David Gillon

The situation with my father seems to have calmed down somewhat, with the rehab unit admitting he's gone far beyond where they were predicting - the latest I heard was he's progressed to walking up and down the corridor, with one physio helping his leg along and another following with wheelchair. But there's still the problem that they may push him out of the unit at some point in the near future, which is putting my sister under a lot of stress in trying to identify a suitable nursing home that we could access quickly, and not helped by individual members of the unit staff being complete arseholes to her. (Difficult to think of another term for someone who says 'there are people waiting for his bed you know', or 'my staff are scared to talk to you' when she's never said anything to the junior staff). Plus there's the finance side of things, complicated by it not being clear whether he's sufficiently well enough we can get away with a power of attorney, or whether we need to go through the Court of Protection. I had a very useful chat with a fellow bendy friend whose family has been through similar and, even though we could probably do the Lasting Power of Attorney stuff ourselves, that confirmed for me that we really should go through a solicitor because of the potential Court of Protection angle - doing CofP ourselves would cost a minimum of £500 just to submit the paperwork, and possibly well over £1000 if they decide a hearing is required, so it's worth getting the professional input/advice to get it right first time

I had to talk myself out of jumping on a train north on Tuesday, and went and booked myself a doctor's appointment instead. I'm going to be no help if I'm out of play from my own health issues. I've pretty much concluded the ongoing shoulder issues are a torn rotator cuff, which my bendy friend tells me is a bendy rite of passage - yeah, right, one I could do without, thank you very much! But she's right in saying I need to see about getting it treated, and to arrange things so that it isn't under the stress of me using crutches all the time - which is why I booked a double appointment with the GP so I can say 'shoulder's buggered, 1) I need it fixed, 2) I need a wheelchair so I have options, so 3) we need another try at a wheelchair assessment'.

And just to make everything even more perfect, I triggered a major backache while talking to my bendy friend on the phone - sat for too long, so, while the pain is now gone, I've had about 5 hours of sleep since Tuesday, and my body is at the 'why is the world spinning, make it stop!' stage of exhaustion. So I think I'm going to go and send off the short story I've been working on, and then I'm going to try and have a snooze.

And the way life's going at the minute. I'll no sooner get to sleep then the phone will go with {heavy foreign accent}'Hello, this is help department of Microsoft, there is problem with your computer and we need you to....'{/heavy foreign accent}

Had my mother on, apparently my dad had a good day at physio, a useful session with the speech therapy people, and has now been cleared to drink unthickened liquids and eat soft (as opposed to pureed) foods. Meanwhile my sister has been in touch with the Stroke Association and one of their specialist nurses will meet with them on Wednesday before going into the 'family meeting' with the doctors with them.

I call that a good day :)

Writing family trauma stuff to wrap brain around it.

( The messy details... )

I'm headed up to my folks in south west Durham tomorrow (Thursday) for a couple of weeks, which is something of an internet dead zone, so any chance I get to get online is likely to be intermittent and probably not conducive to DWing. So if I go suddenly silent that's from stepping back out of the 21stC, not anything dire.

Plans while I'm up there:
Sleeeeppp!
Celebrate my birthday with family
Sit down for some serious editing work on my work-in-progress urban fantasy, which needs to lose around a third of its wordcount.
Catch up on some of the books sitting waiting to be read on my kindle

Hopefully to be avoided:
Family, especially sister dearest, pitching a paddy over my asking for a referral to wheelchair services.