Tempura prawns with stirfried veg and noodles
Today didn’t start well.
Mum woke up feeling lousy: her head hurt, her teeth hurt (I think those two are connected: I suspect she’s grinding her teeth in her sleep. She has a mouth guard to wear at night, but flatly refuses to use it), her stomach hurt, she was sore, and itchy, and generally Not Well.
At one point she told me she wanted to not be here anymore, which I didn’t really know how to respond to, so just went for “I’m sorry you feel like that”. Later she said she didn’t want to see Lady Friday and, when I suggested we wait and see how she feels on Friday, she reminded me that it’s her house and she decides who comes here.
I didn’t see the point in telling her that it’s my home too, as I’m here on her sufferance and I don’t want to tempt fate, so I just gave a vague acknowledgement.
By the time I was leaving for my blood test appointment, mum was still in bed, in the dark, which is fair enough when her head was so painful. I grabbed my coat, my bag and my crutches, opened the door – and came face to face with a Tesco delivery driver. Apparently I booked an earlier slot than I thought. 🤦♂️
With the driver’s help, I unloaded all the stuff onto the counters, dragged poor mum out of bed, in her pj’s, to put the frozen stuff away so it didn’t melt, and just left everything else to sit until I got back. I semi-politely kicked the Tesco driver back out to his van, grabbed my coat, my bag and my crutches again, fought to close the front door1, and splashed my way to the bus stopping point.
The bus is due at 11am, and I got outside at 11.02am. Usually the bus comes at least a few minutes after its expected time, but the one time I was late it was, of course, bang on time and I missed it.
I splashed back inside, shed my sopping wet coat and trousers, and called the GP practice to tell them I wasn’t going to be able to attend my appointment. The next available appointment, even when marked ‘urgent’ by a consultant, is on 16th February. I cannot start my new medication, intended to drastically improve my symptoms in some unspecified way, until after the blood has been taken.
Wearing only a t-shirt and knickers, damp, cold, and hurting even from that small exertion, I cried.
The kind appointment administrator (they’re all kind, tbf) recommended I try calling in a couple of days to see if they’ve had any cancellations. Mum came and gave me a hug, and said she was sorry for my struggles.
Then she asked if I was going to do any laundry today, as the washing machine was full and she wanted it emptied. And so the struggle goes on.
This afternoon the rep from the care agency came as scheduled, and it turned out (not surprisingly) that I had been worrying for nothing. The two week review is always done in person, and it’s just that the person doing it is new and didn’t know that when agreeing the date and time of the appointment.
The appointment was fine, even though mum was still struggling with her head hurting. I was given a copy of mum’s care plan to review, and I can only assume that we were all having so much fun chatting that accurate notes got forgotten about. Tomorrow I will go back to them with a number of corrections, mostly where they have confused mum’s symptoms and mine.
For dinner I went off plan and did stirfried veg (from a bag) with noodles and plum sauce, and tempura prawns. Mum really enjoyed it: I thought it was a bit over-sweet, with an oddly medicinal flavour from whatever spices are in plum sauce.
So that’s today. Tomorrow morning I need to phone the GP to ask for help as mum’s lichen sclerosus isn’t improving, then the Memory Service from which we are still waiting for the support that was promised when mum was diagnosed.
And so, as I said before, the struggle goes on.
- We have an inside door mat that wants to be an outside mat, and constantly shuffles forwards until it stops the front door from closing. Of course it usually does this at the least convenient time. ↩︎
Is it pineapple sponge today? 