No news is good news?

So, the FIL continues to hang on in there. Yesterday he started to take a few breaths on his own so things are looking up a bit and we all stopped holding our breath with him....It's still very early days but we just still have to wait, be patient (not my strongest point) and see how it all goes.

Back from our hols

So, hubby and I are back from our hols. We had a week in a cottage in Cornwall and took the cats with us. Yes, I know that this may sound odd to some of you, but they travel well and I’m sure they prefer a two bed cottage to run around in to a 6ft by 4ft space in a cattery (which they’d have to share). Anyway, when we got there ‘Grace’ was straight out of the basket and tail up went running round and round the cottage investigating every little nook and cranny. ‘Clumsy’ was a bit slower to follow but settled in well.

The weather was truly kind to us (especially since I am now typing this with the rain lashing down outside and we got to see all the things that we wanted to see. For those who have the chance, the Lost Gardens of Heligan and the Eden Project are really well worth a visit in my opinion^*1. We also explored endless pretty little fishing villages (doesn’t everyone who visits Cornwall), ate Cornish cream teas and Cornish pasties and sampled lots of the local ales. It was just the thing for a nice relaxing break.

Sadly, our week was cut short as we had to return home in an emergency. The FIL had some problems with his heart and was rushed into hospital. After a few days of things getting worse, he ended having an emergency quadruple bypass on the Friday afternoon and has been in intensive care ever since. He’s nearly 80 so it’s all very worrying and we are at the stage of keeping our fingers, toes and everything crossed and hoping for the best. If my blogging is a bit irregular over the next week or so that’ll be the reason why, so bear with us all and hold your breath with us please….


^*1Both also have pretty good wheelchair access (if you need it) but take my advice and make sure you have either a power trike or a helper….some of those slopes are wicked! Oh yes, and don’t use slick tyres – they are apt to just slide straight down the hill even when your wheels aren’t going round (….you had to be there to appreciate it!!!)

Away again (but holidays this time!)

Just to let you all know that I am going away for a few days so there’ll be no blogging for a bit. Don’t worry…..I’ll be back!

Hey, these things have wheels….

So, we were at the airport on our way home and needed to get a courtesy bus to get us back to the car park and our cars. I was with the SPF and the BMB and they had all our stuff between them on two trolleys because I was in my wheelchair. This is something that is really necessary at airports as its just miles between point a and point b…anyway, really speaking we weren’t in the airport any longer, but I was still in my ‘chair’ so that’s the way it was.

The bus arrived and the BMB started to load stuff into the back. It was not long before he started to wrestle with a particularly troublesome load (probably mine!) and the SPF rushed forward to help him (abandoning her trolley in the process). Now you are probably aware that these airport trolleys have an automatic braking system and that unless you pull up on the handle they won’t go anywhere. Well, the one on the SPF’s trolley was broken….and we were on a slope. I made a wild grab for the trolley and at this point realised two things:

1. I was in a wheelchair (with wheels) and
2. I didn’t have the brakes on.

It was just at the point that the trolley started to gather pace, that I realised that

1. I was in a predicament and
2. I was heading for the railings.

At this point I let go the trolley with one hand and tried to brake with the other and my frenzied squeaking alerted the SPF to the fact that something was wrong. She caught up with me (and the trolley) and we slithered to a halt – predicament averted!

I did learn that you cannot stop one moving object on wheels with another similar object when there is no braking system involved…….so something positive came out of it! ^*1

^*1SPF, please take note of my positive thinking here….
Please note, no one was harmed in the making of this blog entry. The slope was not a big slope and the SPF did not have to run at 30mph or have her arms ripped out of their sockets trying to stop either me or the trolley. It was amusing tho’…

More bizarre hotel stuff

I don’t know if you know what it’s like when you’re away with a group. You stick together and it’s not always easy to get out so you spend quite a lot of time sat in the hotel lobby at the end of a long day, chatting and waiting for bed time.

There we were again (different night from the teenagers in pyjamas) and we saw someone walking through the lobby carrying a large section of column. It was precisely the kind of thing that supports the tier of a wedding cake, but about 8 ft tall and an arm span around.

In fact it looked so much like a support for a wedding cake that someone commented to that effect and mentioned that it was funny that we hadn’t see the bride and groom. There was a general tittering at the suggestion and at that point in walks a woman in a wedding dress with a man in a tux.

That must have been some wedding, if the cake was that big…

OMG 15 Months snuck up on me…

I just realised that it’s 15 months today since I was sliced and diced. Time just vanishes so fast, doesn’t it (does this mean I’m enjoying myself or something?)

