Before I forget and go in to see Karen at the hospital, I must recall “an interesting thing about strokes”.

Regular blog readers will know that kp doesn’t see things that are in front of her, down and to the left. So, she will ask for the hairbrush, and it will be on the table in front of her, but maybe on the left of the table and she needs to be told “It’s on the table”, and then she has to move her head to look directly at it.

It’s peculiar, but not drastic.

Well, another funny thing has started happening. She is now starting to put makeup on and looks a lot better for it.

For the last 2 days, she has been putting mascara on. On both days, she has done her right eye, and then put the mascara back on the table. She thinks she is done.

On both occasions, I have had to remind her about her left eye.

Weird. Very interested to see if this fixes itself with all the reminders.

Will keep you posted

dp

It would be hard to beat a day with 4 steps. But 6 steps will do nicely thank you !

But first…..

I phoned kp this morning to say I would be a bit late in as I had a few oddjobs to sort. I arrived at 10.30am and we had the usual natter and blog comments exchange. Thanks for all your comments !!

Bath followed with a new twist to the day, the Sports Bra. Well, what a chew on ! Apparently you can’t put bras on when your damp. We had previously worked out that if we put talcum powder on to do the final drying, she gets VERY itchy on a night time so we had stopped using talc a couple of weeks ago and it solved the itchiness problem. Today we had to resort to talc to achieve the desired dryness around the bra area.

I dress kp at the moment after the bath because she can’t do it herself.

T-shirts – no problem
Shorts – With one eye closed
Socks – Walk in the Park
Bras – How the hell do 40% of the population put these things on ?

I couldn’t work out which was the inside or the outside. Do you have the seam on the inside or the outside. Inside it would itch, Outside it would show – big dilemma !

Up or Down was ok. But how do you put it on someone who can only lie on the back or side. It takes some thinking about. In the end kp came up with the (now obvious) solution………..

Let’s leave the bra until she is sitting upright (with the help of the hoist) drying her hair.

It worked a treat. And she looked a lot better for it.

Lunch followed bath. Tomato Soup and Buns.

Marie arrived in time for the physio and the main man didn’t mind 2 of us sitting in on kp’s session.

For the last few days kp hasn’t needed the hoist to transfer from the wheelchair to the bench and today was the same

Today’s exercises were mostly done in the sitting position. Tilting from one hip to the other, one leg to the other. Leaning on one hip, while trying to get her left leg on the bench. Lots of holding awkward positions. Here is a picture of kp holding a position halfway between sitting and standing at another point of the physio session. It’s hard for a healthy person to do, and must be even harder for kp.

Shortly after this photo was taken, he got kp to hold the same position :-

Main Man :- Good, Hold it, now transfer your weight on to the left leg (pause), right leg (pause), left leg (pause), right leg (pause), lean your weight forward (pause), backward (pause), forward (pause), backward (pause) and now sit back down
kp :- Blimey that was hard
Other physio :- You’re right that was

We were all laughing at the fact the hold had gone on for so long. It’s as if the main man’s record had got stuck.

To finish the physio session off, he got kp to stand and helped her walk forward. Marie and I counted – 6 steps !! There is no way she could do it without the physio’s help, but it is 2 more than yesterday

When we got back to the room, Marie hoisted her back into bed and said she looked lovely and suggested I take a photo of kp in the same pose as the one that was taken the very first time she was hoisted.

Cracking Idea

See for yourself how better she looks :-

Before in hoist for first time (nearly 2 months ago):-

After in hoist :-

That’s about it for today.