#atozchallenge - G is for Gynaecologist

We're getting onto the interesting stuff in this challenge now.

If you're like me when you start trying for a baby, very few people will have actually taken a look at those bits 'down there'. Aside from a doctor when I had a water bottle burst on my lap at the age of seven, and my routine cervical smear test, I'd manage to keep most medical personnel well and truly away from my ladybits.

Until I started trying for a baby that is, or rather, until we started trying and failing to have a baby.

From what I understand, the American medical system is different to Britain in that as well as having a GP most women also have a gynaecologist who oversees that department. In Scotland, from the age of about twenty you see a nurse for a smear every three years, and your GP for everything else. As I'd never had any problems in that department, those bits had never really been under than much scrutiny.

Well, that all changes when you're struggling to have a baby. Suddenly it becomes socially acceptable for all sorts of people to start squinting at your nether regions (not to mention procedures to look at their internal workings).

The idea of all that stuff used to freak me out quite a bit but I've made my peace with it. It's kind of preparation for when we actually get pregnant, at least I've had plenty of time to come to terms with the fact that people are going to be examining me down there. It's their job and it really doesn't bother me that much now.

But remember, if you're a bit nervous about any examination you're having to have, let them know, chances are they're dealt with it before. If you're not comfortable with a male doctor, most places will be happy to accommodate your wishes for a female doctor. And while it might be unpleasant, it's only for a few minutes, lie back, think of England, and treat yourself to a big bar of chocolate afterwards!

Project 52: Week 14 - Intense

It didn't take me very long to come up with my idea for the theme intense. I did take a couple of photos just in case I didn't get a chance to do the one that I wanted, my personal favourite was the mess outside the girlie!rats' cage after a night of intensive paper moving. Between them and Tara we should really buy shares in Vax!

Luckily the weather cooperated (to a degree) and we were able to get out to Ettrick Bay yesterday, with Tara on the extendable lead and me with my long lens, and I was able to get a few snaps of one of the most intense views on the island.

Unfortunately it started spotting with rain before I could get too many pictures, but this actually worked out in my favour because we raced it round to the viewing point overlooking Scalpsie Bay. After taking a few photos looking across to Arran, I climbed the hill at the back (I've never been up there before, though I've wanted to several times). That gave me just the right sort of angle across the water.

Week 14: Intense

That's looking across at 'The Sleeping Warrior'. I think this is around his chest and body, it was hard to tell from the way the clouds were. Arran always looks so intense when it's all covered in snow (which it has been for the last few weeks) and with the big heavy clouds above it.

I've stood at the viewing point before and watched the weather change across the water and it always looks totally spectacular. There's nothing quite like it. I'm really lucky to live in a place like this,

In terms of the photo above, it seemed a bit flat because I'd taken it with my long lens. I sharpened things up slightly as well as straightening it up because it was at a slight angle (really obvious when you followed the line of water along the shore). I also fiddled around with the highlights to make the snow seem less grey. It's still not quite as sharp as I would have liked but I was under a bit of pressure because we'd raced the rain and I was worried it would catch us up.

I'm hoping to get some more photos taken around the island in the next few months. Tara loves trips to the beach, and so do I. Hopefully we'll have plenty of nice weather which will give us plenty of time for trips to the beach and photo sessions.

Next week is migration, I can't say I've got any idea of what to use for that one, but I'm sure it'll come to me soon enough.

Well done?

For a while now I've been thinking about how we respond to products or experiences; at work we had a discussion a little while ago about how you're more likely to tell people about bad customer experiences than good ones. It's something I've been thinking about ever since.

I'm aware of the fact that I've told loads of people about our nightmare experience trying to get two iPhones on a contract with Tesco, but I've not really told many people about the fact that Vodafone were really helpful and got everything sorted for us very quickly. The same is probably true for other experiences; it's always the bad ones that seem to spring to mind, while the good ones get sort of forgotten.

Flowers? Chocolates? Or thank you card?

So I'm trying to make more of an effort to let people know when I think they've done a good job or the service has been good because I know myself, it feels good when someone gives you a pat on the back.

There was the girl in the dining area of Cardwell Garden Centre who, when we asked for a bag to take some puddings home in, dashed off to get one for us right away, even though she was in the middle of cleaning up.

