What a difference a year makes!

Happy New Year! We're a few weeks into it, but better late than never eh! I haven't blogged in over a month; I have been so busy with dogs, Christmas, life etc haha. It's been a great month for me and I hope you've all had a great Christmas and New Year.

My family Christmas dinner

Christmas jumpers!

The drawing of our pets I got for Alex

Posh night out!

I use this blog as a sort of diary and I am so glad I started it.. wow 4 years ago now! It's documented my lung functions, weight, feelings, photos, decisions etc throughout the years and is interesting to see how I compare to that now. I have been reading back over the last year's posts and wow, what a difference a year makes!!

This time last year I was very unwell. I was quite frail from being so underweight, a plummeting lung function, bleeding lungs regularly, I felt very alone and had very little hope. I was throwing up a lot due to being so ill and on IVs pretty much every 6-8 weeks. Hospital trips were a 5 hour nightmare, not to mention the days of stress leading up them. Overbooked clinics, understaffed wards.... eurgh :(

I also mentioned this time last year, of enrolling at belly dancing classes.

Now, I'm the heaviest I think I've ever been at 52.1KG, a HEALTHY BMI of 20.1! Finally :D :D pretty soon they will be asking me to go on a diet haha ;) I found an old photo of me from a few years ago. It's shocking to see how skinny I was. My legs especially. Ew I think I look awful here!! I must have been about 44KG here, if that.

My infections have been so much less recurrent and with a lot of hard work I have managed to keep creeping up my lung function percentages and I'm currently at 58%. I'm hoping I can get it into the 60's again one day. Since joining Frimley Park (will be a year in March), I've only had 2 or 3 courses of IVs, which is incredible!! Chris, the doctor couldn't believe it when I saw him the other day. I have the whole team there to thank for this vast vast improvement. They truly have saved my life and I dread to think where I'd be if I hadn't moved. For me, it was 100% the right decision.

I'm nearly a year into my belly dancing now. I really enjoy it; it's such fun and the loveliest group of women you could wish for. I feel very comfortable doing it and know that I can go at my own pace. It's great to do an exercise you love and have fun doing, then you don't even realise it's exercising! :) In December we did a show to family and friends.

Some of the belly dancing girls

Well that's about it for now! Glad I've had time to reflect on things, sometimes you need to to keep your head in the right place. I'm currently half way through a course of oral antibiotics, which I feel are working well. I plan to keep putting on weight an improve my fitness, posture and diabetes control this year. Here's to 2016! xoxo