#ShaveForEndo

Last Monday my sister Kassi did an incredibly brave thing: she shaved off all her hair to raise money for Endometriosis UK and awareness for the disease. It was part of a larger goal to raise £1000 for Endometriosis UK this year and she's already made a lot of headway into that goal. She set her target for this event at £100, but reached that well before the event itself and the total currently sits at £284 with a few more donations yet to be received.

The event itself was at a local hotel and around 20 people attended. I started the evening by giving a short talk about what endo is, why we're raising money and also a little about the charity before we got on with the shaving. Being the "guest of honour" as it were, I was the lucky person that got to cut her plait off (which she is donating to a company that makes wigs for chemo patients - double good karma!) and it was a fun task. As a side note, plaits are hard to cut through and take ages!

Once the plait was off we charged £1 for the guests who wanted to cut off a lovely lock - it was a surprisingly popular activity! Then the lovely Kate Kingston set about the tricky task of shaving off the patches of hair that were left and evening Kassi out while everyone else purchased raffle tickets.

There were a few tears when Kassi first saw her newly-shaved head, but since she'd just spent 30 hours travelling back from a wedding in New Zealand I think we can put that down to emotional tiredness! There was also a lot of time spent parading around with the plait and letting people feel her fuzzy head. It sounds very odd, but it was highly entertaining at the time!

The night ended with the raffle, where everyone sat with their fingers crossed hoping to win a bottle of wine or port! I even won a gift voucher to go and see Kate when it's time for my next trim. :)

Overall we raised £64 on the night between the raffle, the hair cutting and generous donations and people have continued to donate over the last week. We're getting so close to £300 now and it'd be great if we could break that milestone! We've even been invited to do a few interviews to continue raising awareness and talk about why it's so important to us. It's really exciting to have the opportunity to reach more people and raise awareness about endo.

If you'd like to donate you can visit our JustGiving page - we really appreciate anything you can spare!

Now I'm off to remind Kassi that she resembles a potato...

Before & After

An Unexpected Break

Wow, has it really been a month since our engagement party and my last post? So much has happened since then! Today I'm here to apologise for my absence and explain...

As I write I'm sitting in baggy clothing surrounded by boxes of medication, plenty of entertainment and moving carefully so I don't pull my now-healing incisions. It sounds dramatic, but really the drama has been the last 4 weeks!

On the Wednesday after our party while working at the local business park I became very unwell and rushed home to be sick. I thought  I'd caught a stomach bug, but it lasted a lot longer than 24 hours. I visited my GP on the Friday as I was still being sick and hadn't kept food down in days. She told me to keep hydrated but little else. By Sunday I was going noticeably yellow - even the whites of my eyes(!) - so I headed to the out of hours GP.

I have to pause here and say I've got huge respect for the NHS 111 service, who were absolutely brilliant in helping me at every stage of this journey.

Following the GP visit was a trip to the hospital for blood tests which showed jaundice. We went back Monday for more tests and by bedtime I was admitted to the surgical ward! It turns out my gallbladder was full of stones and a very unhappy bunny indeed. A week after first being sick I was in surgery to have it removed, followed by gallstone removal from my blocked bile duct the next day.

It sounds like the story would end there, but shortly after being released I developed pretty severe tonsilitis. For 2 short days I was starting to eat again, only to be reduced to a liquid-only diet! Some antibiotics for that and another week later I was starting to recover again... only for one of my incisions to open back up! Some more time spent in A & E and it turns out there's a small infection preventing it from closing. I'm coming to the end of those antibiotics but now I've broken the joint on my baby finger! I've no idea how - I was sleeping - but it's the one I broke when I was 17 so it was probably already weak in some way.

And that concludes my dramatic 4 weeks! My incisions are finally closing, my throat is better and my finger will mend in time. I can now get back to working, blogging and raising more awareness for Endometriosis! And speaking of endo, we held an event on Monday to raise money and awareness. I guess I'll have to do a few catch up blogs to bring you up to speed since this one is long enough already!

Now it's time to head to bed (at 8pm!) for some much needed sleep. Anyone else missing a gallbladder, or had an interesting few weeks? Let me know in the comments!