Christmas is here!

Finally I feel like Christmas is here :) It's been a hectic few days, and probably a few more to come, but right now I am taking it easy. Sitting by the fire and enjoying the nice warmth :)

Yesterday I decided it was time for us to bake! We baked sand-cookies, German butter-cookies, and we prepared the gingerbread dough. Of course it all had to be lactose and gluten free! That's where the challenge went.
The sand-cookies was an absolute success :) Mostly because it required potato-flour instead of wheat, and no milk. (YAY! :)). The butter-cookies was not sooo much of a success according to my boyfriend, but I thought they were still pretty tasty. The gingerbread dough had to stay overnight, so not much more we could do in that area.

So today, I finished the last of the Christmas shopping. Only thing missing is the Christmas stocking for my boyfriend, and I have 2 more days to complete that task. Just want to find a nice stocking. :) I did search for one today, but that journey was not so much fun. I had bought the last calendar gift for my boyfriend, and left the store without any problem. As soon as I entered a different store, their alarm went off!! On ME. That happened for a total of 3 stores, until a nice lady helped me get off the alarm. I am utterly amazed by the incompetence of the store where the alarm should have gone off in the first place, and didn't.. instead I had to be humiliated several times in different stores.. Why bother to put an alarm on your merchandise if you don't have a detector? Well, as soon as i got the alarm disarmed, everything got better. I got a nice box set for my Christmas cookies, I caught an early bus (it was actually 20 min too late, but for me it was perfect timing). I am good at stumble across things like that. So my day got a lot better again :D

When i got home, i started to prepare a space for our Christmas tree. I had to wait for my boyfriend to get home from work though.. So meanwhile I tried to make a fire. It took me a while, but i managed. (I know how to do it, it just takes a while before the it takes.) After a while my boyfriend called from the city, and while we were talking on the phone, i realized i had to put in another log so the fire wouldn't "die out". As i opened the latch, a burning log fell out! I was covered in glowing coal, and smoke was filling up the room. I quickly got of all the glowing coal, and used two logs to pick up the burning one and throw it back into the fire. I also realized that glowing specks from the wood and hit a broom and the couch, but i quickly got them away as well. So surprisingly not harm done! :D (Besides from my pants be black from ash, and a dirty floor..:P) Must be my lucky day ;). So never talk on the phone while dealing with fire ;).




When my boyfriend came home, i showed him my little mess, and he just thought I was cute ;). He wasn't too worried about my whole little accident (or at least I hope so :)). Then he told me he had a few surprises for me, and I loved them all :D He brought a nice looking dear for decoration, a white, fat, (but sooo cute) Santa, and REAL mistletoe!! I've never had mistletoe before, so I am very intrigued by that :D And it surprised me that the berries are white! I have always thought they were supposed to be red. So right now our mistletoe is hanging over the door as it's supposed to :).

Then we decorated the Christmas tree, and it is so beautiful :) We have colored lights instead white/yellow ones. Must say I am very satisfied with the tree. The baubles are a little bit too small for the tree though, so i think next year I have to make bigger ones, in addition to the small ones:) So little by little I will find my perfect tree ;). But we did a pretty good job for this year :)

(looks a lot better in real life though :)

Then we went to try and make the gingerbread cookies. Well.. that didn't go quuuuuite as planned. I checked the dough this morning, and it was rock hard!! I showed it to my boyfriend a few hours ago, and he couldn't stop laughing :P And it was pretty funny of course. Mission failed!! COMPLETELY failed! We didn't really think it was salvageable, but I thought if we heated it up in the oven for a little, we might be able to roll out the dough. So we did that, and it looked like it would work. My boyfriend managed to roll out the dough, but the dough wasn't doing good at all. Breaking everywhere etc. But he tried, and made a few shapes, and put them in the oven. After 5 minutes, he called me in to the kitchen to show me something. I was not prepared for the sight, and i really laughed out loud. The dough had COMPLETELY melted, and the shapes were no longer shapes.. Just one big FLAT BLOB! So we completely failed on making gingerbread cookies.. For future reference, don't try to make a gingerbread dough gluten free! It does not really work..:P I would put up a picture of it, but we kind of threw it out already, haha. But it was a funny experience though. So tomorrow I am going to get an already made gingerbread dough, (yeah, totally playing it safe :P) and make gingerbread cookies, and try not to eat too many of them, and decorate them nicely. Me and my boyfriend are going to Germany to celebrate Christmas this year with his family, so I (we) wanted to bring them some treats as well:)

