Health Diary Week 81: Food, Exercise and a Positive Mind

Stormy Spring

Stormy Spring clouds on my walk back from physio

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Hi, welcome to another weekly instalment of what’s on my plate: health updates, meal creations and smile-provoking experiences.

NHS Covid Administrator – Week 2

I successfully completed my second week as a Covid Administrator. I’m enjoying the social interaction and having a variety of tasks: Check-in, directing people into assessment or vaccine bays and working in the vaccine bays. The vaccine bays were particularly interesting – I checked and updated patient records and distracted nervous people. Also, I had the opportunity to observe syringes being prepared and vaccines being given – I can’t believe that I can handle this now – a few years ago there’s no way I could. And, during down-times I chatted to some inspiring vaccinators from a variety of backgrounds.

Physiotherapy

I received a phone call on Tuesday, offering me an in-person physiotherapy appointment the next day. I really liked my physiotherapist, Arienne, who asked lots of questions and made me feel listened to. Arienne tested me for nerve damage (all seems fine) and assessed my range of movement and strength – I can’t believe how much strength I’ve lost in my damaged shoulder/arm. I found out there’s no such thing as a locked rotator cuff – I’m sure that’s what A&E told me I had (I’d wondered why I couldn’t find anything about it online). It was decided the exercises I’d been trying to do were too advanced for my current situation, so some new ones were assigned. I’m back for another session in a couple of weeks. I now feel a lot more confident that my shoulder will eventually heal.

New physio exercises to improve the range of movement in my shoulder and arm

Easy, Convenient Dinners

I haven’t had much energy for cooking since I started work, so thank goodness for simple options and frozen batch-cooked food. My go-to post-work light dinner is a simple filled pitta of Violife ‘cheese’ slices, Quorn ‘ham’ slices and salad – simple yet tasty (but admittedly a histamine risk). One evening, I added frozen cooked veg and notomato sauce to noodles and topped them with spring onion. Noodles are really convenient; so, another time I accompanied them with a simple macadamia sauce (macadamia butter, oat milk, garlic granules, mixed herbs and sweet paprika) and served them with a side of coated cauliflower wings from the freezer. I also made a cheesy vegetable pasta using frozen cauliflower and broccoli cheese, carrots and sweetcorn – convenient and delicious:

My easy dinners: Clockwise: ‘Cheese’, ‘ham’ and salad pitta. Vegetable noodles in notomato sauce. Macadamia noodles with cauliflower wings. Cheesy vegetable fusilli pasta

Positive Thinking: What Made Watson Smile

As always, I’m happy to share a few things that made me smile this week…

Kind freebies:

I ordered some supplies from the Vegan Kind Supermarket. They added some free vanilla custard and chickpea fusilli to my delivery – how kind:

Vegan Kind Supermarket freebies: Vanilla custard and chickpea fusilli

Helpful friends:

I received a message from my tenants to say that my garden fence had fallen down in the storm. I must say this was not a smile provoker, but what did make me smile was that one of my friends replied to my Facebook shout-out and confirmed he could help rectify the problem:

Fence down: My poor garden fence finally came down in the most recent storm

Catch-ups:

The stormy weather meant that I couldn’t meet up with Bevy in person. This is another situation that could have been seen as a negative. But, meeting online meant that we got to chat with Charlotte too – and we had such a great much-needed catch up. And, at the end of the week, I had an online chat with Dawn, a like-minded new(ish) friend:

Great friends: Charlotte, me and Bevy (my Mexican-themed party, 2011)

I hope you enjoyed this week’s ‘What’s on Watson’s Plate’. Please feel free to follow my bite-sized updates on Instagram or Facebook. See you next week for another catch up.

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More from What’s on Watson’s Plate

• Week 80: Back to Work
• Week 79: Sunny Spring
• Week 78: Just a Quickie
• Week 77: Katey in the Kitchen
• Week 52: One Year Review: Let’s Start at the Very Beginning…