(August 7, 2012)
A swift overnight with my bear on Friday night on the way to pick my mother up… sitting in the car for three hours played havoc with my gall bladder and associated (hopefully associated)! pain and so I had a night of gentle and solicitous bear and a good and fear free sleep being held…
…and then the week begins… I have my elderly mother staying for a week. She comes over more regulary now under the cover of having her hair done over the road… mostly it gives my sister a rest but probably also gives my mum one too.
It’s hard to tell by random visits how bad her dementia stuff is…. supposedly when at home she wanders often and is picked up heading out of town and has got to the point where she can’t make a cup of tea. So I don’t let her go out unchaperoned… and she seems fully able to make tea…and coffee and is still a dab hand at washing up – which is what i like in a visiting relative.
Having her here occassionally is, no doubt, VERY different from dealing with her daily… I’m able to take her forgetfulness with a pinch of salt and just build it into, as I would any other disability, the way I deal with her.
I quite like that she hands out totally random birthday presents as it makes every day sort of exciting… her choice of Christmas presents over the last few years has become more and more bizarre…and as a family we love that. Its like the mythical aunt who knits weird jumpers… you can roll with it and love it or you can whinge they don’t fit.
She thinks the dog is female and calls Jane ‘he’… but does know she’s Jane. Most nights I show her to her bedroom and she’ll happily ask if she’s forgotten where something is… it means I sleep on the sofa when she’s here to give her a bedroom as we found she just got too confused not going upstairs to bed.
Yesterday we went to see the recently revamped Peterborough museum. Sat in its rather pleasant cafe and me and the boy were totally tickled by Granny attempting to go to the toilet through the emergency exit (the door NEXT to the one marked toilets) and setting off the museum alarm system… a handy re-enactment Viking ran over to steer her right and off she pottered without turning a hair and seemingly oblivious to all the fuss of security men and alarms… just a shame the Viking was in his re-enactment day wear and not full battle dress.
Today I’d planned to take the 7 year old and the (nearly)86 yr old to see Ice Age 4 but my gall bladder played up and eventually I gave in and took a co-codamol and fell asleep on the sofa for about four hours…. Jane has taken them this evening instead and i’ve had more tablets and hopefully after this will give it some early night zzzzz’s.
The positive side of the agony and new improved almost fat free diet is that I’m still losing weight… now my weight starts with an 11 for the first time in several years and I’m starting to dig things out of my wardrobe that have been stuffed to the back ‘in hope’.
The fear of more pain tends to keep me off the cakes and crisps and biscuits and fatty goodies and processed junk…. and I’m even starting to think of healthy things I’d like to eat… I dreamed of spicy chickpeas and brown rice the other night.
Thats got to be a first.
