The Best Laid Plans

If you have opened this up this morning expecting a peek into my holiday sketchbook I’m afraid you are going to be disappointed. It’s true, I had planned to divulge some of my sketching habits and promised you such, but life has intervened, and the sketchbook is on hold until possibly next week when I can get my head around what I want to say. It might happen next Sunday, who knows. I don’t want to make promises I can’t keep.

I don’t really have much of a routine in my week now that I am not working regularly but there are things that I do that give structure. Mondays are often spent doing admin jobs like replying to emails, clearing my desk and sorting things out. On a Tuesday I generally get food shopping for my Mum and usually for us too. Friday mornings we do the housework together and if there is nothing else in the diary I might go over to do housework for Mum as well. Weekends are mostly for seeing family. Nothing is set in stone and these activities are all flexible, with everything else fitted in between. Which means I usually write a first draft of this on a Wednesday or Thursday, do a bit of editing either on Thursday or Friday depending on when I wrote the first draft, so it is scheduled and ready to go before the weekend. This week started as usual, and I planned to write on Wednesday afternoon, knowing I would be out all day on Thursday. I had the day all sorted. It was pouring with rain again so I decided I would spend the morning in my studio doing some long overdue painting and then I would come in to write after lunch. Ah… the best laid plans!

At about 10.30 there was a phone call from Mum. She’d had a call from a doctor at the hospital about coming in. Which doctor at which hospital, about what and coming in when she couldn’t say. She couldn’t remember, she thought she had written it down but couldn’t find the bit of paper, so I reassured her not to worry and told her I would find out. There were various options, but I did a bit of detective work and struck lucky on my first call. The manual reading I had sent in from her loop recorder the previous day had shown some abnormalities and the cardiology department wanted to see her as soon as possible as in “Can you bring her in to same day urgent care now?” So my painting was abandoned and off I went to collect Mum.

While she sorted herself out, I made her a chicken roll to take with her for lunch, discarding the roll she had taken from the freezer and defrosted in the microwave to the point of turning it into a rock solid lump of crispbread, in favour of one of the fresh rolls I had bought her the day before. What she eats and when is becoming an increasing concern.

Next problem was the wheelchair. Mum’s not a great fan, preferring to walk with a rollator but even the disabled parking at the Lister hospital in Stevenage is about half a mile away from the SDEC department, by the time you’ve gone down in two lifts and done a circuit of the hospital, so I insisted. But the detachable footrests were nowhere to be seen. My brother had used it last, except he didn’t, because Mum wouldn’t go in it and he’s obviously not as bossy as me, but I checked, and he hadn’t seen them. Mum denied all knowledge of their existence, although later in the day suggested maybe the children had been playing with them. Children? What children? Anyway I decided we could manage without rather than spend hours looking for them if Mum could just lift up her feet while I was pushing. I know wasn’t easy for her, and Mum preferred to walk along with her feet like she was in a Flintstones pedal car, not helped by one of the brakes being locked in position. I might just go with the rollator next time!

We were seen by a triage nurse and then it was a case of waiting, so I gave Mum her chicken roll. She noticed I didn’t have one so offered to share, but I declined telling her I don’t eat chicken. Two minutes later we had the same conversation again.

“Have you got a roll?”

‘No, but I’m okay for now”

“Would you like some of this?”

“No thanks Mum, I don’t eat meat”

“Really, I never knew that”

I haven’t eaten meat for thirty years!

Eventually we were seen by a young doctor, who carefully explained to her the problem; that Mum’s episodes of very low heart rate put her at risk of passing out and collapsing. Although Mum had no recollection of feeling dizzy or passing out, the episode recorded a couple of weeks ago made sense of the large gash that had appeared on her leg which she was unable to explain. The upshot was she will need a pacemaker fitted in the next couple of weeks. But first, an ECG and some blood tests and another long wait. The nurse taking the bloods asked her for her date of birth and address. Her date of birth she never has problems recalling but she gave her address as the one where she last lived with her own Mum and Dad before she got married in 1956. We laughed and the nurse told her she was better off forgetting her age and remembering where she lived!

While we sat waiting Mum occupied herself rummaging through her purse and handbag, offering me £10 for petrol. I took it, as it makes her cross if I don’t and she gets a disability living allowance to cover taxis and help in the home, which is basically me, so I don’t feel too guilty. Half an hour later, more rummaging and another £10 offered. This time I refused and told her she had already given me some money. By the time she offered me the third £10 I just laughed and told her I could be onto a winner at this rate. At least she saw the funny side too. Sometimes laughing is all we can do.

By the time we left, we hit rush hour traffic that doubled our journey time home. Mum was exhausted so I sat her down in front of the telly while her cooked her dinner. By the time I got home and made my own dinner and downed a couple of glasses of wine there was no chance I was writing anything that evening. Of course in the time I have sat here now on Friday afternoon, getting all this off my chest I could have written what I had planned in the first place but somehow this came out instead. I wasn’t in the right head space for sketchbooks.

I have written this not for sympathy or to make fun of Mum’s increasingly erratic behaviour, because it is what it is, and as long as she remains happy and safe, and we can laugh then that’s fine. But I know when I last wrote about Mum’s lack of diagnosis it touched a chord with many of you and it’s good to remind ourselves we are not alone sometimes.

And the footrests for the wheelchair? I’ve been over this morning to do some cleaning and I found them tied up in a bag, within another bag, inside her shopping trolley which she hasn’t used in a couple of years.

“Well, I don’t know how they got there” says Mum

Oh how we laughed. It must have been those meddling kids again!

Now if you excuse me I’m off to my studio to finish off the painting that I never really started on Wednesday. See you next week!