No, this is not about Trump, Brexit or China. It’s about me. Exactly one year ago tomorrow, I managed to fall and convincingly break my right arm. For whatever reason, or just to make bad things worse, the hospital tried to mend the break using a stiff corset-like armband although the X-Rays clearly showed the bone ends far apart. I was confined to bed, nursed twice a day by the day-care medical helpers and all the time by my three magnificent children. Consistent with theory, my central heating broke down for a week, as did my dishwasher and washing machine.
At the end of March I had the good fortune to see an orthopedic surgeon who advised an operation to fix the break and place a metal strip on the bones. The day after Easter Monday this is what he did and life started to get better. In 2004 I had a cataract operation on my right eye, the one badly damaged by a squash racket in 1978. Last year it was clear that the new lens had become detached and wandered over my eye making things occasionally difficult. In the summer, an eye surgeon in Rotterdam placed a new lens in the eye and that made life a lot better.
The time I had spent in bed in February-March had taken a toll on my leg muscles. I had lost 12 kilos or more and after walking a few hundred meters (with a stick still) I felt pretty exhausted. Not surprisingly, the fear of falling again was a big worry making me even slower. Then in December Christy advised me to have a check-up at my GP for Parkinson’s disease since she saw early signs of what could be just that. My GP disagreed but nevertheless referred me to a neurologist who could see me mid-January. So Christmas was a little different with this looming over my head and by the end of the year I was so weakened I had to spend more days in bed.
Last week, the neurologist examined me and ruled out Parkinson’s disease. What a relief! Christy was there for the appointment taking time off work and hiring a car to get me to the hospital and back. All three kids have again been magnificent in helping me at home with shopping and such things. Now I have the resolve to get those muscles strong again and try to regain my independence. It will soon be (I hope) a better year…
dickwife 