Lamb and mint pies with buttered veg; mixed berry cobbler
I have been feeling really down and lonely today.
I woke multiple times overnight with a milder but still painful re-run of the chest / gallbladder pain I had a few weeks ago. I’m booked in for an ultrasound next month, but in the meantime I guess I’ll just have to try to work out what my triggers are and avoid them.
I seem to be doing a lot of that at the moment: researching various health conditions and how to best manage them. I’m very grateful to the global community of people willing to share their experiences of various illnesses, but I can’t help feeling that I should be getting more input from people with actual medical qualifications.
The nurse who advised me to keep giving mum laxatives and, if they caused diarrhoea, then that was easily resolved by giving her cocodamol, didn’t have to cope with mum crying and near hysterical because she kept “making a mess”.
I posted on an internet forum for carers and received some wonderfully supportive replies, including a suggestion of a befriending service I’m going to sign up to tomorrow. What I need, though, is something no-one can (or will) provide, and that’s someone else to share the responsibility of caring for two people with chronic illnesses. (Myself and mum, I mean.)
Mum, in her more self-aware moments, comments that “we’re a right pair, aren’t we, with all our problems?”, and she’s not wrong.
Meanwhile, outside1, it has rained. And rained. And rained some more. It’s still raining now. If it carries on like this I’m going to be able to add ducks to my list of birds I’ve seen in our garden.
With a ‘stick it in the oven’ type dinner planned, I had a spare spoon to make a nice hot pudding. I went for mixed berries (from the freezer – I must buy more as they’re a very useful thing to have around) with a cobbler topping, because I haven’t done one since moving in with mum.
Mum and I agreed that the pies (Tesco Finest) were pleasant, but the description on the box was needed as otherwise it would have been impossible to know what kind of meat it was meant to be. The berry cobbler, on the other hand, had mum going back for another scoop before she’d finished her first. If mum asks if it’s OK to get more then I know I’m on to a winner.
So now it’s peaceful – except for the never-ending sound of the rain, and the tv that’s on from the moment wakes up – and my phone’s nearly out of battery so this post, at least, will end.
Goodnight.
- That might sound obvious – of course the rain is outside – but I’ve lived in some shocking rental properties where it rained nearly as hard inside as out. ↩︎
Is it pineapple sponge today? 