Day 51 - The Real World

Today we took our first trip out into the "real" world, with the chair, and went shopping. We had to go and post some letters, pay a couple of bills, and get cleo a passport photo for her blue badge application. The blue badge is the disabled sign you place in your car when you park, which exempts you from most parking charges. I am getting quite good now at getting the wheelchair out of the car, and assembling it quickly, but the chair itself takes up most of the boot in the car, meaning there is far less space for shopping, other than on the back seats. When there is only two of us thats fine, but if we were out as a family then a big weekly shop would almost be impossible.

Anyway, our first foray was to the post office and the local chemist, and of course most places these days are relatively wheelchair friendly, with the exception of the doors. I find it very awkward when pushing the chair to physically open doors too. We are getting better because cleo can use her "good leg" to push the door, if its that type, but if its a door with a catch that requires a handle to be turned, its less easy.

Then it was off to Sainsburys for a weekly stock up on food, and while the place is pretty good, cleo didnt like the trolleys that attach to the chair, and they are certainly not big enough to fit a family sized weekly grocery shop into. We ended up getting a second trolley to bring all the stuff out to the car. cleo didnt like sitting in the chair hidden behind the attached trolley with all the shopping: she says its rather claustrophobic and she didn't enjoy spending my money, something which she has never admitted before!

Then it was off to the hospital for physio. James was concentrating on cleos arm and hand today, and having spent a while manipulating her shoulder, elbow and hand he seems to have got some firing of the bigger muscles at the top of the arm: the triceps, and biceps. He seemed pretty pleased at this and we even thought that at one stage we saw a twitch in cleo's thumb, but we were not sure. Hopefully the next few days of physio might result in some more definite reaction in the hand and arm. Time will tell on that one.

After physio we went to see our GP, who was not aware of the stroke as yet. He is a nice guy, and expressed his regret. Told cleo that in his experience she may well be looking at up to 18 months to see improvements, and that there will be days when she feels she has gone backwards, but to keep a positive mindset.

Our day was fairly successful, but very tiring, and I am sure that's how it will be for the coming months. Getting organised to go out, and the physical moving around away from the car is not easy, but very much worthwhile to maintain a normality in our lives as much as possible.

Angel

Sometimes
The most beautiful things
The most innocent things
And many of those dreams
Pass us by
Keep passing up by

You feel good
I said it's funny that you understood
I knew you would
When you were good
You were very, very good

I still look up
When you walk in the room
I've the same wide eyes
They tell the story
Try not to reach out
When you turn 'round
And you say hello
And we both pretend
There was an end
But there was no ending

So I close my eyes softly
'til I become that part of the wind
That we all long for sometime
And to those that I love
Like a ghost through a fog
Like a charmed hour
And a haunted song
And the angel of my dreams

I still look up
I try hard not to look up
That girl was me
Track a ghost through the fog
A charmed hour- a haunted song
Track a ghost through the fog, baby

Ooh you try hard
But you'll never catch me-- yeah

by Stevie Nicks