Caring With Confidence

I would like to draw your attention to this new initiative funded by the NHS. It is a free knowledge and skills based learning programme. Some areas have group meetings. It appears to have limited groups in the South West region - Somerset. No wonder parts of Devon & Cornwall are still referred to as 'the withered arm'. (There was not so much money to be spent on the west which had to soldier on as best it could - left to wither away!)

I suggest you explore this link and see if Caring with Confidence would be of any help to you.

I like to meet and share problems in a group when I can but with time being such an issue it isn't always easy. Another problem I find is just how bone wearingly tired being a carer can be. It is so hard to explain to someone who hasn't experienced it. I often wonder whether it is a low grade form of reactive depression. Does anyone else have any views on this?

Back to Fitness

Besides the physiotherapy sessions MyMan has also been entered in a Back to Fitness programme. Over a 6 week period he along with a class of 5 others is undergoing an hour long exercise and muscle toning programme run at Wonford hospital.

Last week he boasted that he had used dumbbells weighing 66 lbs. I said incredulously - "surely not. Don't you mean 6 lbs?" But he insisted it was 66lbs. "But that's about 4 stone - it can't be that" Again he was definite. He'd seen the weight impressed on the dumbbells with his own eyes - demonstrating this by lowering his spectacles down his nose to see properly - and telling me that 'bloody heavy they are too'.

I told him I still wouldn't and couldn't believe it. 6.6 kilos by a HUGE stretch of the imagination I might manage - but not 66 lbs. Not from a man who is unable to help me carry in a bag of potatoes and 2 litres of milk without moaning how heavy it is.

This week he confessed he'd taken a closer look and it was 6.6 lbs. And, as he'd found them very heavy last week and had strained his chest muscles, he picked up the lighter weight dumbbells.

That's MyMan. Mr Atlas he isn't.

Updated: 22 January 2010

Thank you Robert for your kind comment but I feel MyMan and I are quite well matched.

New Beginnings

It is a little late in the New Year to think of New Beginnings but

"What at first may appear to be an ending, is often a new beginning . . ".

After a long drawn out investigation MyMan has accepted the Financial Ombudsman's Final Decision on his complaint against Equitable Life. It has been another battle against a large instituition. Energy sapping and a time consuming procedure at the best of times.

Now he is even more at a loose end. Still not fit enough to work. With too much time on his hands he concentrates on his low mood. Maybe once the compensation comes through, and he is able to completely cross it off his mental 'jobs to do' list, he may find some energy to get on and enjoy some aspect of retirement. He's now 65 and if he'd still been working I would have been nagging him to retire. He counts himself as sick and out of work. But with the state pension being paid I tell him he is now a retiree/OAP.

He longs still for solitude, peace and complete quiet. I tell him there will be plenty of that when he's in the cemetery.