What a week! Visitors, appointments and lots of those official looking envelopes, oh dear……
The initial part was pure joy; a long awaited visit to the Principality Stadium for the Speedway GP. Now then, I’m not the most obvious speedway fan but having been introduced to it a few years ago by P, I’ve grown to really enjoy it. The trip had been planned for a while; I had spent yet another couple of hours hanging on the phone trying to get accessible tickets, eventually getting through and booking for the four of us. After some ‘confusion’ with the taxi company over exactly why we needed a 7 seater with room for my wheelchair when there were only 4 of us (doh!) we left Llanishen with our friends. On arrival at the 
stadium, we were identified immediately by the stadium stewards, (I’m not certain but think me being in a wheelchair gave us away!) escorted past all the massive queues of people and taken straight to our area! Fantastic service I have to say, it was really impressive and very attentive – even down to the man who wanted to take me to the toilet! I politely declined but it was good to have someone there if I did need help.
Next we had a visit from my sister and her wonderful girls. It was a wonderful week 
of fun, films, food and fantastic family time. We went to the park, had a ‘wheelchair versus nieces’ race and the biggest plate of chips ever as a prize. We went shopping and played with hats and scarves, my niece did her very best Gok Wan impersonation and 
scoured the sale rackets for something for me (the racks were all too high for me to reach so she was a godsend!) and had the most calorific, sickly but scrumptious caramel mocha frappe-thingy as a treat. We went home shattered but happy, hands full of goodies in carrier bags.
The middle bit was not so brilliant; the pain decided that it had been too quiet for far too long and came back with a vengeance confining me to the quiet of the house and the zombi-ness of the painkillers. Another reminder that no matter what I want to do, this pain is not going away, that all the patches, capsules, tablets and potions, it’s always going to be there, lurking and screaming at me.
Two days later, I emerged. Back under control (ish) and back to my normal (ish) self.
Appointments next with the estate agents and mortgage advisors. And thankfully all of them positive. Now the task ahead is again trying to find the ‘perfect’ home – oh yes, we’ve been here before haven’t we! So back on the trail we go, some are affordable but too small, some are big enough but too expensive, some even already had the all important wetroom that I need (oooh, the ability to have a shower whenever I want, on my own, with a seat and grab rails! Calm down Lyn…..!)
And then the envelopes arrived…….
Unusually, these were white ones, which on first glance seemed unimportant. They were placed on the table with all the other, mostly junk, mail and weren’t initially of any importance to us. Well to P anyway, he brought them all up to me in bed where we went through the post as usual. Once there, it jumped out at us; it was bigger than a bill and chunkier. We looked at each other and with a nervous gulp, I opened it. How can one seemingly banal envelope bring so much joy? It simply said that the 
insurance that I had taken out as an afterthought years ago would pay out; that the hunt for our new accessible home had suddenly become a hell of a lot easier. We didn’t believe it at first, this had been a dream for so long, it seemed so unlikely to actually happen. I had been through a hellish assessment by their medical assessor which left me in agony and took days to get anywhere near back to normal, whatever that is.
How did we celebrate? We cried, we gasped, we read it all again and again, word by word, just to check we hadn’t read it wrongly but yes, it said ‘Yes!’ So after calming ourselves down and remembering to breathe, we spent the day just catching each other’s eye and giggling, we just couldn’t believe it – it was done. All the things we had hoped for in 2017 had actually happened – my pension was awarded, my Motability car had been awarded, we’d got married and now this as well. Relieved wasn’t the word, in fact we both felt strangely deflated afterwards, we’d been carrying this between us for the last two and a half years and finally we could put this particular burden down. I don’t what else to say, it was just sheer bloody relief.
What a week indeed, tears of joy, pain, relief and great big chunks of happiness, a good week indeed…….
TopladyTalks 