Cheese salad with hash browns

This morning started with mum remembering that she had an appointment for a CT scan at the hospital early this afternoon, and promptly returning to hide in bed.

Eventually she did get up, and was kind enough to make me a cup of coffee. Unfortunately she put one of her fruit teabags in the mug along with my coffee – a mistake anyone could make, and I would have easily forgiven her if she hadn’t demanded that I “just drink it anyway”.

I didn’t, needless to say: I waited until she was in the bathroom to sneak to the kitchen and dispose of my berry infusion / coffee cocktail. The teabag went in the food waste caddy, at which point I discovered it was infested with maggots. 🤢

But we had a car coming for the drive to the hospital, so the maggot disposal operation had to wait. The drive over was very hard going, with mum complaining that her head hurt, that her stomach hurt, that I took too long fetching her a mint from my bag, that she didn’t understand why we were going…

We got to the hospital, went to the reception desk in the outpatient department, and was told that we should be at the main entrance. I pointed out that the letter that had been sent to mum didn’t say which of the two diagnostic imaging departments we should go to.

“No, they don’t, do they” said the receptionist, with polite indifference.

Our driver took us round to the main entrance, and we went in for mum’s scan. The assistant was really good, asking mum the safety questions about allergies etc, but shooting a glance at me after every answer for silent confirmation that mum’s answers were correct.

I then had maybe four minutes of sitting in a side room in precious silence while the scan was done, then mum rejoined me for the mandatory half-hour wait to make sure she didn’t react badly to the dye used for her scan. Naturally, the complaints immediately started up again – her teeth hurt, her head hurt, how much longer did we have to wait culminating in “I need food”.

“There are biscuits just over there, mum,” I responded, helpful as ever.

“I need more than that.”

You’ll just have to wait, then, won’t you? Thankfully, shortly after that one of the nurses came to tell us mum was free to go, before I said something inappropriate in a public space.

On our way out, we passed the Friends shop and stopped to buy us some sandwiches: egg and cress for mum, and for me my old favourite the chicken mayo roll.

For the ride home we shared a car with a stranger, who turned out not to be a stranger but a near neighbour, also coming home from a hospital appointment. That meant mum had to play nice and not spend the entire journey complaining. She managed it with perfect ease, which was nice, but proves she can stop the flow of complaints and demands if she wants to. I just wish she wanted to for me sometimes!

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Home again, I treated myself to ten minutes to sit down and eat my roll, before sorting out the food waste caddy.

Then a rare hour or so with a book, before I had to cook dinner. I was going to make an omelette, as they’re easy, tasty, and most importantly mum-approved.

Except: “I don’t like them much,” said mum, “but I suppose I can try”. I cracked the eggs, and discovered they’d gone off. For someone who “doesn’t like omelettes”, Mum was very vocally disappointed that we couldn’t have one.

Instead we got cheese salad, with hash browns. Mum ate less than half of hers, having had lunch very late, but somehow did have an appetite for half a cheesecake, coffee ice cream, and dark chocolate.

I’m too exhausted to argue, and just looking forward to bedtime. It’s been a very long day.