The solution?

18 Aug, 2003

I'm nervous about voicing this opinion in case I'm thrown suddenly back to square one but I do believe things are starting to look better around here lately. I've stopped taking the painkillers I was prescribed which were having no effect at all other than to make me feel pretty poorly. Instead I followed the advice of my old French great grandmother - when in pain work through it. She apparently suffered very badly with crippling arthritis and on the days when it troubled her the most she would get out the old tin bath and washboard and vigorously scrub her way through mountains of family washing. I figured I had nothing to lose by working on the theory that my pains could simply be associated with the lack of movement in my right arm. Now when my arm hurts I take it as a signal that I need to exercise it. It's initially very painful but the more I move it the more I ease the discomfort. I very much hope that I have found the answer that the medics were unable to provide.

As a result of this my nights have improved a little and as a knock-on effect of this I am in a more positive frame of mind. What has also helped was the fact that I cancelled all my appointments to give me a straight run of a couple of weeks with no medics visiting the house. Sally (physio) did suggest this some time ago and I think she was right - sometimes it's just nice to have a break to claim back your life and to effectively re-group.

So there we are. I'm touching wood as I say this but I think these terrible pains are abating a little and so allowing me to finally focus again on recovery. What a difference a week can make.

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Here's an interesting little thing I've discovered since I had my stroke which might be of interest to my lady readers...

I can unequivocally confirm that skin care products do make a radical difference to the skin. I have always used a face cleanser and toner followed by fairly cheap moisturiser on my skin. On the day I had my stroke I had actually treated myself to a selection expensive skin care products. Obviously our attention was diverted away from my shopping for the first week or so of my hospital stay and skin care was reduced to a bare minimum of mild soap and water with no moisturiser. I quickly noticed a change as my usually good skin rapidly became very dull and dry. In order to boost my spirits I asked Alain to bring in some of my newly acquired goodies. What a spectacular difference they made and in a relatively short time, in fact the difference was noticeable enough for several of the nurses to have spotted the change and so come and have a nosy and a little test from my pots of this and that. Of even more significance to me was that my skin went from poor to better than pre-stroke, meaning that the expensive preparations were having a marked effect. Needless to say, I am sticking with the new regime.

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It was Tess' 19th birthday on Saturday and now that I'm a bit stronger I thought it a good occasion to try my hand at some simple cookery, namely a Victoria sponge cake. Lotti helped me in the kitchen and, if I'm being honest, did the lion's share of the work but it was nonetheless a valuable exercise on my part. I did a good one-handed job of greasing and flouring the two sandwich tins, found a way to raise and lower the Kitchen Aid mixer (for future reference when I attempt cooking alone), and managed to tackle the washing up. Apart from the valuable occupational therapy involved in making and baking it was also interesting to find that Lotti and I managed to work together without the usual mother/daughter banter. Lotti and I are very similar in personality and so close co-operation on things like this has in the past led to friendly rivalry which I know sometimes makes Alain and Tess feel a little uncomfortable because, to them, it sounds dangerously close to sniping. ...Hee hee, oh what fun we have .

Oh, the cake was delicious by the way.

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20th August:

My 'In' box is flooded this morning with the latest 'Sobig' virus. I presume this means that someone who knows me out there has opened a piece of unsolicited mail. Oh dear, big mistake.

All of the infected mail arriving on my machine will receive my usual treatment, i.e. it will be dumped without opening - the same fate that befalls all junk mail arriving in this house. This is a useful little lesson that I picked up from Winston Churchill (not personally you understand, I mean by reading about him!). He used to immediately 'post' all unsolicited mail in the dustbin, on the premise that if it is really important then the sender will write again. We have found this system to work very well.