Ménières Disease

I know I've been absent some time and not responding to comments - I've not been reading much online due to an onslaught of Ménières Disease (which you can read about on wikipedia here). The short version is it makes me so dizzy I can't blog or read online. So if I missed something important, I'm really sorry!

The long version is, I've been having dizzy/vomiting fits sporadically - like one every six months - for two years, and occasional bouts of mild dizziness lasting several days for about 7 or 8 years prior to that, but really extremely infrequently, like maybe two or three over that whole period. The more recent ones make me completely unable to function for the duration, usually starting one evening with the sort of dizziness that feels like extreme tiredness, and then carrying on the next morning with throwing up, inability to move much, getting better towards the evening and gone by the following day. As they only ever last 24 hours we didn't really think about trying to get a diagnosis until this time, we thought they were isolated incidents rather than an underlying condition.

Separately, I suffered a strong and apparently permanent hearing loss in one ear when Froglet was about 6 months old. At the time the ENT did every test you can think of, including an MRI, and nothing showed up at all. He also kept asking if I suffered from dizziness, and always seemed surprised when I said no - at this point I hadn't had any at all for a couple of years. The tests did show up that my inner ear on the affected side was completely non-functional (which incidentally is a pretty cool test where they pour water in one ear and then watch as it runs out to see if it makes you feel dizzy. It should! and it didn't for me, on that side at least.) So we went to him and tried various things for a whole year and in the end he apologised and said there was nothing more he could do but that he would keep an eye out and if anything new came up he would let us know.

Fast forward 3 years and I get the first bad dizzy spell, right after a long drive and while pregnant. We put it down to the pregnancy, mainly. Fast forward another two years and it's now. I'm on my third dizzy bout this year, so the rate is increasing. Several times it has come on on a weekend so we've seen the on-call doctor rather than our own, and he has injected medication to control the vomiting and nausea, but this time it arrived on Monday two weeks ago and we were able to see my doctor and ask him if this was likely to keep happening/get worse/be treatable... and he discussed it with the ENT and got my original audiograms... and so we now have a diagnosis of Ménières disease, although in fact Ménières is idiopathic which means it's not reeeeally a full diagnosis in itself, more a recognition of the fact that I have this recurring set of symptoms whose cause is as yet undetermined - if the cause is ever determined I will then cease to have Ménières and will have whatever that cause is instead, but in many cases no cause is ever ascertained, because the inner ear, like much that goes on inside our skulls, is still very much a mystery! (My apologies to anyone medical reading this. I know that's a gross over-simplification!)

So I now have an appointment with the ENT next Wednesday to do a new audiogram, which they expect will show a further decline in my hearing on that side, and some other tests as well.

And the last thing to say is that although the properly incapacitating dizziness only lasted 48 hours this time, I have been dizzy in the mild-to-moderate range for the last two weeks and am only just getting over it now, and extended computer time, I have just discovered, makes it worse, so that's all from me for now! :-)

Christmas planning

I know Christmas is still a long way off, but we're not American so no Thanksgiving - the Swiss have been having small harvest celebrations for several weeks now, they seem to stagger them so everyone can go to everyone else's village celebrations - and Switzerland doesn't really do Halloween as such (they save the dressing-up for Carnival time in February) and so Advent and Christmas are the Next Big Thing.

For Froglet's Advent bags this year I've bought some of those little cylindrical plastic beads that you make a picture with and then iron together, and I will do some designs for small baubles to make with them, probably while Nutmeg sleeps after lunch.

I have also got a 10-week preparation list from Planning with Kids, where there is going to be more about it each week so do click through!

• 10 Weeks To Go – Review Christmas budget
• 9 Weeks To Go – Start making the family Christmas cards
• 8 Weeks To Go – Make food packs to donate
• 7 Weeks To Go – Christmas present ideas (ones that are easy to pack)
• 6 Weeks To Go – Help my kids organise a mini fundraiser
• 5 Weeks To Go – Finish Christmas tags and handmade gifts
• 4 Weeks To Go – Handmade Christmas decorations
• 3 Weeks To Go – Cooking Christmas treats
• 2 Weeks To Go – Make arrangements for the house
• 1 Week To Go – Christmas celebration with family before we go

I have to say I am very intrigued to find out what some of them will be (a mini-fundraiser for what?), and intend to use the list as a basis for making my own plans. I'm cutting out the fundraiser as my eldest is currently 5, but it's an interesting thought for future years. And we wouldn't know who to give food packets to so unless we manage to find out before Christmas, that's getting replaced with Christmas parcels to send to Eastern Europe.

Here (for my own benefit more than anyone else's) are the posts I made concerning Advent and preparing for Christmas last year:

http://notreallyhomeschooling.blogspot.com/2009/11/planning-advent.html (this one has links in it to the Jesse Tree stuff)
http://notreallyhomeschooling.blogspot.com/2009/12/advent-week-1.html
http://notreallyhomeschooling.blogspot.com/2009/12/second-week-of-advent.html

Something good

I don't know who is actually reading this but I wanted to talk a little bit about Haiti.

