Stirfried veg and noodles

There’s been little to report for the past couple of days: mum has had stomach pain which moves around her abdomen every time I ask about it, but is never less than ‘very uncomfortable’ but often makes it to ‘really hurts’.

I don’t doubt for one minute that the pain is real, and that mum’s really suffering.

The doctors we’ve seen say it’s mostly anxiety, and I don’t doubt for one minute that they’re mostly right.

I also don’t doubt for a minute that I get the worst of it from both sides, and that I’m very tired of trying. I’ve been feeling quietly hopeless and alone all day today: how do you help someone with their anxiety when they don’t remember they have it? And how do you liaise with doctors who are so convinced they’re right that they won’t listen when the carer-for person says that what they’re doing isn’t helping?

Several times mum has asked me if I’m tired, and I’ve said I am, which is true but also only part of the truth. The rest of the truth is that I feel like I’m failing mum, and failing myself, and I want to curl up in a corner somewhere and cry.

I felt too tired and low to cook a proper meal – oh, how I miss restaurants that will deliver tasty food to your door! – so just did some veggie burgers with salad. [Tesco ‘Plant Chef’ vegetable burgers, which I won’t be buying again as they manage to make vegetables taste worse, which is surely not what things like this are supposed to do.

So instead here’s yesterday’s dinner, which is slightly more interesting: frozen stirfry mix, stirfried with sweet chilli sauce, with noodles par-boiled then stirfried with a bit of soy sauce and sesame oil. It was nice, but left a stickiness on the hands that just wouldn’t be washed off. Very annoying, as mum would say.

So there you go. In lieu of a proper conclusion, because I still haven’t got the hang of them, here’s a photo of two of our collared doves who, while mum, was lying miserably in bed, came to see why she hadn’t been out with their morning seed ration. Or were admiring their reflections, one of the two.