There was the eBay seller who sent me my wool vacuum sealed so it could be posted through the letterbox, saving us a trip to the sorting office.

And then there was the nice lady when we were buying tickets for the ferry who was just generally chatty and pleasant, even though she's having to stand out in the cold drizzle taking tickets from people who are snug and warm in their cars.

Why don't you share some of your good experiences?

#atozchallenge - F is for Fears

This is kind of the partner to the Dreams post I made two days ago. While I spend a good portion of my time dreaming about the future, I also focus quite a bit of energy on worrying about it as well. Just as a word to the wise, I wouldn't recommend this approach, it's probably not very healthy.

I can't help it though, I've always been a worrier. As I've gotten older I've gotten over most of my old worries (though not that one about things lurking in the dark to get me, thank you Doctor Who), but the newer worries are big grown up sized ones.

I used to worry about there being a problem so that we couldn't get pregnant, that I'd have to have investigative procedures which involved strangers examining my ladybits, and that in order to get pregnant we'd have to go through a highly stressful and invasive process. I'm coming to realise that worrying about these things doesn't actually get you anywhere.

That said, I'm getting really good at facing my fears. Even the big scary ones don't bother me too much anymore (again, apart from the Doctor Who induced ones).

And each new hurdle we come up against introduces a whole new range of things to worry about; what if going private bumps us off the NHS list? (It won't) what if they find out there's something else wrong with me? (You deal with it if it happens) what if you get pregnant and something goes wrong? (Seriously, swelling on all the negative stuff is just tempting fate)!

When you're on this kind of a rollercoaster journey, you've got to stay positive; a little mope here and there is fine, but you can't let the big scary worries consume you because they've got big scary mates who'd love to tag along for the ride.

All Creatures Great And Small

We finally got to the end of the All Creatures Great And Small box set that Mr Click bought me for Christmas back in (I think) 2010. We've not been watching it for that long; we did start it shortly after getting it, but stopped watching somewhere around series five.

Last year, after watching Tales of the Unexpected, we restarted it from the beginning and it's been our evening's viewing for several months now (aside from a brief break at the end of November and through December when we watched Christmas films instead). It was quite strange getting towards the end of the series after all this time, so the other week, while I had a three-day weekend, we decided to have a final push to get it finished (and succeeded in watching all bar the last Christmas episode).

We've been watching for such a long time that I kind of regret not jotting down my thoughts as we went along, it's definitely something I'll have to remember in the future for longest TV series that take a while to get through. Obviously, my memory is better when it comes to the episodes we've seen since Christmas.

The earlier episodes borrow quite heavily from the books, right down the names of characters, which I liked. It meant that I often knew the outcome, but it's a while since I read all the books (Mr Click got the box set of those for Christmas for me at the same time) so I wasn't always clear on the details.

Later episodes repeat some of the earlier stories, sometimes with different characters; Calum has to deal with Mr Mulligan and Clancy, whereas the first time around it was James; sometimes the whole story is given a new scenario, as with Tricki-Woo experiencing interesting side effects to some medication that produced the same result when given to an artist's dog. There were a couple of times that I felt frustrated by the obvious repetition, but it got that it didn't bother me; very little changed in Darrowby's Vet Surgery, including what they had to deal with. It was probably less noticeable when it originally aired because people weren't watching it in as quick a succession as we did.

When we took our break from the series it fell at the time when war was announced and James and Siegfried left for the war. This was a really good place to stop as it was here that they made the switch of Helens. Carol Drinkwater is replaced by Lynda Bellingham; I read somewhere that this was because Drinkwater and Christopher Timothy had been seeing each other and split up.

It took me a while to adjust to the next series because the tone felt slightly different for a while. James and Helen have a family and they seem to spend a lot of time worrying about things and being on the verge of falling out. Luckily this doesn't last forever and it's countered by the antics of Calum who is constantly collecting wild animals to tend to, whilst trying to woo Deirdre.

The series itself, as a whole, is lovely. The episodes usually follow two, if not three, storylines and show a mix of the small animal care in the surgery and the large animal practice on the farms. It's interesting to see how techniques change through the years, something that the characters themselves comment on more than once.

