Creamy chicken pasta

Today was a bad day, and a long one.

Mum’s inconsistent memory grasped onto the fact that she had a hospital appointment tomorrow, and it left her in the worst state I’ve seen for some time: lots of crying, constant requests for reassurance, “I don’t want to go”, “please just shoot me”, head and stomach pain, all interspersed with biting my head off if I dared to suggest she was anxious.

Around lunchtime mum mentioned that she had some symptoms of a certain intimate condition that I think most people with female bodies have experienced at least once. I made a call to the department running tomorrow’s hospital appointment and they confirmed what I suspected, that the appointment can’t go ahead until the symptoms have cleared up.

Mum was, unsurprisingly, delighted with the news that she wouldn’t have to go to the hospital tomorrow after all. Within minutes the pains in her head and stomach had eased and she was “la-la-la”ing along with advertising jingles on tv.

Now I just need her ‘other’ symptoms to improve, as there are certain things I just don’t want to discuss in detail on a regular basis. 😬 I will need to rebook the test when mum’s better but, after today, I’m holding off mentioning that part.

In between all that, I called up the council and paid for my new blue badge (the thing that shows I’m officially disabled and therefore permitted to park in accessible parking bays), which will make things easier when I go anywhere in a car as it can be transferred to any vehicle I’m riding in.

Then I made dinner. Having barely eaten all day as the anxiety was making her feel so unwell, mum’s stomach started making “I’m hungry” noises in the late afternoon, so we had dinner even earlier than normal. (Mum would ideally eat dinner at 5pm; I’ve managed to push it back to 6pm on most days, although that’s still really too early for me.)

I did pasta, using a Simply Cook recipe box reconfigured for something quicker. Mum did something she very rarely does, which was to comment how nice it tasted while still eating. There’s enough left for tomorrow, although I expect I’ll end up eating it as mum doesn’t like eating leftovers.

(Apologies for the poor quality photo, btw: my phone was charging so I had to use my kindle, which is not really intended for taking photos.)

And with that, goodnight. 🥱

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