Done and dusted

Christmas done and dusted for another year. Through necessity it was the quietest I have ever experienced but all the better for it. This is now the blue print for festivities at home from now on.

I've found there are some compensations for my currently semi-mobile state. We went out as a family on the 23rd to get in a good supply of food. I came away thinking that the Christmas food shopping experience wasn't too bad really, while the other three family members looked thoroughly frazzled. This could be that it was simply more convenient for them to 'park' me over in a quiet space by the washing powder while they went forth to gather items on the shopping list. I found that I was there purely in an advisory capacity, which is very much more enjoyable than getting down and dirty in the annual tussle over the turkeys in aisle three.

Car parking is a dream now too. My newly arrived 'disabled' sticker means that we can park right close to the shops in American sized spaces meant for actual human beings (as opposed to munchkins). Readers here in the UK will be well familiar with the car park limbo one has to perform in this country. You spider your way in and out of the car, oozing through the 10 inch gap between vehicles to slink and slide your way around the car door.

Anyway...

'Getting washed and dressed - one handed as usual but today also having to work around cuff and tubing of BP monitor. Feeling stressed!'

Yes, I appreciate that this is a better way of monitoring blood pressure but despite what they say it does get uncomfortable permanently wearing all that gubbins and having that cuff squeezing relentlessly at your arm every half hour, morning, noon and night. At the end of it all I tell you felt a strong affinity with the Christmas turkey - well trussed up.

Still. It's done now.

To continue the trend of this entry to record events going backwards in time, I can also tell you about our abortive pre Christmas mini break away. The intention had been to go over, meet up with Tess and all do a few days shopping for gifts in Southampton. Unfortunately Lotti succumbed to flu on the very first day of travel and was so bad in fact that Alain and I were wondering whether we should call for the in-house doctor or even take her to the hospital. We couldn't possibly leave her alone in the hotel room so we decided that if she wasn't substantially better by the following morning it would be better for us all to get an early flight home. She wasn't and we did.

It wasn't the end of the world, just disappointing, and since Lotti took the best part of a week to feel anywhere back to normal it was just as well that we cut the whole thing short. From my point of view it was, at least, 24 hours away from the house and the travel was an adventure in itself.

I don't know what was happening at our local airport but there didn't seem to be a lift available to help me on and off the plane. Instead two lads (barely out of school uniform) lifted me up and down the plane's steps. I felt very vulnerable, wavering around in mid air, strapped to a chair and at the top of a flight of stairs. If one of them should have slipped...

Then of course there is the effect on the backs of those young men, one of whom, at least, was a prime candidate for a slipped disc.

Health wise:

A while ago I started on a regime of Omega 3 oils - shown in studies to 'feed' the nervous system and improve mental functions, both of which would obviously be of benefit to a stroke patient. I have just completed 3 months on high dosage (I will now slip back to a maintenance dose) and I do feel there has been a marked improvement. I find the repair and re-programming of my brain is akin to the development of a child, i.e. it seems to follow a pattern of plateaux and peaks. I have periods when I become extremely despondent because nothing seems to change but then I enter a phase of change where little functions return or improve. It's certainly my impression that since starting to take these oils the improvements have happened more regularly and seem more significant. Certainly, for me, I judge the Omega 3 fish oil experiment a success and I will continue to take them.

Well I've done my usual and I've tinkered around with this journal entry for a few days so that it's now actually early morning on 01.01.04. Time, I think, to actually post this to the web and so wrap up another year and begin a new one.

A happy and healthy new year to you all.