Not waiting for change

I don't normally talk about my health here, I have always intended it to be about creating, sharing ideas and enjoying art and textiles, but if I think back, the reason I started my blog a little over four years ago was to give me a focus while going through treatment for and coming to terms with a Molar pregnancy.

 It helped a lot, I did not write about it but rather everything that I enjoyed and it helped so I just kept going.
 The treatment (Methotrexate injections) affected my concentration and my eyes so badly that I was unable to spend the many enjoyable hours that I used to on my miniature embroidered pictures.

I forgot that I did this one, I enjoyed working in these colours.

I miss working on the miniature pictures and always hoped to go back to them, after the treatment I had my eyes tested and needed glasses, the optician told me it was just my age and nothing to do with the treatment but how can a person go from working in miniature close up, (6 inches from my eyes) to being unable to see one of her works in her own hands without a magnifying glass within 4 months...is that possible?...perhaps it is I don't know if there are any readers out there who can enlighten me I would love to hear from you, if you had the treatment or if you know about the side effects of the treatment.

 I'm waiting to go for tests on my arms. For some time now more than a couple of years I have had pain in my arms, elbows fingers and sometimes my wrists. Some days are more painful than others I wake up feeling as if someone has been jumping on top of my arms all night and that's when it gets me down, I'm not out of bed and already they hurt!

 In my head I want to create but at the moment my body is letting me down, and on those days,I find it frustrating, and difficult to accept. I have made several appts. at the doctors and been given various pills, sent for x-rays but the main problem has never been dealt with nor found...that is until now, I waited another year putting up with pain in the hope that it might go away.....silly of me really to think that. We had a new doctor join the practise, she sent me to the hospital consultant, both think it might be Ulnar nerve damage and to determine how bad it is, I need to go for tests, to see how bad the suspected nerve damage is.  Apparently my arms will be hooked up to a machine and currents sent to the nerves to assess the damage, I'm not looking forward to it but at the same time I don't want to waste any more time getting to the route of the problem but now, whats worse is the hospital has called to cancel and re-arrange the appointment 3 times since November! I'm now beginning to think that this is how they deal with the statistics of waiting for treatment and actually getting it on the NHS and wondering how long it will be till I get the tests, will this always be something I have to live with. I hope not.

This time I refuse to stop doing the things I want to do, I'm still clearing out my studio of excess clutter and various household unwanteds which always seem to find their way in there,  making changes, to make things easier with better use of wall space, drawers and cupboards.

I will take some pictures when its all done.

 Things will be a lot easier to find than in the past and I'm hoping to finish all those little projects that have been shuffling their way to the bottom of my basket drawers like this little piece that I worked on at the beginning of the summer.......

A piece of dyed calico from my college samples provided a lovely background for this hand embroidered flower stem which I did quite a few years ago on a plain white cotton handkerchief, I blended both together with tiny straight stitch lines in varigated thread then outlined in my favourite french knots. 

Looking at it from a different angle sitting in the work basket I decided this view was better

and perhaps a little heart shaped...now what to do with it......?