9 May 2011

Last evening the good Dr Michael Skyped me from his Swedish home in Loa. It was lovely to see him on my laptop particularly as he was sitting in what was my bedroom/study when I last stayed with him. Sweden is particularly beautiful at this time of year and no more so than where he lives overlooking a beautiful lake surrounded by tall pine forests.

Harriet came with Sam for the early morning shower and dressing, by which time I had already had my breakfast, clean my teeth and been shaved by ‘my lovely’. We are already beginning to fall into some sort of routine.

Mid-morning Kay and Tony Dunn dropped into a coffee. (They very kindly brought me a punnet of delicious English strawberries). For many years, Kay lived in an adjacent village, Berden, in The Old Kings Head, with her previous husband, who sadly died. Her two boys, Tom and Mark, were friends of my son Smiler when they were in their teens. Now they are both married with children of their own and we still have the pleasure of seeing them and their new families here from time to time. Just after Kay and Tony left, Barbara, from Ross Nursing, popped in to give me my lunchtime walk. Then, ‘Jane the sheep’ came to babysit me. after massaging the fluid from my hands stretching my arms, staying for a couple of hours to allow Alice to go shopping

The evening walk was supervised by Harriet and yet another nice young carer, Becky, who saw me to the point of sitting on my bed after which Harriet left and Becky did the necessary to get me into bed. Literally, the only drawback to the whole performance each day is a fact that they put into bed at 930 which is just half an hour earlier than I would wish to go. It may be later on that we will change is to 9 o’clock and I will watch something on my laptop for an answer before I go to sleep. She and understand I assume this will be the procedure for as long as I am able to shuffle through on my frame after which they will no doubt hoist me from my study chair into wheelchair and take me through that way.

For those readers who are not particularly interested in the minutiae of the medical details I apologise about these last few days of boring entries but as the initial objective of this blog was to assist people in a similar position to myself, I just want those fellow sufferers to understand how we are managing and, who knows, some of our ideas may be useful to them. I must say the latest aid which we have found most useful are the feet straps which lift up my toes so do not drag on the ground when I walk. What is so good about them is that once I’m sitting down they can be unclipped but left in place and then re-clipped when I need to walk again.

The other apology I need to make concerns the lack of the pictures of the elephants that I referred to in my entry yesterday. I really don’t understand it, as they appear in the initial hardcopy before I cut and pasted it into the blog and then they become little boxes with red crosses in them. Never fear, I will sort this out in the elephants will be there shortly.