Tuesday 31 December 2013

I Wish You Enough


This is doing the rounds on Facebook at the moment and as I was writing my 2013 review on AH Addict, it came to mind. So just a short post here for my New Year's Eve post rather than repeat everything and my thanks for all your support and comments over the last year. They mean a lot to me <3 xxx

I wish you enough sun to keep your attitude bright.
I wish you enough rain to appreciate the sun more.
I wish you enough happiness to keep your spirit alive.
I wish you enough pain so that the smallest joys in life appear much bigger.
I wish you enough gain to satisfy your wanting.
I wish you enough loss to appreciate all that you possess.
I wish you enough hellos to get you through the final good-bye.


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Wednesday 18 December 2013

Baby Shaman On The Move!


If you visit my main blog about gold making in WoW, Auction House Addict, you'll have seen that I have been working on a little project for the month of December. I called it my 30 Minutes a Day project and it involves spending just 15 minutes a day leveling one alt and 15 minutes a day in the Auction House on another. As I promised myself a baby Shaman for Alt Appreciation Week and never got around to it at the time, I chose a Dwarf Shaman to be my leveling alt.

Anyway, it turned out that the best laid plans of mice and men didn't take into account how hard it is to make any progress with questing for just 15 minutes a day so I changed it up a bit & decided to make it more flexible - basically a maximum of 2 hours leveling per week. I haven't reported on my leveling progress over on the other blog so I thought I'd put it here - it makes sense as my gold making readers probably aren't that interested in my leveling adventures after all!

So with a slow start and no heirlooms, no friends and no back up from other alts, my baby Shammy, Lyssara was born in Coldridge Valley. The first few days were very slow - 15 minutes really isn't very long at all to be honest and it quickly started getting boring before I even left the Valley to head to Kharanos.

Once the latest patch update hit and we could send heirlooms to other servers, I decided to see what I had available on my main server and send them over. It turns out, I didn't have any intellect leather/mail gear - I have the agility leather from leveling my Rogue and the agility leather/mail from leveling my Hunter. Luckily though, my main is in a level 25 guild with access to the guild heirlooms so I bought those and sent them over.

I looked up Icy Veins and various other sites to see what an Enhancement Shaman needed and saw that the cloth heirlooms weren't too bad for low levels so I nipped back to my main server and sent some cloth heirlooms over too, as well as the staff.


What a difference heirlooms make! I guess I've used heirlooms since my second alt four years ago so it was a rude awakening indeed. So relieved to have them available cross server now too. A lot has changed since I last leveled through Dun Morogh too - Steelgrill's Depot was always the place to find a Bronze Tube to sell for a bit of gold but now it has a fancy Ultrasafe Personnel Launcher which comes fully equipped with a VLD Parachute (Very Late Deployment). I was lucky enough to not get splatted and made it over to the next area for questing but the best bit is that I got the Going Down achievement & some great screenshots too!

I hit level 13 last night and arrived in Loch Modan ready to start my next zone but not before noticing these guys. I'm not sure I ever noticed them before but it's been so long, I may have just forgotten them! Blogger is messing with the picture colors but the night sky was super dark & the stars and clouds really stood out. I murdered my way through a whole valley of troggs before finally getting enough teeth to complete the quest and headed back to Captain Rugelfuss.

I'm enjoying her so far but then I enjoyed my Elemental Shaman who got to 50-something before being unceremoniously deleted. I can't even remember why I deleted her now but I hope I'm not tempted to delete this one after this project is over!

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Saturday 7 December 2013

My Life Right Now


If you follow me on Twitter or read my other blog AH Addict, you may have seen me mention that I'm going into hospital next week. I've had a few messages asking if I'm ok and wishing me well so I thought I'd just let y'all know what's happening.

If you don't like medical or personal stuff, you may want to skip the rest of this post - it kinda got away from me! Just know that I'm ok and not gonna stop blogging anytime soon!

If you're a relatively new reader/follower, you may not know that I had Breast Cancer last year. I was incredibly lucky not to need chemotherapy or radiation treatment but due to the possible aggressiveness of the tumour type, I did have to have a full mastectomy. That all went very smoothly and I like to think I coped well with losing a breast. My gold blogging friends were really supportive and I'm sure I'd have been more of a mess without them cheering me on.

Due to the type of tumour, I wasn't offered an immediate reconstruction, just in case they needed to go back in & fix something else. Also chemotherapy & radiation therapy can change the skin texture and affect reconstructions adversely so I was offered delayed reconstruction instead. If you watch the news, you may have seen it reported that Angelina Jolie had a double mastectomy - well yes, she did but she had immediate reconstruction too. That meant only one operation to remove the breast tissue and replace it with implants - they saved her skin & probably nipples too so she went through a lot but all in one go.

Delayed reconstruction is a whole different ball game. For starters, I have no 'spare' skin under which to put an implant so one option is to have a tiny inflatable implant inserted which is then slowly expanded over time to stretch the skin I do have. Once there is enough skin, then a normal size implant is put in place and hopefully, that would be the end of the story.

The other option is much more involved - taking a chunk of your own flesh (usually belly fat or lower back, just above bum cheeks) and using microsurgery, attach it and all the related blood vessels to your chest. If everything goes well, you can have a nipple tattooed in later. But this option is a 10 hour surgery followed by a week in an Intensive Nursing ward. Immobilised to prevent the tiny blood vessel stitches from tearing, catheterised because you can't get up for 3 days at least and special leg things to keep the blood moving and prevent blood clots!

My local Breast Care Unit are fantastic. They have a regular 'show & tell' type evening for ladies in my situation. It's all very impersonal to be told how reconstruction works but to see other ladies who have had all the various procedures and to hear their stories makes it so much more real. That was probably the most upsetting evening of the whole experience. The ladies were great but I reacted badly to the scars and as I'd already half decided to refuse reconstruction, that evening just hardened my resolve.

Not only did I refuse reconstruction, I decided I didn't want to spend the rest of my life worrying about my falsie showing through my blouses or even worse, falling out of my bra. I like to scuba dive and swim but I didn't want a falsie in a swimsuit! I started going to the gym too and I want to run. Again, can you imagine my falsie falling out onto the treadmill whilst I'm running there? It would be hysterically funny but I don't want that either!

So I opted for a second mastectomy. I've had to fight to get them to remove healthy tissue though. Apparently it's not a normal reaction so I've had some counselling and numerous Doctors asking me for my reasons and am I sure, over and over again. I finally convinced them that this is what I want so next week, I'm having a second mastectomy. It's a relatively simple 2 hour procedure and I may even be home the same day although it's more likely to be an overnight stay if I need a drain put in.

If it goes as well as last time, you probably won't even miss me! Once I was out of the recovery room and back on the ward, I paid for internet time and was back online within about 7 hours of arriving at the hospital! I came home the following day at lunchtime and was back in WoW within 2 or 3 hours of getting back!

I'm sorry if this is too much information but I have some wonderful online friends who seem to be worried about me and this is my way of letting everyone know I'm ok, really, I am. I promise :)


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