Day by day

Mum has had a couple of quiet days with food, sleep, physio and specialist visits making up her routine. As she says, stroke victims become all about stomach, bowels and bladders. This was one of the reasons she wrote her poem, Ode to the Chimes, which I’ve just published. When those bells go, disgusting things are in your future.

Now that things seems to have settled down and she’s medically stable, Mum’s mood has started to fluctuate and we’re all on the lookout for post-stroke depression, which is extremely common. Some days Mum seems a bit despondent but overall the steady improvement continues. She reported pins and needles in her left fingers yesterday, which got us all excited for a moment, but it appears this morning the pain is a very normal one in her left shoulder. Her left side, of course, is the “crap” one.

Weekends are always quiet and her physio was cancelled yesterday because of apparent staff shortages and so Mum has been able to get plenty of rest (although Doug has been working on her reading with her with materials provided by Emma, Mum’s speech therapist). And of course she’s still a crossword fiend.

Jennifer, Caitlin and Claire visited again today and it was lovely to see them. Caitlin is waiting on her Uni acceptances next week and is a bit nervous. Apparently her plan once they come in is to “panic”. This is a plan I can get behind.

We’re still hoping we’ll hear some word next week regarding Mum’s transfer. I’ll keep everyone informed. Thanks, as ever. If you have anything you want to say to Mum, please comment. I read all the comments from the blog to her and she’s very interested in what everyone is doing.