Tag: disability

More thoughts on remembering appointments

Hands up anyone who remembers the childhood excitement of receiving something in post. I’m talking about the days when all the postman usually brought you was birthday cards and postcards from your Great-Auntie Ethel’s annual holiday to the seaside. There might have been the odd reminder that you were due an eye test, but that just meant that you could go and wear some funny glasses and pretend you were a spaceman for a bit then maybe get to choose a new pair of specs at the end of it. Meanwhile, the grownups got to look forward to opening a new letter almost every day it seemed.

C’mon, I can’t be the only one who remembers these good old days. Raise those hands up high!

Well, I’m an adult now and I’ve decided that getting something in the mail isn’t nearly as exciting as it used to be. I’m very disappointed indeed. I’ve come to realise that post usually means, a letter from the bank, a bill needs paying, or perhaps some junk mail. Hooray…or not. Even those reminders to go to the opticians aren’t fun anymore. Instead of looking forward to playing astronauts, looking at those letters just makes you think about the money you might need to spend on a new pair of glasses.

In addition to delights such as these in my cases there’s the hospital appointment letters too. When I was younger, my parents would stick these to boiler with an assortment of fridge magnets and they would tell me when the day arrived and where I was going. I’m not entirely sure when this happened, but somewhere along the line, they became my responsibility to remember them.

I’ve blogged about some of the tricks I use to help with this briefly before. I know I don’t have as many to remember as a lot of people, but it can still be a challenge sometimes. Here are some more of the ways I try commit them to memory. These work for me, but they might not work for others. They’re just from my personal experience. I’m not a memory expert, nor do I pretend to be.

Keeping all the letters in one place

At the moment, the current ones that I have to try remember are sitting on my printer. Trying to not lose the letter in between doing that and then attending the appointment is a whole other task entirely. As for remembering to take it with me when I go the less said about that the better, I think.

Refreshing my memory constantly

Eventually the appointments will work their way into my phone a bit closer to the time so that my memory gets a little refresher about it.

Remembering the information in small chunks

For me, remembering the dates often tends to be the easier part or I try and get that part in my head before I worry about anything else. I find it harder to remember the times, especially if I have a few quite close together. I have to spend the week before looking at my letters and phone calendar constantly in the hope I can make something sinks in. If I’m really struggling I try to at least remember the month so that I can ring up and double check if I have to.

It seems strange to think that my parents used to have to do all of this stuff for me, and that they used to make it look so easy. I took that for granted at the time. Sorry mum and dad! There were probably more of them to remember back then too.

How do you remember your appointments?

My Botox injections

I had my appointment to get some more Botox injections in my legs yesterday. It’s hoped that doing this will help to ease some of my muscle tightness. I had this done as few times as a child and I’ve had them again as an adult too. I go to most of my appointments alone these days but this is one that I usually like my mum or my dad to come to with me. If I’m being honest I think it’s mostly so I can squeeze their hand while I’m having it done. However neither of them were free to come with me, so I had to make do with digging my nails into my palms instead.

Personally, I’ve found that they’ve worked well for me in the past, and I have to make sure that I really work at my physio after I’ve had the injections to get the best possible results. It really is a good motivator to try my best to keep on top of things.

Yesterday, I also had the idea to put a pair of shorts on underneath a baggy pair of jogging bottoms I bought to help me keep warm when I had my serial casting pots on, so it would be easier and faster than having to change into some sorts when I got to the appointment. This is something that I think I’ll definitely try to remember to do next time because it really did make a big difference.

I’ll go back and see my physio in a couple of weeks time so she can see how well she thinks the Botox is working. In the meantime, I’ll just have to try my best and do as much work as I can.

My (estimated) birthday

April third is the due date that my parents were given when my mother was pregnant with me. To cut a long story short, I arrived early, at 26 weeks, and was born in the first week of January.

I think this date will stick in my mind for the rest of my life, and at this time of year I always find myself feeling thankful, but also wondering how my parents must have felt at the time.

The older I’ve become, the more we’ve talked about it over the years, but every now and then, either my mum or dad will tell me something about my time in the hospital that I didn’t know before. Sometimes it will make me laugh, sometimes it might make me cry, and other times it will leave me surprised.

