6 days on and I’m still very hot at night and cold in the days…
I only went out today to vote…. that was all the adventure I had in me. The voting venue entrance was plenty wheelchair accessible but i don’t think they’d thought much about the exit – of course it’s all ‘ one way ‘ at the moment. I got out the weeny church back door…. but only just, once over the unfriendly to wheelchairs threshold..

After a ( well Jesus it’s all relative in these anti social times ) busy period recently, I was listing ‘ all ‘ the people I’d have to contact to tell them I had Covid… but then in the end I didn’t. Felt a bit intense though for a bit.
None of them had symptoms and they’d all had at least one vaccine jab.
Goes to show then, the system is working!

Chris and Caroline had both already had Covid – they caught it at an outside, socially distant BBQ – which shows how bloody virulent it is, and that outside mingling alone isn’t enough, well not without the vaccine. Well it went crazy here after the ( outdoor ) Cheltenham Festival and a football match ( obviously outside) up north. Obviously the infected fans did travel to the events, but in outside crowds it would seem to prevail….
Thanks for the ( plant based ) lunch they brought ( well tidy ).
Good to see Lily and Zig too!

I’m watching The Handmaid’s Tale. Wow, that’s a chilling one. If you haven’t seen, then do. There’s a lot of stuff on that’s hopelessly bad. It’s obvious that not much new has been released this last year.
My habitual cinema opens in less than 2 weeks – at last – but they are showing about 2 old Disney films and some football matches….. mmmm I think I might wait.

And tomorrow I FINALLY get my front tooth back. Jeez I haven’t been able to speak properly for about a year, and it’ll be AMAZING!

A massive thank you to the lovely Lizzy.
She really is a Duracell bunny, full of never ending energy, which all day long she expends on doing things for other people – the charity, her 2 children, me, the elderly lady in Sevenoaks that she also looks after ( no relation, no one that she knew until last year ) and anyone else that she happens across.

To get me into her car requires a lot of effort ( on her part ). She’s only 5 foot 1 and half my weight, and never admits that anything is difficult. To get my legs into the footwell is REALLY hard. They are very rigidly set in the ‘ sat down’ position once I’m in my chair. To straighten them ie someone else lifting my feet up isn’t easy, so to try to get both my feet into a high up car is very difficult. I can’t help at all, because I can’t bloody bend forward either, so little Lizzy has to lie across the front seats and drag my feet up one by one. After that she has to help me as I pull myself into her car using the handle above the door.
Then she has to take the wheels off my chair, put those into her car, and then the rest of my chair.
Oh, and then she has to lift my very heavy Triride into the car as well.
When we get to where we are going, she has to do it all in reverse.

The whole process makes me feel so guilty that I really really avoid it having to happen. I’d far rather Triride to the destination, leaving her to drive herself, if it’s less than 10 miles, or I’d far rather use public transport. Those ways, there is no need for her to have to hoik me or my stuff, both ends.

So as I rule I catch trains to and from Sevenoaks, but because I’d been ill, Lizzy insisted I go by car. I know she’d never admit to it being a bloody pain, but jeez it must be.
Anyway I want to say thank you to her with all of my heart, for her love and devotion, always, but particularly these last few feverish days where I didn’t do a lot other than sweat. ..

Lizzy, you really are too good for me.
❤️❤️

Well after 3 days of being sort of ok In the daytimes, but then have 101 degree nights, with sweats and feverish dreams, at least it’s not COVID – my test came back negative.
The trouble with SCI ( spinal cord injury ) and hospitals, is that they really really don’t know how to look after you properly.’ Standard ‘ nursing doesn’t work, they have to be extra trained in SCI.

So I definitely wouldn’t go to hospital, even if I was really up against it, not to a standard one. I’d have more chance by myself, with the assistance of my regular helpers.
The paralysis hospitals wouldn’t take me as a patient, in case I infected everyone else.
So it’s not an ideal situation, is it?

After having ‘ got better’ I’ve then got worse again.
Another high temperature.

A peculiar thing that happens to me whenever I’ve had some sort of illness, is that my chest muscle disappears.
If that happens then I know I’ve been ill !

Bit random and actually bloody annoying because I do my best to keep my chest musculature intact, doing chest exercises with a high resistance Pilates ring most days.

Bugger.

I’m going to have a proper COVID test today at 12.30 to see if it’s that. Well like most people I’ve had far more contact with people in the last week or 2, albeit it mostly outside.

It’ll be very interesting how much and if COVID comes back, despite the vaccinations. I mean they don’t actually know, do they, because we haven’t tested the theory by opening up, until now.

Just after a conversation with a friend where I mentioned that I never ( or historically hardly ever ) get ill, as in colds/ coughs/ viral infections etc ( I’ve never had a headache- as in not once ) … I start to feel cold, like really cold. It’s 12 degrees and I have to Triride a mile or 2 from Sevenoaks town to Lizzy’s house, and I start to properly shiver.
When I get there, despite a fan heater pointed at me for an hour, I’m really cold.
After her ( significant ) help onto her sofa, I fall asleep ( for 4 hours) and then eventually once in bed I sleep for another 11 hours and am drenched in sweat.
I have a random dream where there are massive plastic animals going past the window of the house I’m in, and then when I go outside the street is full of objects on fire, with hundreds of people looking on in horror.
Then I say I’d like to go back, because now Lizzy is with me, but she helps me into a small car parked outside her house, in a muddy field, and tells me to go to sleep. When I ask if it would be ok if I just came into the house instead, she just looks at me awkwardly, and despite my plaintive requests she doesn’t let me in… and the car smells a lot of dogs.

When this morning I told Lizzy about my dream, she was quite upset that I should think so badly of her. Well it’s alright for you, I said, you didn’t have to sleep in a cold, wet car.

Me saying that wasn’t helpful. 😂

Anyway I’ve now always got the ‘ don’t make me sleep in the car ‘ line at hand if I ( heaven forbid ) want to make her feel bad!

Oh, and she gave me a lateral flow COVID test ( it’s not pleasant, is it, and made a really gag – but at least that implies I did it properly ) and it was negative.

So, for the first time in a long time ( other than the nastiness of spinal cord injury stuff ) I’ve actually been ill.
But as always with me, ill be better within 24 hours.

I’ve still got the constitution of a Welsh sheep then.

Because I have skim cancer tendencies, I have to put on Factor 50 when the sun comes out. Weirdly though it seems to make me more tanned than using nothing at all ( where I go red before I eventually go brown.
Anyway, my help ( G ) was putting some on my back, and said ‘ ooh, you’ve got the Smurf lotion ‘

Hmmmm… that’ll be the kids blue cream that is Factor 50 then… well I can’t even pronounce Piz Buin let alone feel like spending extra on it.

So if it’s a sunny day in Wesr London, and you see a smurf in a wheelchair, going fast, then that’ll be me.

Please shout out something Smurfy!