Trent & Mersey Canal” – Handbagwarrior; verbal ramblings

Books

We walked a short way at Shugborough Estate the other day, It was a mixture of bright sunshine and dull sky. It was bitter outside but still.

I think I may have migraine today I feel….slightly jittery inside, I have a headache and I feel nauseous. I have had more lately than I have had for a while.

I was musing through my bookmarked sites this morning and spent some time on Goodreads. I love books and have probably read thousands throughout my lifetime. These days I find I am not able to read more than one book at a time, and when I do I have to keep reading it regularly at a steady pace because I forget who the characters are. The complexity of the links between the characters become confusion if they are not explained when they are introduced. I used to be able work out the relationships and connection between the characters which becomes frustrating because I am constantly having to re read parts to get them. This is a shame as I have so many books lined up to read! Currently I am reading The Almond Tree by Michelle Cohen Corasanti which promises to be an excellent story with lots of characters whose connections are important. The names which are not English are unfamiliar to me which will make it slightly harder to remember, but I am excited to read this book.

Am I a pensioner now with the recent changes? who knows.

19/02/13

Today I am 60.

I have washed up, cleaned the bathroom, cleaned and washed out the cats litter tray, I have undertaken the mammoth task of hoovering up all the paper cat litter bits that they walk out with them. At 2.30pm we got wrapped up and armed with his new GPS gadget Mr Hs and I walked out of the marina and turned left to do some geocaching nearby. Having got down onto the towpath we walked towards the first nearest cache, but it seems that the GPS system is so complicated that it was taking a while to understand. Whilst Mr Hs was working out how accurate his GPS toy was I walked 300 metres further down the towpath and finally found my first cache, yippee! I wrote the date and mrs hsg on the list and replaced it. On to the next one back down the towpath, this time Mr Hs found it in a hole in a piece of concrete, dripping with water. The walk back was torturous both Mr Hs and I had not walked this far for several months and joints and muscles were screaming that maybe we had walked too far! The birdsong as we walked was stupendous, both noisy and beautiful announcing that spring is just around the corner. I can’t wait to take the boat out knowing that there is no reason to hurry back.

18/02/13 – We got up early and trundled off to Burton Treatment Centre for my eye check up appointment, only to find I had somehow mixed up the days in my head and the appointment is next Monday. I knew my appointment was on the 25th but simply did not seem to connect the day being the 18th. Mr Hs said several times that he must remember to write this down to tell the memory clinic. Ok wrong day, but it got us up out of bed and out.

Moving on….

Took my final note into work and let them know I am not coming back, they have replaced me already but hey, I don’t care. It was lovely to see all my friends at work and catch up with them, I did not realise how much I was missed. The bosses hugged me and talked about what I will be doing now, took my keys off me and left. I hunted around for my possessions which some had been put into bin bags, some things just stuffed into the cupboard. After I left the building I felt…free!

I have started to write my story/book, who knows whether it will be of interest to anyone, but I am enjoying spending an hour a day writing and as the snow lays heavy outside and there is nothing we need to go out for at present it gives me lots of time.

Mr Hs wants to go out as he hates just sitting about, as I am up and down cooking and making some cards I feel that I am not wasting my time. Perhaps we need to get our new muckboots out of the car and go out….

Diagnosis in writing…

Received a copy of my diagnosis from Professor L. I find I always need to know the exact details, everything there is to know. I think that Prof L does not see the benefit of discussing my diagnosis with me. Maybe he thinks it would not help me/I wouldn’t understand/I will forget anyway. I always need to know details, no matter what it is. Maybe that is part of my Alzheimer’s the obsessiveness of needing details. On the other hand I have always felt that as the patient, I am the person who should be talked to first. I should be told, I should be talked to as if I will remember, because actually I think I will.

I studied psychology and I do understand the workings of memory, I enjoyed the neuroscience part of my degree more than the ’emotional’ side at University. The letter explains that I have deficits in the medial temporal lobe, more so on the right side. There is no dementia (yet). Sooo… how does this make me feel…numb really.

I read this article on an American Alzheimer’s site that gave the 7 stages that I will go through. It was honest, and I welcomed it. UK site’s seem to want to hide all these nasty things from us but I want to know. I am at the pre, pre stage, I have difficulties with my memory, I am finding that my sense of humour is somewhat lacking these days, I find it difficult sometimes to understand what is going on when I am watching a program on tv. As a touch typist who has typed for years, I am now finding that I am ‘automatically’ typing as if I was dyslexic, in other words, transposing letters within a word. Or I am typing a word that is different to what I am typing which I am having to correct constantly. e.g. Or I am typing a work that it different to what \i am typeing whcih I am having to correct contsantly. (typed without corrections). Ok so this may not be that much of a problem, but I know it and it shows what is happening to me, which I would rather not see.

So what have we done these past two days……yesterday Mr Hs slept all day..his man flu is at the coughing stage which is wearing him out. Me, I made blueberry muffins, cooked dinner, read and did not a lot else. Today, Mr Hs went out bought 3 bags of coal, and pressure hosed the pontoon along the side of the boat. The green algae that grows in the wet weather makes the pontoons very slippery and lethal! Then he filled the water tank whilst I did three loads of washing, and drying, cooked dinner, cleaned the carpets, and cleaned the bathroom. Thus the day was filled with normal boating life chores. Yes, it is a lovely peaceful way of life, but you have to constantly monitor your water consumption, monitor whether the toilet cassette needs emptying, take your rubbish by car to the skip, empty the Tipee Ash Can in the ditch or fill in a hole in the road around the marina. I still love it though.

Happy New Year

Woke my usual time around 8.30am and the sun was shining over the marina, well almost! I feel reasonably excited for this year because not working, we will untie the boat and cruise for a couple of months.

I was not raining today, a good start to the year, so we went for a walk along the Trent & Mersey canal in the village of Alrewas, in Staffordshire. It was beautiful, the sun broke through the dark clouds with shards of light. It stilled my thoughts, and made me feel calm and relaxed.

Mr Hsg still has a cold, his eyes running in the chill air on our walk, but the freshness blew away the days of being indoors.