A cracking week this week, but not without tears.

I tentatively went back to work this week. It wasn’t without the odd trip to the smallest room in the building whilst holding everything in. Happy days.

I had asked my boss to keep me on light duties as I still felt very weak, but by Wednesday I was cooking on gas.

Work is a great tonic to take your mind off things and I feel sure I got better quicker because of it. I am now back to 100%. I do think Karen would benefit from something to keep HER mind occupied. We are a step closer this week to getting that.

So, what’s happened…..Well….For quite a while, we have been getting very frustrated with our solicitor. He has been uncommunicative on a big scale. I chased a couple of things this week and he said he had already informed us of these things. Well, I knew we had had no letter. I double-checked my email and there was nothing. I asked him how he had communicated these things, and I had no reply. Final Straw in my book.

So, we found a local solicitor who specialises in Brain Injuries and appointed her. She visited the same day we rang her on a night time (in her own time). On the first day alone, we had 2 emails from her !! The day after she came, we had a letter, so it looks very promising. This might seem a petty thing to blog readers, but I can’t emphasise enough how stressed we were both getting with our old solicitor. AND….to add insult to injury, he wanted payment as we went along, whereas the new one, doesn’t require any payment as we go along.

One of the frustrations we had was that we had found out about people called Case Managers. They sounded like the answer to all of our problems, namely, someone who specifically looks at Karen’s needs to get her better, and coordinates all the parties to achieve this. It must be about 4 months ago (if not longer) that we told the solicitor about this. We had stressed how important this was etc etc…… 4 months is too long !

Anyway, one day this week, Syd (the case manager) came for his first proper visit (he had been before the hols to introduce himself to Karen), but this was the real thing. I took the morning off work.

He was here nearly 4 hours wanting to know all about kp from birth to present day and how her accident has changed her life. He had asked Karen to compile a list of all the goals she would like to achieve. Blimey, she did a cracking job. There must have been about 20. Some more achievable than others, but Syd discounted none of them.

He had also asked her to complete a diary of what her days consist of. They were quite skewed for the first week, as I was rough-as-a-dog and throwing kp out of routine, but the second week (this week), was more accurate.

We could tell Syd was quite taken aback at how little kp has going on in her life and how bad her sleeping patterns were.

But, the good news is that he is going to compile a report summarising the state of affairs and recommending to the solicitor what courses of action need to happen.

Both Karen and I were over the moon after his visit. To end a cracking day, the solicitor visited on the nighttime (as discussed previously) and it felt like everything had come right all on the same day !

On that night, Karen woke up at about 2am, and was very upset. We got up and went outside for a fag. She was upset, because I think she realises there is going to be a lot more hard work required from her to get to the next stage of “better”. She also felt that Syd may feel she has been slacking recently. I tried to reassure her that Syd himself had said that in 9 cases out of 10, motivation is one of the key things affected by a brain injury. Anyway, she felt a lot better after I reassured her that the biggest fight is over, and that she will enjoy the next bit and that Syd doesn’t feel she has been slacking !!

So, all is good in the Pollard Hood. Well, apart from the damn fireworks going off. The dogs are petrified. We were hoping to get together with Dave and Helen (from the Egypt holiday), but we couldn’t leave the dogs, and I expect they couldn’t leave their cats, so it will have to be another week.