I woke this morning almost unable to move, every part of me was not only stiff, it was also in searing pain, specially my back just above my waist. I kept trying to find the strength to lift just one side off the mattress but even when I thought it was clear, my hand could feel that it was still as flat as ever. I eventually managed to turn off the alarm clock and twist well enough to work the mattress elevator, I kept hoping that once the lift had me at a sitting position that I would feel the pain ease, but it didn’t. I seem to wake often feel just like this, but once I have emptied my bladder and dressed it all starts to ease, I can’t help wondering if it is because my bladder is actually over full after my long sleep. Last night it slept the full 12 hours and it was the pain, not the alarm clock that woke me. It always seems to be the same, a desperate journey to the bathroom followed by pain easing it’s way out of my body. I could have easily lain back down and returned to sleep but I knew that alarm was just seconds from sounding, so I started to dress getting ready to face another day. Everything seemed OK until I sat down here and the twist needed to type, brought the pain back for a while, reminding me just how intense pain in your back can be. It’s hard to know what the cause really is, as the three options are clear, sitting badly all day, lying on my back all night or a need to regulate my bladder, it could be all or none of them.

Exhaustion had taken me over yesterday and by 7:30 Adam almost told me to go to bed, but he worded it better than that. He just announced he was going to fetch what he needed from the bedroom as he believe I wouldn’t be long in heading off to sleep. He was more than correct as I had actually been fighting ever since I had taken my meds, I would have easily walk across the hall and through the other door to the bedroom, rather than return to spend more time talking to him. As I said yesterday, I already knew that I was entering another phase of needing to sleep more than normal and it proved itself last night. When your body over rides everything and anything that you have planned, there is no arguing with it, I actually don’t remember any time in my life were tiredness overwhelmed me the way it does now. It is a need to sleep that I have only ever seen in very young children and babies, most parents will have seen it at some point, usually it is when they are both tired and hungry, determined to finish their food but falling asleep until you try to take the food away and suddenly they are awake and screaming at you for stealing their meal. Well I not hungry but it is how I imagine they must feel, a fight to remain doing what I want, but my body determined to make me sleep. Just as a baby will frantically suck on it’s bottle, I pin my eyes open and stare at the TV, doing my best to listen to both it and Adam, yet knowing any second I will totally lose the fight. 12 hours sleep yet a feeling I had only really been there for minutes.

I have been looking at our finances in the last couple of months, it clear that we still need to cut back even more, as our out going as biting into our savings every week. So I have been trying to not smoke so much and to actually use the E cigarette I bought years ago. There is something about them that just isn’t right, it’s not just the taste but the fact they are heavier and just don’t feel right in any way. I have actually made a huge difference to them since I was made redundant, at that point I was buying either 600 or 800 every second week and I smoked them all. Redundancy made me cut them back and I had already brought them down to 200 or 300 every 2 weeks and that was without the e cig, but I knew I had to cut them back further, so on my last couple of shops I bought first 200 and on the second only 100, to force me to get used to the vapour version. It was my attempts to sort out a system I am comfortable with, that caused my mad searching for parts to convert one system to be compatible with the other. So far I am not doing too badly, but what I have found myself doing, is in nicotine value is actually smoke more, I now sit puffing and puffing causing huge nicotine hits. If I were to go back to pure cigs, I would have doubled my intake and more. My goal is to be down to buying just 200 every shopping day and to fill the rest with the electronic version, finances dictate the out come as no matter which version of nicotine I prefer, it has to be the cheapest that I use the most, at least technology has created another version that actually works. I have no intention of giving up smoking, don’t think that as it will never happen, but this e thing, well once you get a system that works properly isn’t that bad. If you like me use them and spend a lot of time at your PC buy yourself a “pass-through”, it plugs in on the USB and takes away all that battery charging, no fiddling around with small thread components that jump out of your hands and leaves you chasing them around the floor, believe me it makes life is a lot easier.

Money is tight for everyone in this country I know that, but I am just not used to it. For too many years my income allowed me to do what I wanted really, I wasn’t earning a fortune but enough to live happily without fear of where the next meal came from or how we would pay the mortgage. Living on what the government pays me, well it has taken a while to adjust and I now have to lock thing down just that bit tighter to survive. I found a saving of £110 a year that I didn’t know I could claim, it was thanks to all the problems with the electric bill. When I was searching around on the electricity site, I found a form that took about 2 minutes to fill in and I had to give them permission to confirm the claim with the government departments involved, at the start of the week I receive an email confirmation that I now had the money in my electricity account. So if you are receiving all the standard benefits for those who are disabled, check with the company you use, as there could be money just sitting there waiting for your claim.