I hope you enjoyed my little Christmas story, and of course the pictures :) (if you click on the pictures, you can see them in bigger format:) )

Christmas Preparations

Today I had decided i was going to be very productive. Buy all the last Christmas presents, and buy the last of the Christmas decorations.. Unfortunately that's not exactly how it went. For several days now my throat has been really swollen, and I have had problems swallowing. I have had this problem once before, and then the only thing that helped was Antibiotics (which I hate). And since i really hate doctors, i delayed it until today. But it thought it would be quickly over with. Well.. The medical system here in Bergen is a little more complicated than the system we have in Florø. I am used to that when u need an "emergency" appointment you call in, and then u get an appointment as soon as possible, depending on how big of an emergency. If there is no line, you just come as soon as possible. Well, here in Bergen you can't get an appointment. You just have to show up, and wait for your turn, depending on the severity of your illness/damage. So when I went there, I had to stay 30 minutes in line to be put in the system, and then I had to wait 3 hours to get in. And you never know if you're next or not, so u can't leave. I REALLY wish they had a number system.. So much could be approved there.
Anyways when it was my turn (FINALLY) I figure out nothing is technically wrong with my throat. It seems to be that I have gotten an infection in my body somewhere (a virus), and my body is trying to fight it off. In this process my lymph node in the throat area has swelled up, and giving me difficulties to swallow, and pain. All in all, its supposed to pass on its own.. If not, I have to go back, and theeen take a blood-sample ( really don't wanna do that of course!) and then probably a antibiotic treatment... So i really hope it goes away soon! Really don't like doctors.. :P

So by the time i was done with the doctor, it was already 4pm. And i was supposed to meet 2 of my best friends to exchange Christmas-gifts, and finish the Christmas-shopping before 6pm. Not a lot of time. I managed to get one Christmas present for my friend, exchange the gifts, and then buy a little Christmas decor for the tree.
Now this is the fun part of the day :D I bought little glass bulbs/balls, and I varnished (lakkerte) the insides, let them dry for a little bit, and i pored in glitter. And they look so good!! I love them :D And it was soo easy. (but kind of messy:P). So I am totally going back tomorrow to buy more of them. Going to decorate the whole tree with them! :)
Later today or tomorrow I am going to start making my origami snowflakes, and I'll post pictures of them as well :)

So here are me and my boyfriend's creations: ENJOY :D

These are the four colors I would like my tree to have. My perfect little tree :)

I think they are so beautiful, and they are so colorful and powerful in real life :)

Here we tried to mix to different colors. I like the one to the right better, but I like the pure colored onces a lot better :)

What do you think?? :) Please leave a comment :D

Vertigo: Diagnostics

On my earlier post I tried to roughly explain my illness. Now I will try to go a little deeper into the different illness theories the doctors has had over the years.
First of all, I call my illness "Vertigo". Which all in all just explains my biggest symptom: dizziness.I have had Vertigo for 22 years, and the doctors have never figured out what really has been wrong with me.They have had several theories, but no outcome. When i get dizzy, or have a seizure, my blood-sugar drops really low. Sometimes dangerously low. So the doctors thought I had reverse diabetes, but sadly no. (well, not sadly, because i HATE needles.. which I will probably come back to..) Anyways, at some point my blood-sugar was so low they thought I would end up in a coma. Luckily I didn't. Later on they thought I had a rare type of migraine, but never really did anything about it. So they gave me up.

 When I turned 16 i was regarded as an adult, and they wanted to have a look at my "case" again. So I was in for a lot more tests. This time they thought I had a form of epilepsy, and did a epilepsy test. the outcome was: epilepsy A LIKE registration in the brain. Conclusion: not epilepsy, but they wanted to send me to an epilepsy facility, which we declined. They also thought i could have gotten Lyme disease from a tic, but the blood-results were negative. So yet again no outcome.

