Fire and Ice

Last time I started the serious planning and allocated parks to days so that I could make reservations. It was all pretty smooth at this time, to be honest, but I hadn’t yet looked at the mobile app so this was my next step. As I alluded to before, I have had the WDW park app on my phone since at least 2016 even though I’ve not been to the parks since. I kind of felt that deleting the app would be admitting defeat, so it’s lived on my phone, unused, for seven years. I even migrated it from phone to phone as I upgraded my device over all that time. I believe it’s changed name too - at the moment I think it’s officially called My Disney Experience but I can’t see that either on the app icon or the app home page. Anyway, I clicked on the app and (after a slight update) it was ready to go. It was also pretty easy to log in and confirm my park reservations. At this point, I was still having second thoughts about which parks I’d allocated to some days so thought I’d make some changes. For v...

Once I’d decided I was going to Disneyworld and had organized my flights plus accommodation , the next step was to procure some of those park tickets I’d heard so much about. I was getting pretty excited about this trip, so now that the more familiar admin was taken care of, I could focus on the exciting, Disney-specific elements. This was something I was looking forward to, of course, but also strangely apprehensive. A bit of context may help: as mentioned previously, I was a pretty confident WDW vacation planner and I also love the vacation planning part of any trip. At the very least I use Google Travel to record all the various elements but when things get a little more complex, I also use my own documents like spreadsheets and such. It really does depend on the trip but one of my more complicated trips was a two-week Caribbean cruise plus a stay in Texas before and after the cruise, during the latter part of the C19 pandemic. There were a lot of elements to keep track of, includ...

Pretty much all of my trip planning starts by looking at flights - and this was no exception. To be honest, I look at flights so much that Google Flights must hate me. I like to dream about travel and sometimes I’ll look at flights just because I’m bored! Other times I do have some sort of a plan but I may abandon the search because of cost, logistics or other reasons. This time the trigger was an email to let me know that RetroMagic was happening, in early October. So I did what I would automatically do and started searching for flights to Orlando and quickly realised that they were expensive. I tried various strategies for keeping costs down (stopovers, weird airlines, arriving in other airports rather than MCO, etc) and the math really wasn’t working. I looked at flying on unusual days, of staying only a few days… I even tried the incredibly unrealistic booking where I’m not allowed any sensible luggage, but even then it was coming up pricey. Especially when added to the hotel - an...

The last time I went to Disney World was in August 2016. It was a world where the most annoying thing that we had to do before entering the theme parks was to go through security. It certainly was a different world. t was a time of FastPass, of unlimited park hopping and when there were absolutely zero construction walls in Epcot. Nobody had heard about park reservations and most sightlines in Epcot were pretty clean. The most complex technical thing that we had to achieve before our visit (and even then, it was entirely optional) was to link our Magic Bands to our park tickets so that we could use them. Needless to say, things have changed quite a bit since then. It’s amazing to think just how much things have changed in under a decade and just how much I’ve fallen behind. As you may know, I’ve been a Disney fan for a long time now: going back way, way back, to perhaps the early 80s if not earlier. I remember going to Disney World when I was very little and having a wonderful time but...

In the last few weeks the miracle continued: I've been able to eat most meals, most things.  I've been able to join the family again for mealtimes and go out with friends for food. I've cooked some nice meals and then was able to enjoy the fruits of my hard work. Over my birthday weekend, I was able to eat cake, have a few drinks and feel pretty normal. Starbucks have once again seen me darken their doorstep and I've been able to enjoy some nice drinks (and get back on track with my Gold status).  Mealtimes are no longer something I dread or that make me anxious - I can now sit down and enjoy food like most people do. In short: things are fairly back to normal. I still think that my stomach has shrunk and most of the time I'm having much smaller portions than I used to but this is probably a good thing. I'm sure I was having large portions before so it's not a bad idea to reduce those! I also struggle with some very specific textures but they are mostly in f...

Our minds are certainly powerful and capable of so much. They are also weird and work in baffling ways, or at least mine does. After some waiting, I finally had a meeting with a Speech-Language Therapist and BOY was this the most useful hour of my life! (well, at least as it relates to my swallowing issues). After reviewing my medical history and tests, we had a chat about what I was experiencing and how was I coping. My SLT was very straight and direct and basically said that I had nothing wrong, physically, but had somehow developed a form of eating disorder with an anxiety overlay. And that was all fine, she could help. I then got an anatomy lesson to show me how swallowing works and also to reassure me that this is something that happens automatically...but when it doesn't, I've been over-thinking it. This causes a self-fulfilling prophecy that if I think I might choke, my body will start to agree and protect me against this fictional danger. This has also meant that my bra...

It's been six months since I first noticed that I was having trouble eating. Since then I've had a handful of doctor's appointments, hospital visits, peculiar tests, bits of advice, good days, bad days...and very, very little to eat.  I know that the medical establishment is trying to help, with all the limits and struggles that it also has because of the pandemic and all sorts of other circumstances. I know (or want to believe) that every person I've met wants to help but the fact remains that we still don't really know why this is happening AND that I also eat less than a picky toddler during a trip to a foreign country where they don't like any of the food. My weight keeps dropping and I'm sure my nutrition is absolutely awful.  My body does seem to be adapting though - I don't get as many hunger pangs as I used to, even when eating one Babybel all day. I also don't get so many headaches even though I'm barely drinking a glass of water a day. ...