7th October 2014

Haven't wrote here for a while as a lot has been going on. After the last entry here I was poisoned, accidentally I hasten to add and by a plant. I had grown this plant from some seeds I got from Ebay, I read the instructions and carefully raised and then planted them outside, they soon flowered and as one of the flowers died I thought I would cut off the dead one and dispose of it, big mistake, little did I know that this flower, the stem and leaves were poison. Within two days I was flat out on my bed, I was covered in a rash, one minute sweating buckets, the next minute freezing cold. I did visit the doctor when the rash first appeared and was given some antihistamines, I was supposed to take one or two a day, I was taking six a day and they didn't help much and I was covering the rash in calamine lotion, which stopped the itching for about half hour, this all lasted about a week. Then there was the pain in the joints in my hands, fingers, wrists and shoulders, also the swelling of the hands and fingers along with the blisters on the fingers. As I squeezed to close my fingers into a fist, the pain was really bad and the blisters turned into bruises as the blood leaked out under the skin. I still have some pain in the joints and where the blisters were the skin is peeling off now.

When I recovered enough to get up I thought I would do some research and that is when I found out about these plants. They are native to India, but have spread into Europe. When the plant is mature and the flower is supposed to fall and it becomes a seed pod. When that is mature the seeds are deadly, in fact, they used to be used to murder people, covering the hands, they used to chop up the seeds and mix it into a stew, within hours the person who ate the stew was dead.

I have obviously disposed of the plants and I am thankful that it was me that got poisoned and not my grandchildren, as they would not have survived, I was lucky as I should have been taken into hospital, it just goes to show that you just don't know what is around you.

(I am not going to say the name of the plant as I don't want to be responsible for someone else's pain)

Well that's one thing, my own life with the PTSD has been bad, the dark feelings I suffer from have escalated, maybe due to the poisoning, I feel so low lately, and I feel so bloody useless all the time, A friend of mine doesn't chat to me anymore, I miss her, even though she's only eighteen, she understands so much about things as she goes through dark times herself. She is a good friend and a good mate, and so mature for her young age. I didn't know her age until quite recently, I thought she was in her thirties by the way she chatted, I met her first on the Rethink forum, which sadly has now closed down.

Someone started up another forum, but I started up one as well, which, in my opinion, was so much better and more like the old forum than the other one. The so called friends on there said they would join me, but as usual I found out that who was my friends were and I finally have closed my forum down. I enjoy running a forum so I will have a good think and maybe open another at a later date.

Till next time ttfn.