eosinophilia, whatever that means.

Blah. Been to the doctor this morning. My appointment was at 11.15am, but I didn't go in for at least an hour after that. The doctor's is just round the corner from where I live, and I got home at 12.55pm. I think he was going for a new waiting time world record, or something.

The blood tests I had turned up something interesting, but not any of the things we'd been looking for, and we don't know quite what this means. Apparently white blood cells come in many different varieties - my doctor only mentioned three types, but looking online it seems there's about five categories, and then subcategories within them. Howstuffworks.com reckons that the average percentage of each type of white blood cell is:

• Neutrophils (one of the body’s main defenses against bacteria) - 58%
  
• Lymphocytes (complex cells that direct the body’s immune system, including the T-helper cells that get damaged if you have HIV) - 33%
  
• Monocytes (which don't seem to be very interesting by themselves, but they enter body tissue, turn into macrophages and destroy bacteria and old, damaged and dead cells in the body) - 4%
  
• Bands (immature neutrophils) - 3%
  
• Eosinophils (kill parasites and have a role in allergic reactions) - 2%
  
• Basophils (not well understood, but whatever they do has something to do with allergic reactions) - 1%

Anyway, it would seem that I have a significantly raised level of eosinophils in my blood, which probably indicates that I'm having quite a bad allergic reaction to stuff around me. I already know that I have allergies, but they've never been formally diagnosed. So I've got to go and have a whole load of allergy tests done to try to figure out what's going on.

It couldn't come at a better time - the allergic rash I have has spread to places it hasn't gone before, and it's been driving me nuts the past couple of weeks. My stomach has been upset since Sunday - diarrhea, rumbly tummy and nausea - and I haven't been near dairy, which I know is a trigger. I didn't think too much of it because I usually get an upset tummy when my period starts, but it's gone on for days and I feel horrible - last night I was so nauseous that every time I tried to eat I almost threw up. My health sucks - I go and get my mental health sorted out and what happens? My physical health breaks down - with the rash and the digestive stuff and chronic pain. Whoopie do. Anyone got a new body I could have - this one's defective?

...and I'm STILL a defence analyst on the quiet!

We had another phone call for Colonel Bob Stewart yesterday. Apparently, while each section of the BBC can change the number on its local database, none of them can change the number on their central database - so we are going to be plagued by them forever more :/ I can't ask BT to block the calls, because they come from a different department (and hence a different number) each time, but it really is driving me nuts. I've just found Colonel Bob's biography online, and there is a contact email address, so I'm going to mail him to see if he can do something.

And British Gas rang us all over the weekend looking for "Mr Conway". Every time they rang I told them it was a wrong number - and yet they rang the same number again! At least 3 times that I know of, and possibly they got the answerphone a few more times. How difficult is it for people to understand that they have a wrong number? Meanwhile, poor Mr Conway has no heating or hot water while they faff.

As a result of this, we have a new outgoing message on our answerphone which states "We are not Colonel Bob Stewart, we are not Mr Conway, and we can't supply a choir for your funeral" (yes, we've had that one a couple of times too). It would be funny if it wasn't so exasperating!

London Disabled LGBT Conference coming soon!

I've been sent this, and I thought it would interest any of you with disabilities or chronic health problems - including invisible disabilities. I'm almost certainly going along, possibly in an official capacity. Apologies for the multiple cross-posts, but it seems that despite sending huge amounts of information to the gay and disabled press, people still haven't heard about it. Especially not bisexuals - I expect a lot of us don't read mainstream gay press, and of course there are tons of people with disabilities and long-term medical problems who don't identify as disabled, and so don't read the disabled press either. Please spread the word around your UK-based friends!

( Inclusion not Ignorance - press release )

I'm going back to bed now - where I intended to go two hours ago...