Peanut veg noodles

When I left you yesterday, I was waiting for a phone call from the NHS 111 service, about the odd spot mum was seeing in her eye.

Shortly after I hit ‘publish’, they called back. The doctor I spoke to wasn’t happy that I had failed to bring mum in when the problem first became apparent (or she wasn’t happy with the 111 call handlers for not insisting I bought her in – I’m not sure which), and insisted that we go to the hospital then and there.

A&E waiting rooms on a Saturday night are, I think universally, full of drunk people who either want to be your best friend or want to fight you. One such person asked if she could borrow my crutches so she could go to the bathroom without putting too much weight on her broken foot. I said yes, and she responded with the TMI friendliness of the intoxicated – until she heard another woman on the phone outside, thought she was gossiping about her, and stormed outside to fight her.

I decided that that was the time to get utterly engrossed in a game on my phone and leave the hospital security staff to sort it out!

The doctor, when we saw him, was the epitome of what a doctor should be: polite, kind, careful, and determined to work out the source of the problem. Mum insisted he looked like a young Clive Myrie¹, who she has a bit of a crush on. I couldn’t see it myself, but it made mum happy so I went with it.

After a few tests, and a wait of just over an hour – i.e. long enough for mum to complain approximately a thousand times that she was bored and wanted to go home – he came back and told us that his colleagues on the mainland, who he had consulted by phone, thought that mum is experiencing detachment of the vitreous.

This sounds terrifying, but I have been assured (by doctors and by follower-friend² Elizabeth, who knows what she’s talking about) that it’s quite common amongst older people and rarely causes any serious issues. Mum will need to see a specialist this week to make sure it is vitreal detachment and nothing more serious: in the meantime, the flashing lights in her vision are giving her something else to complain about. I assume that’s a good thing: she must enjoy complaining given she spends so much of her life doing it, right? 🤔

We arrived home just after midnight. Negotiating the narrow path to our front door in the dark, on my crutches, I accidentally trod on a snail. The crunch-squelch of a snail under foot is one of the most distressing noises I know, both for its unpleasantness and for the knowledge that I have just ended the life of an innocent mollusc. I’m so sorry, snail. 😢

Today has mostly been spent with mum asleep and me playing mobile games / playing around on image creation software. ⬆️

I woke mum up for dinner and she panicked and complained, and complained, and complained. Eventually I resorted to sticking her teeth together with a peanut butter-based sauce to stop the never-ending flow of complaints. Whether it was that, or getting some actual nutrition, mum is calmer now, and hopefully the evening will pass quickly until she can go back to bed and sleep some more.

(The meal was using a Simply Cook spicy peanut chicken noodles, but subbing out pretty much every ingredient to end up with something that was tasty, even if not what the kit makers intended.)

And so, goodnight. As always, I’ll let you know what happens.

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1. A Black British newsreader / broadcast journalist and television presenter, for those outside the UK and unfamiliar with the name. ↩︎
2. I.e. someone I have become online friends with through this blog. I can’t think of a better term atm. ↩︎