Ok Summer...

You can start now, anytime you like.  Sooner rather than later please!

More wind, rain, hailstones with a tiny blink of sunshine today.  Really wish the weather would improve.  Since my activities are curtailed at the moment (due to knee) it would be really nice to be able to spend time in the garden!  Just a few afternoons of sitting in some bright warmth would be so lovely.

The weather gods must have heard me.....hailstones are on again!

Phoned the wheelchair people today as there's a crack in the frame of Alan's power chair, making the back very shoogley (good old scottish word for shaky :-)  An engineer will hopefully come and see it by the end of this week but I fear we might need a whole new frame and not sure how long that will take.  In the meantime he'll have to use his emergency manual chair, which is as light as a feather so he can easily tip it!  We will all have to keep a very close eye on him while he's using it.

Also waiting for the dietician to phone me back as over the last month I have become increasingly concerned about his nutrition levels.  I just don't feel he's getting enough calories or vitamins and minerals.  

Although his appetite is generally good, he has such a narrow diet and this coupled with the fact he will only eat two meals a day (which isn't good for his ulcerative colitis as he's supposed to eat little and often) concerns me more and more.  He just seems to manage to gain a little weight then (as recently happened) he gets a cold, goes off his food for a week and suddenly he's a skeleton again.  And each time he seems to take longer to recover.  He just doesn't have any weight to lose.

I suspect we will have to consider top up feeding by gastrostomy, something we've managed to avoid so far.  It's an added complication that he could do without, but now I think the benefits he would receive would outweigh any negatives.   Wasn't sure whether to speak to our GP first, or the gastro team at the hospital, then decided the dietician would be sensible as a first port of call.   Left a message for her this morning and feel a bit of a weight lifted now that I've made the first step.

Saturday
Sunday