kp got a bit of a shock this morning. She was expecting to get up at 9am (which is very early for kp) to be at Physio for 10.30am. Instead the lady arrived at 7.30am just as I was getting ready to walk the dogs.

I entered the bedroom with the care lady :-

dp:- Morning Love (fear in my voice). X is here.
kp:- Do I have to get up now ?
dp:- It would be a good idea love.(gently lullaby voice)

I faffed around for 2 minutes getting the dogs ready and checked in before I left the house. kp was still in bed with the care lady standing over her in the dark. I put the light on to speed things up and promptly left to take the dogs.

We stopped off at the tip to get rid of half of the rubbish from the homecoming on the way to Physio.

Chester-le-Street hospital seems very new and clean and our lady physio seemed very nice.

She did an assessment of kp today, seeing how strong each leg/arm was, but she started off asking Karen what did she want to be able to do.

Of course, I had to say the old “ironing” joke again. Noone ever laughs, but I can’t help myself.

She wants to be able to walk the dogs, make a cup of tea and be able to use her left arm more.

The lady explained that the walk may be a more long term goal given the strength of the dogs and the length of the walk, but it was certainly something to aim for.

She then tested her balance. It started off easy and progressively got harder………

Standing up for 2 mins (Fine, no problems)
Standing up for 2 mins with feet together (She made it but with a lot more concentration required and the odd “nearly lost it”)
Putting one feet on a step, bringing it down and then repeating with the other (8x) (Not a graceful movement, more a “do it quick before I fall over affair”, but she did it)
Putting one foot directly in front of the other foot and holding for a while and then repeating the other way round (couldn’t do this without cheating), but got some marks for initiative
Bending down to pick something off the floor (SO CLOSE, but so far. She got about as far as you see in this photo, but then the last bit was a grab. She tried this about 3x and didn’t manage it)

The finale and the hardest thing was for her to stand on one leg for a while and then try it with the other leg. (She couldn’t do this at all, but boy did she try !)

Physio over, we went to see kp’s workmates. They were on a “training day”, which means they don’t take blood, but instead sit around a table gossipping all day. I mean “reading SOP’s and talking about work”.

They were very pleased to see kp and there was the odd tear from some staff and I think even kp had 1 or 2 at one moment.

We stayed for about 45 minutes while kp caught up on all the work gossip. She really enjoyed seeing her workmates again.

Then shopping in Sainsburys before home for a hot chicken lunch and then bed for 2pm.

Snooze followed. I got up at 5.30pm and kp is still asleep. She gets tired so easily, but I suppose it is to be expected.

That’s it for today.

I’ll end with a couple of photos from the last day or so.

Here is kp snoozing whilst waiting for her eye appointment (last Friday)………..

Here is kp with part of Ethan’s birthday present on (Sunday)…………