of the aloes I know.  Not too far from where we lived once, there was a mountainside filled with aloes. Buff rocky mountain and these strange prehistoric looking plants everywhere. They had candalabra orange spiky flowers and when the sun beat down I used to think I could smell them!  Then I would think I was just imagining it because as far as I knew aloes had no smell!  Out there on the mountainside I would laugh at my own madness.  Sometimes, if I was lucky I ‘d spot a little bird hanging from them sipping the sweet nectar. It was a vibrant bird with colours of peacock blue, red and teal that shimmered in the sunlight. So tender, small & beautiful hanging from the orange flower above the spiney aloe leaves, it would put a lump in my throat.

But enough…enough. Aloeswood has unexpectedly and shockingly owned and opened my soul today, and so, once I have recovered from my memories, I will wear it again. What can I do?  I am perhaps not wholly smitten but I am taken!  Of all the smells - the wonderful sweet beautific pure scents upon this vast olfactory earth - yup - aloeswood is mine.

I just hope & pray no one will say I smell of crap. That could be very very dangerous as a DSer. It could begin another ridiculous round of mythology about body smelliness and the DS - and I & Oudh would be responsible heaven help us!   Perhaps in WLS patients company I’d be better off wearing something nice like white musk after all!!!

Added:

I decided after writing the above to research oudh a little more. I realise that using the phrase ’smells like shit’ is probably not very succint. A better word would be it is an ‘animaly type’  or it is pungent. Other more often used descriptions are : leather, smokey

Of interest to me was that some describe it as psychoactive. I had no idea it was - but as you can tell my experience of it was very psychoactive. Men wear it to pull the opposite sex. It seems to be classed as a ‘male’ perfume but in a minute amount with along with rose it became substansially feminine…so I am not going put in a box.  I think carefully combined with florals it will provide a woman with a very unique fragrance. 

However - don’t rush off to buy it in big quantities. Some people cannot stand the smell and consider it a waste the moment they open the bottle.  Others find it just does  not work with their chemistry - so buy teeny samples. I think the oud I got is lighter than the dark varieties but perhaps the sandalwood attar it is diluted in does this to it. There are sweeter oudhs, probably a better bet for the ladies.

And now I have written so much, that I can’t write the post-op body butter recipe down! I’m too finished - I need to go and rest!  I shall post it up this weekend all by it’s own for those who wish to make some. and I promise, I will not add Aloeswood to it!

I never want to stop learning.  The world is an exciting sometimes mysterious place for me with many things to explore and discover. But sometimes I wonder if this streak in me is so very nice after all.  The shadow side of it is that I am never totally satisfied.  I get disappointed quickly.  I start to think maybe I can do ‘it’ (whatever ‘it’ is in the moment) better.

There’d be arrogance attached to this if it were not for the fact that I know so little about anything.  This means I become my own vessel of experimentation.  Which in turn means I have no choice but to take risks sometimes.

I began to research various possibilities for the chlorophyll angle of my ‘get to grips with the smell factor’.  I’m struck again by how much filler crap is sometimes added to the tablets we so often swallow. Stearic acid is but one of these .  On ’skin deep’ it has a low to moderate risk factor when topically applied, so what happens I wonder if day after day we consume it?  Does that higher the risk?  And precisely how much do we swallow per pill?  I don’t know…it might be midget amounts or it could be enough to cause longerterm probs.  On the other hand a working compound is often isolated meaning it is easier to take and possibly more effective.

But those fillers bug me.  So I turned to a jar of the natural green stuff.  Various spirulina, barleygrass and Alfalfa powder blended.  It arrived this morning and now I am having my doubts.  Oh my lawdy.  This is GREEN. It is grass for heavens sakes. It is a big punnet - overwhelming.  What am I doing?!!!!  I am not a cow. Usually.

The are not kidding when they call it ‘Supreme Greens’ :

http://mammaearth.com/green-superfood/cat_4.html

I am trying to drum up courage to sample it.  I will need around double the dose (I quite often double my dose to compensate for DS effects) to see if it does anything at all. So thats 4 teaspoons of the stuff. A veritable bowl of soup - ugh!   I am thinking maybe I can rather make a face mask out of it so it does not go to waste!  Such is my sudden reluctance to be the experimental vessel today.

