Monthly Archives: March 2016

A really bad novella

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If you’ve slogged your way through the blog from the beginning or so, you will know that there are many things which have happened to us. What, in a tv series or book, would be held up as poor drama – over exaggerated and melodramatic at best, has really happened to us. The initial cancer, the secondary cancer diagnosed a year after finishing my last drug, Herceptin, moving house and going to Thailand despite reservations of my oncology team, managing to get the whole family together for our first Christmas in the new house and then the inconvenient  and tragic death of my father-in-law, just as he had decided to sell up and move to the same village as us, leaving us with my mother-in-law who has Dementia worse than we had even imagined. The next dramatic episode is provided by my father who telephones to tell us he has prostate cancer. Given that we rarely speak, it is momentous news on all fronts. He sounds frail and frightened, my mother having died a few years ago and he having had the benefit of good health for most of his 88 years. Every time we seem to get on our emotional feet, something comes along to knock us down.

This time, I feel trampled down into the mud, not just because of this last piece of news but because of the cumulative crap which has been thrown at us over the last 4 years. I go to my Reiki appointment at the Hospice and just talking to the Reiki practitioner, I break down and I can’t stop. Nose bleed, the full works. It all comes pouring out and I realise as I speak that I need help and am amazed I haven’t asked for it before. It’s like I’ve been blind and deaf to what’s been going on in my head and heart and, were I a friend, I would have been beating myself about the head for being so stupid (in a nice way, of course). There are lots of suggestions that I might take up but this time I am single-minded in what I want and refuse anything but those things that really appeal. So we make plans for the following week and I leave feeling I have achieved something. On arrival home, I explain to Mr Mason that I am broken and I need help to get back on an even track. He looks just a notch down from distraught until I explain what I need and how I am going to get it. Today I’m tearful, tomorrow I’ll be smiling and joking and it can’t go on. I am wearing myself out psychologically and emotionally and not really able to enjoy the health I have at the moment. I feel much better now I have confessed to the relevant people just how awful I feel and they have taken me seriously and come up with an immediate plan to help me. It’s such a relief. Next I go on line and make an appointment to see my GP so he can go through my meds and see whether we should be tweaking, adding or subtracting. My pain isn’t really under control and the Hospice staff say this is unreasonable so should be the first thing to get under control. So that’s done.

The next day I feel much better. On Friday we go to see the oncologist and I explain to him how I’ve been feeling and he tells me to do things I like, go on holiday, dance, do whatever gives me pleasure and to really live my life. I like him even more. He’s not saying “Get it done before you snuff it” but just enjoy your life and although that makes me cry, it’s a good sort of tearfulness. I tell him I would like to see him dance but he demurs.

I’m not claiming I’m going to be a new me. I’m just going to concentrate on myself a bit more (as Mr Mason has been telling me for ages). The bad novella with all the overly dramatic bits, formerly known as My Life has taken its toll and I need to re-group and set myself up properly again. Going to bed at 4pm every day has to stop. Pain has to stop. Exhaustion has to stop. Tearfulness has to stop and melodrama has to stop. That’s it. I’m signing off with one of my favourite tracks and thinking of Les in Brentford (have you seen him lately?)

 

Lark’s Diary XIII

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The weather has been yucky, yucky, yucky. The dam opposite the house is all brown and going very fast so I wouldn’t like to fall in, even if I was in a little boat, although I don’t know how to drive any kind of boat. Honestly, I’ve been taught no survival skills. And round the apple tree there is an absolute lake! Where does all the water come from? And the silly thing is, Archie and I have to go out to hurry up so we just add more water, making it worse. Mum really doesn’t like me going in the house. And the other day, I went out in the garden and there was more of that white stuff coming down. I was in the nude and freeeeezing so when I came indoors, I went straight up to Mum’s bed and threw myself under the duvet. She wasn’t very pleased when she saw the muddy footprints on the sheets and she said “I wonder what Jan will make of these?” I expect Jan thought I had thrown myself into a warm bed as anyone else would have done but Mum was muttering things about hammeroyds, whatever they are, and saying it was good the marks weren’t on her side of the bed. Sometimes I really don’t understand her.

I seem to have grown out of lots of my clothes and sometimes they’re a squeeze to get over my tummy. Archie has been wearing his dinner jacket suit but he’s lost the bowtie so he looks like one of those men who go to Church and talk a lot.Yesterday we went out for the day to a new beach but Mum wasn’t happy, even though she had something nice to eat at lunchtime because she saved some for me which was a delicious piece of ham. Archie told me something bad had happened 4 years ago  which is why she is often poorly now and that it makes her very sad every year, even though she doesn’t want to be.  I told him she needs to run about a bit more and I’d even let her borrow my squeaky hedgehog which is one of my favourite toys but he said that wouldn’t help and she couldn’t do the running bit anyway. He told me the best thing to do is to stand next to her and lean on her or, if she’s sitting down, stand in front of her and put my head on her lap. That was I get stroked and she is made happy. Archie is a wise dog, I think, even though I don’t understand half of what he says and he STILL puts my head in his mouth when he feels like it!

A very nice lady came to the house the other day and she was very complimentary about me and stroked me a lot so I thought I would share one of my best treasures with her. I had to go all the way to the bottom of the garden for this one as it was very special and I ran into the house and put it in her lap, expecting cries of joy and praise to be heaped upon me. Instead, she screamed “Your dog has just given me a dead bird!” so I whipped it away quickly and put it in my crate. It was very pretty but I wasn’t going to let her have it if she was just going to scream like a human and not appreciate it. Mum and Mark came in quickly, too, and Mark took it away and I never saw it again which was very sad. Usually Freya catches the birds and then, when they don’t flap around any more, she lets me have them as one of my treasures. My treasures include Jumbones, real bones, birds (when they are not taken away by silly screaming women), socks and an orange that Mum was going to eat. I thought I would surprise her with it one day when she was feeling sad as a dog giving you an orange would cheer anyone up.

