“I once had no fears
None at all
And then when
I had some

To my surprise
I grew to like both
Scared or brave
Without them”

When you’ve watched almost every film of the Disney Renaissance era, plus several cartoons from your childhood, and listened to all their soundtracks (repeatedly) via YouTube all within a couple of days of being stuck in bed then you’re probably ready to feel a little better. And when YouTube starts recommending Bryan Adams and Phil Collins tracks you really need to try and get back to work. That’s the plan for tomorrow anyway after being held up in bed since the weekend with a bad stomach.

I was hoping that switching medication a few weeks back would be the end to any issues involving my digestive system, but looks like I’ve not been that lucky. For five years I’ve blamed bloating, rushing to the toilet too often and occasional cramps on my medication, but now I’m beginning to wonder if they were an innocent party.

Until I started to feel unwell last Thursday I was feeling much better on the new combination, considerably less bloated, instead of having a side profile like a pregnant woman my abdomen was flat (ish) and I was a lot less gassy during the night!

I won’t go into detail about how I’ve felt over the past five days but I managed to get seen by my GP this morning, she is confident I have just picked up a stomach bug, I am less than relaxed about this diagnosis, but we’ll see how I feel later this week. I’ve insisted they do further tests, especially as coeliac disease runs in my family and the more I think about the symptoms I’ve been living with for months and the reasons for wanting to change medication, the more I’m considering that those feelings and pains could have been a result of my own body, an intolerance to certain foods or an issue like IBS.

For now it’s a waiting game: I’ll start to feel better soon enough if it’s a simple stomach bug, or wait for test results if they’re to show up anything conclusive. It’s only another couple of weeks or so until I am back at my HIV clinic to see how well the revised drugs are working, fingers remain crossed for another good set of results.