Not the best of weeks this week. Karen has been having what is probably best described as “flashbacks”. She gets stuck in a mindset where she can’t think about anything but the accident. She relives what little she can remember of the aftermath of the crash. With this comes a lot of upset and major distraction is needed to pull her out of it.

I think we had 2 episodes of flashbacks this week.

Wednesday saw the physio and OT (Occupational Therapist) visit this week. Karen had expressed an interest in getting into the bath on her own. We have a chair-lift, but kp even struggles to get over the sides of the bath, and the chair-lift leaves her quite a bit out of the water – not as nice as an experience by far. So, what we tend to do is I help kp into the bath, I stand in the bath with her and lower her down. We have it down to a tee and I feel it is pretty safe. The hard bit is lifting her from sitting to standing when she wants to get out.

Anyhow…..kp understandably doesn’t like to have to rely on my help and would sometimes like a bath in the day if her pain is bad – hence the physios came to offer their advice. So….

This was all done with no water in the bath, which is good because it is non-slip, but then you don’t have the benefit of the water taking some of the weight.

Step 1 was to get into the bath. They came up with a method to get her into the bath. It involved kp sitting on the side of the bath and leaning back so that she could get her legs over (one by one). It kinda worked after a few attempts.

Then she sat on the little side-seat (built-into the bath) – that was easy enough, and then she kinda slides herself over to the back of the bath and slides herself down. Works great in a dry bath (although not without difficulty).

At this stage, she is in the bath successfully. The tricky bit, of course, is getting her out of the bath.

They came up with a 2-step way of getting her up. The first step was to try and get her onto the half-way seat. With only one strong arm/hand, she found it extremely difficult and strenuous to get up to the half-way seat. So they aborted that and came up with the idea of sitting crunched up across the bath, so she could use her legs to help her to lift her bum on to the half-way seat. Well, what a struggle she had and she REALLY tried. In the end, the physio had to get hold of kp’s trousers and help her up. kp was out of breath by this time.

They tried it again, thinking it would be easier second time, but it wasn’t. So, they are going to get another little step that can go in the bath, that is halfway between the bottom of the bath and the half-way step. The idea being, that kp can grab this when she wants to get out and put it in the water and use it as a stepping-stone to the half-way seat.

We look forward to their next visit.

I went to work after their visit and came home to a kp in a LOT of pain. For ages, we have been just getting by on the morphine patches. She has avoided using the morphine tablets, but tonight she took 2 x 10mg, so bad was the pain. All the bath shenannigans obviously took their toll.

The following day she took 2 more !

By Friday, the pain had eased off I am pleased to report.

In fact, on friday, kp thought she would try the bath routine (just the easier getting-in bit). We couldn’t get her feet into the bath on her own, but she thought she would try the sitting in the half-way seat, and then the slide into the bath. Well, it was fun ! Rather than a nice steady slide  down the back of the bath on her bath, which is what we experienced when there was no water in the bath. It was more a steady slide until her bum touched the water and then Tsunami time !!  We had a giggle about that.

We got some bad news from my family this week. My dad had a mini-stroke. In typical dad-fashion, he drove to the hospital himself after having it, unable to open his left hand. They have told him to take things easy !!! So, DAD !!!!!! No more having the kids at a weekend, no more working those long hours. A few more holidays a year (if that’s possible)

On Friday, we were supposed to have our nephew (Ethan) stay for the night and take him to Toys’r'us on the Saturday, but in the end his mum said he had to go to his Nana’s. We tried to ring him at his Nana’s, but she said he wasn’t there. So, that was a bit strange.

We had a nice day yesterday. (Saturday). Marie brought Abbie and Louisa up and we had refreshments and lots of fun.

Today, when kp gets up (about 1pm hopefully as she is still not sleeping right), we will be walking the dogs and jobbing on.

This coming week, the only appointment we have is the Dentist – 2 fillings for me, and kp getting a clean and polish. I think that’s thursday. Quite a busy week for kp, with Angela coming on monday, Adele on tues/wed and friday and Helen on Thursday, so that should do her the world of good.