Extreme Knitting Redhead: Festive Fun and a cancelled run

Sunday, December 26, 2010

Festive Fun and a cancelled run

I hope everyone had a lovely Christmas. We ate far too much and I'm feeling particularly lardy today!

One good thing was that I actually made myself go for a run on Christmas morning. I've been saying I'd do it for a few years now but have always reneged on it until now. It was just 3 miles, nice and slow and wearing my santa hat and it felt great. I saw several dog walkers stretching their legs before the festivities began.

This little run had nothing to do with maintaining fitness as it was all about mental strength and I felt fantastic for doing it.

Sadly, the race we had planned to hold on New Year's Day had to be cancelled because of the dreadful weather. Some of the roads we planned to use were severely iced up and unlikely to be safe in time as the weather forecast is for more snow/ice etc etc. The Race Director said that we should make the decision to cancel for safety reasons so that we had plenty of time to notify people before they went away for the Christmas break.

This was quite a blow but every cloud has a silver lining and the organisers, Nice Work, have promised to make a donation to the Alzheimer's Research Trust out of the profits from the Xmas Pudding Dash which had to be rescheduled to 28th December (it too was cancelled from a week or so ago due to the bad weather).

I was supposed to be doing an interview about the race with Danny Pike on BBC radio on Christmas Eve and I thought they would cancel it but they really wanted the interview to go ahead and used it as another example of how the bad weather has affected everything. If anyone wants to hear the interview, just click here and spin through to around 2 hours 41 minutes, immediately after the Coldplay track.

Over the last couple of evenings, I've knitted myself some lovely snuggly socks to wear around the house and I must take a photo of them tomorrow.

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Mum's Story

In 1997 my mother, then aged 81, had a series of minor strokes. Shortly after that we started to notice behavioural changes notably memory loss and confusion over everyday items. We thought it was just old age finally catching up with her. Then she started wandering and had violent mood swings. Although she already lived with us it became obvious that she couldn't be left alone for long and so I left my job to care for her. The next few years saw a gradual decline into the blackness that is 'vascular dementia'. My normally placid mum became violent and aggressive. She had psychotic incidents where she would see imaginary people (children hiding in her wardrobe, Russians sitting on the stairs, women stealing her clothes) and she would shout at them and sometimes throw things too. She was so convincing that we used to go and check that there wasn't anyone there! When my sister died mum did not know who Judy was or that she was her daughter. There came a point when I suddenly realised she no longer knew that I was her daughter and this was a terrible time for me. In the last 2 years that she lived with us, life for us all became almost unbearable as she needed 24 hour care - she couldn't be left alone at all because she would either wander off or hurt herself, she never slept for more than 30 minutes at a time during the night, she became incontinent and incapable of doing anything for herself. Finally my husband and I realised that we could no longer provide her with the care that she needed and she went to live in a special care home where the team did a splendid job caring for her in the last few months of her life. There she lived a zombified existence unaware of who she was, what she was or where she was. It was heartbreaking. She died in March 2005, the day after her 89th birthday.

Thank you for taking the time to read mum's story and I hope you'll dig deep and sponsor me using the link below to help find a way of beating this destructive disease.