Kelly Azuma

Sorry for keeping you all in suspense. I haven’t been near the computer at all this weekend as it makes me feel worse when I am near it.

Friday morning when I was in the shower I had a sudden epiphany that my problem could be to do with my thyroid and I checked online and the symptoms seemed to match. Anyway, I went off to the chinese medical centre and spoke to the doctor there and when I described all my symptoms he said that is a thyroid problem.

Can you believe that my doctor and the hospital doctor didn’t even pick up on this? All this time I have been pointing to the exact place where my thyroid is and no-one even guessed. (I think they all need to be shot)

Anyway, the energy in my body is meant to run from head to toe but in my case it’s running from toe to head which is why the gastric juice is flowing back up to my throat (so he says) and so I had acupuncture for my thyroid. 2 of the acupuncture needles were actually stuck in each side of my neck, and 2 on either side of my cheek bones, 1 between my eyebrows (for sleep), 1 each in the inside of my elbow and wrist, 1 each in between my thumb and forefinger, 1 each in my knees, 1 each in my inner calf, 1 each in my ankle and 1 each in between my big toe and next toe. This is the meridian for thyroid and is how the energy runs, so by sticking the needles in those points it’s getting the energy back to normal.

By the end of the 25 minutes of laying there I was sooo sleepy. I couldn’t stop yawning! It was great to be able to get a good night’s sleep after nights of tossing and turning!

The doctor said my not having a period for 78 days was due to the thyroid problem as it has to do with the regulation of hormones so I got given herbal pills for the thyroid and for my menstrual cycle. The pills for menstrual are small round balls and I have to take 50 of them twice per day! haha…it’s not so much fun counting them out though.

Anyway, I felt a bit better after the acupuncture and on saturday after lunch I noticed a difference, I didn’t have the intensity of burning that I usually do in my throat, so it seems to be working.

At the moment I’m battling extreme exhaustion and fatigue, I am so tired and just want to sleep, sleep, sleep. I’m sure it’s another sign of the thyroid having problems, I just hope I will be able to right it somewhat through this chinese medicine.

I am having acupuncture again at 11:30 am today so I hope that gets more of the energy moving about.

This weekend was nice and quiet. I shouted Yasu lunch as a kind of pre-birthday event on saturday and saturday afternoon we wandered around a new shopping precinct, had a look at some homewares stores, found this really unique porch light which we bought and is getting sent over from Melbourne.

Then on Sunday it was Yasu’s birthday (a big 35!) and he was happy to receive some different varieties of cup noodle (cheese curry, meat king, and spicy grilled chicken) which he hadn’t had before, and some of his favourite Japanese snacks like Takenoko no Sato and Chocoball and he also got some no alcohol beer – Kirin and Bar Bi Can. We tried the beer last night, the Kirin was nice, but the Bar Bi Can was so watery we ended up pouring the rest of the can out.

For dinner I made roast pork with really crunchy pork crackling (I finally found the way to make it good after watching someone do it on tv) and roast veggies, and for dessert we had Vienetta which Yasu chose and it was yum! He hadn’t had it before and I hadn’t had it for years…

Anyway so it was a good weekend and thanks to the acupuncture I didn’t have to dwell too much on the way I was feeling. Even though I felt sick, it wasn’t right there in my face annoying me, I was able to do other things.

Still plodding along here. Been praying that it’s HP. I looked up the bug online and saw that most of the symptoms including chest pain are symptoms of HP, so god, I hope that it’s right.

Other than that, it’s Yasu’s birthday this Sunday, 22nd and I haven’t done anything! I feel so bad, because my health problems have totally overshadowed his birthday.

I always try to make a big deal out of it for him but I have been so sick lately it’s just been impossible not to focus on myself.

I did manage to get a friend to send over a couple of nice treats from Japan (some new Cup Noodle flavours from the Nissin website, and a few choccy treats) but apart from that I haven’t got a solid birthday present for him.

I had saved up enough money to go stay at a hotel for his birthday if he wanted to, but he’s still deciding what he wants to do, go out for a meal or go stay somewhere. Also, he did say previously that he wanted me to cook a roast pork with crackling and have an icecream cake for dessert which I still intend to do, even if I may not be able to eat any of it.

But as for a present…he says he’s got everything he wants and I’ve got no idea what to buy to surprise him. I had planned to get him something from hiroshima carp but I left it too late and when I went back to the website the things I wanted to get were sold out. :(

It’s not for lack of thought, just that he has everything.

So yeah, kind of just plodding along still feeling uncomfortable but trying not to let it show too much as I don’t want Yasu to feel bad so close to his birthday.

