I don’t feel as though I have stopped for a second over the past week, others might say I have done nothing but sit on my backside, but I beg to differ.

It was Tuesday evening and I was passing the heater in the hall, the one the heats our entire home, and somewhere inside me, I realised there was a something wrong. I stopped. held out my left hand and touched it, the majority of it was cold. The house felt as though it was around the same temperature that it had been for days, which hasn’t been exactly warm. I have constantly been telling Adam that I was cold and I even had him double up the duvets so that it was at it’s designed winter weight, something we have never used before. The result wasn’t just that I was warm in bed, but even Adam noticed that I suddenly stopped being up several times during the night. I may have been sleeping better, but that didn’t help at all when it came to the fact I was still cold during the day.

If you own a storage heater, you will know that it stores up the heat at night and puts it out during the day. A simple system, but what I discovered, just part of it warm, it made no sense at all. Normally they are roasting hot, or simply not working, not a subtle system, but one that works well. We did the only thing we could do outside normal working hours, change the fuse and hope for a miracle. We didn’t get one. The next morning the heater was only warm in the center strip, and the rest was cold. I have been through trying to get a storage heater fixed in the past and it wasn’t funny the last time.

When you start from the simplest point that I hate talking on the phone, add in I hate talking to strangers, plus I really don’t have a clue when it comes to the cost of doing things like fixing a heater, well, you can imagine how wound up I was well before I even started. In fact, I kept doing things, anything that I could just to put it off for another few minutes, even just one. By the time the District nurse arrived, I was as tight as a knot and she could see it. I stuttered my way through what had happened and how I felt as though the last few months, all I have done was spend loads of money, on things that were totally unexpected. Talking to someone friendly really helped, and once she had gone, I set too on phase one, my online search. I found 5 companies, I plucked up the courage and phoned the first, a voice said they no longer do storage heaters and hung up before I could ask if they could recommend someone. The second, I left a message for and never heard back from. The next two I emailed and the final one was answered by a friendly jovial man who was happy to come to the house the next morning.

Wednesday was high on the extra stress and Thursday followed with not just stress, but the exertion of my having to dash back and forward to answer the doorbell, first off, a chemist delivery, then for the postman and finally for the repairman. It may just be a doorbell, but each trip means having to transition from my desk chair to my wheelchair and in reverse when I eventually return. My stress peaked when I found myself having to work out if I could trust this total stranger with £100 to buy the parts needed, he seemed nice enough, but how do you really know. I trusted my gut. The relief of his return didn’t last long, as it was followed by the disappointment of him finding that the heater was too hot, to complete all the work and that he would need to come back the next day. Everything was disconnected with the heavy threat of no heat what so ever, it was going to be a cold 24 hours. Once he was gone, I started to relax a little, that was until Adam came home to make me lunch and reminded me that the dentist was coming that afternoon. I knew exactly what he would be doing and that it would cause me no pain, but there is this thing in the back of my head that associated dentist with just that, and it’s hard to break. Up went the stress levels once more.

I no longer have that rough broken tooth, that constantly caught on the inside of my cheek, which is good, but he is returning on Saturday afternoon, to remove the half tooth I have at the back of my mouth. There goes the plan I had of dying my hair on Saturday, I guess I’m grey for that bit longer.

Friday morning arrived with a chill that hit the second I removed the bed covers. There was only one choice, to spend even more money and switch on both the fire and the oven at full blast. There was no way that I was going to survive a whole day with a house that was that cold. At 10 am the doorbell rang, about the time the District nurse normally calls, so I thought little of it when I went to answer it, other than she was just that little bit early. It wasn’t her, it was the electrician, two hours early. What could I do, other than let him in and panic? There was one thing for sure, I wasn’t letting him go as if I did, I might have to go until Monday before he could return. The other thing I was equally sure about, that I couldn’t have an enema with this guy in the hallway between my bedroom and bathroom. Somehow, I had to stop the nurse coming and I had to do it quick. Of course, I didn’t have their phone number on hand, so all I could do was to call my doctors and go from there. It was one of these wonderful trials, one number to another then another and even when I spoke to someone, they called me back 10 minutes later to confirm that they would call that afternoon instead. I hate the whole idea of putting busy people like them off, but what else could I do, for that reason, I guess, my stress levels didn’t fall, they stayed high even after the heater was once more together and I could look forward to waking to a warm home again, but not until tomorrow.

You wouldn’t believe that something as simple as a heater could cause so much hassle. It’s not really any great surprise that right now, I feel as though I could sleep for a week, if not longer. I know that to most people, this would have been nothing but an annoyingly stupid set of events, but it has pushed me beyond limits that I haven’t passed in a long time. Even what should have been the peace in between each issue was no peace for me at all, as the workmen downstairs are still bringing down walls and making noise that is beyond funny, it’s been three weeks now they have been working, and I guess they are nowhere near done. Is it too much to ask for a little peace, a chance to settle and just be me? All I hope is that tomorrow although the dentist, followed by my carer will be here, will bring me just that bit of calm that I have been missing all week. The simplest of life issues, are all always translated as pain, and for this week, I’ve had enough.

Please read my blog from 2 years ago today – 21/01/2015 Removing walls

About a week ago I said that I had realised that maybe I should be writing a bit more about the effects of my illness on my relationships, especially the most important one between Adam and I, when I wrote that I didn’t realise just how front and center of every second of my waking day our relationship was……