31/8/11

This is to be the first of possibly multiple entries today to make up for my lack general lack of blogging recently. There'll be at least 2 anyway!

First things first - what have I been doing thats kept me so busy in last few weeks?

First off was the 2 weeks in France, it was a great holiday; I'm British so I'll start by mentioning the weather - couldn't have been much more perfect for me; we had a couple of rainy days which gave us an excuse to go to the touristy attractions rather than sitting on the beach and the rest of the time it was lovely and sunny but without being too hot (I'm not a hot weather person!).

I was still all taped up after my operation and feeling rather sore so nothing too strenuous for me, in the 10 days we were actually there I managed to read 8 books (yes, all proper books with lots of pages) which I was quite pleased with, although that does mean that I don't have any more new books left to read! I did manage to play some beach tennis with my brother as playing proper tennis didn't go well for me right handed!

Holiday memories are already fading but things that stick in my mind are the ridiculously busy supermarket and the lack of any restaurants selling any food we liked (no we don't like mussels!). I went in the sea once (just up to my waist as I couldn't really swim!), being the atlantic it was pretty chilly but I couldn't help sitting on the beach the rest of the time wishing I could be having fun in the "surf"!

Since I've been home I've been busy with various hospital updates (more on that in a minute) and have had lots of days at work too. My extra days at work paid for todays trip to Milton Keynes, I was very excited about it as I came back with the MacBook Pro on which I am writing this blog. The buying experience was mostly pleasurable - the salesman was rather pleasing on the eye and they had extra discounts which meant it cost me less than I was anticipating, and they were pretty quick about it too which makes a change. Less happy about being told by the guy that looking at my scar made him feel ill (I do hope he was joking!). Now have to get to grips with Lion, can't believe how different it is so might take some getting used to!

OK, onto the arm, I've been doing my various physio exercises almost every 2 hours and thankfully can now just about straighten my elbow, so at least I know the scar bit of it is healing OK. I'm very much running out of optimism that the nerves are going to fix themselves as I'm getting beyond the window where this normally happens and there is still no improvement in hand and wrist function (hence the shiny, new laptop so that I can take notes in lectures!) . Have yet more appointments coming up but the current opinion from the consultant is that I'm going to benefit from tendon transfer surgery (doesn't that sound fun?) so that at least I can get my thumb working again. I've opted to wait and see how things pan out as uni is rapidly approaching (not that I really fancy going back!), in the mean time the hand therapists (who are far too smiley!) are building me a "bionic" hand, its not technically bionic as its just metal rods and elastic but it'll help move my fingers so I'm not complaining!

Next week is my final appointment with the consultant before uni, more hand therapy and a disability assessment at uni so hopefully they can come up with a viable solution for labs and whatnot! As far as my deep and inner emotions and thoughts go, I don't really know how I feel about it yet. Its started to sink in that this might just be a "big thing" but I'm still smiling. I'm sure the fact that since it all happened I don't enjoy watching programs like Casualty and Holby City means something, but I'm not sure what yet...