When I came back from my trip in February I was so ill we went to the doctors again. This time we went to a private clinic whom went back to the possibility of a special migraine called: Basilar Migraine. Basilar Migraine can give severe vertigo instead of or in addition to a severe headache. Personally this has always been my theory, but since I am in a chronic state of vertigo, I have started to rethink that theory. Can you have chronic migraine, especially this type of migraine? (Because I can get sick from just turning my head too fast). In that case, is it normal to get sick from nothing, small movements, etc?  Where does my blood-sugar add up in all this?

Anyways, I was finally sent to a neurologist (Yeah, they never gave me migraine medicine as a kid, or even a neurologist consult.) The neurologist tested me, and had basically diagnosed me before i stepped through the door. But he did a few tests and it all pointed towards migraine. To this day my official diagnosis is: undefinable migraine, even though he says it points to Basilar Migraine. First he gave me blood-thinners to see if they would help. (they often help prevent migraines, and usually has none or very little side effects). I tried those for 2 months, but nothing changed. So we went back to the neurologist, only this time I got a new neurologist, and he told me there was nothing more they could do for me. Well first of all, that's a load of crap! Which i wish i had told the doctor there and then.. Unfortunately i didn't.. I just took what he told me, and begged for a new appointment, (which I will have in January or February.. hopefully!) and left.. Which i really regret. I feel he could have tried to give me some sort of actual migraine medicine, and see if any of them would help. So to this day i still have the diagnose Undefinable Migraine, and I have yet not taken migraine medicine. And there are sooo many people out there that receive migraine medicine easy as that!! Kind of frustrating.. So the next appointment i will not keep my mouth shut..

In the midst of all this, we (me and my parents) decided to try some more untraditional methods. I went to a TCM specialist (Traditional Chinese Medicine), and he diagnosed me with a liver-weakness from birth.  So for several months now I have been on natural (homeopathic) medicines. I can't tell if they have helped or not, since my healing process all in all has been so slow, but I am sure they have not made it any worse. In addition a lot vitamins of course. A few days ago i started a really big treatment to help my digestive system.You see, around the same time as i started to get really sick, i all of the sudden became very sensitive to lactose, gluten, and finally onions. Only recently i have thought of this intolerance problem as "the root to all evil", aka what started this whole big mess. Since my intolerance has not really gotten any better, I have started to think that's what's keeping me so ill. So right now I am staying away from absolutely everything that contains lactose, gluten and of course all types of onions. The treatment i started a few days ago is to help me fix my stomach, and hopefully help me with my intolerance. And even more, help my vertigo become "livable" again.

Well, I have never had an allergy or an intolerance in my life, which I have always been thankful for. That means going from no allergy/intolerance to several ones is quite an (unpleasant) change.. My best friend (you know who you are ;)) has been going through the same thing as well. She has a lot more to deal with though when it comes to intolerances, and I think mine alone are bad enough! I really admire her for for taking this big change as well as she is. Because it is actually really really hard, especially when all of your favorite food contains those ingredients.. :P But we just have deal with it, and stay positive! Hopefully my intolerances and my friend's will go away one day, and the sooner the better. ;)

That would be an awesome Christmas present^^

Stylish!

So I went to get my hair cut today, and the outcome was really nice!! :) A little shorter than I had expected, but still looks really good. A haircut was long over due to say it like that. I hadn't cut my hair since July (ashamed:P) I went from looking like a cute 16 year old girl (yeah I really look that young..:P) to a "stylish young woman" to say it like that. Finally got some shape into my hair, and now I just hope i can keep it this way :D
Hairdressers make styling your hair look so easy, but it's really  not that easy.. not for me atleast.
So wish me good luck on that! :)

A nice (Christmas) surprise :)