I've never been to Haiti. Like virtually anyone reading this, it only really got onto my radar back in January after the earthquake. So I can't claim a special relationship or anything like that. But since then I've been following a couple of blogs of people who are out there, including that of the Livesay family, who simply blow my mind. Their love for the people and the country is amazing, and the things they have been doing out there and plan to do next are wonderful too.

I'm linking to this one post which is about the hospital they want to build, and why, and the funds that they will need, but I encourage you to read the whole blog, because these are wonderful people who really love God but don't make out that it's all easy or that they're perfect. I find that encouraging and inspiring. And they're funny too. :-)

http://livesayhaiti.blogspot.com/2010/09/bombard.html

Who else loves audiobooks?

Don't worry, I haven't forgotten I still need to post about Corfu.

But first a short break so I can tell you about something really cool.

I grew up with no TV. (And no, I'm not that old. 40 is still quite some way off!) No TV, but loads of books. My mother was a librarian, and she taught us to love books as much as she does. When we couldn't have the written word - for instance on long car journeys - we had the precursor of those nifty backseat DVD players. That's right, the audiobook. Or Books On Tape, as we knew them. (I am *that* old. Just about.)

I love audiobooks. I would listen to them every night before bed. Some my mother narrated for me - mostly when I was smaller - and others were professional versions. As well as being excellent entertainment, they're great for your memory. I can still recite most of Nicol Williamson's wonderful rendition of The Hobbit, complete with regional accents. And virtually all of the slightly-abridged Chronicles of Narnia read by Michael Hordern. That version of The Chronicles of Narnia is still available by the way, in a CD box-set, and I wholeheartedly recommend it, but sadly The Hobbit is now only available secondhand on cassette.

All of this brings us to Librivox.

No this isn't an advert. Well it sort of is. But I'm not getting paid for it, and as Librivox is a completely volunteer organisation, neither is anyone else.

Librivox volunteers record public domain texts - such as The Green Fairy Book, remember that? and make them available to listen to, free of charge, with various different downloading options, over the internet.

Why?

"We love reading, love books, love literature, think the public domain should be defended and enriched, we like free stuff, we like to hear people read to us, and we like reading to other people. It's fun, it's a great community, it's a rewarding public service to the world. And "nothing" is in it for us, except the satisfaction of participating in a wonderful project."

Is what their website says. I've just signed up to be a volunteer. So far I've read one chapter and am halfway through editing a second. Some people have read hundreds. Here's where you can listen to the recordings:

http://librivox.org/newcatalog/

Remember we're only talking about Public Domain stuff here. Generally speaking that means the author has been dead for 70 years or more. The rules differ slightly depending on the country you're in - but basically you won't find any J.K. Rowling or Bill Bryson, to name just a couple of my own favourite authors. You will however find Jane Austen, Dickens, Shakespeare, Tolstoy and many many others who I have never heard of. And if there's something missing that you know is in the public domain and you think ought to be there, you can leave a suggestion on the Librivox forum, or here in the comments if you don't want to sign up there. If you're not sure whether it's in the public domain, see if it's on Project Gutenberg, and if it's there, it's good to go.

You could even volunteer to read yourself.

Venice

No one told me the first week of kindergarten would be so tiring! And I'm not even the one going!
Anyway, let's not talk about that now. Let's talk about Venice.

The Engineer has wanted to go to Venice for ages, but I've been several times (most recently when I was 18 though) and was rather underwhelmed, so we've never got round to it. However, as our big family holiday to Greece fell immediately after his birthday, and as flights from Switzerland are unsurprisingly expensive, we looked into alternative means of transportation and found… car ferries. Ah, how exotic, I hear you say. Well, no, obviously not. But The Engineer does love the sea, and since working in the aviation industry he has developed an interesting dislike of planes. And the car ferry leaves from Venice, a mere five-hour drive not including stops.

So we booked a Novotel on mainland Venice where things are cheaper and have parking spaces, and that was that.

As everyone knows, the ancient part of Venice - the part you actually want to see - has no room for cars, but you can still get to it by car via a huge bridge, which gives you an excellent view of the ferry terminal and multi-storey car park where you will be leaving your vehicle (the car park isn't related to the terminal, anyone can park there). After that, you hop on a vaporetto, or boat-bus, which takes you round the outside of the city to drop you off at one of various bus-stops. We would have loved to stop at several places just to have a look round, but we had to be back at the terminal to board at noon, so we settled for the traditional Piazza San Marco. Thankfully it wasn't flooded - it's the lowest point of the city - but the queues for the Basilica were so long, even early in the morning, that we decided it wasn't worth it with two children in tow. A shame because I wanted to see if the floor inside was as undulating as on my previous visit - something I assume wasn't part of the original design. However, the children thought that chasing pigeons was vastly entertaining, and there was a live band playing outside one of the restaurants, so everyone was happy.

