It’s Duncan here again. I’m sitting here alone in Cumbria – well, alone that is apart from Radia De Longhi, who is nestling between my knees.
You’ll all know that James came out of the Royal London a week ago. Penny and I had about 30 minutes notice of this. We appeared (from Cumbria) at about 1700 hours. James told us “I’m coming out today”. We thought “no, chum, you’re off your trolley”. His nurse then appeared and said “We’re discharging James this evening”. So to our surprise, we found ourselves taking him home (to his flat) at about 1900 hours. James, it transpired was, after all, on his trolley. Although of course, he had to come off it in order to get out.
He’s delighted with this move and it is undoubtedly the best thing for him. His flat offers attractive surroundings and the catering is much better at Flat 11, Victoria Wharf than it was in the Mile End Road.
He’s made great strides with his walking. His 90 year old grandmother, Nana, would have beaten him by a long chalk in a 110 metre endurance walking competition on 23rd November (James wouldn’t have finished). By 26th November, however, he was up to 1km, which would have given Nana a run for her money. Things are looking up.
His eyesight is also looking up, so to speak. The wonkiness has reduced and his eyes are becoming more aligned.
Friday was a busy day. Apart from a gruelling walk in the sunshine along a towpath, across a footpath and through a park, he had several visitors – Anna, Michael and a contingent of medical chaps from Tower Hamlets. The latter (Gaby, Susan and Alan) came to do an assessment. This took two hours, most of which was An Inquisition. The objective of the visit was to find out what was necessary to get James back to work. The result was that he will get some help on physio, with his eyesight and some help on return to work skills (managing his programme and that sort of thing). He then demonstrated that he could walk safely up and downstairs, knew that 999 was the right number to ring to get the fire brigade, didn’t know how to turn the water off (I must find out from our plumber how to do this up here in Cumbria) and was able to articulate his goals quite clearly.
The goals are:
· Carry on going out with his girlfriend (whom he described as a superstar)
· Get back to work
· Get running again
Anything that we can do to help in these areas will doubtless be appreciated!
The Gaby/ Susan/ Alan team were extremely impressed with James’ progress. They said that they were astonished that he was recovering as fast as he is – so that’s good news.
Having been fed through a nasal gastric tube for 4weeks with a continuous drip liquid, James’ stomach has shrunk. It hasn’t had to accommodate large sporadic insurance lunches. Until it’s stretched back to normal size, capacity (and so energy intake) is limited, so he’s still inclined to get tired. Several of you have sent very welcome and tasty hampers/ parcels and these will all help. Mental picture – goose, foie gras – I’m sure that you get the general idea.
A couple of other things:
1. Thank you all very much for your continued support, interest and presents.
2. James’ university friend, Raj, is seeking contributions to a birthday present for James (who attained the ripe old age of 28 on Thursday last week). Some of you may have picked this up from an email which came out last week. Raj’s idea is to get James an iPad and load it with some pictures of James. Several of my cynical colleagues thought that this was a scam. Well, it wasn’t. If you would like to support the idea, you can send me a cheque (Duncan Poole, Whinfell Hall, Low Lorton, Cumbria CA13 0RQ), I’ll pay the cheques into my account and then forward the money to Raj for him to bring the idea to fruition. He’ll still need the photos direct. As I said to Raj (post issue of email), I thought that it would be prudent not to buy anything until he had cash in hand - many of you have been very generous already with time, accommodation, food, flowers etc.
James will have a go at the next bulletin – he’s keeping a diary, which rivals that of other diarist greats like Samuel Pepys and Bridget Jones.
Cheerio to you all for now,
With love from Penny, Bean & James and Alasdair in London,
And me (in chilly Cumbrian isolation – Radia De Longhi is an oil filled radiator, by the way, and not much of a substitute for Penny),
Duncan
29th November 2010.
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