Bye bye hair, but hello to walking – with the odd tumble

My hair has started to fall out now.  In handfuls.  Which isn’t great.  Of course the logical thing is not to keep running my hands through it to see how much is ‘falling’ out.  When I say falling, I actually mean being dragged out by me running my hands through it, but I can’t help it.  It’s compulsive.  Like laughing when someone in front of you trips – you know you shouldn’t, but you do it anyway.  Thankfully, I had a lot of hair to start with, so it’s not that obvious yet – I’ve got a few days before you’d be able to tell just by looking at me, by which time my new wigs should have arrived.  All very exciting.  Not the sort of shopping I’d expected to be doing a month ago, but exciting nonetheless.

On the good news front, last Friday I walked nearly 40 metres, albeit with a little rest halfway, which is awesome!  I obviously had help with this fantastic achievement.  I was using a frame – yes that’s a Zimmer frame to those of you who are now rolling in the aisles laughing at the thought of me on one of those – and had some help from my physios when my wayward feet decided that they’d face a different direction to the one I was aiming for, but I still did it.  Given that it’s only just over 4 weeks since major spinal surgery, I’m fairly chuffed with myself.

It wasn’t all plain sailing on the walking front last week though, it has to be said.  On Wednesday, when trying to achieve some distance - I’d covered 12 metres - I lost my balance slightly, and because I have no real centre of gravity (my torso is still pretty much completely numb), I started to fall.  Now, once I start to go at the moment, there’s no stopping me, so Craig, one of my stalwart physios, initially tried to catch me and when he couldn’t, heroically threw himself underneath me to break my fall.  Bless him; he definitely went above and beyond the call of duty on that occasion.  I’m not sure I’d have done it – as I’ve said before, I’m no small load.  His efforts were successful though, because I didn’t hurt myself and wasn’t put off trying again, so thank you Craig.  Also, thankfully, because this fall happened with my physios present, I didn’t need to get re-badged with my ‘risk of falls’ band.  That would have displeased me greatly.   I didn’t like wearing that at all – good thing it accidentally fell off quite quickly.

So in general, things are going fairly well.  I also had some fine examples of vena bena over the weekend.  A lovely Sauvignon Blanc and a scrummy white Bordeaux.  To my wonderful nurses and HCA’s who are now following this blog, I obviously only had a couple of very small glasses, more like thimblefuls really….  Thank you to my friends for their continuing support in this area – it’s much appreciated. ;-)

Finally, a Toastergate update.  We now have toast, hooray!  Due to the unprecedented level of pensioner complaining and moaning, H&S were overruled and somebody went and bought one. 

Thank God for rule breakers.