Woke up this moring with a crick in my neck, having spent the night on the sofa. Kate started throwing up at 3.30am night before last, and the impossibility of looking after her on her cabin bed when she needed to rush to the bathroom meant that we ended up downstairs, plastic wastebaskets in hand.

Monday October 28
We travelled to Suffolk to see Matthew Manning. I had been intending to travel by train, but at the last moment John's interview was cancelled and so he was able to drive us. Thank goodness that he was, as there was total choas on the train system, following the storm the day before. My mother came and picked up T and K and then we set off at about 10.30 - only half an hour late. The journey was fine, although there were a lot of trees knocked down by the wind, at the side of the road. We arrived very early, and decided to have lunch in the pub. Hartest is a very olde English type of village, with a green, lots of old cottages, and a proper pub with nictine yellow walls and horse brasses. It must be popular in the summer and at weekends, as there were vast rooms of empty tables, and a very comprehensive adventure playground in the garden.

We sat and ate green lipped mussels while Alistair sipped a glass of water. He was quiet and a bit apprehensive, never having visited a healer before. We went for a short walk around the village and then arrived for our appointment fifteen minutes early, as instructed.

Sturgeon's hall is a yellow painted substantial house overlooking the village green. There was an instruction to enter the house using the stable door, and so we found ourselves in a large waiting room with a big fireplace, lots of paintings and comfortable sofas. We were greeted, and then sat on the sofa. There were some interesting books, including a What Doctors Dont Tell You publication about different diseases. I quickly looked up Chron's disease and scribbled down some recommendations about alternative treatments. MOst of them I knew about, but licorice root was a new one on me.

The previous patient made his way painfully out of the treatment room, assisted by Matthew and two helpers, and two sticks. I thought initially that he was an old man, but he didn't appear to be. I was afraid of seeming to stare, so concentrated on returning the book to the table, and getting our things together. We were called in.

I have read so much about Matthew Manning over the years, seen him on television, followed his career with interest. I wondered if I would instantly feel a bond, or feel the power of his healing ability. I warmed to him immediately, he was very relaxed and friendly. He talked to us quietly about what was wrong, told us that treatment might not make any difference, although the other people he was treating with Crohn's had responded to treatment.

The treatment room was a lot smaller than I was expecting, with a warm yellow decor and little stars. Matthew put Alistair on a chair in the middle of the room, and gave him some cushions to put under his feet. Matthew put on some music and then just placed his hands on Alistair. I closed my eyes and tried to meditate and "hold them in the light" as Quakers say.

The time seemed to pass very quickly indeed. It seemed like only a couple of minutes, but must have been half an hour. We came to, said goodbye, and then made our way back to the car.

I must say that I felt very relaxed and calm. I had been suffering from a headache and feeling very stressed out, but as I walked back to the car I could feel how much tension and anxiety had disappeared. The effect is still with me three days later.

Tuesday, October 29
We had to go into town for a number of errands. I needed to pay in some money to my bank account, we had to buy a birthday present for my niece, and pick up a prescription from the doctor's surgery. On our way back from the doctor's, Alistair and Thomas were having kicking competitions, to see who could kick the highest, and I suddenly realised that Alistair was running and jumping - something he hasn't done for months and months.

Wednesday, October 30
Started several hours earlier than planned, as far as I was concerned! I heard Kate make a funny noise at about 3.30am, and called out to her. She woke, ran to the bathroom and started throwing up. She was sick every half hour for the next few hours, and we decamped to the living room. She complained of bad stomach pains, and was yelping in pain - to the extent that I thought she might have appendicitis. She slept fitfully on the sofa, as did I. Alistair woke up at about 10 am, and was bouncing about in a way that I can't remember him doing for years. He was very happy and seemed excited too.

Kate was very disappointed that she wouldn't be able to go to her cousin's birthday party, but didn't want to because she was feeling so poorly. She seemed to improve in the middle of the day, but was feeling ill again by the time that the boys had to leave for the party at 4pm. I gave her some paracetemol for her headache, and stopped worrying that she had appendicitis and started worrying that it was meningitis....

I was thinking this morning that my first web diary, which I started in 1998, we actually one of the first Uk diaries. When I first went online, I found it very frustrating that nearly all the websites on any subject were American - including most of the family history sites, which were a main interest then. Nowadays, there are lots of UK sites, and nearly all television programmes and radio programmes are supported by a web site.

