Vegetable and gyoza stirfry with noodles

Today has been a day so long and full of incident that this is going to be less of a blog post and more of a bullet-pointed list.

It started at zero dark hundred with Suki, who ventured onto my bed last time for the first time ever, deciding that now she had free-range access to my bedroom she could meow at me for attention whenever she wanted. Thankfully my bed is low enough that I could just roll over and stick my hand down for Suki to rub against. It was very cute.

Then I was woken at 9am by a phone call from the GP (the GP, now back from holiday) telling me that mum’s blood test results were already back and showed markers for inflammation. This seems to confirm the neurologist’s suggestion that mum has a condition called Giant Cell (or Temporal) Arteritis, which causes inflammation of the arteries leading to the head. The main symptoms are severe headaches and pain in the jaw or teeth, so an almost perfect match for what mum is experiencing.

The treatment is steroids, and urgently because the condition can cause vision loss if untreated. And thus began a day where I called the pharmacy 9 times, with a 0% answer rate, trying to find out if the tablets were going to be delivered today.

Eventually I called the GP surgery instead, to check that the prescription had been marked as urgent, and to ask if they could help with the uncontactable pharmacy. After 56 minutes on hold, I finally got through, and found that all they could recommend was that I went down to the pharmacy in person.

Seeing no other option, I did just that. I was there and back in about 20 minutes, and the pharmacist promised he would have delivered the tablets tonight. But a) we needed them asap, b) I had no way of knowing that as they weren’t answering their phones, and c) I’m not sure I believe him anymore.

Now I need to skip back several hours, to a phone call from my optician, telling me they couldn’t give me any more lenses until I have a check-up (not an eye-test, just an ‘are the lenses still comfortable? OK, fine’, which usually takes less than 10 minutes). This type of check isn’t part of their home visit service, so I have to go to one if their branches if I want more lenses, which is obviously very difficult for me. Which means I can’t have any more contact lenses.

I said that this was disability discrimination¹, which the person I spoke to agrees with and promised to raise with her bosses.

A short while later, she called back and told me she had agreed with one of the opticians to do the check over the phone. Of course, I missed her call while doing pharmacy-chasing, and had to call her back when I got home. Virtual check-up done, I closed the call and mum promptly said “are you going to do something to help me now?”, which nearly got my phone thrown at her head.

I also had to call the GP surgery as I have been getting texts from them about going for a blood test, and I didn’t know what it was for. The booking admin I spoke to looked through my file and eventually concluded that she had no idea either.

We shared a mutual, invisible shrug and decided I might as well book and attend an appointment anyway, and leave it to the doctors to work out what the test-tubes of blood are for.

The appointment is booked for the week after next, as I’m out four weekdays out of five next week and really can’t cope with making it five days out of five.

I also also sorted out transport to the dementia training course I’m starting next week. The booking phone call was repeatedly interrupted by a certain tabby cat of my acquaintance climbing up the door of the fridge I was sitting by, doing her “please adore me!” dance.

She disappeared back under the cupboard when the groceries arrived, but I kept talking to her to try and keep her calm. Of course, the delivery driver then came back and I had to reassure him I wasn’t in fact talking to myself, but to an invisible cat!

Then it was time to cook and serve dinner, by which time I was so frazzled I forgot to take a photo of it. Mum said she didn’t want to eat because her head hurt so much, but actually ate a good portion.

That meant I could give her the first batch of eight steroid tablets she needs to take twice a day for the next five days. Mum wasn’t happy with having to take eight additional tablets, even when I told her that I took 32 of them at a time when I was in hospital. The reason, in both cases, is that the pharmacy didn’t have any tablets in higher doses than 5mg.

Now, at the end of that marathon of a day, it’s the usual tv and mum telling me her head hurts every couple of minutes. On the positive side, my gallbladder seems to have settled completely, so I’m going to go and eat my feelings, in the form of cookie dough ice cream.

That ice cream is calling my name, so goodnight, sleep well. I really hope I will after all that!

---

1. If a company provides a service but creates a mandatory gatekeeper that is physically inaccessible to a disabled customer, they are failing to provide “Reasonable Adjustments, and thus are discriminating on grounds of disability. ↩︎