kp took a sleeping tablet last night. After sleeping so long yesterday, she felt she wouldn’t sleep at all. She woke up saying how badly she had slept despite the Tamazepam.

Physio today, and the Home Help lady was running late, so I showered kp, got her dressed and her hair dried and styled. I don’t like the new style – it requires too much “hairdressing”. kp kept assuring me how easy it was, and kept putting her hand in her hair and “whisking the hair” to try and get some at the back to stand up. It didn’t work. Time meant we couldn’t try again.

Physio today involved working kp’s left arm and doing some walking skills.

The physio lady started working kp’s left arm. She is trying to get kp to extend her left arm without pushing her elbow in the air, which is her tendency at the moment. So, she got a beanbag on a table and kp had to move the beanbag up and down the table, without it going out of alignment. To aid this, she put a walking stick on the left hand side and kp wasn’t allowed to move the walking stick. It took quite a while for kp to crack this, and although she could do it by the end, it still required ALL her attention. One of the weirdest things (as an onlooker) as how totally focussed kp’s eyes are on the beanbag and her hand. She obviously doesn’t feel where her left arm/hand is going and so has to employ lots of eye/hand coordination to get it to work.

After she had done this successfully a couple of times, it was time for some walking skills. Before this, the physio tested the strength of kp’s hips. She got her to lie on her side and see how far she could raise each knee.

From this, the physio could tell kp’s left hip was substantially weakened from the stroke, but the right hip was worse, no doubt from the hip breakages/issues.

She went on to explain the importance of the hip muscles for walking. Weak hips basically mean that, every step, your hip can’t support itself and falls on the leg, meaning the next step is harder. This is how kp walks all the time and probably part of the reason for her being a slow walker.

In order for kp to walk more normally, the physio advised she is really going to have to do some hip exercises.

This over, she wanted to see how strong kp’s left (stroke side) knee was at standing between steps. So, she rolled kp’s trousers up past her knees and got kp to walk up the room. I would have loved to grab a photo of that, but the pair of them are basically ganging up against the photographer and stopping it happening

She looked like Andy Cap on the beach paddling.

Physio over, we were both longing to go to bed. Me, ‘cos I am feeling a bit “under the weather” at the moment (Sore Throat, arrrrrrrrrrrrr) and kp ‘cos of the bad sleep. So, with not wanting to waste any time on cooking, we got a chip butty on the way home, and then went to sleep for 3-4 horus. It was lovely. I was well gone, and woke up to find my mouth was open and that I had been dribbling all over the pillow. How lovely !

Time to get kp up now……….That’s it for today.