Health Revisited - Did the hoard do lasting damage?

Hello all

I've been busy with the book which has just been sealed (so to speak) and is winging its way through the stratosphere to America (I think) where ONE copy will be printed and will then wing its way back to me by snail mail.  I should have it in a week or so.

Today I finally had my meeting at the hospital to go and view my medical records.  (This was supposed to be as part of the book but it took too long). I had to fill in all sorts of forms to get there but I wanted to know exactly how many times I was hospitalised due to the junk in that house. I remember many times I spent in hospital gasping for breath and more times I spent wrapped from head to foot in bandages with some skin infection or other.  All dust related - I know this now but did not realise it then.

My mother was given advice on how to keep dust levels down!  A bit like keeping fur levels down in a dog grooming parlour - SIMPLY NEVER GOING TO HAPPEN!

A note from when I was seven from my GP "I have seen this little asthmatic girl many times with recurring breathing difficulties".  That was exactly it - I WAS a little asthmatic girl.  I had no character or anything - the asthma had taken over and I was a breathing disorder.

23 July 1988 - Taken in to hospital by blue light ambulance and transferred to Intensive Care Unit 3 hours later and put on a ventilator - those three hours were the longest of my life.  Three days after that I came out of the medically induced coma which they put me in to give me a chance to recover.  I had been on the ventilator (life support machine) for three days after having a respiratory arrest.  My closest shave with my maker I have ever had thankfully.

Still he did nothing about the junk.  Every time I was discharged back to that house.

TWENTY SEVEN - hospital admissions - nine emergency admissions by ambulance. - A very sobering thought - nobody linked my house to the asthma and as I thought it was normal I never thought to tell them.

So - the book - Diary of a Hoarder's Daughter.
127 pages in word translates to 260 pages of an 8x5" paperback. 79,000 words.

I have spent almost every day since last August writing it and then I had my marvelous author aunty to edit it and then I changed my mind on a few bits and added and removed and amended other bits.  Then I read through it.

 I was then told to put it in a virtual drawer and NOT TO TOUCH it for two weeks.  So I did other things - I had the cover done - see below.  Then after one week and five days (couldn't wait any more) I got it out and proof read it again.  Then I decided it was going on Amazon.

Here we have the worst bit. - It took me six days to do this - I did it in WORD, but to upload it needs to be PDF.  After two days i managed to get it to PDF but I was not able to amend PDF so for every chapter (there are forty) I had to amend the original and GUESS where the page breaks were to go because the PDF file looked nothing like the Word file or the online book.  So for Each and every one of the 40 chapters I had to amend word, save as PDF, upload to site until it was correct.

This took six days.  if I wasn't such a techno wally I could have done it but me being pig stubborn and wanting it done NOW resulted in me sitting on the sofa at 4am virtually screaming obscenities at my laptop.

So the cover was done - this is not the final cover as my friend is doing that for me but I guess she is busy and I do not like to nag so for now I have had this one done - comments welcome.  It is colourful, unlike the other hoarder books on the market which are somewhat grim.

As you know my style is not sober and depressing and I like a bit of humour so this is it for now.  Note the small black dog, my little Oggy (car), me looking 'stressed' (that bit got lost in the translation). Note the windows in the house - well it will do for the time being.

for previews you can see it on
http://authonomy.com/books/57980/diary-of-a-hoarder-s-daughter/

thanks for reading :)