It has been some time since the Birch has been used in Australia (at least 50 years), but Simon has been well and truly 'birched' this week. By which I mean that he has been transferred to the Brain Injury Rehabilitation Care in the Home team. This, in itself, is a misnomer since he has to travel approximately 6 hours per week to the Birch gymnasium in Felixstowe. One day per week some therapists see him at our home. It is always a strain transferring between teams, but this one has really stretched us. Simon feels quite intimidated by them because they keep suggesting that he is lucky to have his place on their programme and that if he doesn't come up to scratch in anyway they will throw him off. I don't like that kind of approach, but must hold my temper because we need all the help we can get in this next challenging stage of rehabilitation.
Fortunately, Jeremy, our vision therapist is a wonder and has given Simon a real lift every time he visits us. Today, Simon got to the end of our street, back again and into the house unaided using the powered wheelchair. We are still using the chair that we borrowed from Blake and his family. We have been told again that Simon is on an endless waiting list for the chair that he really needs (he will have to sit in it all day so it must be the right size). I think that I will just have to stump up and buy it. However, in the meantime he is getting safer working with this chair and that is encouraging.
Good news is that Simon has sent a paper for publication and has another under review for an A rated journal (with Matthew GC). I felt so shamed that my own publication record was so meagre by comparison that I dashed out two conference abstracts in one day.
We said goodbye to our care assistant, Tracie, this morning. The funding for her service ran out, now we have another team taking over from tomorrow. It is such a strange way of organising things. We were so happy with Tracie and she knew our routine. Also, she liked coming to see us first thing in the morning - apparently not all clients are pleased to see their Care Assistants and can get quite abusive. Simon and I both wept when she left this morning. I now have the task of training up the new assistant(s) in our morning routine. Hope they like us.
This morning, Professor Skippy Orlando, - the renowned, erudite, and elegant chap that he is - got into a scrap with the girl cat across the road and gave her a hiding! So bad that Sally, her owner, had to take her to the vet to be patched up. This is very embarassing. Skippy, however, does not seem to have any morals and believes that beating up female cats is perfectly acceptable. What to do? I could only apologise and offer to pay the vet bill. Sally wouldn't hear of it which was very kind of her.
Congratulations to Mel on landing an excellent new job. Also to my darling Aunt Dorrie on her birthday (90+). Good on ya, Dorrie.
Love Marian x
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Hi there you two! Malcolm here! My gmail account is all confused at the moment, so I am borrowing Jelina's. I don't read your blog as much as Jelina does because I like to see Simon moving ahead in leaps and bounds rather than a daily progression...Jelina does keep me informed of the major events though. Are you both coping with all the changes. Shame about Tracie, she seemed really nice. That's the way it goes with these services. I had a carer for a couple of weeks, the it ran out. Technically, she can lose her job for talking to me in public! A bit severe if you ask me, she was such a nice woman and deserves a 'hello' and a little chat at the least.
ReplyDeleteUni's back and I have been sick for a couple of weeks with a headache that won't budge. Even had x-rays and a CT scan.
We followed up on the Coorong idea. It should be OK around the Cultural centre and I think Simon would be best served riding shotgun in the busses. There's a big seat, plenty of room, his own door and window and front vision. This may make up for the difficulty in getting in and out of the bus. There's a couple of us big enough to lift him up and down. He will have first hand insight into my lizard-wrangling expertise :-)