Seeded vegan roasts with roasted carrots, parsnips, and potatoes
It had to happen eventually. Today I caught myself thinking: I can’t do this. I can’t live like this.
Mum’s permanent headache has been especially bad today, as she has told me every few minutes, and at times every few seconds. She has also had stomach pain, back pain, and pain in her left arm, although all of those have taken second place to her throbbing head.
Her mood has been unsurprisingly low and her anxiety high: we’ve been through the “all my friends hate me”, the “I’m going to be stuck like this til I die”, the “I’m so stupid, this must be all my fault”, the “they’re going to take me away and I’ll never see you again”. There has been a lot of seeking reassurance – that I won’t leave her, that she will get better, that I won’t let her miss Strictly tonight (which wouldn’t be high on my list of priorities, but I accept her choices).
I keep thinking of the physio at the hospital last year, who insisted that caring for mum is my choice, but I still can’t see what other choices I have.
I could, I suppose, try and find somewhere else to live, but locating a flat that is accessible to someone with my disabilities is a real challenge. Even if I could find one, with my credit history (wrecked by several years of being unable to work) I think most landlords would be hesitant to accept me as a tenant.
I would then have to find someone to look after mum. Technically, I suppose, I could just abandon her and tell the council she’s their problem, but I don’t know if that would work and, let’s face it, if I was the sort of person who would do that then I wouldn’t be writing a blog like this.
And so, as of 4.30 this afternoon, mum is lying on her bed in a darkened room, occasionally calling out to me that her head hurts and ‘they’ will do something, won’t they. Tomorrow afternoon we’re scheduled for a call-back from the ANP1 at the local GP surgery to see how we’re getting on, and that phone call can’t come soon enough. The phrase “we can’t carry on like this” will be uttered.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, mum didn’t eat much today, and had very little interest in dinner. I fancied a Sunday roast, though, so I got some seeded plant roasts (from Tesco’s Plant Chef Christmas range) out of the freezer and stuck them in a roasting tin with mini carrots, mini parsnips, and some frozen roast potatoes (in beef dripping, because the roasts may be vegan but we’re not).
The plant roasts were OK. I guess if you’re vegan and it’s these or a slice of plain bread as everything else has been cooked in animal fat, they’re going to be very appealing. For me, they were a bit pasty in texture, with not much flavour except herbs. Mum, despite her prediction she wouldn’t eat much, finished hers quite happily. If you don’t tell her that the main ingredient is lentils then I won’t. 🫢
Now, after a bit of distraction and some food, mum’s headache has all but gone, while I’ve developed a tension headache of my own. I take four different types of painkiller a day, so anything that can fight it’s way through that lot has got to be bad.
And on that note (the note being 🎵 ouch 🎵), goodnight.
- Advanced Nurse Practitioner. ↩︎
Is it pineapple sponge today? 