It was the first of the mammoth round of appointments today; so lucky then that Girl Lacer went back to school today and conversely, due to the first appointment, I had to keep Boy Lacer off. All disabled children’s services in our home town,were moved last year, out of town, fair enough to all the people in the borough who had to travel to where it used to be, but I bet the majority of the services ‘clients’ have to travel even more now, as the new service building is tucked away in a corner of the borough, which, if you don’t drive (like me), it takes a while to get to, whilst at least where it used to be, it was served by better public transport links. So now, whenever an appointment comes up, it requires considerably more mental arithmetic to work out if I can make the appointment and factoring in the fact that of course the appointment is not going to be on time, still drop off / pick up Girl Lacer. Unfortunately, today’s factoring did not allow for Boy Lacer to also attend nursery, so he had to skip an afternoon, so it was an odd day (it was an odd day yesterday to, with Girl Lacer being off sick still). We dropped Girl Lacer off at school, went back home again, played two player Uno on the Wii (for a painfully long time), I managed to get some washing on the line (with this glorious weather) and then we had to go out again, which like I say was odd. Going out at 11am, that’s when the streets round me are the realm of the toddler and the harassed mum, where getting ready to go out means that 11am is the earliest you can make it. We popped into John Lewis to get some crafting supplies I’d run out of; black embroidery thread, a water soluble marker and some interfacing and surprisingly for my favourite place to get my craft fix, they were out of two out of the three things I needed! Ok, being out of black embroidery thread is not actually that surprising, I’d swear if you did a survey or something, black is the most used colour (therefore meaning they should stock more), as I’ve often had the problem of needing black and not being able to get hold of any, to such an extent I normally bulk buy black when I can, but being out of water soluble markers to, grrrrrh! Then it was on to the bus station.
It’s a half hour bus trip to the new children’s centre and when I did it last time, I took the precaution of dosing Boy Lacer up with Phenergan (which amongst other things can be used as a travel sickness med), but I was foolishly optimistic today, so consequently by the time we got to Chessington Boy Lacer was looking quite green, so we had to get off the bus a little early and walk the rest of the way, popping into a chemist on the way and asking for more Phenergan, to which I got the normal strange looks, which I get every time I ask for the stuff. Phenergan isn’t the nicest of things, but we’ve stuck using it with Boy Lacer as it’s in liquid form and I personally didn’t want to try and get him to eat a tablet, but today they didn’t have any Phenergan, so I had to resort to buying some Joyrides, which yeah, he took (taking about three tiny bites out of the tiny tablet, but he ate it all), so no more suspicious looks in the chemist!
Anyway, we eventually got to orthotics (after the predicted lengthy wait in the waiting room, where Boy Lacer played his new obsession, Total Wipeout, there is one benefit of the new disabled children’s services building, the waiting room has gone from a tiny cupboard, where people used to have to literally squeeze on top of each other to a large and airy playroom). Boy Lacer has been wearing Piedro boots since about 1, when he originally got them (and I hated them on sight), I was told by his then physio, that he’d need them till about nursery age, thing is, he’s been through so many changes of care in that respect since getting the boots, I thought that cut off date was out of the window (specially since he’s already been in nursery for half a year) but no, they’re actually taking him out of the Piedro boots, so bye bye boots that were a pain to lace up and Boy Lacer would have never have learnt how to, caused him great anxieties anytime he thought his laces were about to become undone (which they did on a regular basis) and where if he stood on your foot or kicked you in the shin wearing those boots (which he also did on a far too regular basis) hurt like hell. However, also bye bye to never having to buy him shoes (and any parent is going to know exactly how much that costs . . .), as the Piedro boots were on the NHS.
I’d like to say that they’re taking him out of the boots because his feet and ankles have drastically improved, they haven’t (in fact to my untutored but parental eye, I think they look slightly worse; his feet and ankles lean inwards), but instead they’re giving him a far more solid inner sole (he’s had smaller, flatter inner soles in his boots for just over a year now), which will slide into any shoe, as long as it’s not a slip on shoe, which admittedly will be great for summer (those Piedro boots always looked awfully hot), oooh god, just had a thought, that transferability, PE next year in reception, transferring the inner soles between school shoes and his (I’ll be able to find velcro strap on) plimsolls and back again, those inner soles are going to get soooo lost. Anyway, I’ve seen the inner soles (although we haven’t got them yet, oh no, I have to go back on that bus yet again for that) and just the sight of them made my feet wince, as although I don’t really have Boy Lacer’s specific feet problems, my feet problems as a child were also treated with inner soles and I remember how much those babies hurt. So, he’s getting (on the orthotics person’s advice) a very slow build up time.