THE UNSCRIPTED CARER - 31ST OCTOBER 2007

October has just flown by. The Carer training organised by Guideposts has been really helpful, and I have been able to adapt some of the exercises for my wife. A couple of the training courses taught us how to perform foot massages and hand massages, using “essential oils”.

I have always been intrigued by aromatherapy, but I have always categorised it into the general “weirdo” category, that is for others and not for me. However, having performed hand and foot massages on the missus, it was very apparent just how much she relaxed, and (debatably) it seemed to ease some of her back pain.

Guideposts have recently run a “Have Your Say” day in Rugby, and I did two spells in the library – the day was a bit mixed, and during some of the quieter periods I tracked down a book on Aromatherapy, and a thriller. Having quickly scanned the Aromatherapy book, I realised that the techniques we had been taught for hand and foot massaging, had a wider application. At the end of the day, my wife came out to open the garage door for me, and her back totally seized up and we had to man handle her the few yards back into the house. Eventually we managed to get her on the floor, so that she was in the position to reset her back – unfortunately she was still locked up, and unable to do anything. We mixed up some of the “essential oils” and tried a foot massage, which helped a little bit, but not enough to effect a fix. However, Nicola was now better able to identify just what had locked up, and we tried gentle massages to her “front muscles”, which relaxed her enough for us to turn her over and let me massage her back. We both knew approximately what was wrong, and with a mixture of external massage and Nicola using her muscles, we managed to reset her back. There followed 15 minutes of ice packs, and then we gingerly got her off the floor. The following morning, we got an answer to the panic message that we had left on the phone of her physio!

Whatever we did seemed to have worked OK. However, it was with some trepidation that we went to our dentist in Market Harborough for a routine check up. Nicola struggles in the car for journeys over 5 minutes, so a 25 minute trip to MH, followed by the dentists chair and the journey home, is always a bit daunting. It all went well, we escaped the more enthusiastic extremes of dentistry and Nicola’s back became merely “tired” and survived really well.

You may wonder why we do not pick a more local dentist, but like most men I am scared witless of dentists, and I was introduced to these dentists when I played Rugby in Market Harborough and have stayed with them ever since. The realists amongst you will realise that at club rugby level, a rugby team consists of 15 people that are frightened of a dentist, at international level there are substitutes – who are probably also scared of a dentist!

On the food front, we are currently experimenting with gluten free Christmas cakes, that do not have nuts or glace cherries in them. Substituting various seeds for the nuts seems to work really well, but I have always been a total sucker for glace cherries. The two dogs are very keen on the current experiments, and are more than happy to express their enthusiasm for my efforts!