So, where am I with the back? It’s good really. I’d love to report that I have no pain with it but I would be lying if I said that. I will say that pain pills seem to work better than they used to and I assume that this is because nothing is under quite the strain it was so they have more chance to work (if you see what I mean!). Funnily enough, I still get a fair amount of discomfort from where they took my ribs out. I don’t know if it’s the ribs themselves (or the lack of them) or if it’s just that your diaphragm doesn’t like being sliced in half and then stuck back together again but whichever it is, I would cheerfully live without it. Of course being the optimistic little soul that I am, I quite cheerfully live with it too but I do wish all those people who said it was the worst bit of the operation were wrong! ^*1

As to the rest of it, well, I have regained none of the nerves in my stomach or leg but I guess there’s still time. My walking is just the same and I am just as happy and healthy as ever. People are still coming up to me and saying how well I look and the other day I met an old friend and discovered that the 2” I gained in height means that I could almost look her in the eye. In fact – I didn’t realise before that she was quite so short! Hubby measured me the other day too and made me 4ft 11½” which would mean I’d actually gained 2½”, not 2” but then we realised I still had my shoes on.…..still, I feel much taller than that really!

On a cosmetic note, I really do feel a lot less lopsided. I was given the all clear to do core exercises in January and between that, and the fact that I have no swelling left, I finally have a waist on both sides. I know that there are people out there who will understand just how delighted this makes me… I still have the rib hump and I can still see the fact that I have 30+ degree curves inside me but I really don’t think anyone apart from me, my surgeon and maybe some members of the scoliosis forums (takes one to know one) would ever really notice. Amazing, innit?


^*1 Actually, I’m sure its not the worst bit of the op, but it does seem to have the longest lasting implications…

A likely story

There we were, a large group of us, sat in the hotel lobby when a couple of teenage girls walk past us clutching pillows. They appeared to be dressed in pyjamas too, which was odd, but you never can tell with fashions these days so we shrugged our shoulders and carried on chatting. A few minutes later, another small group of girls goes past, again carrying pillows and they were followed by several teenage boys. There was no doubt that some of these youngsters were in nightwear (it was the nightdress that really gave it away^*1) and they all headed off in the direction of the ballroom. Now, I’ve been to ‘that kind of party’ where its fancy dress on a theme (pyjama, roman toga, vicars and tarts, you get the picture) but in all my years of party going, I have never taken a large prop like a pillow….

So, this goes on for some time, small groups of youngsters, in nightwear, carrying pillows, on their way to the ballroom. We never counted them, but I’m guessing over the next hour or so there must have been hundreds of them^*2. Eventually we cracked and as the manager of the hotel went past, we asked him what was going on – “Oh”, he said “They’re having a sleepover” and went on to explain that they were all members of a local church group.

I tell you, if I’d have known church groups were that much fun, I’d have joined one years ago…..


^*1 No, not on the boy!
^*2 This may be an exaggeration, but there were lots

Isn’t that a small country in Central America?

So, there I was, away in sunny Arizona and we were out for dinner one evening. I was having fajitas – I like fajitas, all that playing with your food and wrapping up meat and peppers and stuff with all sorts of dips etc. Fajitas in blighty are very nice, but these were extra good ones so I was happy.

One of the younger members of our group had never had (or even seen) fajitas before and so was quizzing me on the nature of the red, white and green dips^*1 and what each was called. Me being in a good mood was happy to help and asked her if she wanted to try any of them. “Maybe later”, she said, so I carried on eating.

A little later she asks:
“Can I try some of your Guatemala?”

I felt so mean when I fell off my chair laughing…..

^*1That would be salsa, sour cream and guacamole.

Of little green men and a nice man called Dave

Well, I’m back online properly – typing on the big machine with the proper screen and all. Turns out that unless M is right and its all a nasty Microsoft plot to get us all to buy Vista, that my crash was probably caused by little green men….umm, that means no-one has yet figured out why sh*t happens to computers.

Anyway, I called the Packard Bell helpline and expected at least 30 minutes of canned musack so was very surprised to be directed to ‘Dave’ with just a minimum of pressing the * and # keys on the phone. Dave was helpful too and didn’t ask me any stupid questions instead accepting that I knew that it wasn’t a hardware fault and had actually followed all the proper procedures to get to where I was. He diagnosed a faulty partition that even when the drive had been re-formatted hadn’t been properly removed. In order to access it I needed to access the Q: drive – I have a Q: drive I asked? Where’s that hidden? Well, seems its somewhere in my box and so I did as I was told. From there we removed all the partitions and my software and drivers started to load up just as they should.

Whole process (with Dave’s help) – about 10 minutes. So, there you go – there will be more entries later in the week – I haven’t told you about my trip yet after all…..