{"id":93151,"date":"2020-02-07T16:32:37","date_gmt":"2020-02-07T16:32:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/stories.qvcuk.com\/?p=93151"},"modified":"2020-02-12T15:33:24","modified_gmt":"2020-02-12T15:33:24","slug":"i-feel-like-a-flamingo","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stories.qvcuk.com\/presenters\/julia-roberts\/i-feel-like-a-flamingo\/","title":{"rendered":"I feel like a flamingo!"},"content":{"rendered":"

Well, as promised, here I am with a Friday blog, although it may be a little shorter than usual because a) I don\u2019t have as much to write about as usual, having been housebound for the past week and b) my medication makes my brain a bit fuzzy and also makes me drowsy\u2026 I\u2019m such a lightweight!<\/p>\n

Firstly, thanks for all your good wishes for my operation and I will get around to replying soon, now that I\u2019m starting to feel a bit more like my usual self. Also, apologies if you\u2019ve had trouble finding our presenter blogs – we have had a little facelift and QCommunity no longer exists so you will find our blogs under \u2018Stories\u2019. However, there is a slight glitch at the moment and only the most recent six are showing – I\u2019ve been told it\u2019s being worked on so hopefully that should be sorted soon and you will be able to see everyone\u2019s blogs as normal.<\/p>\n

So, as planned, my ankle osteotomy went ahead last Wednesday, albeit slightly later in the day than scheduled and I woke up with the lower part of my left leg in a cast\u2026 hence the reference to feeling like a flamingo, constantly standing on one leg! I won\u2019t bore you with details, but let\u2019s just say the surgeon seemed satisfied with how things went, although he\u2019ll reserve judgement until the cast comes off on Monday and he is able to have a look at things.<\/p>\n\"\"\n

I was allowed home last Friday and fortunately we have a sofa bed in our lounge and a downstairs shower and loo, so I have been able to \u2018live\u2019 on the ground floor. The physio in the hospital did show me how to negotiate stairs, but the ones in the hospital were quite different from our Victorian cottage ones, i.e. narrow, carpeted and with a turn near the top. I\u2019ve been getting around reasonably well on my crutches, although I didn\u2019t realise how much of an effort it would be as I\u2019m not allowed to put weight on my left foot. To be fair, the physio did say I could have a walking frame if I preferred but I declined as it reminded me of a conversation I had with one of my QVC colleagues a couple of years ago when we were chatting about how long we intended to stay at QVC as Presenters. She said, and I quote, \u2018You\u2019ll never retire, you\u2019ll still be coming in here in your eighties with your zimmer frame.\u2019 There\u2019s a thought!!! It\u2019s a good job I have a strong upper body from Pilates and swimming and a really strong right thigh, vital in getting up and down from a seated position. Actually, we invested in a little stool for the shower, which is much safer than standing on a wet slippery surface, but I do my facial routine morning and night standing on one leg. I hate to think how dry my skin will be under the cast as I normally moisturise after a shower or bath and once the wounds are healed I\u2019ll be reaching for the Decleor Prolagene Gel<\/a>!<\/p>\n

What this past week has given me is a new appreciation of what it is to be less able to get out and about, whether it\u2019s due to age, illness or injury. The very first Get Well card I received was from a former dancing colleague, Diane. We go back to 1976 when we worked together in a theatre show in Barcelona. We had lost contact until she spotted me on QVC and wrote to me. Diane hasn\u2019t enjoyed the best of health and spends the majority of her time housebound, quite a bit of it bed-bound. Until this past week I had no understanding of what that feels like – it\u2019s almost like being a prisoner trapped in your own home. I now have huge admiration for all of you who are unable to live the ‘normal\u2019 life so many of us take for granted and yet still remain positive and purposeful. It makes the fact that we can reach out to you through the TV screen for company and a degree of independence when it comes to shopping an even more important part of my job, something I will be mindful of when I come back to work, hopefully around mid-March.<\/p>\n\"\"\n

I loved Diane\u2019s card, which she made herself, but my favourite was from a friend of mine who has a wicked sense of humour. It features a photo of a Crystal Palace player (who obviously I won\u2019t name on here) and the wording is: Following major foot surgery, leaving your foot in plaster, you\u2019d still be able to score more goals than this fella\u2026 football humour!!!!<\/p>\n

Speaking of coming back to work, Eilidh is back today and is covering my 6 p.m. Fashion on Friday on the Style Channel. She has been off for the past five months following the birth of her son, Beau, and apparently took him in to our Chiswick Studios for cuddles last week – why do I always miss out on the good stuff?! Hopefully there will be plenty of other opportunities. I think Jackie Kabler is taking the helm for my Fashion on Friday show on the main channel at 5 p.m. – it\u2019s a good job my mum knows I\u2019m off sick or she would be ringing in a panic if she didn\u2019t see me on there, as she has done on previous occasions when I haven\u2019t let her know I\u2019d taken time off. She’s enjoyed herself this past week showing the \u2018Bella\u201d article to anyone who set foot over the threshold of her bungalow – she was really chuffed with all her mentions!<\/p>\n\"\"\n

So, I haven\u2019t done a huge amount of anything this past week – a bit of reading, watching The Chase and coming up with an idea for a new book – but I haven\u2019t been able to concentrate particularly well because of the aforementioned medication. You\u2019re probably thinking heavy-duty morphine-based drugs… No, just paracetamol and ibuprofen with a soluble aspirin thrown in to help prevent blood clots. I sometimes wonder how my body ever coped with the oral chemotherapy drugs for my leukemia! I\u2019ve been trying to eat really healthily with protein at every meal to help my broken bones to heal and I\u2019ve also been trying out something called 8G (8greens), which is a Big Deal<\/a> on QVC next week. It\u2019s an efficient way of getting vital vitamins and minerals into your diet even if you\u2019re not that good at your five-a-day. It\u2019s a pleasant tasting drink but the really good thing is that you can \u2018hide\u2019 it in other things like soups, sauces, stews and smoothies, so the rest of the family don\u2019t even know they\u2019re \u2018being healthier\u2019!<\/p>\n

Right, it\u2019s paracetamol time, so brain fuzz for the next hour or so\u2026 if I manage to stay awake.<\/p>\n

Speak soon,
\nJulia xx<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Well, as promised, here I am with a Friday blog, although it may be a little shorter than usual because a) I don\u2019t have as much to write about as usual, having been housebound for the past week and b) my medication makes my brain a bit fuzzy and also makes me drowsy\u2026 I\u2019m such […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":21,"featured_media":93155,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[247,21],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stories.qvcuk.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/93151"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stories.qvcuk.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stories.qvcuk.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stories.qvcuk.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/21"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stories.qvcuk.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=93151"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/stories.qvcuk.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/93151\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":93184,"href":"https:\/\/stories.qvcuk.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/93151\/revisions\/93184"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stories.qvcuk.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/93155"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stories.qvcuk.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=93151"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stories.qvcuk.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=93151"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stories.qvcuk.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=93151"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}