Looking for debt advice

lolls89

rockm87 wrote: »

I do my full weekly shop there, we have adapted to some things, but are better off for it!

As Lidl's stuff can change some bits weekly, it keeps things interesting (such as 'chinese week' - nice thai curry paste).

I admit I still purchase coffee pods at the main supermarket, but it is a treat, so I dont do it every week.

I might do aldi one week and Lidl the next.
Do you not find you spend more if they change things? That's always my downfall when I'm shopping, if they change things.

rockm87 wrote: »

you can always get someone to help. Mash can be frozen, so you could cook up a batch all at once.

Or alternatively use a blender or other sort of appliance?

My partner and Mum were helping me and batch cooking, but I'm trying my best to get back to normal and as they both work full time I felt terrible them helping so much, so I started off just doing ready meals on my own and then as I do now, cooking a bit more with ready prepped veg.

I have a food processor, I could give that a go, but I'm not sure how I would peel the veg.

Grumpelstiltskin

With the chopped onion. It would take your partner or mum 5 minutes to chop an onion. You can then store it in a bag in the salad drawer of the fridge, it will keep for a good while.


Your partner could peel and chop potatoes, keep them in a saucepan of water, no problem for a few hours, once cooked you could mash them using one hand.


I think you need to think in a different way, how would you have coped before you could buy mashed potato?

solvencyseeker

Just to answer your question lolls89. Yes we do a big shop. Last month I got:
2 big boxes washing powder, fabric conditioner, washing up liquid, dishwasher tablets, foil, cling film, toilet paper, bin bags, kitchen paper, shampoo, conditioner, shower gel, deodorant, moisturiser, lots of tins (beans, tomatoes, sweetcorn, tuna), tea bags, coffee, jam, several bags of flour, pasta, rice, pasata, tomato puree, ketchup, brown sauce, mayonnaise, 12 eggs (free range), butter, olive spread, cheese, a selection of fresh and cooked meats, some frozen bits (veggie burgers, peas), milk, juice, squash, dog biscuits, human biscuits, sliced bread, bread rolls, wraps, crisps, lots of fresh fruit and veg (I can chop and cook/freeze) - from what I can remember and it all came to £100.90.
I then top up with fresh stuff from the market/Waitrose/Tesco depending on what else we need to do/what vouchers I have.
I am feeding 4.5 adults (sons girlfriend is a very frequent visitor) and they have big appetites.
If we had an Aldi (or other budget supermarket) nearer I'd go there every week.

lolls89

Grumpelstiltskin wrote: »

With the chopped onion. It would take your partner or mum 5 minutes to chop an onion. You can then store it in a bag in the salad drawer of the fridge, it will keep for a good while.


Your partner could peel and chop potatoes, keep them in a saucepan of water, no problem for a few hours, once cooked you could mash them using one hand.


I think you need to think in a different way, how would you have coped before you could buy mashed potato?

I can't mash with one hand, I can't hold a pan still and mash, I've tried.
My partner works 60 hours a week and is on ati depressants, I'm just trying my best not to give him more jobs to do.

And it takes my mum 45 minutes to get to my house (25 on a bus) she has my brother at home to look after. I really don't want to give evryone more to do than they have to.

lolls89

solvencyseeker wrote: »

Just to answer your question lolls89. Yes we do a big shop. Last month I got:
2 big boxes washing powder, fabric conditioner, washing up liquid, dishwasher tablets, foil, cling film, toilet paper, bin bags, kitchen paper, shampoo, conditioner, shower gel, deodorant, moisturiser, lots of tins (beans, tomatoes, sweetcorn, tuna), tea bags, coffee, jam, several bags of flour, pasta, rice, pasata, tomato puree, ketchup, brown sauce, mayonnaise, 12 eggs (free range), butter, olive spread, cheese, a selection of fresh and cooked meats, some frozen bits (veggie burgers, peas), milk, juice, squash, dog biscuits, human biscuits, sliced bread, bread rolls, wraps, crisps, lots of fresh fruit and veg (I can chop and cook/freeze) - from what I can remember and it all came to £100.90.
I then top up with fresh stuff from the market/Waitrose/Tesco depending on what else we need to do/what vouchers I have.
I am feeding 4.5 adults (sons girlfriend is a very frequent visitor) and they have big appetites.
If we had an Aldi (or other budget supermarket) nearer I'd go there every week.

