TeaTriumph!

Apologies for my rapid fire blogging, but I'm keen to log these early days one by one. As time goes on, I will stop recording every tiny achievement and focus on the big ones. Unfortunetely, for now, the tiny achievements are the big ones, so each is getting recorded.

Friday, I woke up with a stinking headache and feeling really sick. But, as I waggled my foot up and down, I realised only very modest pain in my knee. I took 2 paracetamol, and that was it. I felt no need for anything heavier, at least not for my knee. I could do with some dynamite for my head, but opiates weren't going to be the solution there. I knew what the problem was. Dehydration.

Every night, several times during the night I would wake drenched in sweat. And this would also happen if I slept during the day. Couple that with my initial reluctance to drink to much because it hurt so much to get up to pee, and my heavy use of painkillers to deal with the knee pain. I essentially had a hangover. I really couldn't be bothered to get out of bed and wash. I was also very tearful for some reason. But I didn't want to head down the slippery slope of self-neglect, so I forced myself to get up, and washed myself whilst sobbing uncontrollably into the sink. I drank a litre of water and I went back to bed and slept until 1pm. Woke up, cried some more, took a couple more paracetamol, desk some more water and went back to sleep. I woke again at 3:30, still feeling crap. My plan for today had been to make my first journey downstairs by myself while Jason was at school still. We'd left the jug-and-bucket downstairs because there was still no way I could manage going up by myself. This was progress, and I wasn't going to miss out on it just for a headache and some tears.

Right, I could do this. My aim: get downstairs, make a cup of tea and sit myself on the sofa with tea and a biscuit. Simples.

Step 1: All the pillows and cushions upstairs needed to be downstairs for me to rest my leg on them. So, I threw them all to the top of the stairs, and then threw them all down the stairs. I also threw my phone, tablet, oramorph (just in case) and grabby-device down.
Step 2: get myself downstairs. Very very slowly and constantly re-checking myself
step 3: throw all the stuff from the bottom of the stairs firstly to the doorway of the living room, and from there into  the living room beside the sofa
Step 4: Arrange the sofa so I could sit on it with my leg up.
Step 5: Make tea.
Step 6: get tea from kitchen to living room. (This is the bit I'm proudest of). Line up a series of chairs between the kettle and the sofa. Transfer tea a chair at a time until you reach the sofa. Transfer tea from final chair to the living room table. BOOM! Tea in place!
Step 7: Arrange myself on the sofa.
Step 8: sit back with tea and biscuit, feeling smug!
Victories;
Working through the tears and despair and making my journey downstairs
My success making tea and getting it to the sofa even though I'm not known for my common sense.
A whole day with no opiate analgaesia