Thursday 13 February 2014

Swathed

Life at present is a round of medical appointments and physiotherapy. And dealing little by little with paperwork.

The good news is that, so far, there has been an improvement in my arm. The physiotherapist beamed!  I did, too. But it will be a slow process, and I can only hope that I can get to the stage where it ceases to be a constant problem.

All this bandaging, to compress the tissue, takes quite a long time each day. Doing it one-handed is quite tricky, and it has been a hit and miss process trying to achieve the right degree of compression. The arm aches, and it is not possible to do anything much with it. It feels as though I have many more thumbs than fingers. Holding the music at choir was quite tricky and makes the arm ache.  And I cannot crochet, for the time being, the arm is not flexible enough,  and is too sore. Just as well I finished the baby blanket before all this drama happened.

I should be able to drive in about another ten days, and that will be a relief. My kind friend drove me to choir last night, and another friend from choir drove me home. There is an all day rehearsal on Saturday, and bus and train will get me there and back. And I have almost finished my letter to the hospital, detailing my condition and its cause. Inter alia, I make the point that I was less able than usual to deal with the situation, but this is hardly an unusual, given that hospitals deal all day and all night with sick people, who by definition would not be firing on all cylinders.

My friends, neighbours and local doctors and health professionals have been so very supportive, in all ways. And having a heavily bandaged arm helps me get a seat on the bus, and elicits many kind enquiries.


2 comments:

Elephant's Child said...

I am so very glad to hear that there has been some improvement. And hope it continues apace.
Good luck on the letter to the hospital front. I didn't get a lot of joy from ours. Attack seemed to be their defence. Which is sad.

Jan said...

I'm glad there has been some improvement in the arm. I do know this can take a while as I've seen my sister with it.

I hope your hospital letter achieves something for all patients. Being pro-active is good. After one of her several breast cancer operations my sister was having the wound dressed. A nurse blew her nose and did not wash her hands afterwards. Another one dropped a dressing on the floor and was about to re-use it. Obviously my sister protested both times and each time her protest was received with a puzzled air.

I can't imagine how difficult bandaging the arm by yourself must be. Is there a neighbour who could help?

I have a totally busted shoulder which needs a replacement joint. Torn ligament s and much more. With all that is happening in our family at the moment I've put it aside. A physio friend strapped it which brought great relief and she showed my son how to do it. Strapping holds shoulder together with an ingenious lot of double strapping. No way could I replicate it.

I was going to ask son who now lives with me after a breakup to redo it tonight. However, his nine year old daughter was readmitted to oncology ward at Westmead CHildren's last night. 48 hours will tell us if it is an infection or a reaction to the second round of chemo. She has leukaemia diagnosed on New Year's Day. He probably won;t be back all weekend.