Veg and noodles with sweet chilli sauce

Not much to report for today.

I slept without, as far as I can tell, moving at all last night, given that I woke up in almost the exact same position I laid down in. I felt OK when I woke up, so I fed a poor, ‘starving’ cat (spoiler alert: she most definitely wasn’t starving!), and got myself some breakfast: instant porridge made with water, a tiny splash of semi-skimmed milk (literally no more than 2tbsp), and a sprinkling of dried fruit and coconut flakes.

Apparently even that tiny amount was too much fat and dairy, as I was almost immediately in considerable pain again. I managed to get myself into the kitchen to get mum’s tablets, stopped to clean Suki’s tray, and the bag I was using slipped a spilt (thankfully clean) cat litter across the floor. Mum kindly came and cleaned up, as the long-handled dustpan and brush I’ve ordered won’t arrive until tomorrow. As she emptied the litter back into the tray, she commented that the clean tray was “not too bad, considering¹. And that’s not meant as a criticism”.

Which is nice to know, but raises the troubling possibility that all her usual little comments, which I have been trying to brush off as “she didn’t mean that the way it sounded” absolutely were meant as criticisms. The implications of that will have to wait until I feel better to unpack.

This afternoon I contacted the GP surgery to ask for a referral to the gastroenterology surgical team. Thankfully, my email was picked up by one of the ANPs rather than my GP, which means it was processed within a couple of hours rather than a couple of months. Now I just have to wait, which will be difficult even though I know waiting lists over here are much shorter than in other parts of the country.

Then I arranged for one of mum’s friends to take her to the dentist on Wednesday, and tried not to snap at mum when she ‘casually mentioned’ for the dozenth time that she wants to get her hair cut. She did apologise when I pointed out that getting her teeth and my gallbladder sorted were taking priority.

For dinner this evening I boiled some wholewheat noodles, mangetout², and baby sweetcorn, then added some sweet chilli sauce. I thoroughly expected it to be pretty unpleasant, so shouldn’t have been upset when mum looked at the finished meal and said “is that it?”, but for some reason it nearly reduced me to tears.

Two bites in, mum decided it was delicious and wanted more: I gave her some of mine as I had no appetite thanks to the constant ‘ow’ in my side / stomach. I did manage to eat what was left and it actually wasn’t bad: the wholemeal noodles are surprisingly tasty, and I do love a mangi-tutti.

Tomorrow I have a phone call with my consultant over on the mainland, which might be interesting, or might be a complete waste of time. I’ll let you know.

1. Considering we don’t have any more cat litter, that is. My trusty AI friend has given me some suggestions on how to get more tomorrow, given the bag I ordered online won’t arrive until the end of the week. Hopefully at least one of them will a) get us some cat litter, and b) give me something to write about tomorrow. ↩︎
2. Which a chef friend of my dad’s called “mangi-tutti”, by which name I have called them ever since. ↩︎