I’ve had to give up work ànd I’m pretty much stuck in the house as my wheelchair can’t get out easily. I:
- have a puzzle book
- Try to do some physio every day
- Read books on my kindle
- Watch tv
What do you do?
I play my saxophone. I took it up just before I was diagnosed 7 1/2 years ago. I’m 73 1/2 and it keeps me well out of mischief!
I’m like you @JamesVC , the list of what you do is pretty much what I do, I do very occasionally get out, never in Autumn, or winter, Spring and summer and better for me.
Jean
I’m a routine freak, pretty much the same things day in day out:
My carers arrive at about 8 am to get me up, and radio two is tuned into. After breakfast the carers leave at 9:30, so I catch up on emails, then catch up with words with friends, which is like scrabble and gives me a bit of a mental workout. 10:30 is when the pop music quiz is on radio two, so I have a listen to that. After 11 o’clock News I log into Duolingo, where I am Learning French. I’m currently on day 388 of a learning streak, so feeling very smug. Again it’s about mental stimulation. By 12 o’clock I’m starting to tire, so I tilt the wheelchair back and have a snooze. If the schedule runs smoothly I wake up at about 12:50 and the television goes on for a bit of bargain hunt followed by 1 o’clock News.
Carers are back at 1 o’clock to do my lunch. It’s a 45 minute call so one of them is preparing my lunch I’ll use my standing frame for a bit of physio. The TV goes off after lunch, and I’ll read the news and do the crossword in the Guardian until about 3 o’clock. At 3 o’clock I watch countdown on catch up because then I don’t have to put up with the adverts! By 4ish I’m knackered again so I have another snooze. After that it’s more words with friends, some solitaire on my phone, and then I’ll watch the last 20 minutes of pointless.
One carer comes round to do my dinner, which is nearly always a sandwich that they will have made for me in the morning.
Once the carer has left I’ll watch some proper television, and I have my hands splinted by now so I can’t use my phone other than to use voice control so that I can change the channels on the TV using my phone.
My carers come back at 10 pm to put me to bed. It’s a 45 minute call and they leave me sitting up in bed. By the time I’ve had a quick read of the Guardian, finished the crossword if necessary, had a peek at the forums here and watched one episode of something on the iPad delete it’s 1 am, so everything gets turned off and I sleep until the carers come back.
And repeat. Ad infinitum.
Monday Wednesday and Friday afternoons I get an extra two hours with one of the carers which I use for online deliveries from the supermarket, Batch cooking, picking up my prescriptions, walking the dog, and having a coffee with biscuits. On Tuesday afternoon the cleaner comes for two hours. So there is a fair amount of variety. I will occasionally go out to meet friends (I think I’ve been out five or six times this year) and for hospital appointments and so on.
And that’s about all I do. Once in a blue moon I might go to the cinema over the theatre, but the latest the carers are willing to come for my bed call is 10 pm so that restricts things quite a bit. I’d love to go out more in the evenings but there we go. So there’s a fair amount of mental stimulation throughout the day, but I find the routine is important to me because I’ve got a set of targets and milestones throughout the day which creates the smallest sense of having achieved something. My father is 90 in a couple of weeks, and I’m only 51, and the thought of another 30+ years of this is bloody depressing!
Moirah, I commenced battle with the saxophone some years ago now and enjoyed every noisy minute of it, but am sad to say that the Sax eventually won the battle… much to the relief of the neighbours.
Ben
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For a while I did short online courses on Future Learn ( a large number of courses on a wide range of topics and lasting from a week to several months- involving a few hours a week)
Video games. Plenty of different genres. Plenty of decent older games that are cheaper than the latest games. If you go console you can purchase used games. Once you’re done with them you can sell them and put money towards other game/s.
I cry and cry and lay in bed all day