A few days ago I got a nice little surprise. I ended up getting a little extra money this month:D
The whole thing started with my last job here in Norway. I worked part-time in a toystore for a few months to earn extra money for my around the world trip. Now.. I am not sure if every country has this system or not, but in Norway we get something called vacation money. Usually you get 11-12% of what you earned that whole year as vacation money the next year during summertime. Sometimes you get it after quitting/leaving your job, but then it gets taxed. So when i left my job to go on the world trip, I did not receive any vacation money. So a year and more passed, and I still did not receive my vacation money. Honestly I had forgotten all about it until a few months ago, so I am kind of glad i remembered!
So I went to ask my previous boss about this, and in his papers it said that I had received my vacation money well over a year ago. So I asked him to check with his accountant etc. to double check, because who knows. I might have overlooked something. Which i was starting to think, but I couldn't make sense of it. So my boss went from being 100% sure to 30% sure that i had received my money. And guess what?? they ended up agreeing that something had gone wrong in the process and I had not received my money after all. There was something wrong with the papers that just didn't make any sense. So I am really glad I went with my guts. So now I am getting a lot of extra money for Christmas which I am really pleased about. Who wouldn't be!? :D

So.. Now that I have all this extra money... what will I do with it? At first i wanted to save it, like I usually do, and maybe use a little bit for Christmas presents.. (I am really terrible at using money on myself, I just save, save, save. I like to be prepared for the worst). But this time I am actually going to treat myself to a well overdue appointment with the hairdresser. I have been saving for long hair for a long time now, but lately I have had big problems with my hair. It is getting so tangled up that I have to use a lot of force to get them out, and in the process i end up ripping out big chunks of hair.. not good at all. So now I am going back to a shorter hair due. I am excited and sad about it, because I really wanted to have long hair for once, but I guess I am not really cut out for that. So my new hair due will most likely be a shorter type of inverted bob. Something like this:

I know I will look good like this, so I am not afraid of such a big "change". (unless i get a really terrible hairdresser of course!). So lets hope everything goes as planned tomorrow! Going to miss my hair though.. but I will look really stylish! :D

Christmas Shopping

Today my boyfriend and I went Christmas shopping, which wasn't 100% successful... I am a little picky, I must say. This is the first time I am really decorating my own place, so I want to do it good. I don't want to buy Christmas decoration just to buy and then ending up throwing it away the next year because it broke or I realised I didn't like it after all. So our mission today was to buy a nice cloth for our round table, and some nice pillows. Well.. Norway is seriously expensive, so the only ones i liked were way to expensive. So we didn't end up buying a cloth or pillows.. :P

Buuuuuuut, we got some REALLY nice decorations for our future Christmas tree. They were also very expensive, but totally worth it. I got the inspiration from my Grandparents Christmas tree. I have always loved the way they decorate it. And the type of decoration is really hard to find, and very expensive.

So I got the cones you see in the top photo, and i am going to buy those bells in the second photo. I also bought little hearts with white/silver frost on the top. I think they are extremely beautiful, and I want to buy a lot more in this style. For Christmas tree I have always preferred colors in red, blue, green and yellow/gold, and mayb a little white or silver. So those are the colors I am going with so far. I am still missing a lot for the tree, but I will get them little by little. :) In addition we bought a hobby knife so I can make origami snowflakes, and I can't wait to start that! Origami is the traditional art of paperfolding. Commonly seen as Cranes/Swans or hats. Well mine are going to be snowflakes and maybe some hearts and stars.

In Norway (and probably everywhere else :P) it's very common to bake gingerbread cookies. So the other day i bought a heart shape and a star shape to make nice figurines. And they really out of the ordinary! So I can't wait to bake gingerbread cookies and decorate the place with those beautiful shapes.. (of course if my boyfriend don't eat them all ;)). Also we made a gingerbread house a few days ago, and we might go even more creative next time. I once made a gingerbread castle/fort with one of my best friends, and it was sooo much fun. And the whole thing looked really great. So maybe me and my boyfriend will go for something like that. Or maybe a little train. Well this will be the first Christmas since I was little that I am in the creative mood, so I hope it will stick :) I am finally starting to like Christmas again, which I will talk about later.

That's all for now :) Hope everyone is as excited about Christmas as I am!

