Where does the time go?

Where on erth does the time go - can't believe I haven't updated this Blog site for sucha long time. Still spending lots of time on Loving Hands website and keeping the forum running smoothly there - we now have over 500 members at Loving Hands and have been making hundreds of items for the variou scharities we support :0)

We have been making things for :- Blythswood Care, Linda McDonald Foundation, Teddies for Tragedy, BISS, Feed the Children, Save the Children, Trauma Toys for UK ambulance and fire crews, Blankets for Animal Shelters, Teddies for the Kenyan Orphans Project and Shelterboxm blankets for a Zambian Aids Hospice, Squares for the Soweto Comfort Club Knit a Square project, Baby clothing (both prem and newborn sizes, blankets and burila items for UK maternities and have recently added Algerian Action to our list of charities we support. We do get about a bit and are kept ever so busy.

Currently our stitchers are making bags to save baby Puffins :0) It makes us smile to think we are helping them too :0)

Hopefully there will be a contigent from Loving Hands at the Scottish Knitting Only show at Perth Racecourse on Saturday 9th May from 10am to 4pm - some of us were at the first one last year and it was a fabulous day - hopefully as long as I am not in surgery or recovering I will be there again!

My accident happened last July - I slipped in the bath, cut my cheek and had to go get it stitched. 30 stitches later I was home and packing for our holidays. The next day it was getting swollen so doc said to put ice on it which I did. Later the saem day it was swelling even more so we went back to A&E and were given antibiotics and sent home again. By lunchtime the next day my head looked like an elephants and I was struggling to breathe because of the swelling - back to hospital - this time in an ambulance. The upshot of it was I had contracted necrotising faciitis (the flesh eating bug) in the wound on my face. Over two days and three surgeries they removed my forehead, left side of my face and temple, the whole of my left eye and my left cheekbone. I was in a coma for three weeks during which time I suffered from terrible drug induced nightmares - don't understand how anyone could deliberately put themselves through that for fun -and finally woke up in August :0)

Since then they have rotated part of my scalp to make a new forehead for me and covered my face with part of the skin from my leg. I am goin in soon to get a pedicle flap done (they will raise part of my chest with skin and muscle, lay it back and leave it for about 6 weeks to develop it's own blood supply and then they will re-open my cheek and attach the flap to my face leaving me attached to my chest for a further 6 weeks to make sure it takes properly. The final step will be to seperate the chest and face. Hopefully this will give me a much more natural looking cheek.

Later on they will give me a prosthetic to wear with an artificial eye, eyelid and eyebrow and this will cover the fact that my cheekbone is missing and the gap at my temple.

Finally they will put a balloon under my scalp to stretch the skin so they can eventually give me a new hairline and I can stop wearing wigs.

It is going to be a long slow process but worth it in the end. I have never been down or felt sorry for myself - far too busy with my family and loving hands - I count my blessings every day as I was ever so lucky to survive the bug with it being so close to my brain - I can still do almost everything I could do before, work, drive, run my group, go shopping etc. :0)

Right - back to work now - we will be having our World Wide Knit in Public Day knitpic in the park this year in Dunfermline. Just waiting to get the date etc so we can get it properly organised. Hoping to get lots of our members together that day - praying for good weather :0)