LDOW (last day of work) no parade no celebration of me and cotton bud aversion...

So on my last day I actually made an effort, and by effort I mean I allowed both girl and boy child to stand by my bed chanting ridiculous songs and rantings and possibly enchantments about HOW and WHY one should get her ass out of bed on a Friday... Did official body check (limbs in tact still not dead) fell out of bed (loudly) and chuntered about the damn unfairness of it all. Spent 20 mins checking self out in mirror (17 minutes of which checking out zit and deciding to just leave it alone since it clearly intends on world domination and the less I know about its plans the better) remaining 3 minutes spent working out whether I could lob (real word) talc into my hair call it dry shampoo and rock up to work - note to self epic failure just went grey and Einstein looking but without the Eureka moment.

Being deaf sucks, I don't think people realise how much stuff happens when you can hear, my driving which is abominable at the best of times (just ask my previous students) is well completely off if I can't hear what's happening on the left side of me - even worse when it's taken me more than two days to work out that actually it's the right side I can't hear.... Seriously you people the things you take for granted like walking in a straight line, understanding anything any one says and other hearing related issues...I have no idea what anyone at work said to me today but given that there was no parade no party no celebration of the me I don't really care.... I spent at least an hour reading RED magazine in which I learnt that in no way am I a) thin b) young c) fashionable or d) Middle class, what I did learn was that journalists make apologies when they become mums, that it's okay to be frugal so you can spend triple figures on a pair of jeans (nah ah) and that it's okay to start the month with the posh stuff (fish fingers and peas) and to be  down to the 11p noodles by the end of the month (turns out this is a posh persons dilemma too,,, in fact they only go to waitrose ((other supermarkets are available))) for the free coffee,,,)

Home life is completely disastrous and I would discuss it further if I didn't live in fear that some professional other than me would swoop and abduct my children (message me if you know anyone stupid enough to do so) let's just say that the King household is not the funhouse one would expect it to be....but one plus note I can't hear half the arguments that are going on.... Proof of this is when I thought mum said to look for the blackboard but actually she meant gauze.. Bad news is that when watching ones favourite program (goggle box) one does not have a clue what's going on and I have it in good authority from both girl child and hubby that the subtitles replace rude words like bollox for ball testiclres and fuck for poop (I intend to test this when hearing enabled) 

Went to chemist and it's a and sign when the woman laughs and says wow your becoming a regular... I wanted the ground to swallow me up... So then I have to explain how I made myself deaf, while possibly yelling at her because I can't hear myself let alone anyone else which kind of makes me want to wilt away to nothing... To be fair if she laughed I don't have a clue so she must have done it quietly until she shouted that I was clearly so far gone that olive oil wasn't going to save me and sold me some devil / satanic brew that came with warning and toxic radiation labels. I made mum administer this but so far aside from the weird my brain is falling out my head sensation nothing actually happened... Well aside from getting closer to my mothers lady garden than a 33 year old woman ought to and demanding that girl child read aloud to me.. (I love her but big does she have monotone out loud reading)  apparently  when the fizzing starts this is good...

Not a lot else to say today...

Insommnia related disney sing offs, self inflicted deafeness and cards that made me chuckle.

So after yesterdays blog entry for some reason I decided to clean out my ears, why in gods name I decided to do this I have no actual clue, it was just one of those seems like I should do it moment. Now I do admit that I laugh in the face of health advice and warnings and I am a cotton bud user, you would think that seeing as I have actually made myself deaf doing this at least twice that I would know better... turns out not so much. I will save you the graphic details of this activity by only giving you a snap shot of how I envisaged said ear cleaning:

