Pickled Bean

Well today finds me in a bit of a pickle, but overall happy. When I had my first offer for Southampton, they asked that I start my Hep B vaccination straight away. I never finished the course because I didn’t get in. One of the conditions of my Peninsula place is having a clear Occupational Health test, which involves having a clear Hep B surface antigen test. After the fun of having my blood taken (see last post), I rang up the next day to double check the right test had been asked for, which it had. When I went to collect the results on Friday, the receptionist happily told me I was Hep B immune. Now, this shouldn’t be possible to tell from an antigen test. Here comes the science: Antigens are little bits of the pathogen cut up and displayed on the outside of cells, ready for the antibodies to come along and try and recognise, which they would be able to do if you’ve seen something before. If they do, they replicate and mount the appropriate specialised response which helps you beat it quickly and efficiently, if not, you have to tough the buggy out with your normal non-specialised, less effective approach. So in short, an antigen test would say whether or not I had the thing, an antibody test would say I had seen it before or was immune to it. So you can see I was a little perplexed. The test that had been asked for was indeed an antigen test, but the lab had decided an antibody test would be more appropriate. Grr. Now logic says if I’m immune to it, I can’t have it, so I bundled all my paperwork together and sent it all off to PCMD. I called them this morning to check that given the results, the antibody test would be fine, but they were adamant they wanted an antigen test. *Sigh* I called my Dr’s and explained, and then got a very shouty call back from my Dr about time wasting and money wasting, and he doesn’t seem to want to listen to me saying that I know this and I’m sorry and I’ve told them but they won’t budge. Eeep! And my Dr’s always been so nice to me 0_0 He wanted PCMD’s number to yell at them himself, so I’m waiting for the fallout from that. Oh dear… How can I be in PCMD’s bad books when I haven’t even started yet :(

Other than that, it was a good weekend. I finished the jumper, and apart from being a little tight across the, er, chest area (making me look massive, lol) it’s lovely. I’m hoping it’ll be better with a shirt under it, squishing me in, and not the horizontally stripy thing I was trying it on over. I had a club day at the rowing club learning about safety and welfare and proper warm ups and I super-duperly passed a hamstring flexibility test :) Flexible bean.

I also went sale shopping and am very nearly all sorted for uni now. PCMD has two balls a year – a summer and winter. I bought a load of dresses off ebay before I went to Southampton, but then I lost a load of weight whilst away, so my old size 12 wardrobe doesn’t fit me now I’m a size 8. I’ve been slowly replacing things over time as required – like jeans and jumpers and work stuff, and now I also have a summer coat, and some dresses, including a beautiful floor length dress perfect for mr’s commissioning dinner. I had to get a cardi as well, because the army has some silly rule about dresses not being allowed to show the ankles or the shoulders (because the sight of bare ankles and shoulders drive men wild don’t ya know?!), and it’s nearly impossible to find one that does both and doesn’t make me look about 50. I’m so excited, I can’t wait for an excuse to wear them now, they’re so pretty! I wouldn’t say I’m terribly girly, I normally can’t stand giggling silly-ily dressed girls (what’s wrong with jumpers and coats?), but I do like a nice swishy dress :) Don’t worry, you’ll still never catch me in pink or anything flowery. All that’s left to get now is another pair of work trousers, chocolate brown ones I think, some stationary bits and a couple more textbooks. And then I’ll be an all sorted bean, exciting stuffs!
Mr’s birthday present hasn’t arrived yet, and it’s his birthday this week, eep! I’m seeing him at the weekend, so hopefully it’ll arrive before then, and I’ll only be a couple of days late with it. Aww, and in other rubbish bean news, I lost my seat in the boat because I had to miss that one outing because of the silly nurse. Boo! I’ve been demoted from stroke to 2. Altogether now: thiiiiiiiiings, can only get betterrrrrr, can only get…… :D Have a good week guys.