I have had a call from Bedfordshire sensory team to tell me that there has been a problem with processing my new aids so I wont be seeing anything of them until at least 16th June! I've managed this far without them so a couple more weeks wont hurt (for anyone reading my blog for the first time, Bedfordshire sensory team came for a home visit and are providing me with some aids to help me at home, they come to your home, assess your needs and talk about different gadgets to make life easier, they then go off and process your little list of aids, this time they are putting the money into my bank account and I have to order the gadgets myself, then you fill in a form with the item codes and price and send it back to them with all the receipts, this process is notoriously slow, but I am not complaining as I am very grateful for the support they are providing). I was also contacted by them to give my input into a meeting about the service and my experiences as a 'user' there are two meetings one this Wednesday and the other on the 23rd June, and I would need to attend both, they are in Dunstable, they would provide transport and would be grateful if I could attend as they feel I would be confident enough to be completely honest and open about my experiences....my first thoughts were COOOOLLLL, I was so flattered and my tummy did one of those excited little flips (I know, sado! I don't get out much!!)...then the 23rd June started flashing in the back of my head..mmmm...23rd June, what is happening on the 23rd June? I have to nip down and vote...oh crap, its my hospital appointment date, for a very tiny second I considered seeing if I could change my appointment, and then my Mums voice popped into my head, going, 'don't you bloody dare cancel that appointment' so I had to turn them down, but told them to consider me any other time as I would love to do something like that!
Thursday I had another counselling session, I don't think you get the same impact as if you were meeting someone face to face, however, the lady who emails me is very nice, and this week set me some homework of making sure I have 10 to 15 minutes each day to sit quietly and think about myself! OMG, how hard is that! Every time I feel my mind wondering I have to bring my thoughts back to myself, I have found it really really difficult, one to get 10 minutes to sit still and two to think about myself, how do you think about yourself? where do you start? I started thinking about the things I have done, but this led me onto thinking about all the people I have done these things with. so today, I tried to retrain my brain, and started to think about things like how my body and brain works, the clothes I like to wear, the foods I like to eat, I think I managed about 4 minutes before Ralph started whimpering for his morning walk.
I've been doing a lot of walking, if I am walking Ralph on my own I stick to my familiar route, mostly so that if I need help and someone has to come looking for me, I will be some where on that usual route, but my sister has been recovering from spinal surgery and is now very much on the mend, so we have been exploring all the field walks around our village, you can walk for miles all along the river and there are well kept tracks through and around farmers fields, my sister has a Dalmatian, called Pongo, who is, well, a bit crazy really, he leaps into the river at every opportunity and spends a lot of time running, poor Ralph is only small and spends his time trying to keep out of the way of Pongo's thundering paws.
My daughter downloaded one of these step apps onto my phone, at the moment I am averaging between 18,000 and 20,000 steps a day. It also tells me how long I have been walking for and how many calories I have burnt, so this morning I have already walked for solidly for 1hr 30mins, taken 7396 steps and burnt 188 calories, oh, and it tells you how many miles you have walked, so Ralph and I walked 3 miles this morning . Its over cast here today, and perfect lighting for me outside, not too bright, not too dull, it was a lovely walk and we even met lots of dogs and their humans this morn, some times we don't see a soul!
I have noticed on my walks that British Rail are doing loads to improve the surroundings for visually impaired people, new railings have gone up at Arlesey station as you come down the steps there used to be a very large high curb, even though I knew it was there I was always falling up or down it, there is a lovely bright yellow railing around the curb now all the way to where the curb lowers to stop curb crashes! The little things like painting a hand rail yellow makes such a massive difference...
when I had some mobility training, they taught me that if you are holding the railing, it should dip where you would be going down a step, then has a little kink where the last step would be and then the rail would be straight so you know you are on level footing, then another kink to tell you there is another step and then the rail should carry on down until the last step where it kinks again, if I haven't explained this very well, if you look at the photo above, this is a newish train bridge and shows exactly what I mean. Thumbs up to BR, shame they cant get trains running on time too, but you cant have everything I suppose!
Just a very quick update on my veggie growing, so we now have potatoes coming up, yesterday I put in carrots and sweet peppers, every thing else is going great. we brought a little fire pit, mostly because my eldest has now finished school and only has A level exams to do then she wants to have a ritual burning of all her course work, I, on the other hand thought it would be lovely to pick sweetcorn, wrap it in foil and cook it straight on the fire pit.
The chilli's are starting to come up too, I am so pleased with it all, I never would have thought growing veg would be so much fun!
Tomorrow we are talking Ralph for his first trip to the seaside, so will pop some photos on soon, if its not pouring with rain all day, x
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