A rollercoaster of a week

I don't know how much of this I've talked about this before, but here's a little bit of transition news. If you're not interested then just skip down, I have some food stuff further down.

A year ago my therapist and my consultant agreed that I could go for chest surgery, for a double mastectomy and chest reconstruction. The folks responsibility for funding decisions in my area decided that although I fully satisfied the international recommendations, and the recommendations of the specialist commissioning board, the primary care trust decided that I had to undergo two years "real life experience" (RLE). I'm not going to go into the arguments for and against RLE, but at the time that my clinic agreed that I was ready I was 10 months into my RLE and doing well. NOT having chest surgery has a very negative affect on my health. My mental health has just really gone down hill from the moment that I was told no. My physical health has suffered from the day I started binding full time. It affects my breathing, leaves not just red marks from where it most compresses and rubs, but white marks where the blood hasn't been able to flow into all my skin properly, I get headaches, a bad back and my posture is affected. However the way that work in the NHS is commissioned has changed from 1st April this year so the PCT is no more and I am no longer at their whim. I saw my therapist just over a week ago and rather scared him with how much hope I'd lost of ever getting any further progress with my transition. My depression has become quite bad, despite being paleo and despite being on medication. So he agreed that he'd do some research and chase up about my referral letter for me to try and get things moving along. In the mean time I had a consultation in London with a surgeon about lower surgery. Yeah seriously I've seen the surgeon about my lower surgery before I've seen a surgeon about my chest. No that's not normal but is in fact a sign of just how messed around I've been by the system. So that consultation was on Monday. I was really excited. Firstly at the thought of life after surgery and secondly because he'd given me more options than I was expecting, and an option that would likely to give me better results than I was expecting. So I was kind of riding that high all week, until I got home from work on friday. There was a letter from my therapist. It would seem that he's misunderstood which surgeon I had requested for my chest surgery and has now thrown me into turmoil because I'm second guessing my choice again, even though my choice was made months ago. So from a real high to a real low, all in the space of a week. And because it's such a failure as misunderstanding my choice of surgeon it's so messing with my head there's not space for much else, so I'm rather phasing in and out of what's going on around me at the moment. That said, I'm still working, I'm still trying to eat well, and I'm still exercising. I'm a bit practised at continuing my life through heart ache, depression and anxiety.

Back to Paleo and simple living stuff!!!

Always on the look out for ways to make my life simpler, and always on the look out for a bargain, when I walked round the supermarket this weekend picking up special offer veg I had a brainwave!

I picked up courgette, aubergines and tomatoes on special offer. Since tinned tomatoes, carrots and onions are all cheap anyway, I decided to cook up a big batch of sauce to provide veg for a few days. When I cook I don't like trying to multi-task so I chop everything up all at the same time and are displayed in the photos above. You also get to have a good nose at my kitchen. If you look carefully you can see the not more than 2 days old eggs, the local organic cider vinegar, and the latest batch of sauerkraut. You can also see the rice noodles, the sugar for my many cups of tea, and the fact I have too many chopping boards. 

Before I go, I thought I'd share one more picture with you. This one is of an bronze bowl from Iron Age Devon (I live in Devon) that is on display in the British Museum. 

It's probably ceremonial, but maybe it was used for cooking. It's a bit beautiful anyway. This is as a reminder that when we talk about people in the past, and how they did stuff, we're not talking about some hypothetical people but living, breathing people with hope and worries and concerns just like we have. They might have hoped and worried about different things, but we can't just reduce them to diet and exercise.