17 October 2011

I am glad to say what I woke up feeling no worse for yesterday’s excesses.

I can hardly believe it. I spent half an hour or so the to-day with another MND sufferer extolling the virtues of the Dragon voice activation programme. For those readers who have been following my blog for the last six months or so, they will realise the great frustration. I have endured through Dragon not understanding my commands. However, having said that, I still have no hesitation in recommending this to anyone who has problems with their hands or, indeed, to anyone who cannot touch type. I know that my problem is very much a one-off and that over the past 20 years or so. I had been more than delighted with Dragon – it’s got better and better with each new version.Let us hope that having sent all the information required by the US HQ of Dragont they will shortly come up with an answer

The best advice I can give to any other MND sufferer, or their carers, is to try to anticipate problems that the patient may encounter as he//she gets weaker. We have always managed to look ahead and get things in place before they become absolutely necessary, for example, although adept at voice activation over 20 years, over the years, I have used my hands in combination with my voice to speed up some of the operations. Whereas now, only having the use of one splinted finger. I have had to learn more commands and to rely more heavily on the voice. My objective being to be totally free of any hand, involvement other than asking my dear wife to switch on the laptop-first thing in the morning.

The same lesson can be learned from the wheelchair. Whilst at present I can control it quite skilfully with my right hand, or more correctly, my right arm, I anticipate there will come a time when my arms are too weak and, with this in mind, I have got the wheelchair people to fit a chin control unit to the chair which I hope to receive shortly. I will then alternate between hand and chin until I become skilful enough to operate the chair by chin only and then when I lose the use of my arm, there can be a seamless change from hand to chin.

I spent a quiet day working on my computer as I have some activity or other planned for each of the next 10 days or so, however I am looking forward to my weekly outing to the golf club tomorrow. Having said that, the weather forecast is bleak and snow is forecast later in the week, so I suspect that my Tuesday outings from now on will be fairly limited until next spring. Can I realistcaly look that far forward?

I have no idea why people are so beastly about their wives with whom they must have been madly in love with once. Now, barring jokes about mother’s-in-law. they seem to be the nub of many of the jokes I receive. This one for example, click here.