I’m starting to live in wretched fear of my own endless creating. This green stuff and clay  I cannot think of anything less appealling but if I don’t do it I won’t know whether it works, nor if it is worth it.  When I swallowed clay for the first time I felt the excellent effect was worth the horror of slugging back liquid earth.  If I can reduce the clay amount it would probably be better…hence the green stuff addition. Plus as the clay might absorb my precious nutrients there is the possibility the green stuff might balance that a little .  The green stuff also has lots of natural copper & I can do with that as I continue to take high dose zinc. There may be unproven, speculative advantages in the combo. I frikkin hope so!

I’m thinking on how I took a similar partly -proven, speculative gamble on a very large scale with my DS. I checked out every facet of the bodies biology and the exact way surgery would impact that,  in as much as I could beforehand.  I am still today amazed that so few WLS candidates don’t bother to do this. The surgeon says it works and away they go into what can be no mans land sometimes.      I dunno - it strikes the fear of the gods into me, but we all understand desperation, so I am not judging. Just observing.   I’m glad to this day that I did not opt for so called ’safer’ surgeries. So far my DS has appeared both safer and more effective generally speaking than what is on mainstream offer in WLS world. I understand exactly why it is not offered as mainstream - and I don’t buy the ‘ DS is riskier thing’  but I won’t go into that here because I might get started in a way that is even too big for me to handle.

Of course I might just be biding my time & one day it comes back to bite me on the bottom.  But so far - I’d say the riskiest weight loss surgery has come out tops. In my life anyway. Maybe in the abstracts written about it too.

But back to other matters.

I have been painting my kitchen.  It’s a good thing as my energy is way high. I think I get used to a high activity level when I travel with all the walking I do (sometimes I walk all day nearly!).  It’s looking crisp & clean & I feel happy I am doing something constructive about my delapidated half cooked house.

The weekend is here & I need to crack on with things.  I am making several ‘custom’ facial serums for people I know with allergies to mainstream cosmetics.  I started this cosmetic malarky not long ago & made a few gifts and now I have friends calling me to say ‘I’ve run out of my cream!!!’   I don’t mind supplying them as I love to be challenged and I believe that a product tailored to the user also has a certain happiness factor that money can’t buy.  I like being part of that vibration. 

To these ends, a bag of Babassu oil arrived this morning and I am in deep love with it. It is so so beautiful and I am so inspired and just itching to work with it.  It is a semi solid oil but the magic is it sinks into my skin leaving not a trace of grease, just a gentle softness. This is a rare quality as most oils either take a lot of time to sink into the skin or leave a sweaty shine. Not this baby!  It has a cooling effect as it is applied but not in the harsh way a menthol or mint would have. There is no sudden rush attached to it, it soothes.  How I wish I had known about it when I was a pre-op and had a dried out skin for several months. It would have been perfect and itis really that good that it could be used alone as a moisturiser. So if you are a new dry skinned post-op, throw out all those rubbish artificial creams. Order a bag of this - you are highly unlikely to regret it. When I have the time I will post up a special easy recipe for Babassu Post op butter/cream…and I shall tentatively reveal my source for obtaining it too.

It will be the base in my serums.  I also got some Monoi ‘d Tahiti oil which is made by distilling Gardenia flowers into virgin coconut oil.  The soft floral scent of it is absolutely gorgeous. In South Africa I had Gardenia’s in my garden and as evening fell the air would fill with this fragrance direct from heaven.  This oil retains the exact notes of a live blooming moonlit gardenia bush.  I’m not against carefully chosen synthetics in perfumes, but today I wonder why even bother with bought perfumes?  They all smell the same to me in many ways within their ‘types’.  Again - I want more.

And my friends there is more to be had.  This oil is a good start to that ‘moreness factor.’ It is probably ‘beginners bliss’ on my part but suddenly I am feeling like there is another amazing world of scents and fragrances to explore.

What is wonderful is how the fragrance has lasted on my skin. Natural fragrance oils often have a short skin life. I applied some several hours ago and it is still holding firm. It has dried down a little but has a kind of aura as if it floats in the air around me when I move.   I think it is gentle enough for some of my allergen endowed friends to have a little of diluted into the serum but we’ll patch test first to be sure.

Enough now - my but I have rambled on today. Let me get on with all things pending!

Hope you enjoy your weekend - have a good one!

WARNING:  contains writing of a poop/rectal related nature - do not read if such things appall you.

(And try not to plump for malabsorptive WLS either if that is the case.) 

