15 October 2010
This is the day the good Dr long arrives and we check that we have all the necessary bits and pieces for a trouble-free holiday. In preparation for that we tried out, last night in bed, the special ‘ incontinence’ pants provided to us by Sue and attached a leg bag on a stand at the side of the bed. I wanted to try two things, one, to see if the plastic pipe was long enough to cope with turning over in bed and two, to test out the equipment in preparation for the flight. Sadly the bag came adrift from the pants, no doubt through the constant turning over and therefore it requires a longer plastic pipe. I cannot remember exactly how we coped when I had to sleep with bed bag attached, when I had cancer in 2000.The other, and I suppose most important, test worked and we now Know that we will have at least one workable option for the long flights which will avoid the struggling to get to the lavatory.
I rang Sue, the incontinence nurse, this morning and she’s very kindly dropped everything to pick up some more equipment and see me today, bearing in mind the imminence of my departure. Knowing how be busy she is with the large area she has to cover in her part-time. I think that it’s splendid of her to give me that sort of immediate attention. She arrived around mid day with a good supply of additional gear so we should be fine now, in that area at least.
Apart from that ‘ my lovely’ got stuck into the packing. I find it so frustrating not to be able to do it myself. however, I have been as helpful as I can by giving her a comprehensive list of what goes in the main suitcase and what goes in the hand luggage.
I usually include things that I carry on the principle that the main bag could be lost or severely delayed as it was once ion a trip to Kenya where I had none of my own  clothes -other than what I travelled in – or medicines or whatever for 7 days. So I always carry things like my pills my electric razor, my electric toothbrush, my iPod and earphones, my laptop and, of course, my swimming trunks. At least I could survive a day or two on that lot.
The good Dr arrived around five and it did not take as long before we cracked open the first bottle of champagne. We were worried about the final packing tomorrow.