All the following bits in quotes are Karen’s own words.

Sleepwise – “Still really good”, “odd naff ones”
Pain – “Fine”
Mood – “Fine”

The big problem at the moment is “Sweats”. Some of the drugs (2 of them I think) make Karen sweat no matter if she is hot or cold. And she (understandably) hates them. Especially the cold sweats.

Every night, she has to get up at least twice (sometimes more (3x last night)), to change her pyjama top ‘cos they are wringing wet through.

But, it’s not affecting her mood which is great. It really feels like kp is back in the house.

So, uneventful week really. All the treatments are on hold for the Xmas break. I took Karen to get her nails done on Tuesday. Occasionally, she has this problem in her groin area, which affects her walking. She is back to a hobbling pace. And wednesday (after the night’s sleep), she woke up with this groin problem. It meant she had to use the walking stick around the house. That lasted until Saturday morning. Thankfully, it was better in time for the dog walks over the weekend. We both really enjoyed them. And to top off a cracking weekend, she took one of the dogs around to the local shop, all on her lonesome, and really enjoyed it. She had to post some letters, hence the trip.

So, quite a relaxing week. We have tried to plan some holidays for the first 6 months of the year to give kp something to look forward. So far, we have got…..

January – Maffeys in Southampton (booked)
February – “Go somewhere hot”, we haven’t worked out where yet
March – dp to go diving, kp to maybe go somewhere with the girls
April – Nowt planned
May – Spain (booked)
June – Nowt planned

So, not a bad start to the Year.

Veronica (good friend of ours from the Big Smoke) forwarded me on an email that she had received from someone called Timothy Mason. Timothy had 2 major strokes when he was 43, taking away his ability to walk and speak. He has written a book about how this changed his life, and it’s available from Amazon (“The Best That I Can Be” by Timothy John Mason). I bought it and read it, hoping to find out how Tim “came to terms with” a significantly different life to the one he had before. The idea being his secret may help Karen. Well, I have read the book and it’s a very good read, and it has helped me, and I think it will help Karen too, so although she has had snippets read to her, she is going to try and read it herself. Fingers crossed.

To end on a positive and a funny, Karen received an application form for a volunteer position at the Stroke Association. Syd encouraged Karen to apply for it on the basis that nothing’s lost, so she did that this week. I hardly helped fill it in at all, it’s mostly Karen’s work.

But, I had to intervene when she nearly ticked the wrong box on the “Equal Opportunities” employment questionnaire. Basically, this is an extra added sheet that you get with job applications nowadays so that they can prove they are an equal opportunity employer. It asks you things like “What is your Ethnic Origin ?”, “Sexual Orientation” etc etc…

Well, Karen was filling it in and she was reading the “What is your sexual orientation ?” bit, and the options were something like…..

A-Don’t want to disclose
B-Gay
C-HeteroSexual
D-Lesbian

But Karen had a problem lining up the words with the box, and I can now officially let everyone know that Karen is a Lesbian.

Here is an excerpt of Karen’s sleep last night. She was talking for 1 minute 30 seconds and not really making much sense.

ClickHere