Some Good News - Well almost

We visited Margaret's GP yesterday. The news was good. The blood tests showed that her Glomeruler Filtration Rate (GFR) had risen from 14.7 to 27 ml/min. This takes her from the edge of kidney failure stage 5 which requires dialysis or transplant to stage 4 which is merely "severe kidney damage". I have found a good website which provides information for both patients/carers and health professionals. What this means is that Margaret will require continuing monitoring of her kidney function from now on.

Her GP tested Margaret's cognition and confusion which showed that there was no real improvement in this area. One test is to write a brief sentence which Margaret can still do quite well but with some amusing results. Today she wrote, "Danielle Steele has six children. I wonder who has the last bath?" Her GP was confused until I explained that Margaret and I had grown up during WW2 in the UK where hot bathwater was restricted to 5 inches per week and to get a good bath the family took it in turns to use the same bath water. Margaret was fourth after her mother, brother and sister. On the web I found the following account of growing up in Scotland during WW2.

"Another hardship was the fact that we were only allowed 5 inches of bathwater to bath in once a week. A black line had to be painted round the bath to show where the limit of 5 inches was which we were not allowed to exceed. (Showers had not yet hit the scene.) Soon more posters sprang up, this time exhorting us to ‘Bath with a Friend’! At Home House we had a strict rota for bath night, followed by our own schedule where, in addition to our own ration, we allocated ourselves a night each when we would jump into the bath after a friend! The rest of the time we had to just wash ourselves with water from the basin which, if we were lucky, might be lukewarm."

URL: http://www.bbc.co.uk/ww2peopleswar/stories/67/a5231567.shtml

The rest of yesterday was pretty normal but Margaret was too tired to come out with me to walk Louis and was in bed by 9.30 pm.

This morning things have been nice and quiet so I think I'll change my bed linen and do some washing and maybe even some gardening.