That's brilliant, thank you.
Looking at your list quite alot of it's the same kind of things we would buy so I definitely think I'll save going to Aldi.

Tuesday_Tenor

lolls89 wrote: »

No it's not, it's a while ago since I injured it now but I'm still getting over it, I can't fully extend or bend it ( and i was told yesterday not to expect any more extension) and there's talk of me maybe having a joint replacement on my elbow

Are you getting physio? Suspect you are, hence the taxis to hospital.
Swimming can be the best exercise for gradually moving joints as the water supports. In some places/ situations it can be NHS / GP-funded, so make sure you ask about this. Even if you're not a swimmer, it's exercising the arm in water that's important, even if you don't take your feet off the floor!

Speaking from experience, I badly smashed top of humerus 2 years ago. There was the possibility of surgery to pin it, and if that failed then a shoulder replacement .... Eeek! Consultant and I agreed to see how it healed naturally, and to resume swimming at the eariiest opportunity after initial immobilisation. Luckily it did heal OK and I credit the swimming with getting my range of movement back to 98% of what it was before.

Best wishes for improving your difficult situation.

lolls89

Tuesday_Tenor wrote: »

Are you getting physio? Suspect you are, hence the taxis to hospital.
Swimming can be the best exercise for gradually moving joints as the water supports. In some places/ situations it can be NHS / GP-funded, so make sure you ask about this. Even if you're not a swimmer, it's exercising the arm in water that's important, even if you don't take your feet off the floor!

Speaking from experience, I badly smashed top of humerus 2 years ago. There was the possibility of surgery to pin it, and if that failed then a shoulder replacement .... Eeek! Consultant and I agreed to see how it healed naturally, and to resume swimming at the eariiest opportunity after initial immobilisation. Luckily it did heal OK and I credit the swimming with getting my range of movement back to 98% of what it was before.

Best wishes for improving your difficult situation.

Yeah I'm at physio twice a week. Ooh I'll ask about that, I haven't been able to go swimming because of our money problems, I was advised to exercise in water so I have been doing my home physio in the bath.

That's fab, well done! So did it heal without any medical intervention? Did you have to have a cast or a support or anything?

Tuesday_Tenor

lolls89 wrote: »

did it heal without any medical intervention? Did you have to have a cast or a support or anything?

Yes, no surgery needed at all.
No cast , but a soft foam waistband/cuff contraption that immobilised my arm by pinning my elbow to my side for three weeks!
Also, had to sleep sitting up for a while, as they wanted gravity to assist.
I hardly slept at all for a week!
Had mega bruising from a haematoma, but no nerve damage, thank goodness.
Somehow, despite the sleep deprivation, three fractures and two lumps of bone being displaced, it all knitted up fine! The displaced lumps attached where they were, the result was a head of humerus knobbly in the wrong places. However, with natural bone-remodelling over time, even that should smooth itself out completely in a few years! Bone healing is near-miraculous!

Was yours a fracture too?

If you've been advised that the time is right to exercise in water you must find some way to make this happen. Your arm function is too important not to do so, even if it takes you £20 (4 pool sessions) further into debt.

After three weeks immobilisation I could only at first move my arm the minutest smidgen. I feared I would never ever do my beloved backstroke lengths again! I had physio for a few weeks then was OK'd to use the pool. The relief when I got in and found I could still swim, one-armed, was amazing! I could gently 'waft' the stiff arm in the water to a degree that was impossible in the air. I could tell then that this was really going to help. I tried to go to the pool twice a week, as well as the other physio stuff, and was doing a sort-of, rather crooked, backstroke within a month! Physio was amazed how quickly I regained full movement; it was largely the swimming that helped the speed of rehab.

Do be careful, though, I told another fracture victim how wonderful the swimming had been, ony to find they'd done their fracture by slipping at a swimming pool ....! Just take care!

All the best for a good recovery.

lolls89

Tuesday_Tenor wrote: »

Yes, no surgery needed at all.
No cast , but a soft foam waistband/cuff contraption that immobilised my arm by pinning my elbow to my side for three weeks!
Also, had to sleep sitting up for a while, as they wanted gravity to assist.
I hardly slept at all for a week!
Had mega bruising from a haematoma, but no nerve damage, thank goodness.
Somehow, despite the sleep deprivation, three fractures and two lumps of bone being displaced, it all knitted up fine! The displaced lumps attached where they were, the result was a head of humerus knobbly in the wrong places. However, with natural bone-remodelling over time, even that should smooth itself out completely in a few years! Bone healing is near-miraculous!

