Pain remains an issue. We are still doing patches every 2 days.

Tuesday saw us go to rehab uk for a tour and an assessment. But it seems Karen had an eventful day before she even got there. It was disaster after disaster. She got up, had a shower, but couldn’t turn the shower fully off. She has a bit of gip with her right thumb and can’t seem to grip things too well. So, whilst she was getting changed, the drip drip drip of the shower was getting on her nerves. She couldn’t get her socks on, frustration was building, she couldn’t get her bra on, frustration was continuing to build.

She was running out of time before the taxi came. She had to forget her bra and put it into her handbag so I could do it when she got to Rehab UK. She tried to get her orange jumper on, but just couldn’t work out how to get into it. If an arm is inside out, she can’t work out orientation and how to fix it. She thought she had cracked it, and tried to get it on, but got stuck. She tried and tried to get the jumper off to start again. She said she was nearly in tears with the frustration. In the end, she realised she was going to get out of the jumper and had to cut herself out with scissors

Here is the remnants of the jumper….

When I said “Marie will be able to sew that back together”, Karen was NOT impressed.

So, not a good start to the day.

She forgot the money for the taxi, but thankfully, I just had enough when I met her there.

She was gagging for a fag by this time, but because she was late, we had to go straight in. Poor kp.

Anyway, we had a guided tour of rehab uk. They offer 2 programmes …..

• Vocational
• Community

The Vocational (or VOX as it was referred to) programme was for people who were looking to get back to paid work.

The Community programme is for people who want to reintegrate back into society more.

Following the tour, we spent an hour with the Clinical Psychologist (CP) who assessed Karen. It was quite a deep assessment, covering everything from

• the accident
• her schooling
• her work career
• her aptitudes
• her likes/dislikes
• her skills
• etc…
• etc.

Karen really struggled to take in all the information from the tour, and I think the assessment was one step too far. The end result was that the CP didn’t believe that the VOX course was right for Karen. Karen kinda knew this anyway. The community programme does things like show you how to take public transport, work your washing machine, manage your finances and Karen doesn’t really need those services, so really, for now, there is nothing Rehab UK can offer Karen.

That may change of course. If Karen wanted to do some voluntary work, Rehab UK would go into the prospective workplace and educate the staff there on Karen’s difficulties before she went to the workplace, so they didn’t think she was being lazy or “sleeping on the job”.

That’s it for this week so far…..