It’s been a while since I posted – I’ve been putting daily updates on Dad on Facebook, but once again keep forgetting that my blog exists … since this is supposed to be a stitching blog, though, I’ll show that first and then if you want to keep reading I’ll add an update on Dad afterwards 🙂
While I’ve been home I’ve managed to get a bit more stitching done (more than I usually do at home, as it’s been more as a stress relief than anything else really!) – partly on my own pieces, but also the Round Robin pieces that have been due … our Round Robin started up on 1 February, just before Dad got taken in for his surgery! The girls have been great, and they’ve sent the last two pieces to me together in NZ, so I’ve had the opportunity to continue stitching over here … mind you, thank goodness I taught Mum to XS on her 70th birthday, as she had the full set of DMC at home – if she wasn’t a stitcher, I’d have been truly stuck!! So here are the Round Robin pieces to date:
Ann’s RR … I stitched the top right section (round 2 completed)
Kate’s RR … still working on this one, but just have the gold braid backstitch left to do (round 3 WIP)
The next piece is one of my 2013 Crazy January Challenge projects and is for me … she is my favourite pixie of all time from Nora Corbett (Bluebell Pixie), and it’s awesome to finally see her start to come to life on fabric after lusting after her for so long! Sadly, though, I hadn’t realised that the spool of Kreinik 1432 I had was only a part one, so I’ve come to a halt stitching on her until I can get home again and check my stash for another spool or order another one to be posted over to me. I’ve also decided that I’m going to leave off the beads and the Waterlilies silk thread until I get her home anyway, just in case she has a bad trip home and needs to be washed and ironed. So sad that I can’t keep working on her, but this is how she will just have to stay until I eventually get home again 🙂 I’ll add all the fabric details etc when I finally get her finished.
As for other stitching, I just need to finish off the gold braid backstitching on the current RR piece, then I have the final one to be started immediately afterwards. That one should be a relatively quick stitch, as it’s quite blocky, and it’s in my favourite colour … b l u e … so I’m going to enjoy stitching that one immensely!! 😀
Once that’s done, though, Dad had better be ready to come home again, because I only have one XS project left at home to start working on (although a medium size so it would last me a while) … my laptop died a few weeks ago and is currently in the repair shop (of which I’m about to send a complaint letter to the branch manager …), and it contains all of my freebie charts etc which was my back-up stitching library if I ran out of stitching!
Update on Dad:
It’s been a long road for Dad the last few weeks – he gradually became more lucid, and is now mentally alert once again (almost back to normal once more in that way). For a few he was having lots of problems with his ileostomy bag and having to have it replaced a few times a day – that was causing his skin to become red raw, not just around the stoma site, but pretty much all down his abdomen and top of his thigh … he was screaming out in agony and crying his eyes out and begging for his life to be ended … it was the most heartbreaking thing to watch. Mum had to leave the room, and I have to admit to barely keeping it together watching him suffering so much. Thankfully, though, they have eventually found a bag that seems to be staying in place and not leaking, and the last week he has been much more stable, and with that a lot happier within himself. He’s been through so much over the last 6 weeks (I can’t believe he’s been in there for so long!!), I just don’t know how he’s managed to pull himself through!!
Anyway, about a week ago now he was moved to a new ward, to the Assessment Therapy and Rehab ward for Older People – they’re still struggling with him to get him eating, but we’ve now been asked if we can bring in food from home so he’s at least getting some sort of nutrients into him. He’s a really plain eater and fussy as all hell as to what he will eat, so he lifts the lid of the hospital plate, takes one look, and puts the lid back down again. I remember as a teenager making Spaghetti Bolognaise at home and asking if he wanted some (Mum and I eat pretty much everything), and his response was “I’m not eating that, it’s foreign muck!” … yep, that’s my Dad! LOL. Mum took him some sausage rolls in for his dinner last night as requested, but got upset that the Dr said he shouldn’t eat the tomato that came with it due to the skin … poor guy, that’s one thing he said to me the day before his first operation, that he couldn’t wait until afterwards when he can eat tomatoes and baked beans again, ‘cos he’d been on a strict diet for the previous 2 months … and the poor guy still can’t eat them 😦
Other than that, though, he’s finally on the road to recovery – we spoke to his Dr on Monday afternoon, and I got the OK to take Dad out in a wheelchair … in fact she was so keen for us to do it she went and got a wheelchair for us there and then! It was quite a momentous occasion for us, we took him down to the hospital cafe on the ground floor and got ourselves a coffee then sat outside in the fresh air and drank it – it was the first time Dad had breathed in fresh air and been outside for 5 1/2 weeks … I think that really lifted his spirits astronomically 🙂 He also got the go-ahead yesterday morning by the Dr that he can use his walker to go to the bathroom etc without having to call for a Nurse, so now he thinks he’s Superman! He wanted to go down to the hospital cafe on the ground floor on his walker, but I refused to take him unless we could take a wheelchair with us as a back-up … he got a bit cantankerous then, but I stood my ground, and he eventually backed down and said he could be taken in the chair, and he wouldn’t bother with the walker. On Monday the Dr had stressed that his body was exceptionally weak, and that his Rehab stay was longer than normal because of that – his body gets tired really quickly, even though the mind is extremely willing his body isn’t quite up to it yet. Hopefully it won’t be long, though, before he can get out and about more himself.
So after all this length of time, and almost 6 weeks of daily visits, it means we can finally see a light at the end of the tunnel, where the light is his discharge papers and the ability to come home. We now have to have home assessments done and see whether hand-rails etc have to be installed for him … but at least we’re starting to have some concrete plan of action to get him up and home again! 😀
