Two months at home and OCE

It was lovely to be home and get used to being home and also finding my way round my own home again , Dad came down for a week to make sure I was ok when Nik started back to work.Quite a sleepy little Cotswold village is hard to walk round outside its so hilly so going out practicing walking wasnt a good option.  We got an invitation from the consultant at OCE for me to have a look round the place, Nik had been but I hadnt so we went, it was ideal looked a great place where I knew I could improve my walking and arm usage with the facilities there.  Dr HS suggested to me that to come there as an in patient would be of far more value and enable me more, so after much thought and discussion at home I called him and said I would like to go ahead, we may be looking at me going in in January for 6/7 weeks, what was 6 wks to a lifetime and better quality of life.

So bring on Christmas, Charles came down from Lancaster Uni on 19th Dec and was due to go home on the following Monday but due to a rather heavy fall of snow on the Saturday he stayed til Weds which was really nice, it was so awful being stuck inside in the snow for 5 days! and not bring able to go out and enjoy it  picturesque maybe but you do get a bit fed up with it. Mark managed to help us get Charles out and back to Stratford station in his four wheel drive. Nik took the opportunity to go and get our shopping from Tesco, as they wouldn't do their home delivery!

I had been a tad concerned about what we might do for Christmas, Nik had helped me do the meal before but he'd never cooked one, however thankfully two lots of friends very kindly offered to have us over for Christmas Day.  We went to the Western for lunchtime drinks then to Caroline and Austen's for dinner and they did us proud, we had an excellent meal with all the trimmings, well stuffed tummies and good snooze when we got home.

We didn't do a great deal over Christmas cos of the weather, drinkies at friends in the village, Nik and Ed dug the car out, Ed went sledging,  Then sometime during the last week of 2010 I got a call from Julie at the OCE would I like to go in next week! Date being 6th Jan - eek!  At this time Charles had come down - nice to see some family - to spend a week with us, so cos of Ed going back to school, Charles with us, Nik with work commitments, appointments already made, I asked if I could go in on 10th Jan and that was fine so next bit OCE.