Tuesday, 23 June 2025. I finished my last article at a point where I was still at the breakfast table so we carry on from that same day for this post.
The big news is that I managed to walk with assistance from a zimmer frame and two physio assistants, almost the full length of the corridor. I quickly lost count and the two physios lost count but Miss Franny was watching and thought it close to 30 steps. Quite an achievement after my maiden voyage of 12 steps the other day.
The Day or Garden Room continues to be my favourite eating and resting and just sitting place. I sketched it over a couple of days and you can see the result here.
Usually the same group of us meet up here daily. At lunchtime others may join us. Miss Franny was once again here over lunch and was able to see me walk the corridor. Mind you, my leg was very painful once I got to bed and kept me awake until 2.00am. A nurse came then to turn me to avoid pressure sores and I was able to get some sleep.
Thursday, 25 June 2025. It's only 6.20am but my day started early as I felt the need for a bedpan and water bottle. The bottles here are very bulky, stubby things, made of the same sort of recycled card or paper as egg boxes from the grocer.
Trying to use one at the same time as being on a bedpan is fraught with difficulty and with some horror I felt the thing start to break down. Being short and stubby (the water bottle - don't let your imagination run riot...) means it's almost impossible to hang over the side of a bedpan - a disadvantage to anyone who does No.1 before No.2 starts - and I soon felt a warm and damp sensation where I would rather only feel the same whilst washing... Plus the bottle was quite heavy by this time, just my luck to have managed to sleep through... Luckily the need for the bedpan had translated into just wind. The pan had also broken under me, spilling the already spilled water onto the bed. A very young and attractive nurse made physical discomfort a slightly embarrassing one aswell...
Well the physios gave me a rest from walking yesterday. I spent most of it in the Day/Garden Room again. The usual gang joined me, including my lively 89 year old lady and others from her ward. Every week the wards are emptied of patients and given a 'deep clean' and it was their turn yesterday. Today I think we lose one out of the four in our ward as they are going home. That sounds such a wonderful prospect after almost seven weeks in hospital.
Friday, 26 June 2025. Friday comes around again. In here, or even at home once retired it's just another day. So what happened yesterday, I hear you say...
Well one of our four in the ward went home and the bed was full of someone else when I came back from the Garden Room. Today my little old lady goes home. She said she would miss us all. In here, especially in the Garden Room, where we sit with the same group of people, you do form attachments like people struggling through some form of challenge together.
I generally sit next to a chap in the early stages of Parkinsons so I can give help if he can't quite lift his hand to his mouth or to grab a tissue to mop up any dribble. He can only talk very quietly but yesterday after I had stopped a large dribble just before it reached his pyjama top I overheard him say to the others, "he's good isn't he?" So it's nice to know I'm appreciated.
Also yesterday the physios took me down to the gym. It's not a gym for pumping iron or anything like that. It holds a mock staircase of around three or four steps up leading to a half landing with a 90 degree turn to steps leading back down again.
I'm not ready for that yet. Instead I was directed on to a set of parallel bars. Now before you have visions of me swinging my legs about over the bars to do about face or other athletic moves, all they required was that I grip the bars and walk the three metres to the other end and back three times. I did it five times.
After the first they said I was walking with my left foot splayed out. Guilty m'lud... I think there must have been a bit of penguin in my far back ancestry... After the second they asked me to lift my feet more. So with thoughts of pedalling a bike in my head I set off again.
They made me sit down and rest after the third and asked how I was. I said I was ready to do more and did another two theres and backs before they stopped me, saying that was enough.
Then they had me stand at the side of the bars. I warned them I wasn't up to doing ballerina leg swings but the next exercise simply involved raising one knee for a count of five. Easy peasy.
Thanks go to old school chum Janet and hubby Graham for bringing Miss Franny down and back again. After a short chat they went into the town to look round the shops leaving Fran with me for an hour or so. Thanks also to ex-colleague Carolyn who came to see me last night and you will like this, Flower. Someone after you had gone asked if you were my daughter... Bloody cheek!
Every now and then my memory is not up to fine details and I was having so many MRI scans during my time in hospital that I'm not sure if this happened at Blackpool or the Lytham Respite Ward. I've had a bad back since my twenties and it flares up every now and then. A couple of days after an MRI scan on my spine a doctor came to see me and said "This wasn't caused by the fall - it's an chronic (meaning long-standing, not horrendously bad) injury, but you have some broken vertebrae in your back. Vertebrae 1 and 3 are broken and vertebrae 5 is close to slipping the disc." So great - here Quasimodo, have a hump to go with that funny eye...
