THE BEST LAID PLANS...

Last Christmas I was really looking forward to 2011, and feling very positive about life. Yes, I was due to have a hip replacement in January (I'm not old enough surely???) and I wasn't looking forward to it but I reckoned to be in and out of hospital in 4 days. The plan was to have the second operation, for the other hip, in May. I'd therefore be walking fine by the time my holiday in California in October came around.

Unfortunately sometimes plans can go awry big time! The NHS delayed my op until March and I ended up with serious complications which involved blood transfusions and a 2 week hospital stay. Things didn't get much better afterwards. Don't want to bore you but I was laid up for 2 months before I could even begin physio.

I was just starting to get better when life took another turn for the worse and I ended up as a full time carer for my poor old mum, whose formerly mild dementia had nosedived. It's such a cruel disease and looking after someone when you are fit and healthy is hard enough, but while on crutches and still unwell yourself makes it virtually impossible. My life, my fitness and my writing took a back seat as I struggled to care for her.

She's in a home now, at last. It's a long hard process to find one. Sad to say she doesn't even know me and that's so hard to accept. I find going to see her so difficult. I sit there and hold her hand but she's off in a world of her own and doesn't even acknowledge me.

Now I've vowed to pull my life together, although the second operation has yet to materialise. Sometime in the next 8 weeks is the vague reply. In the meantime I'm off to the west coast of the States for 2 weeks.

When I get back I vow that I will start blogging again.

Deanna