The old lady hasn’t come back to the house so I’m not sure what they have done with her. I hope they didn’t take her to Dr Bum as although she was always telling me off and getting me into trouble, she was quite good at stroking when she wasn’t thinking about it. And even if they have taken her to Dr Bum, they haven’t brought her back so she can’t be one of my treasures and be buried in the garden, although that would take an awful lot of digging. I don’t know why humans make life quite so complicated. I’m not sure I’ll ever understand them as well as Archie does.

Living without sleep

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Someone asked me recently whether we have settled into our new home and area. I found I didn’t really know what to say so said a lot of “um”s and “mmmmm”s because it’s such a difficult question to answer. Have we settled in? Before our recent bereavement, I would have said yes. We knew where to go for what, had dates in our diaries for local auctions and had started to know the locals. Then, of course, having dared to relax into a light spot of complacency, Dad, bless him, snuffed it and our world became new, confusing and extremely demanding, a likely parallel to how Mum feels.

At present, Mum is having  respite at a local care home which seems to tick all the boxes. It doesn’t smell of wee and cabbage, staff address the residents by their first name and there are some nice cuddles going on. Tempers of staff are amazingly reigned in when the grumpy Mrs H slams the plate of potted meat sandwiches on the table saying loudly that she’s not going to eat these. She agrees she would like sardines on toast which they produce without accidentally dropping it on her head and she then sits there for 5 minutes mashing the fish into the toast until it’s a right mess. “I can’t eat this muck” she shouts and patiently, oh, so patiently, a carer comes to check what she would like for her tea. Toast is agreed, made and delivered. No jam. Apparently it’s the work of the devil. There is a cat on the first floor that day and she aims the end of her stick at it repeatedly. Luckily it is faster and smarter. On Valentine’s Day the staff put on a pantomime for the residents. We arrive as it has just finished and I see a sign saying ‘Fawlty Towers’ over the servery hatch. There is a lot of noise with women crying and some keening, just making primeval noises. Mum sees us and rushes over saying “This is my son and he’s come to take me home”. She has some white powder over her trousers which we later find out is flour and she accidentally got in the way when it was being thrown. She is profoundly disturbed by the pantomime as are many of the residents and I suspect it won’t be happening again. But the staff give their all in trying to entertain them and to make it a good, comfortable place to be with activities, rather than just a group of old people sitting around a tv set (whether it’s on or off). So Mum is settled as she can be.

During the first few weeks when she lived with us, I found myself not only physically exhausted but not even thinking about cancer. It was all about wee, obsessions about combs and handkerchiefs, how to put a cup down on a table the right way, buying her a whole new wardrobe as she came to us like Orphan Annie with clothes of varying sizes, very few of them fitting and many of them having seen better days. We talked endlessly about food she might like and if I disappeared to my office, there was a little voice calling “Shelley” as she wanted company 24/7. It’s all so understandable. Losing a husband of 70 years, being moved from one part of the country to another, having no friends or relatives nearby. One thing she hasn’t worried about is money, fortunately.

But this shift away from cancer was very strange. It’s like my heart can only hold so much pain at a time. I knew in the back of my mind that I was over-tired (a lovely phrase which I have never understood until I experienced it) and that my pain had increased but the most pressing issues were not getting into arguments with Mum, no matter what she said or how she contradicted me. Once she was in bed, it was like a dam bursting and all I could do was crawl into bed and with sleep coming instantaneously. The sort of sleep Mr Mason has so often enjoyed – head hitting the pillow and into the Land of Nod he tumbles. Now Mum is in respite, I feel I am still catching up on rest and  easily sleeping for 12 hours a night but my mind is all over the place. Like at the beginning of primary cancer, I don’t know where I am again. I’ve found myself noticing a tightness in my chest and abdomen, the sort that predicts a fit of screaming to release tension. I’d be ace at that generic wailing music so many dramas use these days. It can be used for science fiction, films about the Far East, historical fiction. It’s one of our family sayings “Here is the generic wailing music again” and “Fresh start”, mostly used in soap operas. Every week someone has a fresh start. Maybe that’s what I’m missing.

But I’m digressing. I’m feeling stuck again. A few months ago I knew roughly where I was going, even though some of it wasn’t pleasant, but now, I don’t know where I am, let alone where I’m going. So the cancer feelings are creeping back in again and I don’t know what to do with them. I feel I can’t go through the deep distress again. Apart from anything else, I don’t want to go through it. I want to get back on the track I was on; the one where I was beginning to settle down, relax, take up hobbies and appreciate what I have and what’s around me. Now I feel grumpy, tired and out of sorts. I don’t want to eat; I’m genuinely not hungry or interested in food. Poor Mr Mason suggests meal after meal and none appeal. In the end, I usually go with what he wants, simply because it seems the fairest thing to do. For someone with a whole bookcase full of cookery books and an interest in all sorts of food, it feels like another cruel punishment I have to endure – and one Mr Mason endures, too. The only benefit is that I am losing weight slowly and gradually. And as for writing, something I love doing, it holds no interest and seems like another chore, especially when my eyes can barely focus on the screen as they are so tired.

It’s common for women after breast cancer to have Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. I suspect this is it, yet again, brought on by another stressful event. It’s hard to haul yourself out of the big black hole time after time when energy is sapped and overwhelming tirednes is the first thing I experience every morning when I wake. So I suppose I’m not settled yet as I’m struggling again to attain an equilibrium which is tolerable.  It will come but it’s taking a bloody long time.