Minted lamb and Mediterranean vegetable giant couscous
I can’t quite remember what I did last week, but it left me so exhausted even mum noticed: by the time our weekly grocery delivery arrived on Saturday afternoon, I was literally staggering with exhaustion.
By the evening, mum was showing signs of a recurrence of her UTI, but we mutually agreed to wait until the next morning to see if she needed urgent medical attention.
The next morning she was clearly worse: in pain from her head and her stomach, and confused enough that, when the NHS 111 doctor asked mum to confirm who I was to her, she couldn’t quite remember. The doctor summoned an ambulance, and the very kind paramedics felt that mum needed to be admitted to hospital, as much for my benefit (giving me a brief break from caring) as for mum’s.
The ambulance took us to hospital, we were checked in at A&E1, then a nurse pushed mum in a wheelchair through to the waiting room. The nurse gave me a pot for a urine sample, promised to check with the doctors if I could give mum some painkillers for her head, then disappeared back to whatever she had been doing before we arrived. And then we waited.
And waited.
And waited.
The waiting room emptied around us until it was just me, mum, and one other guy watching videos on his phone (with headphones, like a properly civilised human). And still we waited.
Finally, over two hours after arriving by ambulance, the doctor called us in. He asked if a urine test had been completed: I said no, I still had the pot, wrapped in a plastic bag, in my bag. The doctor took it off me and headed off to get it tested, muttering about having “too many qualifications to be carrying pots of pee around”.
Then he asked if mum had had blood taken for testing: also no. What had we been doing all the time since arriving? Sitting waiting for someone to come and talk to us.
The doctor headed off to arrange a blood test, muttering about “people round here can’t be bothered to do their jobs”. The person who took mum’s blood may or may not have done her job previously – I’m in no position to know or comment – but she was very kind, and fetched mum a sandwich from somewhere, and some biscuits for me as I was too exhausted and overwhelmed to feel hungry. (Plus I knew mum wouldn’t eat a whole sandwich and I’d get what was left, which I did.)
Then we waited some more.
After a while (really not long by hospital standards, but it felt longer with mum saying “I want to go home” every 30 seconds), the doctor appeared with news that neither the urine nor blood tests had shown anything, a prescription for more antibiotics, and a helpless shrug and apology that he couldn’t do more to help.
We got a taxi home – once I managed to get into the minibus they sent, which was too high for me to get in without considerable effort hauling myself up, anyway. Mum chatted all the way home, and once we got home told me how much better she felt, and bustled around the house, chatting and laughing, while I lay on my bed feeling unremittingly awful.
Today mum has been in a lot of pain again, but forced herself to get up. By the time our cleaner arrived, mum was feeling well enough to “brrrrr, brrrrr” along with the vacuum cleaner (for no real reason except it amused her), while I dragged myself from room to room finding clean bedding for the cleaner to put on our beds, clean towels for the newly cleaned bathroom, the bowl for the cleaner to put the wet washing in, etc, etc.
I’m tired, in pain, thoroughly fed up, and mum says “as long as you’re going to feed us?” Sigh.
Feed us I did, with couscous from the freezer (mum said “it’s not something I’d usually like, but I’ll try it” – I reminded her she’d liked it so much she’d asked for seconds last time) with minted lamb. Then I microwaved a couple of sponge puddings from the cupboard and we ate them with ice cream, then mum did the washing up and complained that I’d used two pans to prepare dinner. So now I’ll go and wash the pans, then wait not very patiently until it’s time to sleep.
Roll on bedtime, and I just hope the health visitor coming to see mum tomorrow doesn’t visit too early. Let me sleep, please!
- With the lead paramedic noting that mum “has a bladder the size of… well, someone with a UTI”, which amused me more than it probably should have done in the circumstances. ↩︎
Is it pineapple sponge today? 