So of course there I am digging away just asking for trouble with the cotton bud from the ear factory of death (or deaf pun intended) when next thing you know I can't hear a bloody thing. Which then leads me to all manner of behaviors including weighing up the putting the ear bud back in, banging myself on the other side of my head like I expect my hearing to be resumed, blowing with my nose closed and just generally trying not to have a oh god I made myself deaf again panic attack. The last time I did this I had to go to work and spent an entire day agreeing to things that I still don't know what they are... this could only lead to disaster.. I decided and this won't surprise anyone to get drunk so that I wouldn't notice the hearing loss. Eventually I announced it was bed time in which I noticed in my habitual best check on the world (read facebook) in case I actually missed out on something and noticed that Bombshell grey girl was unusually (for the time) not gone sleepies. Of course in my drunken and deaf state I felt that I should extend the hand of friendship one non sleeper to another so I send her a whats app (because I'm down with the kids and all about the technology) to see if she was ok. Clearly she was in an odd mood herself because rather than engaging in conversation with me she sent me a series of photo's about how she was in fact in bed and misty but not sleepy... turns out she can mist the bed send me a photo of how I'm not in the bed and then instigate a text "chat" session for the period of an hour and a half. I'm telling you next time hubby complains about my need to chat when going to bed I shall point out that I have nothing on BSGG!

Proof that she sends me guilt pictures of pillow mist and my absence (also spot the grey room and red and black and white picture that shows that I do not make this stuff up!

Naturally because neither of us are good at normal adult conversation this resulted in a guided tour of my making my way downstairs using photo imagery and walking head first into the kitchen door, BSGG sent me her recordings on her inane giggling that I am now setting as her ring tone.

Now I've been through this entire conversation and somehow we got into a who knows the most disney songs sing off which involved sending one another recordings of our personal take on several films, I think I won when I made her ears bleed with my kiss the girl interpretation. WAHHHH WAHHH WAHHHHHH WAHHHH



We did get somewhat stuck on the little mermaid which led to a whole bunch of inane giggling and even discussion of puppetry of the penis (to be discussed in a whole other blog post)



Dinglehoppers featuring heavily throughout the discussion...



and then just went on a whole other adventure. The discussion ended with a nice round of goodnight from the sound of music and because I was feeling competitive I left her a morning song of The sun has got his hat on to make her giggle in the morning. Turns out my singing is not improved by being deaf...

I *may* have blown up the home computer last night which meant that me and mum having no combined social skills at all had nothing to do all day, so she insisted that we go out shopping and bond. This may sound like a nice idea but if you can't hear out of one ear and have to keep saying WHAT? and realise how loud the world is normally while trying to stay upright in the wind (turns out you need your hearing for a lot more shit that you realise) its just not the bonding experience we had hoped for. Plus if you lose your mother in the pound shop you can't hear yourself yelling "mum, mum, mum" but the rest of the store can and if your my mother then you pretend not to know me and instantly disassociate yourself from the crazy lady who didn't brush her hair this morning.

So throughout my shopping I pondered doing some gardening again, since this appears to keep me out of trouble, helps my mood and means I get to make people eat stuff that I grew and they aren't allowed to complain about it. So one purchased a lot of seeds and garden related paraphernalia and felt in general smug about my self efficiency. Did not feel as smug as me and mum returned to the car buckled at the knees under the weight and each trying to work out as the arthritis twins how to actually carry all this crap. This led to a mass discussion about the morals and ethics of stealing shopping trolleys and how its not really stealing if you paid a pound for it, I did point out on this basis that if you were going to acquire a trolley for a pound that it made sense to have the larger one on the basis of frugality.

By this time I was already to go home  but since she was clearly giddy from leaving the house mum insisted that we stop at the garden center since we had to drive past it anyway so it was only right. I agreed but only because their was discussion about a nice sit down a cup of tea (she lies people she lies). Taking my mum to the garden center was a mistake since I forgot about her sensory need to touch, smell and taste anything, which makes most outings last longer than the average day out. We were admittedly impressed by bacon jam and mum announced that was hubby's fathers day present sorted.

One of my favorite part of the shop is their selection of highly inappropriate cards because I am THAT immature. I was tickled by the stores need to cover this particular card with a warning post it note:

which revealed this:

But didn't think that this needed a warning...

