Well, touch wood, fingers crossed, don’t walk under a ladder, but we have had a slightly better day today. kp isn’t back to her old self by any means, but I sense a bit of an improvement.

She has had a bad left (and right) shoulder for the past 3 or 4 days, and was looking forward to some relief from physio. The physio got out her magic “Anti-Flam” potion and gave kp a good massage with it, whilst moving her shoulder blade all over the place. At first, the slightest touch feels very strange to kp, but as the physio does more and more of it, her nerves get accustomed to it and within 15 minutes she had relief in her shoulders. Yay !!!

It was then time for kp to do some work with her left arm, the idea being that exercise helps keep it loose and mobile. First off, kp had to place the pieces into a board but only by using her left arm/hand. She has a tendency for her left elbow to stick right out. If you try this while reaching out for something, you’ll know how unnatural this is and that it causes your shoulder gip, but it’s the only way kp knows to get her arm out across a table. So, she has to relearn how to keep it in. Easy said ! kp doesn’t know how to get her elbow in and kept having to ask the physio …

kp:- Is it doing it right now ? (as she concentrated on placing the piece on board)

The physio suggested kp do the puzzle as 2 actions. Get the piece from the side and bring it to your side and then place it. This seemed to do the trick.

With that puzzle over, it was time for a jigsaw. I knew kp wouldn’t like this. She finds this kind of activity hard on both a physical front (moving and manipulating the pieces) and a mental front (scanning for the right pieces and working out their orientation). The physio realised that she couldn’t work out which pieces went where and picked out the 4 corners so kp could place them first. With the 4 corners done albeit at a very slow pace, the physio got the edges together so kp could work on them. She struggled on both the physical and mental front with this. The pieces were hard to pick up, hard to turn and she had to really think about where they went.

We had a little amusing moment when she got one of the pieces, sussed out where it was to go and started trying to place it next to the corner. Unfortunately, the piece was upside down, but she felt it was right. And she started trying to force the piece into the slot. We could all see that one of the prongs of the jigsaw was overlapping the edge of the board and that the other prong (from the corner) didn’t fit. But, BOY, did she try and get it to fit. I was amazed the jigsaw didn’t break.

Noone said anything about this to Karen, with the physio politely saying “I think it goes the other way round.”

Physio over, we went to Costco, the pet shop and Sainsburys for supplies. kp did very well round the shops. I got her to tell me when it was safe to cross the car park into Costco. No problems there !

At Sainsbury’s another funny moment occurred. I loaded up the checkout conveyor and we waited for the person in front of us to get through. While we waited, kp started fumbling through the lady’s shopping in front of us.

kp:- Why have you got this ? (pointing to some Spicy Madras sauce)
dp:- That’s not our shopping love (ours was to the left)

With shopping over, we came home and had a nice lunch. I was pleased at this, because kp has been off food for a few days, and she had a good lunch/dinner (4pm).

So, fingers crossed etc…..tonight will see her mood lift even further.

She is cancelling her OT session tomorrow because she doesn’t feel up to it and I think she is looking forward to a “nothing” day, something we don’t seem to have had for a while. It’s a fine balance between “keeping her busy” and then the quiet days where all she can do is focus on her aches/pains/condition.