30 April 2011

Another quiet day, or at least we thought. The good Dr Michael left after breakfast, for his home in Sweden, and telephoned us late afternoon to say that he had arrived safely.

We were fine and spent the rest of the day together and watched one or two of the residue programmes of the Royal Wedding, in between other things. All was well until bedtime when I failed to rise from the chair and stand on my feet. instead slid to the floor with my usual cries of alarm. ‘My lovely’was her usual calm brilliant self and managed to prop me against the NHS chair so I could breathe and she could go for help.

Much as she would have liked to, there was no way she could possibly get me up from sitting on the floor to a vertical position. Fortunately our next-door neighbour Tom, was not at home and I’m quite pleased about that as we called upon him only two days ago and, let’s face it, there does come a time when you become a bloody nuisance. Anyway, our next port of call was another neighbour, Edward Oliver, who only lives 100 yards or so away. Unfortunately Edward had been to dinner the night before in London and had decide to have an early night. This was rudely interrupted by our telephone call and the poor chap had to get up, dress himself and come round. Even between them, ‘my lovely’ and Edward, with the assistance of the standing hoist, could not manage to get me to my feet and onto my frame, so we decided it was prudent to do what we had always been told we must do and dialled 999. The ambulance arrived from Radwinter no more than 10 or 15 min later with two extremely kind and helpful paramedics. They soon got me onto my frame with which I then I shakily made my way through to the bedroom.

I think it is, as I have suspected for some time, that my arms are giving out faster than my legs as I need to support the weight of my body on the frame when I’m attempting to stand up. I have noticed, for example, that it is getting more difficult to feed myself, even using both arms and the armrest, so I know they are getting weaker. As much as anything I believe that I have lost confidence and dread every time I have to go through the manoeuvre of standing from my NHS chair.

It’s ‘sods law’ that these things always happen at the weekend, and, in this case, on an extra long weekend. Although we have alerted Lynne, our OT, that we need more physical instruction on how to transfer from chair to chair, perhaps using a hoist, I think the earliest this can happen will be Wednesday morning, so in the meantime we will have to set up some assistance for the morning and night move