Vertigo

So some of you might think: "What's vertigo?", and it's actually quite simple. Vertigo is the medical term for dizziness.  Ever since i was 2 (20 years ago) I have had Vertigo. Everyone experiences Vertigo at some point, but for me it has always been different. When i was younger i would have a vertigo seizure every other month on the spot. I would get so dizzy i couldn't walk, or even stand. I couldn't really open my eyes, and within 5 minutes i would begin to throw up. Every little change would make it worse, whether it would be movement, light or sound. People who has seen a seizure has been very frightened, and not really figured out what to do. Luckily I usually always had a close friend or a family member around to explain and help me. these seizures last for 3-4 days, where i will gradually get better day by day. In addition to that i have to take it easy for 1-2 weeks to make sure i don't relapse. So of course this has always been very annoying, even terrifying for me. But always manageable. 
When I hit puberty the "pattern" started to change. I would get more often sick, but I would have less seizures. So I always had to be a lot more careful when I did sports etc, because if i were in too much activity, and i was feeling bad, i would get a full blown seizure. Like I said, I was (and still am) terrified of having a seizure. I feel like I am losing myself, like falling into a dark hole. This feeling is painful but not in the common sense. Unfortunately i can't describe it better than that.. This feeling also comes in waves, sometimes weak, and growing stronger, or it just hits me like a tidal wave.. It all depends on movements, sound and light..
One and a half year ago i went on an around the world trip with my boyfriend. That's when everything started to change. I got more and more often sick.. I would only feel well for 1-2 weeks, and then i would be sick for 2-3 weeks at the time. Not a full blown seizure, but enough for me to stay in bed or not leave the house..
So the around the world trip was not as fun as I thought it would be, even though i experienced a lot and had a few good times. But it was a really difficult time for me. Luckily I had my boyfriend there with me, and even though this was the first time he experienced this, he took it very well, and is probably the person who understands it the best. Him and my dad are the ones that understand it the most, and usually known exactly what to do. 
When we returned from our trip, i was amazingly good for 2 weeks, and i thought everything was going back to normal. Then all of the sudden i got really sick again, and it never went away.. Since February 2010 i have had chronic vertigo. I had to watch every move I make, I couldn't be around loud noises too much, or in too much activity. I had to wear sunglasses to go outside, even if it wasn't sunny, and I were nauseous 70% of the day. In the beginning i couldn't even leave the house, and I was barely out of the couch/bed. I got really depressed, and didn't know what was in store for me anymore. I couldn't work, i couldn't study I couldn't even do simple housetasks, and most of all I couldn't do anything i considered fun anymore... I was really really down.
Luckily i got gradually and very slowly better. About 3 weeks ago, suddenly felt 100% again. it was the first really good day i had had since February. So that day i went on a cleaning spree, and it felt really good! And i HATE cleaning. But just being able to do something again felt so good. After that day it has been very up and down, but mostly up. Finally i feel like I it's going my way, and I will get a lot better. I don't really believe i will ever be cured, but I hope i will at least go back to the way it was.. After Christmas i will try and go to the gym and start exercise again. Hopefully i will be able to exercise without getting too sick, and that way get my body strength back, and more endurance towards my vertigo.


Well I tried to make this "readable" and i could have gone deeper, but for now this is going to have to due.. if there is any questions feel free to leave a comment :)

Introduction

Welcome to Eowyn's Little Universe. This is my first real blog, and I honestly have no clue how to begin!

I have pondered for a long time now about whether or not I should start writing a blog, and finally i decided to do so.

Lately my life has been revolving around my vertigo illness that i have had since i was 2 years old. I have learned to live with it, and it wasn't all that bad until one and a half year ago.. My life took a big turn, and it has been hard for me and the people close to me. So I will probably write a lot about that, and how its going.. Frankly I don't want to write a blog about all the bad stuff in my life, because I honestly have had a really good life! But we all have our bad times at some point.. So this blog is more for myself to be honest. I want to be able to get out some frustration when i have bad times, and remind myself about the good things in my life.

In the beginning I think it will be a lot of back and forth, but I will try and make it readable. I have so much to write about, and I  have no idea how to start. So I will just try my best.

There is a part of me that hopes that someone out there will read my blog and be able to help me get rid of  my illness. Someone who has gone through the same, or knows what it is... The odds are of course small, but I can always hope, of the little I have left..:)

So please, feel free to leave any kinds of comments, or tips :)