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Having returned home I had a week with my husband to relax and start finding my way around the house once more. I had been in a wheelchair for the past twelve months but suddenly everything was so much more difficult to do. The whole balance of my body had changed as I was now about 14lbs lighter on one side and when leaning forward to do things I only had one leg to balance with. This was all so new, unexpected and so frustrating as I slowly had to learn to cope with a completely new life style. We still had the bed downstairs in the dinning room where we had been living for the past four months, it was now June and we had been waiting for Social Services to visit since our initial request for help in November. The Amputee Rehabilitation Clinic had organised a commode for me to have next to the bed and Cedric had widened the door to the downstairs toilet several months past so that I could get in with my wheelchair making it possible for me to wash and care for myself. It was now well over four months since I had had a bath as I could not get up the stairs to the bathroom and now I was beginning to feel so much better I longed to be able to get back into the bathroom for a shower or a bath. I had seen a shower seat that fits across the bath and swivels to allow the user to sit and have a shower. It was amazing how quickly I became adept in my new situation. A work top in the kitchen had been lowered so that I could prepare meals, wash the pots in a bowl and the ironing board could be set at a height that I can manage from the chair. Once the decking/ramp was in place I could reach the rotary wash line from my chair and took good advantage of the summer sun that had graced our beautiful country.
The first trip was to Bakewell a beautiful market town in the
Derbyshire Peak
District famous for it's pudding that bears little resemblance to the tarts that Mr. Kippling makes. We walked by the river, had an ice-cream and fed the trout as
they were faster than the ducks. We walked around the shops and had a pub lunch
before setting off for a drive through the Derbyshire Dales and a return to our
home. As we made the top of the hills I said to Cedric "you will have to
pull over as I have an itch in my left foot", and despite the obvious
stupidity of the situation he pulled over and got out of the car, walked around
to my side and scratched the place where my foot should have been and the itching
subsided. This was the first time that I had experienced Phantom Sensation and it
was weird. The next time was even
more odd as we were lying in bed and I said to
Cedric I have an itch in my foot, but my foot is not on the bed. It felt as
though my leg was
hanging through the bed and my foot was under the bed. Cedric replied, "if you
think I am crawling under the bed to scratch it, you can forget it." I have not
had a lot of phantom sensation but there have been occasions that usually
occurred in the early days when nerve endings were mending or later when I first
started wearing an artificial leg and pressure on the stump would trigger these
sensations.
We made a visit to Bridlington on the east coast where I was able to propel the wheelchair on my own and take in the sights and sounds of such an idyllic seaside town. Dinner was fish and chips which was fantastic and I began to enjoy life outside of my home once more. For the past year we had hardly gone out at all as my leg had been so bad and I felt so worn out all the time. I could not go for a paddle in the sea, but what the heck, at least I was out and about once more. Later that week I even got to go to the hairdresser for the first time in a year and it was so good to feel like a real person once more. It is hard to understand how restrictive a debilitating condition can be.
The week past by quickly and the next step was to go for rehabilitation.