Rip-roaring day today. What a cracker. We have had as much funny as yesterday with the Titters and Lydia mice (as if that was possible !), and some real bonus top of the range physio action. I am still amazed at today. It will become clear later in the blog what I am on about.

“It started with a kiss.” (Writer and Artiste for a bonus point)

Beautiful day weatherwise, so we spent quite a lot of time in the lovely sun after bath and tea and toast (cooked by dp). Mean Toast if I say so myself. The key is to eject the toast at just the right speed and to butter with a firm but steady hand, ensuring swift delivery to impatient wife. Sorry, that should just read “wife”.

kp and I completely missed a note from the physio saying it was going to be later than planned, so we turned up 15 minutes early only to return to the room wondering “what note”. The physio had hidden the note on the front of Karen’s door in plain sight on bold yellow post-it note paper. Doh !

Physio today rocked like a rocker rocking on a rocking house, who knows how to rock very hard. It rocked.

We started off with leg strengthening stuff, where kp had to push the main man away with both her legs

She did lots of this with the main man egging her on to kick him against the wall. kp was polite and did the best she could to push him away.

Rest, then more physio kicking.

He then sat her on the end of the bench and worked on her left arm/hand. And this is where I got a bit carried away and got slack with the camera. He asked kp to place her left hand on her left knee. Which she did, albeit slowly. She tried to lift it onto her knee (using her shoulder) and he persuaded her to slide it across the leg. It worked.

He then wanted her to move her hand back to her hip so the conversation went like this :-

Main Man :- ok, now imagine your left hand moving back to your hip
kp (in totally serious voice) :- Imagine it or do it ?

Well, we were in stitches. Karen can be such a pedant. In no time she was laughing at herself which made us laugh more.

ANYWAY, she did it. It then got harder and she had to move it from her left knee to her right knee. She needed a bit of assistance at the elbow, but cracked it.

kp :- Well, I have never done that before.

I was all smiles and very proud. It’s something which sounds so simple to most of us, but for kp, it took SOOOOOOOOOOOO much concentration and she cracked it. Whilst all of this is going on, I can’t underestimate how much she has to look at her left arm/hand and will it to do what she wants.

But she gets there.

Some more leg work followed and then the finale which absolutely floored me. I was amazed, amazed ! I doubted (if I am honest) that she would be able to do it AT ALL, and certainly not so soon.

The main man got kp’s wheelchair and placed it in front of her with the handles facing her as if she was going to push it. She stood up (on her own), and step by step she pushed it forward. She had a physio either side of her for safety and to be fair they helped her left leg/foot along (which effectively she was trying to lift up like her right). But she was trying to get it to move along. Her right leg worked BEAUTIFULLY, JUST LIKE A NORMAL STEP ! Her left didn’t flow at all, and if it weren’t for the physios help in positioning it wouldn’t have supported her weight, but once they help with the fine tuning of its position, it could bear weight !!!

This is a photo took early on, before I got blown away by it all.

I was stunned, amazed, proud, smiling from ear to ear and mouthing to Karen words like “amazing, marvellous”.

She couldn’t have done it without the physios there, but she will in time, just like a week or so ago, she couldn’t stand without them there. It was such an achievement and it just seemed to carry on. I am being conservative when I say she did 12 steps !!! I am sure it was more, but at least 12. At the end of it, she sat in the wheelchair and the main man turned it round to show her how far she had come, probably about 10-12 feet. Very impressive.

On the way back from physio, I couldn’t help muttering to myself and kp

“That was amazing, amazing, incredible” etc etc……

“I thought that was about 3-4 weeks off.

kp phoned my dad which she invariably does when she has achieved something big and he was chuffed to bits.

Bit more fresh air followed, still lovely, and then we went back to the room just as Adele and Michelle arrived. They started doing girly talk so that was my queue to lay out my blanket and pillow and have 40 winks. After about 30 minutes, kp’s consultant came round on his rounds. I heard him and by the time he was in the room, I was halfway up from lying, basically kneeling on the blanket.

Consultant :- Oh sorry, are you praying ?

I may have been facing Mecca by accident, and the blanket probably did look like a prayer mat, but I can honestly say, prayer wasn’t on my mind.

We had a cracking 30 minutes with the consultant who said how well kp was doing and

Consultant :- “Medically, you don’t need to be in hospital any more”

Basically, we could do all the drugs she has at home, but all she was in hospital for now was the physio. Good to hear, although we felt this was the case, but its nice to hear it from the consultant.

The care kp gets in Ward 22 is awesome, and although we could possibly get by at home, it’s very reassuring to have so many skills so close at hand.

Jane and Ronnie had arrived whilst the consultant was in, and we joined them downstairs for tea/coffees. We were howling laughing at the conversations we were having, and it is so nice to see kp belly laughing again. It feels like she is back to her normal self. Long may it last.

That’s it for today.

They don’t come much better than the last couple of days, but if we get somewhere close to this, we will all be happy.