A Winter's Tale

Sorry I couldn't resist the title as today is officially the first day of winter in Australia and it is a bright cold morning.

This week has been a fairly quiet week with no major dramas although there have been a couple of worrying moments.  Last Wednesday Margaret saw a small tablet just under her bed and got down on the floor, picked it up and took it!.  I think that it may have been  Lofoxenal which is to stop diarrhoea and in itself wouldn't do to much harm but Margaret was now stuck and couldn't get up again.  She called me but in spite of all our joint efforts she didn't have the strength to get up.  We literally had a cup of tea/coffee while we thought the situation over.  She wasn't hurt and it seemed a  bit much to call an ambulance for assistance.  Our helpful neighbour, S, was out and we were on our own.  In the end I got a low plastic step which we used to use to get in and out of our caravan.  Margaret managed to roll onto her knees then wiggle her bottom over the step and sit down. Now, with help, she could bring each leg to the front.  We tried to get her up again and again she failed.  The step was too low.  I left her sitting there finishing her tea while I went to the garage for more inspiration.  Here I found four pieces of wood about 100mm/4inches square an 50cm/2 foot long.  Back in the bedroom Margaret supported herself against the bed and I lifted each side of the step in turn and inserted two pieces of wood either side until she was high enough off the floor to get herself up.  Apart from a few dimples on her bottom from the step she was OK but it had taken over half an hour to rescue her.

The rescue system back in the garage.

The next instance was similar.  On Friday we were waiting for the Blue Care carer to come and help Margaret shower while I caught up with some emails in our study.  Margaret wheeled herself in to join me and sat down on the foam sofa which doubles as a temporary bed.  Unfortunately this is quite low and again Margaret couldn't get up.  Now this was a much more difficult problems as there is no hard surface to provide us with support.  I was about to try plan B using an office chair when the Blue Care RN drove into the drive and with her help we got Margaret up.

The RN gave Margaret a lecture about sitting anywhere where her bottom is lower than her knees as she just isn't strong enough to get up from a semi squat position.

One nice thing to happen is that Margaret made contact with an old friend after about fifteen years.  She was sitting at dinner early last week when she asked me to get a photo of her friend and his lovely wife with their four young sons from the bookshelf to look at.  They live in the USA and the last we heard of him was that he was carving out a successful career as voice over artist and coach in Hollywood.  Next morning, on impulse,  I looked him up on the web and he has a website.  This once I will use his full name, Patrick Fraley.  He gave a contact email address so I dropped him a short note telling that Margaret would love to her from him.  We received a lovely email back within a couple of hours.  Patrick's life has also been hard recently because his oldest son died last year at 24 years  and his wife has had a kidney transplant.  In spite of this he sent us a lovely photo of his family taken just before his son's death and reminisced with Margaret about his time in South Australia.  In 1974 he was a young drama MFA from Cornell and he came to Adelaide to set up Drama Workshops at Theatre 62.  Margaret was one of his first students and they have been friends ever since.  We shall now keep in touch by emails.

Most of the last week Margaret has been feeling quite low but we did get out for lunch Thursday.  Apart from that she has been resting.   She had a blood test sample taken yesterday and will get the results on Thursday.