What's really fascinating is that you actually watch some of the procedures for real. I especially enjoyed the lambing episodes because it's something I can relate to, having done it myself. I picked up a copy of Vet Behind The Ears, Christopher Timothy's book about his time on the show, and I'm looking forward to reading it to find out how much they actually got to do. And how it worked, did they just hang around a farm waiting for a cow to go into labour so they could start shooting?

This box set contains all the episodes of the TV series, including the three Christmas episodes. Slightly annoyingly these are placed right at the end of the box set, rather than in their respective places through the series. This meant that we watched the 1991 Christmas special right after the last episode, then jumped back in time to the 1983 episode which saw James returning from the war, before going on to the 1985 Christmas episode. It's a very minor niggle but one I might resolve by rearranging the positions of the discs myself before the next viewing.

It's a shame there are no special features on the discs. I'd love to have listened to some episode commentaries, or perhaps watched a couple of documentaries about how they filmed it all and the history of Veterinary Science. The whole series is like one long advert for Visit North Yorkshire so they could've put something on about the real James Herriot, Alf Wright, and maybe mentioned The James Herriot Experience in Thirsk (if you get the chance to go there, do, it's fantastic and I appreciate all the more now I've read the books and seen the series).

I've really enjoyed watching this series and I think I'm going to miss it now, particularly as we've completely changed direction with our next choice of viewing; we're onto the first series of Game of Thrones! Winter is coming.

#atozchallenge - E is for Endometriosis

Endometriosis is the name given to a medical condition where the lining of the womb ends up in places where it shouldn't. I first heard of it in an episode of House of all places where it was featuring as the case of the week, but I never thought it was something that I was or would experience.

Sure, I've always suffered with my periods. Even before they started I suffered badly from migraines each month, which all but stopped once I hit puberty but were replaced with severe cramps, nausea and other unpleasantness. It really never occurred to me that this wasn't normal and there weren't really any female family members I could talk to about it.

So I dealt with it. I found some yoga stretches that helped and I'd dose myself up with painkillers each month, and I survived.

It wasn't something I thought too much about until I was married and we started trying for a baby that I started paying more attention to my cycle and started wondering if things weren't quite right. My suspicions were confirmed last March when I had a laparoscopy to find out why we'd been trying for over two years to start a family without success.

The endometriosis has led to scarring on my Fallopian tubes which explains the lack of baby after three years now. I'm not sure if anything could have been done to prevent that had I seen a doctor sooner, it feels a bit silly asking that now because it's too late. I think one of the main treatments is birth control which was never something I really fancied, though knowing what I know now maybe I'd feel differently.

Meanwhile, I'm still struggling with the endo. It's like since I got the diagnosis my body has notched things up a level and some months it's been about ten times worse than it used to be. I'm still trying to find a painkiller that actually works and takes away the pain but doesn't make me feel nauseous/loopy/like cheese is something worth crying about. I'm sure I'll find something that'll work eventually.

Day Zero Project: Take a week's holiday

I've taken almost a week's worth of holiday from work before. Usually in the run up to Christmas when I realise I've still got several day's worth to use before it runs out but that time is normally spent at home watching films, walking Tara or perhaps going to the mainland for shopping.

Our last holiday was in 2009, when we went to North Yorkshire. We'd hoped to go back there in 2011, but then we moved house and I lost my job, and it seemed like a far better use of that money would be on feeding ourselves and paying for electricity (especially as I never actually got any money from Jobseeker's Allowance). If I ever needed a holiday, it was then!

The thing is, we live in such a beautiful part of the world, that it's very easy not to mind being here all the time. We have trips to the mainland for shopping and every so often we go to Dunoon, or Ayr, or Oban as a day trip which gives you a change of scenery.

That said, I'd really enjoy booking off a full week from work, knowing I'd be going away to somewhere completely different. We've been talking about going back to North Yorkshire next year, though that'll depend on what's happening IVF-wise, because I'll need my holidays for that. The good thing about my current job is I'm not constrained in when I can take my holidays now, so it means we're fairly flexible.

One way or another, I'll take a week's holiday, even if it does just any up being to sit at home and watch Christmas films!