Apologies for a lack of a blog entry. It’s been a busy 2 weeks with one thing and another. The main reason for no blog entry was that we have been away to Spain for 9 days.

So, back to the week before we went to Spain.

Monday – We had recently seen a consultant anaesthetist about kp’s medication. He felt the medication kp was on was correct, but we should have a go at reducing the level of medication. He’s the chap who said that the purpose of pain medication (in case like Karen’s) isn’t to reduce pain, but to “maintain function”. In other words, there is a balancing act between keeping some pain, but getting back some benefits from reduced side effects.

The key to the reduction is very slow and steady. So, we took the morphine patches down from 600 to 575 on monday. At first, we thought there was no noticeable change, but towards the end of the week, we were less sure, but kp has persevered.

On the monday afternoon, Rachel (OT) came and did an assessment of kp to see how well she is doing. She asked kp to cook her beans on toast and a fruit salad, which kp did, we thought, without incident. A later report revealed that she hadn’t done quite as well as she thought she had, but still pretty ok !

Tuesday and we went to see Mr Scott at Durham Hospital (Dryburn). This was the annual hip and pelvis check-up. All looked ok from their perspective. Mr Scott remarked that one of the screws linking kp’s pelvis to the bar that holds it in place had broke (and he pointed it out on the x-ray), but that it was nothing to worry about, because there are about 10 of them.

Same time next year for another review.

Wednesday and Prof Barnes (a consultant neurologist) attended kp at the house. This was with a view to a follow-up medico-legal examination that he had done about a year ago. Nice chap, making kp feel very at ease.

On the night-time, Jane (Burns) came over and there was lots of laughing, something that follows Jane wherever she goes.

The following day, Jane was going to take Karen to Boundary Mills shopping centre, but unfortunately, kp had had a bad night’s sleep and didn’t wake up until 2pm ! Jane had waited until about 11am but had decided to let sleeping dogs lie

Knowing I was finishing my job with my current company, we had took the opportunity to book a last minute holiday in Spain. 9 days. We flew out early Saturday morning and arrived to a squeltering hot Spain.

The holiday was sooooooooooo relaxed. We were staying at mum and dad’s villa in Torrevieja. I can’t even recall what day we did what, but here’s pretty much what we got up to.

Eat
Sleep
Pool
Fag
Pool
Sit
Talk
Sleep
Play “Risk” until 3am

Repeat all holiday

Actually, that’s not fair.

We got quite a lot done as well. We went on numerous days out. One day we explored the mountains North-West of Murcia. We got out of the car at a spot in the middle of nowhere with beautiful views and could hear nothing but crickets and they were deafening.

Another day (and probably our best day), we explored mountains north of Benidorm and we thought the first trip out was great – we were overawed by the beauty of places like Relleu. Incredible – beautiful views, lovely peace and quite. Awesome !

In all, it was one of the best holidays we had been on for relaxtion, dp+kp time etc etc…..

Unfortunately, it all went a bit sour at the end with lots of tears and hysteria. To say kp doesn’t like cockroaches is a little on the mild side. She really detests the little bastards. On the penultimate night, there was a power cut to the whole street. We hadn’t seen a single cockroach all holiday in the villa, but the power cut got kp so on edge, we had to book into a hotel for the night (144 euros). The following night, we were wide awake playing risk at 1am in the morning and kp went in to get a drink and saw a little baby cockroach on the wall INSIDE the villa, well, she freaked.

Another night in the hotel ensued. I maintained an eery calm despite being none too pleased at the upheaval. Thankfully, I hadn’t drunk too much to drive.

Noone likes cockroaches (well, noone I know), but kp REALLY can’t stand them.

But, despite these last couple of days, we had a really good time !

Two complaints

1. Cockroaches (obviously)
2. The Heat (it was just too hot). 35′C+ on a couple of days.

Here are some photos………..

And the obligatory pier walk photo…..

Busy week coming up. Jane and Ronnie are visiting all week, and lots of appointments in there as well.