Bad week.

Not pain-wise, that was generally under control. But mood-wise.

The DVLA have asked that kp attend a Visual Field Test. This was on the same day as her physio. Unfortunately, I hadn’t been involved in the planning of it (my fault) and the day was a complete mess. kp had arranged the taxi to/from the physio session. There was an hour between the physio end and the start of the eye test. kp should have gone direct from one to the other, but didn’t.

We have a lovely taxi driver based in Esh Winning (Alan) that takes Karen on all her trips, but he can’t do school home time, which coincided with the time she needed picking up from the Eye test. So, the order of the day was the taxi took her to the Physio session, brought her back home. Alan was ready for her and rushed her straight to the eye test. Bit too rushed for kp. So, she’s starting to get a bit flustered.

The eye test itself was a bit of a disaster. Basically, they wanted to see what peripheral vision she has. She has been generally very tired this week, and add the flusteredness in and she was all over the place in the test. They shine little spots of light at the edge of your eyesight and she has to push a button when she sees one. The optician failed her on the test because there were too many false positives. She was trigger happy with the button when there was no light there.

So, she explained her tiredness and they have rescheduled for the monday.

So, even more flustered now, she had to navigate herself through Durham to the taxi rank. Which took all kp’s mental and physical energy. When she got to the taxi rank, she started to get in the taxi and the taxi driver (let’s call him Mr Knobhead from now on) wouldn’t let her sit in the front seat. kp doesn’t like to do back-seat since the accident, but she was too tired/flustered to explain, so she got in the back seat, but the taxi driver was tutting at the speed she was taking to get in. When she got in, he drove off without waiting for her to get her seat belt on.

When they got home, he wanted to drop her off at the end of the drive (well, it’s probably 40 yards long). Karen asked him to drive to the end, which Mr Knobhead tutted at, and he drove her a bit further along the drive, but not close enough. She asked for a receipt, and he virtually threw it at her.

So, not a pleasant experience.

I blame myself for the day, as I hadn’t been involved in the organisation, which normally I would.

Friday, in hindsight, we made another cockup.

It was a 12.30pm appointment for a medical-legal report with a consultant at the neurorehab centre in Newcastle. It was supposed to take an hour, so I thought I would meet her there (from work) and return (to work) after the appointment. Sounded great (in theory)

It was the worst rain of the summer so far. (irrelevant, but it will help kp remember it in a year’s time).

We were there on time and the consultant saw us. With the exception of a small physical examination of hands/arms/legs at the end, it was just loads of questions about how the stroke affects her day to day life. He covered everything possible (that we could think of).

Some interesting things came out of it though, which hadn’t dawned on us.

kp has occasional problems swallowing. We just thought it was a “reduced sensation” thing. It turns out the problem is not related to that, but to the trouble kp has with 3D stuff, When she has a mouthful of food and it’s all chewed up ready to swallow, she can’t work out how to get her tongue to get it to the back of the throat. Very interesting.

The consultant did a test which kp has had done before. It’s the one where he touches one of her knees and she has to tell which knee he is touching. She can do this fine as long as he doesn’t touch both knees at the same time. If he does this, kp only feels the right and this is because of the neglect about things on the left hand side. He then said, in bad cases, people only eat the food on one side of the plate. I remembered back to the time when kp did this. She has come so far.

Now, unfortunately, he went on to say a real life example of where this could be an issue. He brought up the driving issue. He gave the example along the lines of if Karen was driving along and a person walked out from the right hand side of the road, at the same time as someone walked out from the left, she would only see the one on the right. kp understood the implications of this, and I could see it being stored on her back burner.

This was also the opportunity for kp to ask some questions, which she did.

The whole thing (For kp) was a reaffirmation that her brain is damaged, that it won’t heal, and there may be still some recovery but not much until the end of the second year (April 2008). There were other points made, which I could tell kp was thinking about.

The appointment was supposed to be an hour but it was about 90 mins. About 15 minutes from the end, she got upset, very upset. She told the chap she was ashamed of how slow her brain worked, what she couldn’t do etc……He explained it was understandable, but it was not her fault etc etc…..

But, as we walked away from the appointment, she cried all the way to the taxi. She (and I) were wishing that we hadn’t come our separate ways.  I rang work and said I wouldn’t be coming back, and kp went home with Alan.

Lots of talking for the afternoon, and yesterday and today (Sunday), she is still thinking and talking about what has been said.

So, not the best of weeks, another busy week coming up, but this time we will plan better.

Monday – dentist / eye test (Karen’s dads’ funeral, but I don’t think she is going)
Tuesday – Zimmer and Crutches are being picked up, Physio and appointment with a neuro consultant (dp attending)
Rest of the week is quieter.