Category: Family
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Unsafe discharge and death by licorice
Mum moved downstairs two months ago. It hasn’t been easy. The previous occupiers, our neighbours, left the house a filthy mess. Me and my brother got the kitchen and bathroom cleaned on moving in day, but it was far from ideal. Another neighbour who I know from work/church repainted her walls and ceilings. A neighbour my wife knows weeded the garden and did some cleaning and washing. Little kid posts the dog jumpers and cat tea cosies she knits to keep her eBay customers happy. Big kid sweeps and mops the floor for manga money. Sainsbury’s deliver a crateful of cat food, fizzy drinks, snacks, and black licorice. The licorice keeps her “moving”. I make her a cooked meal every evening, empty the bins, and keep moving furniture around as and when requested. “When I get the place sorted I’ll be fine” is my mum’s mantra. Mine is more “you need to get your health sorted” and “tell your doctor”.
Mum looks set to move at the very start of next month. Moving house is the most stressful life event, and doing so when you’re 80, unwell, and from the home you bought expecting it to be your final home in the town where you went to school is harder. She’s handled it pretty well, to be fair, although the anxiety has kicked in the closer we got to the desired completion date. It’s not been easy for me, either, as there’s a limit to what I can do from a distance. It’s mostly “ask your solicitor” or “tell your solicitor” and trying to reassure her that everything will be all right in the end.
The first week she moved in, she banged her leg during the night causing a pretty horrible haematoma, which required a couple of trips to the hospital, the GP surgery and ongoing home visits from the district nurse. Yesterday morning I was on my third spoon of cornflakes before the school run when I received a text from mum saying she’d had a fall and was on the floor. Her other leg (not the one she banged before) gave way as she got out of bed and she toppled over on to her side. Remarkably, she didn’t break anything and had got herself sitting upright again, but obviously couldn’t get herself up. I couldn’t get her up either, which is probably just as well, as the medical advice is not to move them. My wife stayed with her while I took little kid to school. Paramedics duly arrived and very carefully assessed and treated her and recommended a trip to Accident and Emergency (A&E) due to her elevated heart rate and medical history. She did not want to go, but the alternative was to wait for a home visit from the GP in the afternoon and s/he would certainly call an ambulance.
After a day in A&E, and after I left her to pick up little kid, she was told she would be discharged that evening. They’d booked hospital transport to take her home, but I drove to collect her as it might have been a long wait. When I got there, she couldn’t get out of her chair into her wheelchair without the assistance of two carers. I wondered if she’d be able to get into and out of my car. And into and out of her bed. Without falling down again. There was general agreement that it was certainly a suboptimal arrangement. My wife, who is a social worker and deals with similar scenarios in her work, advised me that what the hospital was proposing is known as an unsafe discharge.
As soon as I uttered this magic phrase, mum was readmitted to A&E so that she could be discharged safely. She was not happy about that or with me, I have to say. And I can quite understand. Everyone just wants to go home and sleep peacefully, comfortably and privately in their own bed. Today she’s been reassessed. She now has a six-week care package in place for when she goes home so that she can regain her independence without putting herself at risk of another fall. They’ve done more scans and found new problems.
And, seriously, it now turns out that her long-standing licorice habit might be the single cause of some of her most debilitating problems.
Big kid has video-documented my pizza making process by creating a “cooking website” while I made pizza on Saturday.
(For some reason the videos aren’t only seem to play when you load the site in a private or incognito browser.)
Peak Absurdity on the Ski School Run
Big kid went skiing with school today (his school breaks up for summer a week later than everywhere else). He had to be at school half an hour earlier than usual to catch the coach to The Snow Centre. Real snow, -6°C.
As we arrived, we realised he hadn’t brought his coat.
I quickly dumped little kid in breakfast club, and hobbled back to the car, which I had clairvoyantly parked half a mile away so the kids could scoot in the rest of the way. Bin collection day slowed things down, and the wife was in a state of undress and unable to fling the coat out of the window when I arrived home, meaning I had to haul myself up and downstairs to retrieve it myself, huffing and puffing and effing and blinding all the way.
