One of those days where things just seemed to go wrong for me. But kp is fine. My bad day was due to tiredness.

Got up with the dogs at 3.33am. Couldn’t get back to sleep until about 6.30am, was up at 7.30am.

Went to the post office, stood in a long queue, to finally get to the counter and find out that the parcel I was there to collect had been delivered to our neighbours. Pollards don’t like queues.

Arrived with 5 minutes to spare before physio at the hospital. kp wanted the loo before physio – in moving things out of the path of the wheelchair, a 1-inch hole (designer hole, I thought of it as) in my jeans caught on the wheelchair and I went flying on to Karen’s bed. The 1-inch designer hole was now a less than trendy 2-inch rip.

Karen thought it very funny. Ha Bloody Ha !

Physio today was leg strengthening to start with, but with a twist. The main man must have been thinking kp has been taking everything he throws at her with a pinch of salt, so he upped the ante. He got her to put her right knee on the bench, which puts more weight on her weaker left leg. She then had to lift her right leg off the bench and move it, putting ALL her weight on her left leg. She did this a couple of times, and the “Owwww”s got louder and louder and then with a final “OWWWWWWW!”, she collapsed in a heap on to the main man’s knee. She looked like a ventriloquist dummy for the main man.

He got her to do a few more of these before she did a walk up the corridor.

Physio over, we were “Go for Home Visit”.

All we needed was drugs and lots of them – typical Saturday night

We needed the Fentanyl Patch, so had to wait a few moments for it to be prescribed. It was lunchtime on the ward, and to save the nurses some time (at this very busy time for them), I offered to go and get the patch from the phamarcy. It’s right at the other end of the hospital, so I bundled up kp in the car, and we packed for our home visit and I drove round to the pharmacy. I left kp in the car and nipped in. I ended up waiting 15 minutes to be told “We can’t give this kind of prescription (morphine patient) directly to a patient. “You’ll have to go back to the ward to pick it up there. We’ll ring them when its ready”

So, we drove back to the ward, and went through the pallover of getting the wheelchair out of the car, packing kp up with all the rucksacks etc and taking the lift to the ward. I was a walking zombie at this time.

We had some tea and scones to pass the time and after about an hour, it had arrived.

I was gagging for a lie-down by this time.

We went home and pretty much went straight to bed. After about 90 mins, kp woke me up for the loo. We tried to get back to sleep, but by then it was too late.

She then wanted to try on all her trousers and shirts (well, it felt like all, it was actually only 2 pairs of trousers and 1 blouse) to find out which fitted ready for our meal with ace neighbours (Tommy and Eileen) tonight. After the second pair of trousers and before the blouse, I tripped on the blasted wheelchair again and the 2-inch rip, became a 4-inch (chuck them in the bin) tear.

That pretty much sums up the day for me. We are going out for a meal in less than hour and I am sure we will enjoy it.

Fingers crossed, the weekend picks up

Well, we have just been out for a lovely meal with Tommy and Eileen. Thanks T+E !

It wasn’t without incident of course. After a half lager shandy, kp needed to go to the loo.

We rushed off to the loo to find only a men’s and women’s, but no disabled. Do you go in the men’s ? Or the ladies ?

Well, it had to be the ladies of course, so I pushed kp in whilst walking a bit camp (so as not to look out of place) and unfortunately, there wasn’t room for a wheelchair in the cubicle, so she had to walk the remaining steps to the loo.

Once in the confined cubicle space, she had to turn around with me for assistance. Well, neither of us know what happened but kp launched herself towards the loo window, collapsing as she did so. I launched at kp with my body weight (all 9 stone) and managed to counteract her weight heading to the window, the result of which was she landed perfectly positioned on the loo seat. kp was in stitches of laughter and so was I.

If anyone would have walked in, they would have wondered what the hell was going on. They would have seen a wheelchair parked up at a cubicle door with 2 people tittering away behind it.

Relief was imminent and we returned to join T+E moments later, before having to make a return journey half way through kp’s second half of lager shandy. This time was a bit more professional.

We had a thoroughly enjoyable evening. I am dreading tonight especially the moment where she wakes me up to go to the loo when I am fast asleep. That’s torture for me. But she’s worth it.