A stab in the dark

Wednesday August 17

It is the first day that I am alone in the house for the main part of the day. Moving around the house from living to kitchen and back, to the bathroom when needed, is not too bad. The hardest part is only that I am to keep on ‘toe tap’ on the right leg where the hip was broken. This is to take the weight of it and help it have time to heal. It does mean walking in unnatural ways.

The trolley is the most important thing that helps when alone. I can load it up with books, a laptop, or a pot of tea and coffee, and use it transfer things between rooms, or around the kitchen when making things.

There are some issues, such as a non-cooperative dog who decides to sit down exactly where I’m needing to pass!

In some respects, this is the worst part of the situation as there is no safe way to negotiate such situations. A fully healthy person could just step over. I can’t.

However, this is not the biggest obstacle of the day, that is the psychological one of injecting myself. I’m not scared of needles and don’t have an issue with being injected by someone, a nurse, a doctor, someone who isn’t me and knows what they are doing. And here’s the thing, it actually doesn’t hurt and is over in less than a minute, if you just get on with it.

However, I’ve never done this before, and the thought of sticking something into my stomach is instinctively wrong. At the allotted time I go to the bathroom, I get the needle out, take off my t-shirt. I choose a place and aim for the stomach – one, two, three  …. Ah no, I can’t do it! Take a deep breath, try again. Still no. I do this a few times, and the more I fail the more stressed I get and the more annoyed, and the less likely to succeed. Eventually, after about thirty minutes I make it. I’ve worked out what to do, aim, look away, and as I move my arm, also move my stomach to the needle. And here’s the thing, once I’ve broken the skin I don’t mind looking. I’m happy checking it’s all the way in and that I have pushed the all the medicine out, it’s just that moment of breaking the skin.

But we’ve done it once, only five more weeks and six days of this to go. We’ll be fine.