The day before the operation !

kp was very anxious today and we could all tell. Bordering on silent for a lot of the day.

This morning, we went to physio. I was asked to attend this week (for the past few weeks I have been going to Sainsbury’s shopping) as the physio wanted to show me a couple of checks to ensure kp was exercising the right muscles.

Today, kp started off by demonstrating her “sitting on the floor” maneuvre. It takes a while, but she doesn’t have to think about it as much as previous days.

That complete, it was time to use some of the gym equipment. She started off by standing on an air cushion – very unsteady to stand on, the idea being it takes all kp’s skills to maintain balance, hence improving it. From this she moved on to the wobble board.

She was supposed to try and just stand there, keeping her balance with no hands on, but her hands touched quite a lot. With the balancing over, she then had to make all the edge of the wobble board touch the floor smoothly. She did it, but not smoothly. (see video (link later))

With this over, she went on to the exercise bike. She did this very well – the trickiest thing being mounting it.

And then it was the treadmill. She loved this. And managed a top speed of 2.4km/h. It was great to see her really enjoying it. The physio let her dictate the speed and asked her to remove her hands from the rails and I managed to get a few seconds of Karen on the treadmill on my phone’s video function. Unfortunately, I had forgot to set the quality settings, so it isn’t brilliant.

The funniest moment is when the machine does an emergency stop. You’ll notice Karen has a belt on and there is a white piece of string going to the machine. When she gets too far from the front of the machine, it pulls the emergency switch and stops immediately. She is so close to pulling it out for so long, I was wishing her to speed up, but at the same time wanted the machine to do a quick stop

Here is the video – CLICK HERE

kp has been without her Fentanyl Patches since this morning. This is needed so as the morphine from the patch doesn’t interfere with the morphine she will be given during the op. Last time she mixed the two, she had really bad halluncinatory effects. She was already feeling a bit less fluid and achy at lunchtime, so I hope all her exercise at the physio session doesn’t have any effects before the op.
We went to BHS on the way home to get some hospital night wear that wouldn’t put too much pressure on her belly.

Once home, Marie had arrived and we had a cup of tea with Marie and Marge. Marge had offered to stay tonight as well, but kp just wanted to be on her own and felt really guilty for having to say as much. Marge understood.

Marie and Marge could tell kp was not on top form. She was very subdued ALL afternoon and ended up joining me for a 2 hour snooze. She just wants the “damn thing” over.

Thanks for all the phonecalls and good wishes we have received all ready. Fingers crossed for tomorrow. It’ll all be over before we know it.