May has been unseasonably cold and wet but, fortuitously, relaxation of Covid restrictions earlier this month allowed us to accept visitors inside the house. Our good friends from Stamford and Wirksworth have been here for lunch, as have my sister and husband, while our daughter Fiona and family visit regularly. The biggest bonus, though, was that our son, Adam has been able to come up from London and stay over for the first time in over a year. Fiona cooked a family ‘Christmas’ lunch here, which Adam had missed due to Covid, and we exchanged the Christmas presents we’d been holding on to since December. Wonderful!
It has been lovely to see friends and family again but the down side of greater personal contact was that I picked up a cold. Not normally a big deal, but it’s the first I’ve had in over a year thanks to lockdown, shielding etc.; and, as I’ve discovered, a cold, on top of MND is no joke. I can still cough, albeit weakly, and I have a cough-assist machine which I can use periodically during the day; but night-time proved to be a real trial. Kept awake by frequent bouts of coughing, my energy levels next day would be even lower than normal. What’s more, cough, cough, coughing meant my chest muscles weren’t rested overnight, so my breathing next morning was just as tired and laboured as when I went to bed. As a consequence, I’ve been using the portable ventilator throughout the day.
A major disadvantage of wearing the ventilator is difficulty talking. The machine gives me a blast of air on schedule, even if I’m in the middle of a sentence, so I just have to stop talking and resume when it lets me. Interjecting in a 3- or 4-way conversation can also be difficult if the ventilator is blowing at the moment I want to speak. I’ve also found that Dragon, my new voice-to-text software, can’t understand a word I’m saying when I’m wearing the ventilator. Perhaps nobody can but they are all just being polite!!
On the subject of Dragon, a couple of you replied to my last blog reminding me of the YouTube clip of two Scotsmen in a voice-controlled lift, trying to reach the 11th floor (from, of course, blog no.11. See: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MNuFcIRlwdc); absolutely hilarious. Testing Dragon to see how it responded to ‘11’, delivered in my best Scottish accent (and without wearing the ventilator), it came out with, ‘well, all, although, alone, such…. ‘!! The problem is not solved!!!
While on the Scottish theme, the BBC recently broadcast an interview with former Scotland rugby union international, Doddie Weir, rugby league player Rob Burrow, and pro footballer Stephen Darby, all living with MND. See https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/av/57227301. Worth a look.
Our pond has had three visits by a pair of mallard ducks this month, and one less welcome visitor. When my cold was at its worst, lying in bed seemed to induce more coughing so, on a couple of days, Doreen got me up early. At 6:00am, one morning, I was sitting quietly in the conservatory when suddenly, right in front of me, not 10 yards away, a heron suddenly landed on the roof of the summer house. I’ve seen herons before, but never nearly as close, and never previously in our garden. I don’t know who was most startled, me seeing this large, pre-historic-looking bird suddenly appearing, or the heron, finding itself in a close encounter with a ‘dreaded’ human. It probably didn’t help that my immediate reaction was to turn and shout, “heron!” to Doreen. Perhaps, if I’d had the presence of mind (at 6:00am?!!) to sit quietly, it might not have noticed me, and I could have watched how it approached our pond, but alerted by either my shout or my movement, it quickly turned and flew away. At least our one remaining goldfish was safe for another day!