Salt and pepper prawns, chips, mixed veg

I’ve been feeling really quite down today. I think it’s because in past years I have come over to the Isle of Wight for Christmas and headed home around this sort of time. Of course this year I’m not going anywhere, and some part of my mind is sadly aware that this is it: this is my life now.

Every time my hands fumbled, my legs hurt, my feet struggled to negotiate a simple step, I wanted to cry. Everything is so much more difficult than it used to be, and the change from life as a working professional to a disabled carer is stark.

With hindsight, a lifetime of working as an administrator was good preparation for being a carer: there’s a lot of organisation and paperwork that goes into this role. There’s also a lot of repetition in administrating, although not as much as in caring for mum. I have lost count of the number of times I have told mum I will call the GP tomorrow about a particular health problem she’s experiencing, that they’re not ignoring her and it’s just that their first couple of attempts at treatment didn’t work.

I will confess that, around the tenth or so repetition, I let my frustration creep into my “yes, mum, I’ll call them to-mor-row.” I’m not proud of myself, but mum didn’t seem to notice so no harm done.

I had, in any case, already earned my brownie points for the day. Mum has been saying for the last few days that she needed a new pair of slippers, that they had started getting threadbare and leaving her feet cold every evening. Today I remembered that last time I bought myself some cheap slippers I got two for the price of one, and the second pair were still in their original bag under my bed.

So I handed them over, and mum was delighted, commenting several times how nice her new “feet” are. (I’m not sure if she had forgotten the word ‘slippers’ or was remembering that my dad’s mum always referred to shoes of all kinds as ‘feet’, as in “I just need to put my feet on before we go out”.)

I took the opportunity to get out my own new slippers, of a rather fancier brand and thus more solidly made, which I’m hoping will stop me from repeatedly falling out of and over them. I’m not yet sure if they’re actually going to help in that regard, but the extra 3/4 inch height they give me seems, for some reason, to stop me from sliding off the seat of my orthopedic chair so often. That’s one small win for them, at least.

In non shoe-related news, a family friend mentioned in a text an idea she’s had for promoting the local village. I’m not sure if she was just asking if I thought the idea was a good one or if she was soliciting my help for making it a reality. I’ll let you know when / if it happens.

Dinner was stuff from the freezer. Mum wasn’t hungry, because I made her lunch today rather than leaving her to find something for herself, which usually means she has a banana and a bit of cake (we had emmental-stuffed croissants, and they were very nice). She ate a few prawns with a handful of chips and a couple of spoonfuls of veg. I got the rest of all three, and drowned my chips in loads of ketchup. Mum didn’t make her usual “urrgh” noises, so she was either too enamoured with her new slippers that she didn’t notice, or too distracted by her headache to notice (we’re having another go at cutting out the painkillers, so her headache has had to fend for itself today).

Now it’s the usual Monday evening run of quiz shows, followed by what I intend to be an early night so I can be awake early to get on the call-back list for the GP tomorrow. What will probably happen is that mum will tell me she’s going to bed, I’ll tell her I’m just going to read a couple of chapters of my book before I do the same, and then find myself still doing ‘just one more chapter’ an hour later.

At least I’ll have nice warm, slipper-clad feet while doing so.