17 October 2011

I am glad to say what I woke up feeling no worse for yesterday’s excesses.

I can hardly believe it. I spent half an hour or so the to-day with another MND sufferer extolling the virtues of the Dragon voice activation programme. For those readers who have been following my blog for the last six months or so, they will realise the great frustration. I have endured through Dragon not understanding my commands. However, having said that, I still have no hesitation in recommending this to anyone who has problems with their hands or, indeed, to anyone who cannot touch type. I know that my problem is very much a one-off and that over the past 20 years or so. I had been more than delighted with Dragon – it’s got better and better with each new version.Let us hope that having sent all the information required by the US HQ of Dragont they will shortly come up with an answer

The best advice I can give to any other MND sufferer, or their carers, is to try to anticipate problems that the patient may encounter as he//she gets weaker. We have always managed to look ahead and get things in place before they become absolutely necessary, for example, although adept at voice activation over 20 years, over the years, I have used my hands in combination with my voice to speed up some of the operations. Whereas now, only having the use of one splinted finger. I have had to learn more commands and to rely more heavily on the voice. My objective being to be totally free of any hand, involvement other than asking my dear wife to switch on the laptop-first thing in the morning.

The same lesson can be learned from the wheelchair. Whilst at present I can control it quite skilfully with my right hand, or more correctly, my right arm, I anticipate there will come a time when my arms are too weak and, with this in mind, I have got the wheelchair people to fit a chin control unit to the chair which I hope to receive shortly. I will then alternate between hand and chin until I become skilful enough to operate the chair by chin only and then when I lose the use of my arm, there can be a seamless change from hand to chin.

I spent a quiet day working on my computer as I have some activity or other planned for each of the next 10 days or so, however I am looking forward to my weekly outing to the golf club tomorrow. Having said that, the weather forecast is bleak and snow is forecast later in the week, so I suspect that my Tuesday outings from now on will be fairly limited until next spring. Can I realistcaly look that far forward?

I have no idea why people are so beastly about their wives with whom they must have been madly in love with once. Now, barring jokes about mother’s-in-law. they seem to be the nub of many of the jokes I receive. This one for example, click here.

 

16 October 2011

The second of the World Series Rugby sem-finals the New Zealand All Blacks started with an early try and dominated the first half, going in at the break 14 -6 up In the second half, Australia were stupendous and their forwards was magnificent and they comfortably won their place in the final 20 points to […]

15 October 2011

An exciting start to the weekend watching Wales play France in the semi-finals of the Rugby World Cup in New Zealand. Sadly, due to a poor referee decision early on, Wales had to play most of the game with 14 men. They battled very bravely but missed opportunities, one conversion and two possible penalties which […]

14 October 2011

What a shambles. I was supposed to attend the Rank Hospice in Cambridge today for a meeting with Dr Saunders and her pain relief experts. We got ourselves ready for the ambulance,, outside in the electric wheelchair, but when it arrived it seemed to us at it was too small to get the electric wheelchair […]

13 October 2011

Paul returned my laptop late afternoon but I was too tired to try out all of the programmes. However I did find one of two things I couldn’t do so Paul popped back on his way home and added some more programmes which he had previously removed. Sadly, Dragon does not seem to understand my commands any […]

11 October 2011

The weather was dry so I was able to go off to the golf club this morning, sporting the new smart light blue sweater which’ my lovely’ and bought for me for my birthday. We had a poor turnout today, no Griggsy, Kit or Karl – three of the members who are only too happy […]

10 October 2011

My faithful secretary Doreen, came in today to catch up with filing etc. It only seems a short while ago that she came here to do the same job and I find it hard to believe that there would be very much to do, however it still took a couple of hours. This despite my […]

9 October 2011

Started off the day by watching an excellent match in the World Series Rugby Championships in New Zealand between, the favourites, New Zealand and underdogs Argentina. It was generally expected that Argentina would be absolutely slaughtered by the the New Zealanders (the All Blacks) by a margin of 30 or 40 points but, unbelievably Argentina […]

8 October 2 011

A very pleasant start to the day, after an uncomfortable tonight – shoulder and knee again – which started off by me watching the World Series Rugby in New Zealand. I just saw the end of the Welsh victory against Ireland, making them the first of the home teams to get into the semi-finals. Then, […]

6 October 2011

Like all good Englishman I shall start today by discussing the weather. I don’t know where the custom arose but it has always been considered to be a polite ‘ice breaker’ between comparative strangers or people meeting for the first time (if you’ll forgive the pun). Anyway the autumn is clearly upon us and the […]