Jigsaw 14 - Christmas Baking

 We have just passed the halfway mark of 2025 a couple of weeks ago and I am already on jigsaw 14. At this rate I will definitely crush my number of completions compared to 2024. I did 19 last year.

My jigsaws sit on a card table (wrote about it last January here) and since being back in the family house it is still located in the main family area. No one else in the house seems interested in doing the jigsaws (they did use to help when we would have them on the go at the caravan but not at home?) and so, not that I would mind if they helped, they are easy to access and complete whilst watching tv in the evenings.

So, I don't have to sit in the dining room or another room to complete them and I am sure this assists with getting them completed quicker as you can do a few pieces, or 10, most evenings. Sometimes I set myself the challenge of trying to get at least 10-20 pieces picked from the box and they have to be set on the table/connected in the right place. This definitely helps with getting it moving and finished.

Another Christmas one, as mentioned before, several of them to complete and seeing as it is freezing cold and ark like UK Christmas here in NZ at present, then it feels like it should almost be Christmas time.

Yes, even after 27 years of being in NZ and having Christmas in the sunshine, I still miss the cold and dark and bright lights that my head associates with Christmas. Christmas definitely creeps up on me every year here as there are no dark nights going home after work, seeing all the lights and window displays lit up. There are no carols playing in the shopping centers with the freezing air outside reminding you that it might just snow before or on Christmas.

It is warm and sunny; day light savings has well and truly kicked in, the evenings are light and bright and if you do want to go and see Christmas lights anywhere, well, you have to wait until 9-10pm before it is dark enough!

We always have a Christmas tree with lights, and the lights come on in the house at about 6pm but it is at least 8pm before they start to emulate that gorgeous glow of holiday spirit. My snowman ornaments definitely look out of place in NZ lol, any talk of snow is unheard of at that time of year.

One day, I will go back to England for a holiday to enjoy the lights and darkness of December as we lead into Christmas. Just one small problem.....I do love the heat of summer and not sure I could give it up just to see Christmas lights!

On to the jigsaw that I have just finished. I wish I had more time in December, as the year comes to a stressful close to get baking done to share with friends and work colleagues but alas, it is always so busy that I never get anything completed. Doesn't stop me thinking of what I could make, if I had the day to spend in the kitchen.

All the Time I Can Get

 When your oldest child lives 600 kms away, you don't get to see them much. Therefore, when they do come up, you spend every second with them.

In this case, he was driving his own car back down (he flew up to get said car), about an 8-hour drive and I wanted to make sure he had a good breakfast, so a 7.30am cafe run was ordered and we had a last meal together 💗

We Have a Winner

 Thanks to the power of modern technology, I knew my results of the HIDA scan and what they meant before I saw the surgeon again.

Here in New Zealand, we have medical apps that allow us to link into our GP and see all medications we are taking, all test results, all letters of referral and all appointment notes. We can also message the surgery on the app and book appointments with our named doctor (although good luck with that one since covid, takes about 10 days for an appointment) and request repeat prescriptions without having to go to the surgery.

So of course, when I got the message that a new result had been uploaded then I took a quick look and bingo, found the issue:

I have an inactive gallbladder.

Your gallbladder is an organ that sits underneath your liver and assists the liver with the excretion of bile into the digestive system when you eat. The bile helps to break down fat. You can live without it; your liver and cystic duct just have to learn to divert the bile into the digestive system a slightly different route. Most people have a gallbladder that fills with bile when you eat and then excretes it out as required, usually with an ejection fraction of about 50%.

Mine is at 16%, so a little slow and useless really

Therefore, when I eat, bile is accumulating in the gallbladder as normal and then it is not emptying properly, this leads to a full gallbladder that can then go into spasm or cramp. Thus, the colicky pain I was getting as it was full of bile and not able to empty it all out.

The solution (according to Dr Google, true nurse here!) is a Cholecystectomy, which in simple terms = let's take that gallbladder out.

Guess my appointment with the surgeon in the next few weeks will be to confirm what I have already established, unless the expert has a different solution (I do trust his knowledge) and that will be some future surgery.

HIDA Scan

 Today I got my nuclear medical scan of my gallbladder.

It involved a 90-minute scan, laid on my back the whole time, with no moving (although I could hold my kindle and read) and at the 45-minute mark, I had to eat a Mars bar and drink a glass of milk, all while lying flat on the bed with a scanning machine above my abdomen.

Firstly, I am not a fan of milk. I will have it with breakfast cereal, but I am not that person that will grab a glass of milk with dinner or because I am thirsty. My baby son, well that is a different story. he will gulp it down out of the bottle stood in front of the open fridge!

Secondly, a whole Mars bar! We are not talking about a mini snack size either, we are talking the whole 50g bar, at 9.30am.

I like chocolate but am not a person who will eat a chocolate bar because I find the feeling of just chocolate in my mouth a horrible feeling and texture. So don't ever buy me a bar of chocolate or Easter egg as it will last forever and bug those around me because it is sitting there and torturing them!

I do however, like Twix and things that are a little bit of chocolate, but nowadays, I seem to manage a snack size bar and don't need a large one, plus I would rather have a jelly candy instead.

So, eating this bar was going to be a struggle. But apparently that was the point, to feed my gallbladder a whole heap of fat all in one go (full fat milk as well) and see how it coped. It was amusing having this nice gentleman stand beside me feeding me a bite of chocolate bar and then offering me the straw to drink milk through.

A HIDA scan is apparently a hepatobiliary iminodiacetic acid scan, where a radioactive tracer is injected and then you overload the digestive system with fat, and it evaluates the function of the liver, gallbladder and bile ducts by tracking the flow of bile.

Let's see what these results show, if anything, but not holding out much hope!

Doughnuts

 Some days, to get through Friday you need something special.

Today, my car had a mind of its own and drove to the best little doughnut shop in town, at 7am, and I took a large box of treats to share at work.

Whilst my appetite is still not great, I did manage at least half of a doughnut and everyone else appreciated breakfast on this cold winter Friday

Procedure Day

 And just like that, 5 days passed by without incident and here we are.

Well, I have just gone through 24 hours of bowel prep and no eating, well clear liquid only so feeling a little drained but let's get this show moving.

And the immediate results when I came round......?

You guessed it, absolutely nothing!

Although he did mention one more test to me and at this point, I am open to anything, so a nuclear medical scan of my gallbladder is now planned, despite the ultrasound showing no gallstones or enlargement of the gallbladder.

Fingers crossed.

Jigsaw 13 - Gnomes

 I thought this one was cute when I saw it and thought why not, a very different style to my usual ones. It was easy to sort each gnome into its own colour so actually was not difficult to complete. As it was a Cobble Hill design then it did have some fun shaped pieces.