Post109: Being looked after and another lovely lunch

Another mundane week and Avril (my carer) has been away this weekend which is fair enough but in the past has caused a bit of a system crash because it has meant I've had nobody around to help me get out of bed and get my morning routine underway because I am not independent enough to be able to do it myself but things were a little different this weekend. The Brave regular readers of this rubbish will remember I recently met a gorgeous girl called Asli – well, she kindly stepped in and has done an amazing job, she has kept me company, cooked for me and been affectionate and reassured me that I look great despite my perception of my freakish appearance all weekend, she feels like a miracle after so long in hell and feeling so painfully lonely, she is amazing and I can't wait to introduce her to people over the coming months or at my rapidly approaching 32nd birthday which if you feel you should have heard about and haven't is because I couldn't organise a piss-up in a brewery with my current brainpower!
I suppose there have been a couple of interesting developments this week
I did my sleep test on Tuesday to see if sleep apnoea is contributing to my fatigue, I have already mouthed off about how angry I am that this wasn't done during the two years I was in hospital but now they tell me after I have to spend an inconvenient night in a strange place next to a noisy main road hooked up to god knows how many electrodes that the results will take a month! I spent 2 odd years waiting for everything and call me impatient but I'm fed up with it! A month, a f*cking MONTH, I could probably do it faster myself, I've probably picked up enough jargon in two years and my writing is dire enough to write a prescription and given how much the medical profession seem to know about the brain and stroke my guess is probably as good as theirs. In fact the treatment for sleep apnoea is so earth-shatteringly simple (a breathing mask at night with an oxygen cylinder it's a wonder they just don't give it a go and see what happens rather than bother with the rigmarole of the test:Another efficiency discovered by D.S.H Pardey esq! Bound to fall on deaf ears though. No-one listens to me: I wonder why? The other thing that has quite helped this week has been discovering the different strokes messageboard. Different strokes is a charity set up for young stroke survivors (<60 years old) There seem to be very few genuuinely young stroke survivors which has made me feel even more on my own and unusual ,so I instantly put up a couple of questions, one about fatigue and one about walking: So far the answers have been kind and courteous if not exactly helpful but you never know if someone is going to come up with some pure gold, here's hoping.
Changing the subject totally, I have just come back from a lovely lunch with exactly the same people as in post 79. For those who can't be arsed (oh that's everyone):That's Simon Dawes, his wife Yvonne and their two little terrors Joseph and Isabelle and recently engaged Anna and Paul who believe it or not used to work for Simon then when Simon quite rightly got promoted up to greater things I took over his job despite having to wing a lot of stuff and became their boss.
Anyway our friendship survived this and them being engaged is great news and Pauls jokes are as bad as ever. Here's what he wrote on my facebook wall last week.
“cheers for the best wishes, sorry for the delay in getting back to you, Anna monopolises the puter and I am not too clever at this facebook lark
looking forward to meeting up, and have invested in the harry hill book of jokes to ensure guaranteed bad jokes - such as
'how did the washing powder get out at cricket?' -
Bold
see you next week
I'm sorry but you've gotta love that!