Physio today at 9.30am at Chester-le-Street hospital. This means an early rise for both kp and I. I was out with the dogs at 6.30am, and kp had to get up at 7.30am when homehelp lady #1 (HHL1) arrived. Time doesn’t start until 9am in kp’s book and even then that’s early, so 7.30am is EARLY (in capitals).

I braved the room before the home help lady. After 30 seconds, I was brave enough to put the light on and was greeted with this……….

Let’s take a vote………..Do you think she wanted to get out of bed ?

Well, she had to and that was that. I let HHL1 do the honours!

Physio today was good and concentrated on kp’s arm. The lady physio did some strength tests on her arm and then proceeded to see how much dexterity she has for practical jobs.

She asked kp to put some cones on top of each other………

kp needed help with this. Her left elbow tends to stick out more than it should, apparently because her muscles (in her left arm) have moved to a different position due to disuse.

She then tried kp on the sticks. Basically kp had to move a stick from one hole to another. She needed help with this also…..

It was clear kp’s shoulder was too stiff to achieve any of these tasks so she set away trying to find kp’s pressure points and exerting pressure on them to ease the stiffness. It seemed to work a treat. I saw kp’s shoulder go from really stiff (and raised higher than her right), to quite relaxed.

She showed me how to find these pressure points and how to release them a bit. So, that’s my homework for the week (once a day).

Finally, she got kp to try and grab some tiddlywinks between her thumb and finger. kp can do this if she gives the tiddlywink to her left hand from her right hand, but she tends to grip the tiddlywink lower down her forefinger than she normally would, but practice makes perfect.

Karen was given homework for the week and we have a visit next week by the Occupational Therapist (OT) to see how kp does at day to day tasks like ironing etc…

Physio is Friday next week (LATER IN THE DAY I AM PLEASED TO REPORT).

Physio over, we went to Lydia’s for some breakfast and to meet up with her Nan and boyfriend. That’s Lydia’s boyfriend and not her Nan’s. Her Nan is well past it (private joke).

Lydia has 2 of the most beautiful cat’s (Blynn and Persia). Peria is a black persian cat with ginger coloured eyes, and Blynn is another brand of cat (I forget), but is beautiful. I couldn’t take a photo of Persia ‘cos he was too fidgety, but here’s Blynn….

We enjoyed a cracking breakfast and kp braved Lyd’s bannister-less stairs to the loo, with me in front of her and Deborah behind her. She was a bit wary to say the least. Coming down, she was very scared, but again one in front and one behind and the odd “nearly fell”, she made it.

Straight home for a snooze. HHL#1 returned to do 90 mins of housework which was great.

That’s pretty much today.