10 January 2011

Just after midnight last night there was a power cut, or at least that’s what I thought. My wireless cut out but fortunately the emergency battery on the respirator kicked in. but in doing so set off the alarm which rang continuously all night, in my ears, I imagine something akin to tinnitus (continuous ringing in the ears). As ‘my lovely’ did not appear to hear this at all, I’m not sure what value it is. The problem is that Alice has supersensitive hearing and even has to put earplugs in when she is setting the alarm in the evening, so it would be impossible to have it made any louder.

Anyway, when I woke up and realised that there was no wireless playing and the lights had gone out, assuming that there had been a local power cut, the duration of which would probably not known, I took the view that as the respirator had an eight hour emergency battery and the bed itself works on a battery (at least, I hope it works on a battery, I must check with the OT), I would be okay until ‘my lovely’ came in at 5 a.m.. The alternatives, assuming it was a local power cut of unknown duration, would either have been to have got Chris Wix out of bed to start the generator, which would have to be re-fuelled every four hours, or, as we have been advised, to dial 999 for an ambulance to take me to a safe environment. Neither of which alternative appealed to me. In either case it would have meant pressing my emergency buzzer and waking up Alice, which I was anxious not to do as I know how desperately important a good night’s sleep is to her. However, to be fair to her, she was cross with me for not buzzing her which, in retrospect, was probably very foolish of me.

As it happened Alice had a reasonably good night’s sleep and slept through until her normal rising time of 5 a.m. at which stage she too discovered that was there no power. Like me, she assumed there had been a power cut, so she telephoned Chris Wix, presumably with a view to asking him to come up to start the generator. She was greatly relieved, however, when he told her that there had been a local power cut in the middle of the night but the power had been restored. and this power cut would have automatically thrown our trip switch.

She checked the switch and greatly relieved to find that he was quite right, it was our electricity which was off and this was quickly restored. So panic over.

This morning I had a further training session with Charlie, from AbilityNet. It was meant to be all about how to add media to the blog but we got bogged down early on with other issues and, in particular, found that the computer was extremely slow in reacting to commands. Charlie suggests that I break down the blog file into no more than 30/40 pages at a time and this should speed up the process. In any event, he will mention it in his report and I will have a word with the MND Association as the real solution is a faster laptop.