I am down to a diet of fruit cups and milky tea. If I eat anything else I get intense pain. Last night I made lasagna for dinner and made the mistake of having a spoonful and I was up all night, couldn’t sleep, in pain, and had to watch Seinfeld repeats on tv, torture in itself. After that though was an interesting British show called “how to have sex after marriage”, it deals with married couples who have lost the spark, gets them to rate each other on emotions, sex life, and appearance, then gives them training on how to please each other and then they go back and have a date and rate themselves again. It is pretty interesting but they do have adult themes, so that’s why it’s on at about 1am. haha

Anyway, hope I can get to sleep tonight and looking forward to finding out the test results tomorrow, please everyone cross your fingers and toes that it’s HP!!!

Firstly I want to start off by thanking everyone who left birthday wishes and congratulations, I was really happy to read all your comments and they are all appreciated, thank you! :)

Yasu worked Tuesday morning and came home about 1pm. I had already packed all our stuff into bags so we loaded it into the car and arrived at the resort just after 2pm after a couple of pit-stops on the way to get some drinks and snacks.

The resort was much more than I imagined, I thought I had stepped into Asia – it was designed like a beautiful rainforest with a boardwalk, water features, statues and ponds going in a zig-zag fashion around the hotel with koi swimming. It was so beautiful and relaxing.

Our door opened up onto this view

Found this cutie hiding in the greenery

Another cutie trying to hide from my camera

This struck me as being NZ'esque but not sure if it is.

The entrance to the resort

The entrance at night

Balcony

The pool looked gorgeous and was virtually deserted but we spent most of our time hopping in and out of the spa in our room and totally forgot about the pool! All those hours clocked up in the garden on the weekend called more for hot spa’s than cool water I’m afraid. :)

I had this for dinner on one of the nights - Chicken, Leek, and Lemon Risotto

We had lots of nice breakfasts, lunches and dinners. I had the above meal for dinner on my birthday at a restaurant overlooking the beach. Yasu really wanted to have this one too but he also wanted to try their carbonara, so I ordered both and we had half each. The carbonara was also really nice.

Tortellini Carbonara

One of the nights we also went to another hotel on the beach for their buffet of fine foods, it was delish, and the dessert bar was to die for. I forgot the camera on that night but I had pecan pie, puchi lemon meringues, puchi apple and custard pies, creme brulee that tasted like the custard in shuu creams and was heaven, um.. chocolate mousse, strawberry shortcake, brownies, cheesecake and fruit salad…oh and a cheese platter…my god. I really ate to my hearts content, diet out the window temporarily…but who could resist such a dessert bar! This restaurant is literally overlooking the beach and we could see the waves crashing on the shore, it was brilliant.

On the actual day of my birthday we went to Ikea and found a couple of things we want to get – we had no plans to buy anything but found some great furniture inside that we just fell in love with. We went to the foodhall for lunch and we had swedish meatballs – oh yum, I just love them so much!! I had a swedish almond cake for dessert, and a Lingonberry Soda, and Yasu had a Princess cake.

After we finished lunch we went to the Swedish Food Market and I bought a few packets of the sauce that go on the meatballs, some apple cider and some Ikea chocolate bars. There was so much to choose from in there, so many delicious goodies but we had to rush as we were going to see a movie.

We got there just in time to see Alice in Wonderland in 3D. It was my first time ever to see a movie in 3D and it was amazing! We got given glasses to wear, not the flimsy paper ones with one red and one green eye – these are real glasses that just look like sunglasses. When you put them on the images look like they are in the space between you and the screen, not flat on the screen like on non-3D. I never got why everyone went on about 3D, but now I do! It’s so amazing! Alice was great, Yasu and I were totally swept up in the movie and the graphics were amazing. Even at the end of the film when everyone got up to leave, we stayed watching as the frame around the screen was 3D and was growing flowers and vines which were blooming in 3D. It was like I could reach out and touch them.

After that we went back to the resort and jumped in the spa again then sat on the balcony and people watched for a while. I realised that you see alot of interesting things when you have a balcony, things you otherwise might have missed. We looked down at the beach, the surfers, and people walking along.

We did a lot of talking and catching up, alot of relaxing in the spa and it was heaven, just what the doctor ordered.

We also went to the aquarium but I will write about that in a separate post as I have a million and one pictures to upload. All good things must come to an end, and so did our holiday, though neither of us really wanted to go home, and Yasu was umming and ahhing whether he could extend the stay for a couple more days but his boss really needed him to come back because he is the supervisor of a big project happening at the moment. I was hoping that there would be an outbreak of bird or swine flu that would make us have to be quarantined inside the resort for another week but no such luck!

We didn’t go home right away, we packed everything in the car and did some touristy things on the way home, and it was really hard to get back to reality today because the last 4 days have been SO perfect and the resort was just so perfect in every way. We are really thinking about when we can go back again..

Quick catchup on what’s been happening in my life. :) Read more

I’ve just finished booking our getaway for our 7th wedding anniversary in April. Read more