Even though I was quite young at the time, I still remember my dad telling me that I spent the first three months of my life in hospital. I hadn’t really thought about that very much before then, but I still remember being quite shocked by that nugget of information even though I was just a child.

Another story that gave me a surprise more recently was something my mother told me when we were sitting in a coffee shop at Christmas time last year. We were talking about what it was like when I was born, and she started telling me how excited she and my dad got when they first saw me open my eyes.

This was news to me. It had ever occurred to me that they wouldn’t have been open yet, but apparently they weren’t. Needless to say I was very surprised. I was 22 at the time, and I was only hearing this story for the first time, but I was glad that she was telling me them all the same. That memory was a happy one for her, and I’m sure my dad would tell me that it is for him too if I asked him about it, and I always like to hear the happy stories.

I wonder how many more untold tales there are that I’ll get to hear one day?

How easily I become unbalanced

Sometimes I think I underestimate just how easy it is for me to start feeling unbalanced and start to wobble. I come close to falling over quite often, sometimes I catch myself in time, sometimes I don’t. Often I’ll feel myself becoming unsteady and know exactly what’s happened to cause it, but occasionally there seems to be no reason at all.  People I’m with will ask “What happened there?” and all I’ll be able to do is shrug my shoulders, say “I have no idea” and then give a nervous laugh. I always get nervous when I think I’m about to fall, but I don’t think that’s really surprising.

There are also plenty of instances when I know what made me start to wobble, and I’ll be amazed at what a simple thing it was. The other day I was leaning against the kitchen worktop, using both hands to butter some crackers; one of the broke in half when I wasn’t expecting it. The surprise of it cracking in my hand was even to make me jump and start to tip over backwards. Luckily I managed to reach out and grab the counter in time to steady myself. It was a good job too because if I had gone over, there’s a good chance I would have hit the oven. It wasn’t on at the time, but it still wouldn’t have been pleasant.

After I felt stable again and I stopped feeling nervous I realised that I was surprised that something so simple was enough to throw me off. It’s not the first time a crumbling cracker has made me wobble either (I eat rather a lot of them), but I’m always shocked when it does.

I try not to think about all the things that could have happened when I manage to avoid crashing to the ground, or how much worse it could have been when I do take a tumble. I just try my best to be as careful as I can.

Finding fancy footware

My mother is getting remarried and I will be one of her bridesmaids.

She and her husband-to-be picked out the bridesmaid dresses a few months ago and spent a couple of days trying to decide if they liked them best in teal or red. They settled on the teal, and I got very excited when one of my friends pointed out that it’s only a few shades of blue lighter than my walking frame Martha is.

Once the dress were picked out, we thought that we would have to get mine taken up because they were maxi dresses that would’ve been way too long for me, but then we noticed that they had the same dress in a shorter cut too, which, when I tried it on, happened to be almost full-length on me.  Result! I say almost because I think it stops a couple of inches above my ankles but that’s fine with me. I’m less likely to trip on it that way, she says. She hopes. Oh please, don’t let me fall over.

Anyway…

With all that sorted, I knew that we would have to try and find me some footwear to go with it. The very idea sent a shiver down my spine. Trying to find something for everyday wear can be hard enough, and trying to find something for a special occasion, especially something that isn’t a boot, is even harder.

My mum did some shoe-scouting without me and then took me along to show me the potentials she had found, with me saying all the while that I’d be quite happy to go in whatever pair of (probably worn-down) boots I happened to be working my way through at the time.

My mum said that she wanted me to have something nice to wear so that I’d feel good about myself. This made me happy, but I was doubtful that we’d find anything. I sat back, literally, on Martha’s seat and let her take charge.

The first pair of sandals that we tried were no good. I was expecting this. It usually takes a few tries to find something. Not always though. The second pair of sandals fit me, stayed on my feet AND had Velcro straps so that would make things easier for me. I felt quite sturdy walking in them both with and without the walker. I was amazed. I wanted to buy them as quickly as possible in case it was some kind of magic spell that would be broken if we took too long in the shop. She did help me try another pair, but I was pretty happy with the ones we found.

Okay, that’s not quite true. I was pretty excited about the ones we found because I haven’t had any sandals since I was a kid I don’t think.

Oh, and I should also mention that they’ve bought me a nice pair of fluffy slippers to change into if the sandals get too much for my feet. I’m hoping I won’t need them, but you never know.