Yesterday morning, Meg seemed exceptionally sleepy and did not manage to fully wake up even as she was being washed and dressed. Wether this is a result of her medication, or the combined effects of the double vaccination we received on Thursday last and our little party yesterday, I cannot say. However she is coming around a little after I am giving her some breakfast and no doubt a trip down the hill will wake her up even more. Meg seems to have a big immune response to the recent vaccinations because the vaccination sites form a red circle about 4-5 cm across which the care workers carefully documented, photographed and filed away in Meg's record as they are trained to do. Apart from the slightest hint of a sore arm, I seem to have suffered no ill effects. Although feeling tired, I was by no means as exhausted as the day before so probably a bit more sleep is the ultimate remedy. I did find an informative article on the subject from an American professor of medicine who had studied the effects of vaccines. He concludes that the bottom line is you cannot gauge how well the vaccine is working within your body based on what you can detect from the outside. Different people do mount stronger or weaker immune responses to a vaccine, but post-shot side effects will not tell you which you are. It is the second, adaptive immune response that helps your body gain vaccine immunity, not the inflammatory response that triggers those early aches and pains. So that has added a tad to my knowledge base.
This morning was an absolutely beautiful morning so it was a real pleasure to walk down the hill with Meg and to meet up with our Saturday crowd. Our conversations are always somewhat wide ranging and perhaps bizarre to outsiders and there is always a lot of black humour involved. One interesting topic of conversation (admittedly started by myself) were the precautions that needed to be taken before disposing of the body of a spouse in England's deepest lake which is Wastwater beneath Scafell Pike. This question received some prominence during the intense droughts in the 1970's when the level of the water in British lakes dropped dramatically and in the case of Wastwater revealed some underlying rocks that lay not many metres below the surface of the lake. A dentist in the 1930's thought he would successfully dispose of the body of his murdered spouse by heaving her over the side of a rowing boat in the dead of night in Wastwater where the weighted body would normally sink to a great depth. But the dentist was unfortunate in that his wife's body ledged on the aforementioned rocks and the skeleton, complete with wedding ring, was exposed during the severe drought. From the wedding ring it was possible for the police to find a hallmark and a place of manufacture and to link this with a previously unsolved crime. So one must always be careful to remove wedding rings or any another means of identifying a corpse before disposing of it and the unfortunate dentist was eventually successfully charged with his crime some forty years after the event. From then on our discussion moved onto the ground up glass that is sometimes used to reinforce the tarmac used in road building which I thught was called 'skut' but I have not been able thus far to verify this word via the internet. We lunched at home on half a chicken, leek and ham pie that I had in the freezer with some broccoli and tomatoes enhanced with garlic and tomato puree that I made up into a second vegetable. This was actually all very tasty.
In the late morning, I had received a text from my sister and we arranged to FaceTime each other at 1.00pm. The news was not really pleasant as my sister reported to me that her mobility problems were increasing and she was losing the confidence of living alone and independently. I shared the call not only with my sister but only with one of her daughters (i.e. one of my nieces) and I said that I wold call back later on in the evening. To help my clarify my own thoughts, I got into contact with my daughter-in-law as I knew my son out of the house for a day and we had a fruitful discussion of several routes forward. One possibility is that we do not move from incompletely independent living in one's own home (the situation at present) straight into residential care. It may be that a brief period of residential care may gave us time as a family to explore and put into place other options. One options is, via social services and the local occupational therapy services, we explore a range of options to support my sister at home with a care package not completely dissimilar to the one that Meg and I receive at the moment. Another option is what is termed 'Assisted Living' where there may be a flat with a range of services, including some medical services available in the very near proximity. There are some residential homes where there is a full residential service available but a kind of half-way house available to those whose needs are not so urgent at this point in time. Of course to consider all of these options, what is needed is a professional assessment and for this social services are the key but getting access to an assessment is not an easy task. I suspect that the key may be a letter from my sister's GP, perhaps aided and assisted by an advocate as, for example, provided by the local AgeUK service. Evidently, it is difficult to give practical advice when I am not on the spot but will do whatever I can from a distance whether it be research or even some correspondence with my sister's GP.
The UK is set to be blasted by strong winds and heavy rain next week as Hurricane Kirk moves across the Atlantic Ocean. The weather system strengthened into a category 4 storm on Friday and its remnants threaten to bring a spell of unsettled conditions, with temperatures forecast to fall. While the hurricane is expected to be downgraded by the time it reaches Europe, the Met Office has said it poses a threat of disruptive rain and wind for some after a mild weekend. All of this serves as a reminder that I need a waterproof cover for Meg's wheelchair before the really bad weather sets in. But we are due to receive a visit from the wheelchair service shortly to assess the suitability of ankle straps to be fitted so I may stay my hand until after their visit.
© Mike Hart [2024]