Leading me to the only conclusion possible sluts are not good but tiny penises are acceptable. I'm sure this is some kind of middle class value that I am yet to learn.

And the best card of all (which may end up being my mothers day card)

kind of doesn't need any further explanation. I would have stayed longer but mum started looking like she was going to eat the stores new body range (although to be fair the violet cream products were totally edible smelling) so we left, minus the tea and food.

This afternoon I decided to start planting things and getting all down with the nature. Now sometimes I forget I am an adult and that my mum lives with me and not in fact the other way round (I know I protest about this too much) so there I am all dressed in hubbys clothes (well I'm not going to ruin my own am I?) pottering around flinging mud and talking to my peas and broccoli like some kind of green guru goddess when the chuntering starts...

" and where will you be putting those?"
"errrm in the airing cupboard?"
"wrong, its too hot in there and we need the space for the towels"
"sigh fine I'll put them in the windowsills"
"nope you cant do that can you the cat will knock them over and I'll be hoovering mud for days"
"then I'll clean out the porch and put them out there"
"SNORT sorry clean?"
"fine shuffle things around and make space"
"how can you make space where there isn't any"
"I'll clean off the shoe rack and put the seeds on there"
"and where will all the BLOODY shoes go... I ask you, seeds for shoes what is the world... mumble mumble (please note I had to guess some of this with the whole deaf thing)
"on the floor?"
"on the floor oh please... no they can go in your bedroom"
"the shoes?"
"no the seeds that way they won't be in the way, of course you'll have to keep it tidy in there plants don't grown under mountains of clothes you know"

I gave in and put them in the bedroom only for hubby to come home and announce

"I am not sleeping in a  bloody green house, they aren't staying in here"

Which just makes you wonder why I even bother in the first place.

A catch up on events, my teenage self reflected in girl child and othertime wasting stuff

Realise that my recent blogs have been full of woe and misery as well as few and far between. I was driving to work this morning, which in itself a bit of a shocker, and reflecting on why exactly I talk about having and writing a book so much that I haven't actually got one? This of course led onto the kind of terminal thinking that one of my particular friends accuses me of over doing, my psych says I don't do enough and my other friend allows me to do because as yet I am not a full ass hat...



 is it any wonder I'm confused? Anyhoo thats by the by, so I was thinking thoughts on thoughts and feeling that kind of manic inspiration that I often get about the 400 voices errr I mean books that are actually contained in my head and how well I am doing in the fact that I am writing at all which when you realise what an achievement that is so I came up with a whole bunch of titles and ideas based on the write what you know theory... which could either get me de-registered in my career and make me world famous, or make me infamous and deregistered... whether there is a difference in the two I will never know until I actually do it and stop talking about it...

Why is it I always start at the end and never at the beginning? I can't remember how much ranting I did in recent weeks so I am admittedly using photo prompts to get me talking...

Which would mean we have to deal with the mother situation, so I took her to my favourite place in the whole world on her request (seriously if I write nothing else that damn hospital tour guide is looking more and more like a reality) to the hospital to meet with the OT. This was alarmingly real, as in the kind of real that it took me a lot of effort to process as being funny in anyway... but fortunately my mum as the kind of humor that I can borrow. So we met with the student OT who spoke so quietly we had to guess what she was saying and talked to mum about how she was feeling and her limitations etc, that was pretty sad (and I know she will kill me but its my blog my words) because I realised that my mother was a) human and b) vulnerable which is a pretty eye opening experiencing when you spent most of your life putting her on a pedestal and thinking that she's a super human and it turns out that actually shes like the rest of us. My mum doesn't do uncomfortable unless it involves makings some other sucker miserable and she does do pride like a lion in that you are never too poor to have a clean house or to afford soap. I think her saving grace that stopped me from having some kind of break down (let alone her) was her childish immaturity when they cast her resting splint and offered her equipment in the house.. in which she got the giggles imagining her short ass daughter (me) with my legs dangling off the toilet as a result of said equipment.

