Deirdre Geraghty

I got hold of my brother Jack on Skype and we chatted for just over ten minutes. It was really nice to see his face and his wife Sue. Skype is such a marvellous invention.

My big brother Jack (whose real name is John) lives in Australia with his wife Sue and over the past few years l have kept in touch by phone – much more often than before. But since I have had my tablet l have skyped him every few weeks. As I woke up early this morning that is exactly what l have been trying to do. No success yet but I will keep trying.

I wanted to go to Tesco Express and the cash machine and I haven’t walked that far for a month so I was very apprehensive. It was a little warmer than it has been so I set off, taking it one step at a time. And now I am home and I did everything I wanted to do. I am so pleased with myself.

I was just dozing off last night when the phone rang. It was my old friend Barry. We do talk from time to time but he does tend to ring when I have just about had it for the day. But we started talking and, as always, we kept talking. This time it was for just under two hours. Phew!

I thought I had cracked it yesterday – l woke up and had breakfast at 5.30 so I managed to get on my exercise bike nice and early which set me up for the day. And then this morning l struggled to get up at 10 to 8. Oh well!

My new cleaner is coming today. She has been only been once before so it is early days yet. Before I had a cleaner my house was very much in a mess because besides having difficulty mentally with keeping the place in order there are many chores l can’t manage physically. Things like the pain from the arthritis in my spine stops me from using the vacuum cleaner and changing my bedding besides the fact my COPD (emphysema) and asthma means that I am completely out of breath when I try. Without my DLA l, of course, couldn’t afford it.

I really enjoyed that colouring in last week. I currently have two books – one a William Morris Stained Glass Colouring Book which I have half finished and a Celtic Design Colouring Book which I haven’t started yet. What fun!

I stayed up late last night to watch ‘Shoah’ part two which, again, ran for 4 and a half hours without a break as it was BBC. One person after another spoke about it, some – like the Jewish barber who cut womens’ hair before they went into the gas chamber, cried and others, like the man who worked running the ghetto in Warsaw in 1941 just said ‘he didn’t know’. My son tells me the world is a different place and it could never happen again – l hope he is right.

Too much dopamine is schizophrenia and not enough dopamine is Parkinson’s disease. I take an antipsychotic for the schizophrenia but that leaves me with not enough dopamine so I take something for Parkinson’s disease. Nevertheless I still rock back and forth in my chair and pace up and down especially if I have something coming up. It is called akathisia. That condition would be a whole lot worse if I didn’t take the tablet for Parkinson’s disease – what l call my ‘side effects’ tablet, without that I couldn’t sit down.

My GP gave me a leaflet for the Wellbeing Service who, hopefully, will help me with my anxiety levels. I get very anxious when I am going to do anything out of ‘the norm’ like going on a trip or anything which is other than the everyday things. They are going to give me a telephone assessment in a few weeks time.