Lamb steak and aubergine with flatbread and salad

(Sorry – baa’d joke. 🐑)

Another day of dealing with mum’s various health problems.

This morning we had a paramedic come round to check mum over as she spent much of the morning lying on her bed clutching her stomach. I put forward the suggestion of a stomach ulcer (thank you, Sheila), and he said ‘maybe’, but he thinks diverticulitis might be the cause of the pain.

For now he’s on board with my “eat more fibre” plan, and also suggested some of those bacteria-containing yoghurt drinks. I’ve added a tropical fruit flavour one to our grocery order for tomorrow; if mum doesn’t like it, or won’t even try it, I’ll drink it myself. 🤷‍♂️

If, when things are more regular, mum is still experiencing pain on a regular basis, they’ll put her forward for more tests. Mum is thrilled at that prospect, as you can imagine.

In other mum health news, I heard back from the Memory Service assessor who came round last Friday: the waiting list for assessment may be long and slow, but they don’t hang about when they get to you. 👏

The reviewing consultant has a provisional diagnosis, but wants to do an MRI scan and an ECG before he tells us what that diagnosis is. Mum reluctantly agreed to these tests when I promised to be with her every step of the way, although I doubt she’ll remember agreeing to it when it comes to actually attending the appointment at the hospital.

I also mediated¹ a phone call from the mental health practitioner, who strongly recommended not increasing mum’s antidepressants until her physical health problems are resolved, where the Memory Service doctor wanted to increase the dose first.

I now need to find out if the Island’s overwhelmed mental health service would be prepared to take on a client with memory issues and, if so, how long she would have to wait to speak to someone. [I’m on the waiting list for their ‘adjusting to a long-term health condition’ service, and will probably still be on the waiting list into 2026. 😟]

Depending on the answer, I may then have to find a therapist for mum in the private sector, which will be a real learning curve for me as I’ve only ever had therapy on the NHS or through my employer’s EAP.

Somehow, around all that, I found time to download my beloved Sims game to my laptop, which took a while as I have lots of expansion packs, each of which needed to be downloaded before the game would play. I quickly discovered that 2+ years of not playing had wiped some of the details from my mind, so I started up a new story to get myself back in practice. Mum was both intrigued and mystified by what she could see on my laptop screen, and even moreso by my attempt to explain Simlish.²

Dinner was an attempt to coax mum to eat by providing two of her favourite things – lamb and aubergine – in one meal. For maybe the first time ever, I managed to cook the lamb perfectly – well browned on the outside, still slightly pink in the middle – and started to see why mum likes it so much. Mum ate every scrap and finished with a “very nice” so, on that front at least, I can count the day as a success.

Now I’m off to count lamb chops jumping over a gate, or some other mixed-up metaphor for collapsing in an exhausted heap.

Dag dag³, everyone!

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1. By which I mean I put my mobile phone on loudspeaker and interpreted where needed. ↩︎
2. The ‘language’ spoken by the game’s characters. It is somehow both gibberish and something that people can (and do) learn to speak, and with that I can see why mum was so mystified! ↩︎
3. Simlish for ‘goodbye’. And sometimes hello. It must be very confusing being a Sim. ↩︎