24 August 2011

I had a miserable night with fairly severe pain in both knees and my right shoulder. This despite having doubled the strength of the painkillers I have been taking. I suspect it is arthritis, at least, in the knees, however, I will raise the matter at my next MND assessment.

I’m sure the readers are getting as fed up as I am in hearing about my problems with Dragon but it took me seven attempts this morning in booting up before it logging to Dragon I telephoned Ruben of AbilityNet and have made an appointment for 9.30 on Friday for yet another’ remote assist’ session in the hope that we can finally ironed out the problems. It would be bad enough for an able-bodied person to have to deal with these problems but from me, with just one splintered finger, it is a nightmare.

At midday today an ambulance was sspposed to arrive to take me to Addenbrookes to have an assessment on my eyes with a view to treating the left eye which has a starred cataract on it. In the event, the ambulance did not arrive until 1.40 48 2.30 appointment.

Apparently there had been some sort of problem with the first ambulance and the crew had to return to Addenbrookes to pick up another one. On seeing the ophthalmic surgeon he told me that my previous assessment was just a week or two out of date-apparently there are valid for six months. Why on earth they could not have stretched a point and accepted that earlier assessment, instead of putting me through the whole process again, I really don’t know. However, the long and the short of it was I shall be booked in shortly for the operation which is no big deal apparentl,y just a day case.

Two things they seem slightly concerned about. One, that my urine contained some nitrates so this has to be tested again but I have no idea what the significance of nitrates in your urine is. I suspect it may be something resulting from the number of pills that I have to take. The s econd problem was that they not sure . whether they could even carry out the operation as I would have to lie flat and weari ng my respirator. It is a bulky piece of equipment covering my nose and mouth and this may make it difficult for them to operate. I’m told that I will have to present myself 15 min or so earlier then the appointed time for the operation in order to carry out a trial run of me lying flat in my respirator

After all this excitement was over I booked in to be taken home I waited for an hour or so before the receptionist told me that there was no hospital staff available and I would be taken home in a taxi. I had no objection to that until a black caab turned up which, it soon became clear, was not high enough to accommodate my wheelchair. In fact the taxi driver tried squashing my head under the top of the door in order to get me in until I asked how on earth they were going to get me out at the other end. I suspect we would have had to call the fire brigade and cut off the roof of the taxi.So they sent for another taxi which apparently was supposed to be higher than the first one. When that arrived we found it had the same problem At that stage I suggested using Ollie’s Friendly Wheelchair Taxi Service there was even a problem with this. He was registered with the Essex NHS and we were in Hertfordshire I was then faced with the prospect of sitting there for up to 3 hours for them to try to make other arrangements or to ask Ollie to take me home and then tried to get the hospital to refund me. I chose the latter. Good old Ollie, when we rang he was on his way out with Debbie but immediately turned round and went home to pick up his ambulance. What a splendid fellow he is and have many other people would have been kind enough to do that?

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