Busyknitter

On top of S breaking his arm, I’ve done my back in. T woke up screaming early Sunday morning. I’m not sure what happened next, as I was half asleep, but somehow in sorting him out, I’ve managed to pull something.

And it bloody hurts.

I went to work as normal today but sloped off in the afternoon to see a physio ( I know I work in the NHS, but when the chips are down, it’s worth £27 for instant access ). Apparantly a couple of my thoracic (in the middle) and cervical (at the neck) vertebrae are out of alignment. She pummelled my back for about twenty minutes and gave me a spell on the TENS machine. I’ve been sent away with a few stretching exercises. But like so many of these things, it’s just going to be a matter of time and painkillers.

I’m going to have to keep out of T’s way for a few days, as he likes rough play and he’s built like a brick s***house

Update on S. I took him to school this morning, but they phoned at 10am asking me to fetch him home again. He’s still in a fair amount of pain and won’t really be able to do much until the permanent cast goes on later this week.

One thing I’ve learned this week is how easy it is to both over and under-react when one of the kids takes a tumble.

On Tuesday, T managed to daze himself a bit doing somersaults on our bed. With autistic children, it’s harder than normal to tell how serious an incident is. All I had to go on was the squiffy look in his eyes, the strange way he was carrying one of his shoulders and the horrible howling racket he was making. My snap judgement was that he had hurt his neck and so I called an ambulance. Fifteen minutes later I found myself sheepishly facing a couple of bemused and underemployed paramedics, while T tootled about the room obviously perfectly all right.

This afternoon I took the boys for a bike ride in Dunsop Valley in the Forest of Bowland. A really lovely spot for a family bike ride; a three-mile long tarmacced private road leading along a gentle river valley to a waterworks. Beautiful scenery, easy cycling and no cars. Dunsop Bridge, the village at the beginning of the ride has a top-notch swing park, lots of car parking and a village green with hundreds of overfed ducks. Absolutely perfect.

At one point, S swerved to avoid some walkers, lost control of the bike and ended up sprawled on the ground.Now, much as I love him, it has to be said that S has always been a bit of a wimp physically. So when he screamed, I found myself feeling more annoyance than sympathy. He had a couple of scratches on his elbow and hand. But seemed able to extend both his arms and wiggle his fingers. So I decided he was OK and ordered him back on his bike.

Half an hour later when not only had he not got back on his bike, he was refusing even to push it, I was beginning to think that maybe something was up. The main problem we had was getting back to the car, as we really were in the middle of nowhere and Mr BK was at home enjoying his day off from the kids. I tried pushing both bikes together, but that was not easy, especially as I had T attached to mine in his trailer. Then I did a relay for a while riding my bike for a couple of hundred yards and then going back and fetching S’s bike. The boy, meanwhile, was looking paler and more miserable by the minute. Just then a couple of elderly ladies turned up and helped wheel the bikes back to the car park.

It took twenty minutes to rig up the bike carrier, an hour to drive home to deposit T with hubby and a further 2o minutes to get to the hospital. At one point I thought S was going to pass out, but by the time we’d got there he’d perked upa bit . A&E was full of sporting injuries and there were at least two other kids who’d come off their bikes - it’s always like that on Saturday afternoons apparantly . The triage nurse said he had a banana arm, ie it looked a bit bent. So S was X-rayed almost immediately and half an hour later a junior doctor was showing us the transparancies of his right wrist with two clear fractures on it.

So it’s plaster for 4 weeks, no PE or swimming and how the hell is he going to do his school work? Bit of a bugger seeing as handwriting is his big learning support issue.

And I’ve been spending the rest of the day apologising to S for being such a mean cow to him when he first fell over.

Incident 1
T tried to eat my copy of John Wesley Harding! It has teeth marks round the edge. Still seems to play OK, except for the last track “I’ll be your baby tonight”

Incident 2
Took the boys swimming this afternoon, which T loves. After we’d been in the water for 50 minutes or so, T stripped off (his new hobby). I couldn’t get his trunks back on him, so we decided we might as well get changed. In the nanosecond it took me to open the locker, he scarpered back to the pool. I gave chase and got there just in time to see him spring into the water, naked and armbandless. He sunk to the bottom (which was only about 3 feet), so I had to hop in and fish him out gasping for breath. I think we really gave the lifeguard a bit of a fright.

Cycling into work yesterday in the rain. Just as I turned into the car park (oh all right, probably going a little too fast…) all of a sudden a car was coming out towards me. I swerved to avoid it and the wheels of the bike skidded right out from under me.

And I was sprawled flat on the ground

The only immediate problem was a cut on my left hand (makes using the bike brakes and knitting very tricky) but today I feel really stiff, particularly on one side of my neck. My body really is not co-operating with my conspiracy to keep pretending that I’m young and bouncy.

And I had to put up with loads of jokes about stabilizers……..

Sunday was a bit of funny day (ha ha and peculiar).

Church in the morning, the monthly family service. Which meant that older son got to bunk off. While he actually thinks a lot about God, faith, the world etc (well a lot for an 11-year old) he absolutely cannot bear corporate worship, especially childrens songs with daft actions. So as an act of compassion, I let him stay at gome with his heathen Dad.

However younger autistic son adores family service. My parish does a fantastic job of looking after T and including him in things as much as possible. While he copes pretty well with Sunday school sundays, he loves being in church itself with all our hymns and silly songs and happily pootles about to his hearts content (it’s a modern building, self contained and very safe).

What really gets him going is the drumkit at the front. He stands about three inches away from the cymbol and gazes adoringly at it, while our drummer (who is also our vicar) tries to avoid hitting him. But this Sunday, we started off with a traditional hymn, and no drums. So T snuck his way to the front and planted himself on the drum stool. And he just sat there through the whole hymn with a ridiculously happy and triumphant expression on his face. I wish I’d had my camera with me.

That was the morning.

In the afternoon, we went off to a country pub to meet a load of people from church to celebrate someone’s 50th birthday. T often cries when we arrive at a place in the car, but particularly new places. He must have been tired or otherwise out of sorts, because the moment I pulled up at the pub car park, he set off into a major, major meltdown (I think it qualifies as his worst ever). Which went on for an hour and a half for goodness sake! He spent most of the time slapping the tops of his legs, which are now all bruised.

‘Fraid I didn’t cope very well. People we knew kept hovering around trying to help and making daft suggestions - “Would you like to come and fly a kite, T?” People we didn’t know just looked askance. We were sitting in the middle of a large, open field, but I only wanted to find a cave to hide in.

We’ve been given a bike carrier for the car on a long loan, which means we are now much more mobile than before. T loves going into the country, but is completely useless at grasping the need to get from A to B, even if A is the car park and B is the picnic site 150 yards away. But with our bikes and his trailer, we can really get away from the roads and have some fun

So for our first trip we ventured north to Grizedale Forest in the Lake District (link in side bar). Nearly 2,500 hectares of beautiful, wild forest with nearly 90 sculptures of various kinds dotted around the landscape.

We chose the easiest bike trail they had and pootled around taking frequent stops to let T out and run off some steam. S explored up a beck and found a hidden waterfall. He has also learned that heather makes a lovely soft bed. As for T, he really has a thing for trees and loves to be around them. So everyone was happy. After the ride and a good dose of chocolate, we went off to the forest centre and its spectacular play area (including a swing that would be suitable for older disabled children).

Trouble is it is now horribly apparant that my 18-year old touring bike with narrow wheels and dodgy gears isn’t really up to this kind of terrain. Also that S will very soon need a bike with gears (his is a BMX).

Guess what’s going to be in our letters to Santa this year…….