10 August 2015

I’m sitting here trying to work out why I am so mesmerized by ‘The Great Australian Spelling Bee’ (not surprisingly, Brian’s preference is Top Gear.) I must be missing the school environment more than I thought!

It’s been a pretty ordinary week, but that’s quite good really.

I’m relatively stable and have been participating in the usual weekly programs of exercise and trying to manage daily household tasks as best I can. Back pain continues to haunt me, making some activities a bit more challenging. Later this week I will have a home visit from a Warrnambool GP who specializes in palliative care and pain management. I will be interested to hear of her suggestions, and what she has to say about priorities in my case management.  

On Saturday I will also spend some time with a local Psychologist, who happens to be in our home bible study group. Amongst his areas of expertise, he offers pain hypnotherapy - I am happy to try anything for relief that doesn’t necessarily involve dosing myself up to the hilt. Who knows?

But whenever I have felt the going a bit tough, it never ceases to amaze me how a timely card, a letter, a text message, a bunch of flowers or even some gluten free muffins just arrives out of the blue. You may never know how much this ‘lifts the spirits’ and what it means to us. Thank you!

Today it was Brian’s turn to have a Specialist appointment. Because of his Parkinson’s Disease he is under the care of a neurologist from Geelong, and today for the first time we had a remote appointment via skype. What a saving in time and effort – a 7-hour round trip for a 10 minute appointment reduced to driving just 5 minutes down the road, and with his GP present as well. Why aren’t there more such appointments?

However Brian continues to baffle his specialists with some of his symptoms, so he is being changed to a different Parkinsons drug, starting tomorrow. Hopefully the possible 3-week period to adapt to this drug won’t bring side effects.

The other day I checked our calendar and to my surprise discovered that we have a whole week coming up with no significant appointments! This seemed too good an opportunity to waste, so we have decided to go away for a short holiday break next week to Dunkeld, staying at a holiday house that has been purpose-built for wheelchair access.

How lovely to look forward to a few days away, no medical tests, just time to relax and take a few drives into the Grampians should we choose! Perhaps Brian might even find an orchid or two to photograph?

I’ll let you know how we go…

If we can't get to band practice, band practice comes to us!