The tower was boarded up for repairs of some sort, and the bridge of Sighs had some bizarre sky-blue boards with adverts for some watch company or other on either side of it so you couldn't get a good photo (see picture above, on right!) But no matter. We bought ice-cream and wandered through the back streets, vaguely in the direction of the Rialto bridge. Froglet and I spent most of our time admiring the glasswork in the shop windows, to try and keep his mind off the fact that he "really wanted to go to the ferry right now", but The Engineer managed to get some nice shots of things we didn't even realise were there. So when you go to Venice make sure you look up as well as into shops. (This is even better advice when in Prague, where some of the loveliest paintings and embellishments are right under the eaves).

Venice must have a wheelchair-friendly route around it, as some little staircases had locked stairlifts on them. I imagine one has to go to the Tourist Office to get a key. However we managed without - this sort of thing being what we bought the lightweight pushchair for in the first place - and eventually made it to the Bridge. It was quite crowded so we admired it from a distance and then got in the queue for a Vaporetto back to the car park. This one took us through the centre of town, along the Grand Canal. I don't remember doing that last time, but it's definitely a lovely route.

I want to write about boarding the car ferry - I realise that sounds utterly boring, but if you have never boarded a Greek ferry at an Italian port, you are missing out! Anyway I'm out of time, so that will be for my next post.

A Grecian holiday, part one

Have you ever heard of Gerald Durrell? If you have, chances are you're either a naturalist, or you've read one of his books (or, in the UK, seen the TV series). Or possibly you're thinking of his older brother Lawrence, the famous author. Gerald Durrell was an ardent lover of nature and animals in particular, who became a great conservationist, founded one of the first zoos dedicated to conservation, on the island of Jersey, and incidentally wrote a great many very entertaining books about animals and his life with or near them.

As you may be able to tell, I'm something of a fan. But what does all that have to do with Greece? Well, everything. It's the reason we chose our holiday destination. (Well the reason I chose it anyway. Everyone else just thought my suggestion was a good second-best to theirs, so democracy ensured I won.) But back to my point: Gerald Durrell spent 5 years of his early life living on the Greek island of Corfu, and at least three of his books deal with memories from that time. And if you've read them, you can't help but want to go there and see what it's like now, nearly 80 years later.

So we did.

It's quite different. There are more cars, fewer donkeys, and considerably less in the way of wildlife - in our time there we found one shell on the beach. One.
Things are more organised. There are more fences - his books give the feeling that in the early 1930s you could walk from one end of the island to the other without "trespassing", although I imagine that wasn't really the case.

Fortunately, I was mentally prepared for this, and thus not disappointed. After all, who expects a member state of the European Union to be exactly how it was before the war that gave birth to what would eventually become the EU? So, disregarding the changes, I focused on the things that had remained the same. Of course I made sure we had the books with us too!

So that was one exciting thing, for me. (No one else shared this, despite all my family having read the books too. Ah well.) The other exciting thing was being with my whole family - parents and three sisters, some with husbands and kids in tow. Froglet loved having someone almost his own age to play with. Actually his little cousin is almost exactly halfway between him and Nutmeg, but she mostly played with him. Nutmeg mostly clung to me, at least the first few days. I can't blame her though, as it was surprisingly cold and windy. We had thunderstorms and rain for a whole two days, and then for part of several more. (Great for me - I'm not a hot-weather person).

We stayed at a lovely all-inclusive hotel in the north of the island, with several saltwater pools and its own beach. Most of the tourist attractions are elsewhere to be honest, but as we drove down and got the car ferry across we were able to drive into Corfu town for a day, and visit a couple of other little places nearer at hand too. I definitely recommend hiring/bringing a car if you're not staying in the capital of the island, as Greek public transport can be quite infrequent (not to mention slow). That's Froglet on the car ferry on the left, with the island behind him. The photo above is the view of the Old Citadel in Corfu Town, as seen from the ferry while we were docking.

And that is all I'm going to say for now, but at some point soon I'll write more about Corfu itself. And Venice. Have I mentioned Venice yet?

Spring and summer non-posting

My friend MaryLeigh at Blue Cotton Memory was asking where I've been. Well several factors have combined to make posting more difficult.

First we got a new computer - an Apple. It took us quite a while to work out how to sync our camera with it (apparently it doesn't like Canon G10s), and even longer to work out how to put the photos somewhere where I can get at them from my blog to post. For a while I posted sans photos but it's not as nice, is it? But hopefully that is now solved.

Secondly, Froglet starts official kindergarten this August, so we took him out of nursery at the end of May to give him a summer holiday (and save some money!) Not entirely a brilliant idea, as I now have no free time at lunchtimes when Nutmeg sleeps. But then again, children in Switzerland come home for lunch every day anyway once they start kindy, so I had to get used to it sometime. Now I have to learn to make 20-minute posts, like this one!

And thirdly we have had both visits from and visits to family, including a holiday in Greece, so that has kept us busy and offline. The photo is one I took outside our hotel room there, and I will be posting about the trip soon. With pictures. :-)