My husband

My husband tries so hard to live his life the way he used to and it wears him out. Gradually he is changing to a more relaxed approach to life. He needs to do that to survive I think. When your aim is to live to be 90 then I think you need to modify your life if you have a chronic illness. At 77 he has certainly had a difficult year. But with a lockdown there is the advantage you can not really go anywhere and the pace of life can be quite slow and relaxed. Walking around the house gives me thousands of steps and I just have to encourage him to do the same. He just has to fit into the mold now. 

I remember when I injured my back and it is a while ago now it was extremely frustrating for me to spend all my time standing or lying down. I could also kneel at my computer desk and did do that as well. But gradually I was able to work back into my calisthenics exercises and that helped my back a lot. During the summer though I can not get in all those exercises - there just isn't time! But now that fall is here and I have more time I am back to doing my calisthenics and my back is much better. Really I should do therapy on my back but when I tried to get that done the doctor I had at the time was not helpful. So we moved on from that doctor. It was interesting that after a few weeks of trying to get a referral the office called to set up an appointment for flu shots. We had already gone to the drug store but I reminded the secretary once again that my back was still giving me a great amount of pain and basically she did not care. I am not sure she passed my messages on actually. 

When I injured my knee I was sent off to physio right away which was quite reasonable but I have never again asked about my back. Perhaps I am afraid that there is really something wrong with it that needs an operation and that is just not practical with my husband and my calisthenics keeps it in check for the moment.

But back to my husband, he is busy working on his genealogy and that is really good for him. Plus he has so much material and it would be a pity to lose all of his research. Only he can really organize it so that it can be given to other researchers.