Was yours a fracture too?

If you've been advised that the time is right to exercise in water you must find some way to make this happen. Your arm function is too important not to do so, even if it takes you £20 (4 pool sessions) further into debt.

After three weeks immobilisation I could only at first move my arm the minutest smidgen. I feared I would never ever do my beloved backstroke lengths again! I had physio for a few weeks then was OK'd to use the pool. The relief when I got in and found I could still swim, one-armed, was amazing! I could gently 'waft' the stiff arm in the water to a degree that was impossible in the air. I could tell then that this was really going to help. I tried to go to the pool twice a week, as well as the other physio stuff, and was doing a sort-of, rather crooked, backstroke within a month! Physio was amazed how quickly I regained full movement; it was largely the swimming that helped the speed of rehab.

Do be careful, though, I told another fracture victim how wonderful the swimming had been, ony to find they'd done their fracture by slipping at a swimming pool ....! Just take care!

All the best for a good recovery.

That is absolutely amazing!

Can I ask why you chose not to have surgery and to let it heal naturally?
I was classed as trauma so was in surgery within 4 hours of arriving at A&E, so there wasn't any discussion or other options.

Yes, from what I can gather I smashed and dislocated it, they keep throwing around the words radial head, capitellum and intra-articular surface. But even with all my googling I can't work out what's what lol

When I asked my physio she said that doing my exercise in the bath was fine but after reading your story I am definitely going to get to the leisure centre!

At the moment my arm sits at 100 degrees and I can move it to 80, but I was the same at first and couldnt move it at all.

I am so grateful for your post, after a couple of weeks of feeling a bit down and sorry for myself, it's very motivational!

Thank you

(and I'll keep that in mind haha)

Tuesday_Tenor

lolls89 wrote: »

Can I ask why you chose not to have surgery and to let it heal naturally?

The orthopaedic consultant was very open and honest with me about not being sure what to do for the best; there were pros and cons to 2 different approaches to treatment. The choices were:
A) No surgery, but with a chance that it wouldn't heal well or quickly, particularly the broken off bits, as on the X-ray they seemed well distant and mis-aligned from where they should have been!
Surgery to pin it, which in theory should mean better positioning for better healing BUT he was concerned that surgery might itself cause nerve damage, or even, worst case scenario, too much might disintegrate and he be unable to pin it at all. In which case he would, there and then, have to do joint replacement surgery:eek::eek::eek:. And shoulder replacements are not so 'off the peg' as hip and knee replacements so a more complex operation.:eek:

There was a day or so to decide. He conferred with the other two consultants, one of whom definitely WOULD do the surgery, one of whom definitely WOULD NOT. So we were still in a 50:50 situation!

However, when he started talking about seeing how it would heal naturally, and if there wasn't a good result, it might come to doing a shoulder replacement later on, but in a more planned, non urgent, way, that definitely seemed like a good way to go. I wasn't keen on the idea of surgery to pin it, anyway, but would have agreed if it was CLEARLY the way to go, but in my case it wasn't.

As it was, all turned out well.

One other thing I did, not relevant in your case as it applies for the initial bone healing stage. I researched the use of comfrey, the traditional 'bone-knit' plant, as my neighbour has loads in her garden.
Finding some slightly controversial articles I decided not to take it internally but did use it for poultices (when someone else was around, I couldn't tie or stick them on onehandedly!) and massaging. No idea if it helped, but as it's been used for thousands of years I thought it was unlikely to do much harm.

Two years on my arm is about 2% less flexible that the other one - not something I notice in daily life! Oh, I'm a female tenor, by the way, and I couldn't do my swimsuit up at the back for ages ; the staff in the pool helped me if there was no one in the changing room! That was quite an extreme test, which I was very pleased to master eventually! I also needed a front fastening bra for a while!

Anyway, I know the swimming really helped me get the range of movement back. Midday was quiet in our pool, I avoided weekends with loads of boisterous kids, and I let the staff know about the fracture and why I was pottering about in such an odd way! Hope it helps you too.