In 1998, I was using an old Macintosh Power Mac to access the internet, and found that any sites with a lot of content, or with audio or lots of moving graphics, took forever to load - and often the sites bounced me off before they could load. The BBC site used to shut me out because the loading time was so long.

When I made my own website within a month of getting online, I made sure that I stuck to a very basic design and didn't shut out people because they didn't have a powerful computer or fast connection. I hope I would be as thoughtful nowadays, although I now have a broadband connection and a pretty powerful computer.

All the children and my husband have a cold now. We have the son of a friend spending the day with us. My friend is away in Dublin for a conference which she is helping to run, and her son has a training day, and so to the delight of my younger son, whose special friend this is, he will spend the hwole day and not just the time after school with us.

I decided yesterday to get on and finish off some do-it-yourself jobs. Ages ago I bought some plywood to make a bed guard for K's bed. She has a cabin bed, but we had to buy a new mattress, which turned out to be too deep for safety in a cabin bed. I bought the ply to stop her rolling off in the middle of the night.

I had marked out a shape to cut out of the playwood, started cutting it with a jigsaw months ago and gave it up as too hard. Yesterday I took the jigsaw and a lot of elbow grease, and finished the cutting out, and then painted the board, both sides. She wanted blue and purple in a swrily design.

The children looked at the paints I was using and asked if they could paint their wall in their bedroom. I started painting their room ages ago, but they couldn't agree what colour to do the other walls, which still have a rather insipid flower patterned wallpaper on them. So we mixed up some blue pigment with some green paint and got a rather fetching aquamarine colour, and we all painted the wall. It meant moving a couple of hundred books and videos and two bookcases, and of course we had some dramas. K kicked over the paint soon after starting, and so I had to carefully slide the newspaper containing more than half the paint we had made up, onto a sheet of hardboard and then we had to paint like crazy before the paint ran off the hardboard or solidified.

K also managed to get paint over her trousers, which made her wail for ages. She has one pair of jeans which she wears constantly and gets very upset if they aren't available for wearing. After twenty minutes scrubbing and soaking I managed to get all the paint out. I had to get up at 6 am to make sure that they were put in the tumble dryer so that she could wear them again this morning.

Still, we finished the wall, and managed to put the furniture back, and it looks miles better. Now all I have to do is paint in and around T's loft bed, which won't be an easy task.

My dear husband came home drunk and went into mega tidying up mode as soom as he arrived. It is best to either get out of the way or shout at him until he withdraws to our bedroom, I find. As I was still reorganising in the children's bedroom, I left him to it. He is supposed to be cutting down, but has been drunk the last four nights out of four. What he is using for money I can't imagine.

I have been researching alternatives for congestive heart failure for my father, who is quite poorly at the moment. I discover that CQ10, Vitamin C, Omega 3 oils and L arganine plus gentle arm exercise will be helpful. Not sure that he will take them though. He gets so fed up with taking pills and medicines that he ends up taking some things every other day - probably dropping his intake below the leval at which it would be helpful. I have tried to point this out to him, but he is very resistant. The trouble is that he was always so healthy and fit and active, he finds it difficult to think of himself as being unwell.

I'm agonizing over our next visit to the hospital, next Monday. I woke at 5 am this morning and couldn't get back to sleep. Research on the internet for information is frightening and frustrating. I already know about Crohn's disease in general terms, and I have a lot of notes about the various treatments and the alternatives. None of them seem very good - most people relapse, and many need surgery for strictures and obstructions. (/p)

(p)A had a colonoscopy five weeks ago, and biopsies were taken which identified Crohn's as the disease he has been suffering from for the last 18 months. He has been on a liquid diet since the colonoscopy - not easy for a 12 year old. But I have been proud of him and the way that he has managed to follow the diet. He has even been cooking for the rest of us, as cookery is, cruelly, one of his favourite activities.(/P)

(p)When we went to the hospital a couple of weeks ago, his blood tests showed that things were moving in the right direction - his inflammation rate was down to normal again, his weight and blood iron rate were moving up. Even so, the consultant said that he would only agree that his Crohn's was in remission if the next colonoscopy on November 1 showed that all the inflammation was gone, AND the biopsies showed that there was no active Crohn's in his colon. (/P)

(p)He said that even if he appeared to be better, even if his blood results remained good, if there was active Crohn's he would advise prescribing a steroid.

