Friday saw Maralyn visit for my acupuncture treatment, you will remember that we were unable to keep the appointment last week due to the snow that had fallen. There was no way that I wanted her to risk an accident to keep the appointment and so we mutually agreed to cancel. When she was here on Friday I was interested to know how her surgery was going in Chard, I am pleased to say that she had two more patients booked in after the first week and it sounds like for the next week she was fully booked. I am really pleased that she is going to do well here in Chard, and hope that if you are local, reading this and have a problem that acupuncture may help, that you will give her a call. Look on my “links” page and give her a call.
I had my Physiotherapy appointment in the afternoon in which I transferred from my chair to the sofa and then my Physio put the soft mat on the floor for me to turn myself within the space of the cushion on the sofa and put myself on to my knees. From here the aim is for me to get back on to the sofa. I have yet to manage it as I can’t seem to lift myself high enough to get back on to the cushion, it is incredibly hard work and after ten minutes of trying to repeatedly lift myself on to the sofa I ended up having to resort to the floor. We did some extra exercises using my step up which when combined with my wheelchair, I could utilise both and managed to get myself on to the sofa. A really good physio session, and then I had a really good lengthy talk with her about lots of things based around my accident, my treatment and my understanding of it all. The fact that I can not remember being told I would never walk may actually now be catching up with me and causing underlying problems, mixed with all of the other things related to paralysation which may or may not have been told to me and the lack of help I have received, she believes that this is now all bubbling away. She is not the only one to think this and as I explained to her, it is difficult for me to request help or talk to someone. I am not sure I actually need to, from my point of view I have always been there for my lads as their section commander and platoon Serjeant. I have encouraged and been a shoulder to cry on for recruits and now for me to be the one to need that, if indeed I do, is quite hard. I know it is not a failing and nor does it make you less of a man, in fact I have always told the aforementioned that it takes more of a man to ask for that help, but I don’t even know if that will help. The physio session ended with the news that I may be loosing my current physiotherapist, I will be gutted if I do because she knows me now, she is very focused on the goals we have set and we have a laugh during my appointments which really helps. We shall see though. If I do loose her as my physio, the patients she gains will have struck pure gold, either way I wish her all the best.
I spent the evening playing on the games console. I am not on it every five minutes or indeed every day and so I thought I would have a go on it. Darren had helped me hook it up to the on line side of things as it had come with a month free on line gaming. Tomorrow I will be getting hold of my mate who is going to talk me through setting it so we can talk to each through the television. It will be good to sit in the front room and talk to him while watching him on the television. What they can do with technology today eh! It was quite weird playing the console, I was playing a game, with Darren and talking to him even though we were not in the same house, amazing. On the flip side though, there is the danger that kids as they grow up will forget what playing outside actually means. To walk in to town to meet up with your friends will be a thing of the past, and this will not be the only thing, you have only got to look at the high street shops that are disappearing and collapsing to realise that going in to the bigger towns on a Saturday as a family and walking around the shops is rapidly dying off. The internet is a clever thing and has helped with many things but you can not deny that it is killing off so many different things also, and the worst thing is that it will eventually, I am sure, kill off conversation face to face. It will be mixed with text speak and simply typing what you want to say will be how it is done. Who knows, in years to come you may well find that mobile telephones won’t even have a mouthpiece, I hope not though. Is it really progress?
It was midnight when Darren and I switched off our consoles and I went to bed. I had to be up at around six thirty on Saturday morning to get ready for Darren to collect me and drive me to the Archaeological dig with Op Nightingale on Salisbury Plain Training Area (SPTA), something which I was looking forward to, not just because of what we were looking to dig up, but because of the people I would be able to catch up with including my mate who was seriously wounded by a suicide bomber on our first tour of Afghanistan. Op Nightingale has enabled me to spend time with him, laugh and joke with him and talk about how he has coped with his injury, something which I would be able to do but would have to try to arrange a time that suited us both, in between his operations and rehab, which would be very difficult and aside from Op Nightingale giving injured personnel rehab by a new interest, being amongst others who have injuries that are not just physical, gives everyone a chance to talk if they so wish and for that alone I personally want to thank Richard and the team.
Make sure you watch or set your timer to record Time Team which is when we were on Barrows Clump, something which I have written about before. It was on earlier today but will be repeated on Sky channel 140 at 02.05. It will be well worth watching. Please read the next Blog page which is all about the dig we did on Saturday on SPTA, full of pictures showing what we were recovering.