Archives for September 2014

Lymphoedema Awareness Week!

September 17, 2014 by Jo-Ann Greene Leave a Comment

It is Lymphoedema Awareness Week in the Uk and to help raise awareness and money the Lymphoedema Support Network (LSN) decided on a campaign called ‘Sock it to Lymphoedema’.

The idea is to get friends and family to show their support by wearing odd socks or gloves for a day and making a donation to the LSN. If they are asked why they have odd socks on then they could say ‘I am CHOOSING to wear different socks/gloves today- people with lymphoedema don’t have that choice’. To donate text LSNS14 together with how much you wish to donate to 70070.

Here are Max and Lucia in their odd socks! Lucia never wears socks as she is always in her compression tights, plus it is extremely difficult to find socks she can wear even for a short time as the elastic is too tight and leaves marks around her legs. So she was really excited to be wearing socks and didn’t want to take them off! Max thought it was hilarious!

Always good to have a wee bit of fun while raising money for a good cause.

Bye bye potty…for now

September 8, 2014 by Jo-Ann Greene 2 Comments

Well the potty training has been abandonned (days ago but am only getting time to update now). On the second day Lucia hated it even more and was getting really distressed and panicking about even sitting on the potty never mind actually doing anything in it. She ended up holding on for hours as she was too scared to let it go.

So I thought the best thing was just to forget it for the time being and try again in a few weeks. We’re not even talking about it in the hope that we haven’t given her a negative impression.

On the plus side though Lucia coped really well without her compression for that day and a half. However, the wee pet was so traumatised by the whole thing that she didn’t even get to enjoy having her legs out of her garments.

The tape on her foot helped to keep the swelling at bay, her leg was in great shape and the experience has definitely given me more confidence for the next time that she (and I!) will be able to cope ok.

Plus it is nice that my baby isn’t quite ready to be a big girl just yet.

Day 1 in the potty training house!

September 5, 2014 by Jo-Ann Greene 3 Comments

This is just a very quick update on how it’s all going – exhausting! Although Lucia was very excited to get her big girl pants on she decided pretty quickly that she hated the potty!! It took most of the day to even get her to sit on the potty for longer than 5 seconds – she point blank refused all morning so we had a couple of accidents as expected. However, we turned a corner in the afternoon thanks to Max.

When he got home from school he very kindly sat on the second potty to coax Lucia into sitting on hers – and it started to work. We kept at it all afternoon and by 6pm we finally got a pee in the potty!! Max was as excited as I was though I think our enthusiasm may have scared Lucia a little! Though she couldn’t wait to tell her daddy when he got home from work.

Lymphoedema-wise so far so good. I put ‘Cure Tape’ (in bright pink!) which is a type of kinesio on her foot to help with the fluid movement, as we used to do before we had garments. I didn’t see any point in putting it on her legs as any accidents would just soak it. So we have done plenty of dancing, walking, running and trampolining in the house to keep the lymph moving and everything looked and felt great this evening.

Right now I am having a cup of tea and a movie to chill out before doing it all again tomorrow!