Miraculously, I managed to walk without crutches at almost Olympic speed into school and presented a relieved big kid with his coat, literally as he stepped on to the coach.
When I got back home, again, in a pool of sweat, wife had gone swimming. She texted me to ask if our lad had got his coat, and to say “I need a Bailey’s after all that stress!”
This evening, when the lad got home, I asked him if he was glad he had his coat with him in sub-zero temperatures. “Nah. They gave us ski jackets.”
Exploited child labour this evening to harvest two bags of potatoes.
Big kid insisted that the “butt potato” take pride of place in the group photo.
Disappointingly small crop, but they are really tasty.
Déjà vu this week, as I spent time trying to help my mum reply to an email and send an attachment.
I can’t do it. Please do it for me!
Simultaneously, I receive email with attachment from mum. Not a reply, though - a new email.
“OK, so just reply to the email you need to reply to and send the attachment like you did to me just now.”
I don’t know what his email address is!
To cut a long story short, I discovered that her old Tiscali email account hasn’t sent or received email since 2019!
And because it was set as her default email in her Gmail settings, she couldn’t reply to emails.
Hence she sent a new email to me, and why she couldn’t do the same with the person who’s email address she “didn’t know”, as the address is helpfully hidden in the UI.
I asked her why she didn’t tell me before, and she quickly changed the subject.
Mum’s house has been on the market for just over a week, and photographs have been uploaded to the online estate agent listing for a full three days. She’s had three viewings, including one with a lady who really likes it and who’s friend lives on the same road - of course, she needs to sell hers first.
We’ve had an offer on the flat she wants near me provisionally accepted - just waiting on getting a firm offer on hers.
Now she’s panicking and looking at online house cash purchase merchants and auctions, because she reckons she hasn’t got time to waste, and she doesn’t want someone else to make a better offer.
A new hope
It’s been quite a week.
My Mum has had a rough few years. Eight years ago, aged 71, she lost John (my step-Dad) to cancer. One moment he was fine, the next he started deteriorating rapidly, was soon bedridden, and spent weeks waiting for for death to take him as his body wasted away. Three months and he was gone.
Mum sold their beautiful big retirement bungalow she’d nursed him in, and got a smaller bungalow in the small town where she’d grown up and her cousin still lives and owns the amazing wool shop.
Two years later she had a mini-stroke, fell and broke her ankle, and had to hand in her driver’s licence while she recovered.
Then came COVID-19 and the isolation, followed by misdiagnosed heart failure, and then cancer of her own. She needed major surgery, but the doctors said she wouldn’t survive a general anaesthetic (because of the misdiagnosed heart failure).
She prepared to have the surgery with an epidural. On the day of the op, they decided she couldn’t have the surgery without a general and so that’s what happened. Then there was the radiotherapy and follow up tests every three months since. She survived it all.
Then her beloved, very elderly (and very fat) cats died one after another.
She’s been through a lot!
Just before xmas last year she had a chest infection. She’s had breathing problems on and off for as long as I can remember. As a kid she said it was bronchitis. Later it was asthma. Now, like me, it’s COPD.
She hasn’t recovered from this episode and is struggling to do everyday tasks including personal care. Her neighbour has been a godsend throughout and describes my Mum like she’s her own mum. I’ve been trying to help from a distance (a four hour drive away) to organise home help, etc.
Last Sunday I noticed that my neighbours on the ground floor had a For Sale sign outside their relatively (these days) spacious one bed flat. I messaged my Mum saying it’s a shame she can’t move in there. Me and my wife could help her with the things she can’t do for herself plus keep her company and she gets to see her grandsons in the flesh more than twice a year.
