Magnetic cat flaps

While my gorgeous wife has had weekend leave , I have unfortunately had to work to ensure my flock in Southfields have had sufficient opportunity to fill their boots with the offerings of my booze shop. In between shifts I have been belting down the A3 to see Mel and returning via home to make sure our lovely two cats,Ben and Kevin ,have had plenty of tucker to graze on in our absence. Sometime ago we invested £65 in a staywell infra red cat flap. The idea being that Ben and Kevin wore a little tag on their collar that allowed them to come and go as they pleased . Nice we both thought. Little did we think that Mr Kevin would spend all day sitting in front of the cat flap letting it go on and off and inviting all his chums in for a free feed! As I was about to leave home I heard a nudge on the cat flap and then it all fell into place, Kevin ran to see what the noise was , cat flap goes click and in stroll Top Cat, Benny the Ball, Choo Choo, The Brain and Spook.

Weekend pass

Well it has been wonderful! I have slept in a proper bed and have eaten BBq lamb and steak.I have even had wine. Funnily enough a glass seems to assist with getting up the stairs, makes me worry about them less.I have not been out of my mum's house - apart from going into the garden - since my arrival on Friday. The main reason for this is that I can get around the house without the wheelchair, it has been lovely not to see it and have the feeling of more independence. I am now however stiff as a board, I have walked more this weekend than in the last 8 weeks put together. Getting quite nifty on the zimmer!
Today is Andrew's birthday,it will not be his most memorrable. He has had to work and this evening we will go for a meal.Our choice of eating venue is no longer governed by where we want to eat and what style of food we are in the mood for, we now choose places by their disabled access and facilities.You would have hoped that in 2007 this would be a huge choice - this is sadly not the case. Disabled access and disabled facilities are two different things. What's the point of going somewhere for a drink and a meal that has a ramp for a wheelchair to get into the building but then a flight of stairs to the toilet.We will be gracing one of the local pizza chains. Oh the glamour!!

Stairway to heaven

It has been a good couple of days. Tuesday saw me on a home visit with an OT and a physio, sadly not to ours but my mum's. She has what is fast becoming the holy grail - a downstairs loo! They are very thorough here and prior to letting me leave here at the weekends they wanted to visit with me. I was on form and managed to bound up the step into the house (zimmer assisted) and whizz round the ground floor. Every chair in the house was measured for height and I then duly sat down and stood up from them all. Mum had set up a bed for me in her study, however one look at what can really only be described as a camp bed and I announced that I would like to try the stairs. I did set the scene in case of failure by saying that it would be good for the physio to see where we needed to concentrate our sessions.With a picture of the bed and a vision of the bad nights sleep it would surely provide firmly fixed in my mind I approached the stairs. It took a stick in one hand, the bannister and about 5 minutes but I got up them! Obviously that was the easy bit, getting down is MUCH harder. My left leg is so weak but going down stairs it really has to work. The stairs seem to be so much steeper when you feel you are simply dangling a limb over the edge of each step, still I made it down and have been deemed "safe with assistance". This basically means some poor bugger has to stand in front of me and if I fall they are coming wih me! I am so excited, this weekend will be the first time I have slept in a proper bed, upstairs and everything for over 2 months.
Still lest I get over excited by this its been back to physio and looking at my still relatively immobile ankle. The splint I have does a good job at holding the foot up so I can walk but I still need to work on regaining the movement. It is so very hard to isolate a muscle and to work it when you can bearly feel it. Movement was also so instinctive before that it is new and unnatural to think about tiny flexes.I spent most of an hour tensing my whole body and moving all my other limbs in the effort to lift my toes in order to flex my ankle. Didn't get anywhere! I try too hard and by tensing everything cannot get the tiny movements that I need.
Muscles are so weak the movement will not be like I remember, in fact at the moment it may be bearly there. It is all to easy to assume that if I try really hard and strain away that my ankle will suddenly spring into perfect full action. Later in the evening sat on my own I finally managed to get the small movement and flexed my ankle up, lifting my foot just the tiniest amount from the floor. Its bearly there but at least its there at all.
On a positive, note all this physio and activity is burning calories like never before. I can currently eat as much chocolate as I like. M & S chocolate coated fudge sticks - yum!

Bestival 2007

Its all fallen in to place today! We have managed to secure the hire of a 6 berth beauty for our jaunt on the isle of wight with Bert and Heidi this September. Mel is so excited as it will be her first jolly for some 9 months! She was a little worried today that she would not be able to get busy in the big top or go bonkers in the bollywood bar , but a little e-mail to mr rod d bank would hopefully make that dream come true. If all else fails then I will push her up the hill to the womens institute tea tent and she can have a lovelly cream tea.

Weekends at The Wolfson

Weekends at The Wolfson are hard, part of the rehabilitation process envolves patients being encouraged to go home where possible. We have 13 very steep stairs in our little terrace house. To me they are Everest. So here I stayed. Saturday saw us going to our dear friends Bert and Heidi's for a BBQ (oh, the joys of a house with a downstairs loo!) The first of the year for me as I have missed the early warm weather by my prolonged stay with the NHS. A wonderful sea bass and the most enormous prawns were the dish of the day. It is very strange going to places that I know so well from before the operation, places that I walked into without a thought that now I go back to in a wheelchair.I used to take it for granted that I could nip into the other room to see Sami playing, or pop into the garden to look at the BBQ. This is a long road to recovery and it starts with a stagger across the kitchen on a zimmer.
This morning I though I had an easy start to the week, with nothing till 11.15 am.I was enjoying the only decent meal of the day - even the NHS can cook toast,when a physio shattered my peace by telling me that my hydro therapy session had been missed off the time table and could I get there quickly. I cant to anything quickly! 20 minutes later and in I went.This week was easier than my last session when I got very upset that I could no longer swim, I can't walk, my left leg does not work, why did it come as a shock?!
Then it was gym exercises. Hard work with legs like lead from the pool but an improvement from last week.....this was closely followed by cant throw, cant catch group - (The PC term is Upper Limb group). We all sat around not throwing or catching very well, with the exception of one elderly chap who could not grasp that the whole point of the excercise was to use your bad limb, his left one worked perfectly well so why couldn't he use it?
The day was wrapped up by more physio. Still trying to move my ankle. Sadly at the moment everytime I try to move it, all the other muscles in my body seem to tense and strain....but my foot stays flat on the floor. I have nick named my foot the pork chop, this is what it feels like. Flat, immobile, pink and fleshy.
Can't bear to join the lines of wheelchairs in front of the tv in the lounge. Thank goodness for portable DVD players.
Shattered again but have to stay awake until the 10pm for the drug run.

Dashing for supper

Chuffed with the timings of her return leg in the 10metre zimmer dash, Dj Melly Mels physio has now given her the task of walking to supper from the television lounge every evening. I know its only 5metres or so but for somebody who has not walked more than 50 metres in the last 2 months that is some distance. She took that leap of faith from her wheelchair gripped onto her zimmer and away she went. As she entered the dining room it was fairly apparent that some of the older guests thought they had seen a miracle as they started to spit their food out in amazement as Mel walked in , head held high. I swear you could hear the murmerings of Hallelulujah praise the lord! It was a miracle.

Scramlette

Its been a busy morning in rehab. Occupational Therapy today was making breakfast. Scrambled eggs on toast. Easy you may think. Not when your left hand does not work very well and the OT insists on making me scramble the eggs with it, despite the fact I am right handed. Apparently I had the wrist action its just the grip that I now need to work on. After an age I eventually produced what was really a kind of omelette on toast. The most obvious and immediate benefit of making left handed scramlette is that I had little need for hospital lunch.