Day 144 - Monday 19th September

Karen's spasms of pain seem to have subsided which is good news and her urine has no more blood in it, so good news on that front.

However..........She was very upset this morning, bordering on inconsolable. She is sick of being in hospital, but more sick that when she does go home she can't walk or even stand by herself. She is also concerned that she won't be able to walk again.

kp:- "I don't think I have the strength in my left leg"

It is heartbreaking for her. I can't put in words how utterly demoralised and down she was. There was nothing I could say, nothing I could do apart from listen, but she hardly spoke. All I could do was pass her tissues, which she kept stuffing up her nighty arm (left side).

She wanted the day to continue as normal, so we did the bath routine with tears still flowing. By the time she got to the bath, she had stopped crying, but was very quiet. When her nighty was taken off, more tissues came out than I could count. I don't think she could feel they were there, and she obviously wasn't counting as I passed them to her.

Bath over, she just stayed quiet as she did her hair. When it came to lunchtime, she didn't want any of the soup I had brought in. She just wanted to be quiet.

Today was the psychological tests by the neuro-psychologist lady. As soon as she arrived, she could tell kp wasn't ready for tests and I left the room as the ladies talked through Karen's sadness/upset. After about 45 minutes, I was ushered in for the tests. The lady had done a marvellous job on Karen's upset. She had put everything in perspective and given kp a new angle or two to look at things from. She also gave me some tips as to how to get kp out of the upset if it happens again. Distraction is the key apparently. She mentioned something about coming in in a clown costume and doing tricks, but thankfully she was just joking. Karen's mood was noticeably better in time for the tests.

The tests were very interesting (for me as an onlooker) :-

• The first one was 50 words which Karen had to read out, starting off with things like dog and cat and then going to homily and iridescent and other big words that were hard to pronounce unless you knew the meaning of the word. I think it was some sort of basic IQ test.
• Then it was time to remember a short story and recall as many facts as you can remember. kp did better than I did at this one.
• Then another story with a facts recall
• Then the lady read out letters and numbers and kp had to put the numbers first in numerical order and then the letters in alphabetical order
• The hardest test was when she read out 10 pairs of words and kp had to memorise them (Rose & Paper, Truck & Glass, Bank & Cartoon). She would then read out Bank and kp had to remember what word came with Bank. REALLY hard. She then repeated the list about 5 times to see how better she got at it.
• Then there was a test where she had to say how things were alike. eg Cat and Dog (answer would be animals). All these tests start off easy and then get harder and harder until you fail. Some of the harder ones I can recall were Steam and Fog, Democracy and Monarchy,.
• Then she read out sequences of numbers which kp had to put them in the right order and read out. Easy when its 2 numbers, but when you get to 5 numbers wrong, it's bloody hard.

The funniest moment was when kp was first told about having to read out numbers in numerical order.

Lady NP :- I am going to read you some numbers and you have to read them back to me in numerical order
kp :- ok
Lady NP :- ok, for example 9....7, you would say 7....9
kp :- ok
Lady NP :- ok, let's start............4.....2
kp :- 3

I laughed out loud 'cos she clearly hadn't understand the test. kp was laughing at the fact she had misunderstood it so badly.

The last test went back to the stories she had started with and she had to recall as much as possible about them.

The upshot of all the tests is kp is bright (I was amazed at this), and has an "ok" short term memory, but a very good long term memory. (she remembered more about the stories the second time she was asked (weirdly)). It was a generally positive result, with the exception of 2 things.

She has to think a lot harder to work things out or remember things.
She has a small retention bucket for facts. In other words, if you want to tell kp a story she remembers, she needs to be told it a few times, so she can pick up all the key facts.

I was impressed with how well kp did given she had a Renault ram into her at 60mph. Very proud !

Tests over, it was physio time.

Today, kp wanted to pin the main man down to how long it would be before she walks. He said within 2 months. kp was happy with this and has already started counting the weeks. Week 1 is gone, we are now in Week 2. I hope, for Main Man's sake, she can !

Today's physio was unstiffening kp's pelvis, which the main man did brilliantly (as per). The only downside to this was at the end of the session, he asked her to stand and she couldn't. She normally can stand with assistance, but it was a lot of effort today and assistance from the main man. This was to be expected apparently given what he had done.

Eileen kindly let the dogs out for us, so I could stay until 5.45pm (Marie being on holiday). kp had a bit of Minced Beef and Mash, but the food is very unappetising and I nearly took a photo of the Butterscotch Tart, it was that bad, but I don't think kp will want to be reminded of that again.

I left a much more upbeat Karen I am pleased to say.

Hopefully she will be more the usual kp tomorrow. We have lined lots of things up for the weekend so she has something to look forward to :-)