I didn’t really expect her to take it seriously, but as her helpful and caring neighbour said, “It’s a no-brainer.” The neighbours downstairs told me that they hadn’t decided if they were selling or letting, but today I viewed the flat opposite which, although I’d forgotten about it, has been on the market for longer. It’s also in good condition, and my neighbour is not in a chain and has somewhere to move to.
It’s given my Mum some hope. It’s a big move at her age. Fingers crossed it all works out.
The code of life
// SIGNAL: INTERGENERATIONAL LINK
Big kid has been learning about WWII at school.
He took in a photo of his great grandfather (my Grandpa on my Dad’s side).
Grandpa Fred was a coder.
He was in the Royal Signal Corps, decoding Morse code messages from the Nazis.
// SIGNAL: CHANCE & FATE
When war broke, he tried to join the Royal Navy.
Because he knew Morse code from his job at the Post Office, they sent him to Scotland.
If he’d joined the Atlantic or Arctic convoys,
he’d very likely have ended up at the bottom of the cold, dark sea.
And we wouldn’t be here.
// SIGNAL: MY EARLY CODE
As a teenager, I spent hours typing pages of machine code
from computer magazines into my Dragon 32 PC.
One wrong keystroke and the game wouldn’t load.
But if I got it right, I’d have “Bomber” to play.
// SIGNAL: THE HUMAN PROJECT
We’re all coding — encoding and decoding —
stories that give our lives meaning and purpose.
Weaving unique patterns in the fabric of space-time.
Searching for answers in the world wide web.
Gazing at the stars, as we always have.
Using threads from the code of life
handed down by our ancestors, since time immemorial.
// SIGNAL: MARKS WE LEAVE
From cave paintings to fossils and footsteps on the moon,
from the Pyramids to the Parthenon to the Pentagon —
we’re leaving reminders of our existence.
Building structures to organise, process,
and understand information about our world.
// SIGNAL: THE NEW CODE
Now we’re coding large language models.
Training them on the whole of human knowledge and history.
Hoping they’ll tell us the meaning of life —
or at least not destroy us
in the hands of our new Nazi overlords,
or serve us up tasteless slop.
// SIGNAL: THE OLD GUARD
I’m not sure what Fred would have made of it all.
Like my great grandfather Frank before him,
he was from another time. Conservative. Happy with his lot.
He loved Oldham Athletic (“Latics”),
the Telegraph crossword,
driving carefully, and Freemasonry.
He wrote letters on a typewriter.
// SIGNAL: A BODY REMEMBERED
He had all his teeth removed at a relatively young age
in a “buy one get them all removed free” kind of deal.
The dentures never fit properly.
He spent years struggling to eat anything that wasn’t tasteless slop.
Raw egg mixed with milk and Ribena was a particular favourite.
If I remember correctly.
// FINAL PULSE
Fred would have loved his great grandkids.
It’s a shame they never got to meet.
He would probably have said:
“Give over, lad.”
All in a day's housework
Busy day so far.
New school street comes into effect next month, so to prepare this morning we parked away from the school and the kids scooted in with me chasing after them on my flat feet.
Need to teach little kid how to use his brake.
Had to pop into the school office to ask for a parents' evening form.
Went to Tesco to buy the items that Waitrose couldn’t deliver later.
No time for breakfast, instead peeled, chopped and boiled spuds, chopped and fried onions with lentils, prepared carrots and leeks for honey-roasting, cut broccoli florets for steaming, mashed potatoes and spooned on to onions and lentils mixed with gravy and HP sauce in a baking dish, grated Red Leicester to go on top.
Emptied our general waste bin, wet and dry recycling bins, and the food bin.
Unblocked the kitchen sink with the plunger.
Put my laundry away.
Washed up.
Put the groceries away.
Time for a late brunch.
Wife beefed about the beef (“too salty”) and the horseradish (“tastes like jalapeno flavoured toothpaste”), but otherwise enjoyed the “perfect” roast potatoes and the veggies.
Kid A said he would try the tiniest piece of beef along with some cabbage, but ate neither.
Kid B said, “Maybe yesterday”.