Spanish omelette and salad; chocolate cherry cake

Today started with my mobile ringing at a time that is entirely unsociable for a hard-working carer. It was, however, followed by a call from the hospital regarding a complaint I made several weeks ago.

(If you remember, I accompanied mum to an appointment with the Eye Clinic, where I was separated from mum and she was left, alone and distressed, in a different area. It was only thanks to a observant and caring volunteer that they didn’t end up with a missing dementia patient emergency.)

The Eye Department Sister is also a carer for an older parent, it turns out, and she was genuinely horrified that her team had mishandled things so badly. An anonymised account of events will be presented to a department training session next month, as a “this is what we shouldn’t do” teaching moment, which is all I wanted.

I also managed to get a reward for the volunteer, who thoroughly deserves whatever prize or commendation she gets.

Then I sent an email to the dentist asking what I should do about mum’s increasingly sore mouth, put some WD40 on the hinges on the garden door (squeaky hinges being one of my odder pet hates), and ordered myself birthday¹ cakes. (Yes, cakes plural: a strawberry ripple one, and a tiramisu one from the same small company, because mum saw it and dropped a hint so unsubtle it was more of a hunt. I also ordered ginger parkin and Yorkshire curd tarts from a different company, based in Yorkshire, for future content purposes².)

As the day wore on, getting closer to Lady Friday’s arrival, mum got increasingly anxious. She was alert enough today to be aware her anxiety was unreasonable, but anxiety is not generally open to being reasoned with. Of course, once Lady Friday was here, all was well and they went out for a walk.

I took the opportunity to call Admiral Nurses, hoping for some advice on handling mum’s various medical issues and her complaints about same. Unfortunately they were too busy to answer my call or, so far, to return the message I left. I just hope they don’t call me back at unsociable o’clock tomorrow morning: once in two days is enough for that nonsense. 😴

This evening I decided to preempt the “there’s nothing to eat” drama of the day before a grocery delivery by making a chocolate cake from a packet mix, and adding frozen cherries to make it fancy. What I should have done is defrosted the cherries first, but I didn’t so it took an age to cook.

Which gave me time to make a Spanish omelette which, when ready, mum greeted with “I don’t know how much of this I’m going to eat: my mouth is too sore”. Of course she practically cleared her plate, got frustrated that the cake wasn’t ready then, when it was ready, ate a huge portion with a lake of cream.

I remember the days when doctors raised concerns that mum was too thin and she possibly needed supplemental calories. It turns out all she needed was steroids, and suddenly I can’t keep enough food in the house to satisfy her. (Yesterday she asked me, in genuine bewilderment, where all the food had gone. I had to respond bluntly: “you ate it all, mum”.)

And so another week ends. Have a lovely Friday evening, or night, or Saturday morning, depending on whereabouts in the world you are.

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1. Next Thursday. 🎂 ↩︎
2. By which I mean content for this blog, although they will of course also be content for me. ↩︎