The bane of travelling in company is that I am anxious as anything about sharing confined spaces, co-living area’s and especially shared bathrooms with friends. I only just bring myself to stay with family members on account of it.  Now, 7 years after surgery I am trying to face all my insecurities about this. It’s a hard one and recently even spending the night with friends in Kitzbuhel had me reduced to nervous wreck status.  It’s the explaining about the pong factor that haunts me and the fact that on my DS journey I have had some awful experiences in public toilets with people slanging out vomiting noises and abusive statements (while I sat miserably on the loo waiting for them to depart!). Happily the smell is vile enough that no one lingers for long so the abusive slangs are only seconds worth!  I did discover after those episodes a fantastic spray odour remover which helps me hugely but still I sweat this stuff.  There are times I have forgotten to travel with spray & had to face the public loo without my safety blanket.  In any event - the long and short of it is that with the stress my gut seizes from all the tension, I bloat & go all gastric. I hardly sleep and beg my bowels to move before any household members wake up.  I open windows, spray heavily, courtesy flush…go through a whole palaver.

To avoid all that, my preference is to stay in a nearby hotel rather than in homes. But the drawback is that it has an impact on Pete who loves to socialise and be with people.  It also is a bit cr*p to always dip out of generous heartfelt offers to stay with people one cares for.  The overnight stay in Kitzbuhel was as it was, fine.  But I did faff and panic over the bowel stuff and I had a rough night on account of myself.

Now there is an invitation to travel trans-Africa for 14 days through game parks in November with friends. Windhoek & Botswana mostly. It’s chock full of great adventures, close encounters with game animals, bungee jumping, white river rafting, copter ride over the zambezi falls, even walking with lions - yikes, not sure about that one!

Pete’s face lit up at the thought.  But the first thing I thought of was the public loo’s en route. Second thing - the wind.  When I mentioned this to him his face kind of fell & I felt so bad because I know I impede his life in this way and tbh it is not fair. So I have to do something - right?

Now I don’t get huge volumes of wind as I used to in my first years with la DS, but everyone let’s off and the prob is a DS let off is wayyyyy more potent. There is no blaming the dog I am afraid.  It also lingers enough to make one paranoid. I know some DSers who  swear even though they ran from the scene the evil smell followed them!!!

In my own home or space my family & I are unbothered.  I use the spray & everyone knows to give it a few secs (with spray) or  a few mins (without spray) before using the bathroom after me.   I don’t want any pre-ops to think it is totally unbearable (as I once feared) - generally it is not. Infact 99% of the time it’s no issue. But the other 1% becomes a 100% issue for me when sharing room/bathroom with friends or strangers. It can be a tough one.

Anyhoo,  I also realllly want to do this trip. It’s so fantastic and full of wonderful sights.  It is rough - travelling by a kitted truck with around 10 others, camping in the bush… using public loo’s or shitting in the bush. 

I am making a plan of attack now to combat the smellies.  An internal regimen and several spray/loo bowl options.

For the wind - I shall be experimenting over the next week with a homemade mix comprised of bentonite clay, devrom, chlorophyll. Another possibility includes using acidophilus, chlorophyl and lactase together which I believe might be a very good wind reducer.

The spray I have works very effectively for taking care of ‘outside’ odours, but I shall try to maximise it & adapt it to a scent that I would prefer. I’m thinking a tiny hand spray to use inconspiciously in company, that does not reek of tell tale lav citrus might be a good plan. I doubt I will use it as I long ago developed the bum muscle to hold in any gas factor which is hectically uncomfy but can be done. I just want to play it safe.

I am also going to try to find an ‘in bowl’ pong destroyer.  I’d love to find something like this  as I often fret about the use of chemical sprays in small confined spaces and the inhalation of them.  So far we haven’t had much choice but to resort to them, but it can’t be good for one’s health longerterm.

Talk about going it from every angle.

I know it looks like major effort & it is, but I am hoping I can pare down some of these approaches into a slick little pong prevention routine!

Once I have this sorted I am never ever again going to feel anxious about this issue. No more excuses not to broaden the scope of my social life!  That’s a promise to myself! 

Over and above that I’ll need to get flagyl. This will probably mean a long arm twisting episode with my GP no doubt. Sigh. I’m looking forward to asking for it like a hole in the head!

In the past (just hoping that has changed) my GP’s  don’t seem believe in prevention, but if I’m out in the bush in Africa it’s not like there will be a pharmacy to hand. There will be a doc (friend of friends) on the journey & maybe he will come equipped but I can’t count on that!   It’s always risky for me when I travel to countries where hygiene standards are not top brass.  I don’t fancy a bout of the trots on a bus!!!  I must also order enough protein shooters to ensure I don’t fall short and sort out the vitamin needs.

Lot’s of experimenting to follow so if the smell factor concerns you sometimes watch this space!