(p)When I was in the room with the consultant, it all seemed to make perfect sense, but when I was recounting the conversation to my husband, and later to a friend, it no longer seemed to make sense. If he is improving, why would we want to add in an aggressive treatment like a steroid, which carries all its own side effects and risks? If he is improving why would we want a second colonoscopy, the first having been very distressing (although A was sedated not to remember the pain he suffered)?

(p)The consultant said that at A's age, the disease could be just as damaging as the steroids, but that isn't what I have read - the research I have seen indicates that the growth retardation of the disease is reversible, while that of the steroids is not.

(p)I am dreading the next appointment, because I don't feel I am good at challenging the doctors, and I know that my husband isn't. As a fellow professional (he's a solicitor) he has a very deep regard for the professional training of doctors. Even though this nearly killed him a couple of years ago. (Our local hospital admitted him for a bowel obstruction, and then ignored him for 10 days, dehydrated him so effectively that his kidneys stopped working for a while, and generally tried their best to finish him off on a number of occasions.

(p)Even when I demanded that a doctor should come and examine my husband, the junior doctor who came made comments like "Do you have any medical training, Mrs B?" When I remonstrated with him and said that no-one had examined my husband for days he said "I am here, I see him." I really lost it at that point and said "You know that seeing him is not the same as a proper examination. I'm very concerned about his condition, he has been deteriorating every day and no-one seems to take the slightest notice." He examined him, and suddenly everything was urgent and an emergency - although it still took them some 30 hours to get him into surgery.)

(p)I find that my son's diagnosis has sent me straight back to that time, and also to the time when he was my first baby, a time when the responsibility that was vested in me as his mother was almost overwhelming. I saw in his deep dark eyes that he trusted me, expected that I knew what I was doing, and I didn't!

(p)Meanwhile, life goes on, and I have the same stuff to deal with as usual. Not enough money, the endless, endless questions about why I am home educating. You'd think after three years that this would bother me less. I begin to think I should be like those snappy people who turn up on the web support lists, who simply roar "Mind your own business!" when asked why little Amy isn't in school.

(p)Yesterday I slipped out of the house leaving my husband in charge. A friend trades in Traidcraft and Tearcraft products, and every year at about this time she has an open day for people to order or buy Christmas cards and presents. The children normally go, but they all have stinking colds, and as J was around, I decided to go on my own. Where in previous years I have built up a huge order and paid by cheque, I raided J's wallet and only bought what I had the cash to pay for.

(p)I was enjoying my time away from the house - I was given a very pleasant cup of coffee, and she always bakes a lot of cakes and biscuits for this event, so I had a cube of ginger cake too, free, but with a donation to the world hunger fund if desired. I was enjoying them when a woman I have met on previous occasions came over and asked where the children were. I explained they were bunged up with a stinking cold, and no doubt infectious. She then began to browse on the table next to my chair and suddenly turned to say "What will you do about secondary education?"

(p)I replied that I intended to carry on home educating. "But what about physics? Chemistry? all those other subjects which schools offer?" I said that the children don't seem that interested in physics, although actually, thinking about it we have done quite a lot about magnetism and gravity. We have chemistry sets and have done some chemistry. I tried to explain that I think of things in such a different way now, that I regard education in its original sense as drawing out gifts and qualities from the child, and not filling them up with facts and figures.

(p)All the time I was really quite resentful. I shouldn't dream of approaching another parent and demanding to know why they have sent their children to a particular school, or to know how that school manages to teach independence of mind when all pupils are taught in the same way, or independent research when groups of pupils must work together in order to share out researces and time. Or why schools only measure academic performance, when the adult world requires so much more than this - creativity, innovation, initiative.

(p)I read the Times Educational Supplement (TES) each week, and was interested recently to see that Richard Rogers, the architect, didn't read until he was 11. There is a new test for teachers to give to children who aren't performing well academically, which tests their spatial awareness, as this was the area in which Rogers was a genius. It seems that many children with dyslexia and problems with literacy may have hidden talents for spatial awareness. Although what they will do with the information if teachers discover hoardes of children with a genius for spatial awareness is anyone's guess....