Eastern Europe Trip

I’m starting to realise that no matter how much time I actually have on my hands whilst not being at work, it never seems enough to get round to updating the blog as often as I should!

Enough excuses, here’s the latest news…

As reported last week, Tracy has been in her back-brace again and took a few tentative steps… well, since then those steps have got significantly more steady, and she now gets up and goes to the ward loo – which is about 50meters away. She still needs help to put on the back-brace, as her right arm is pretty useless at the moment, but she does the rest of it herself – only relying on someone to hold her hand for comfort more than support. Yesterday they had her walk to the end of the ward and then up and down the stairs!! She managed 11 of then, but said it was like climbing Everest… This is the major milestone that will determine when she can be allowed home, as she’s been told once she masters the stairs she’ll be discharged…

Her arm is also progressing well. It looks pretty gross at the moment (I’ll spare you the photos) and is really skinny, but it is healing well and they are changing the dressing every 2 days as it recovers. It’s still incredibly sensitive, so the dressing changes are very painful (so much so that she has a dose of painkillers before they do it), but that’s the only pain she’s in (apart from the discomfort of wearing the back brace, of course). She’s also still working to get movement back in her fingers, and each day there’s a little bit more movement, but it’s still going to be a long time before she has a usable hand again…

Before she’ll be allowed home we also need to sort some things out here. First, and most important, we need to put up a banister rail as our stairs are very steep. Only problem is getting it from B&Q to home, as it needs to be some 4.2m long… Nikki’s coming over today in her Range Rover to help, so that should enable me to get it sorted. Secondly, we need some things from the occupational health folk – a commode for Tracy to use when downstairs (as climbing our stairs would be more like climbing K2 than Everest… not as high but more technically challenging…), a “litter-picker” to help her get dressed (imagine a clamp on a stick and you’ll get the picture) and a few other bits and pieces. Finally, we need to ensure the district nurses are geared up to come and change her arm dressing every 2 days – the nurses from plastics will come once a week to check on overall progress.

All of which we hope will be sorted quickly – as early as Friday this week is possible – which would be great, especially as her mum & dad and brother & sister-in-law are coming up this weekend. It would be just fantastic if they could visit her at home, rather than in hospital. Until then, at least she’s able to sit up and watch TV now… with Doc and Surgeon Tigger also showing an interest!






As for me, my recovery continues, albeit much slower than I’d like. Following last week’s stupidity (when I rode Tracy’s bike over to my sister’s to pick up my other bike) I’ve been having more pain in my knee and the joint has stiffened up. I’ve been doing my exercises to try and get full movement, but it’s taking longer than I’d like. But at least I’m still mobile and am now on with sorting out a few jobs at home.

I’ve also been contacted by my insurance company, to confirm that the bike will be written off. The engineer finally went to see it at Carole Nash’s repair centre, and was left in no doubt it was not worth repairing. Now I just need to wait to hear exactly what they’ve valued it at, and to wait for the cheque to arrive – good job I have another bike, or I’d be without one (although riding is still painful at the moment due to my knee!). I agreed with the engineer it was OK for me to go and take off some of the accessories from the bike, and with the help of the excellent team at Carole Nash’s repair centre I went on Monday and spent a happy hour stripping bits off the bike. I recovered my front fog lamps and wiring, intercom and wiring, and pannier rails, top-box and fittings. Now I have some work to do to transfer these to my other bike, but it keeps me busy and provides a welcome diversion from daytime TV (I’ve not watched Star Trek for over a week!).

So, that’s it for now. Hopefully the next update will be when Tracy comes home!