(I did suggest hubby could use this as a ball scratcher which is when mum both hid and locked this baby away)

So she got some uglys and the first thing we both thought was how the hell we could craft these babies up with some bling (suggestions welcome). Now I hate to be negative (OKAY I LIE) but jesus one night of wearing a rest splint and the next day shes all lets clean the house from top to bottom, lets hoover out the sofa (errr why?) lets dust stuff that I didn't even know needed dusting and she was all Mary Poppins on speed and LSD combined (note I am guessing about the drug use and have no actual experience of this) which probably would have been okay if my mood hadn't decided to drop below zero and tell me that having my eyes open in itself was an achievement... it got so bad that I had to in fact send out an sos:

As you can see hubby was about as supportive as an un-wired bra...

She even made me clean out my social work stuff....

Then boy child who entered the Housman Poetry Competition for something to do since he was grounded decided to go and win the fricking thing, queue excited teacher entering my house without an actual invitation and announcing that the trophy was worth 2 grand but not to worry it was insured (and watched me cringe while buy child smacked it against the radiator) she added that she would pick it up in the morning to ensure it's safety, and then corrected herself and meant she would pick up boy child, but given that that trophy is worth 17 times as much as anything else in my house I knew what she REALLY meant...

 

Was very proud of boy child but highly annoyed that yet again he manages to be brilliant when he is in trouble... it really goes against my parenting ethos and confuses the hell out me, plus I'm a sucker for his humour "so whats it like to live with a celebrity?" and a high five.



As a result of recent events I have been forced to rename the children beauty and the beast or the lyrical genius and liver girl.... they actually decided they preferred the more derogatory girl child and boy child...

So we had another fantastic trip to the children s hospital only to have an entirely different experience... seriously the children's out patients clinic is like a holding pen for sick kids and is pretty depressing... especially when you get processed and colour co-ordinated, if I had known we were going to be in the orange zone I would have dressed more appropriately so that I didn't clash with the chairs quite so badly. To be honest I'm pretty fed up of talking about livers and gall bladders and blah blah and also of collecting more pictures of insides although this one is pretty artsy in its own right:

I'm not going to explain this one, because a) you need a PHD in both ART and SURGERY so just accept that we are going with the keep plodding along until someone tells us differently approach...

It is clear that I am spending a serious amount of time with girl child since my face has decided to retaliate in some kind of teenage hormone attack. I have the world's biggest zit on my cheekbone and I would take a photo but my lens wasn't big enough... so last night under the advice of both girl child and mum I put toothpaste on it to help remove the... something. This would have been fine if when having a shower I had remembered to wash my face or even look in a mirror before leaving for work. But NO this is me and my life, so I spend a good hour feeling paranoid and trying to work out why people are looking at me before going into supervision in which my poor supervisor was left with the question of whether I had been engaging in some morning delight based on the white gunk on my cheek... Normally I would have brushed this off... but being my first and last supervision I kind of wanted the ground to swallow up and eat me... anyhoo I leave this team in two days which I am grateful for because I have no desire to be know as the girl with questionable gunk on her face for ever more!

As you can imagine I decided to work from home for the rest of the day in which girl child introduced me to the joys of the sims hunger games in which we watched (actually watched) someone else kill off their sims on the telly for approximately four hours, I'd like to say that I was mature enough to not get suckered into this culture but apparently I am more child than even I admit.

Finally girl child decided to apply a face mask using home made ingredients (I had forgotten how much fun this stage of girl teenage-hood is) you know the kind of thing jackie / bunty and just 17 insisted would make you beautiful, which resulted in her pouring sour cream, bananas and porridge oats all over her face, I was going to intervene when she got the cucumber slices out (fine I SO wasn't but I can pretend) but based on the kittens response to her face decided to leave well alone and just take a photo instead...

In the interests of full disclosure I forgot to add that I ended up in one of THOSE conversations with my dad while drunk and ended up getting drunker and telling my mum why she needs to stay in the uk....I will gloss over this point, but felt pretty shit the next day :(

Pies, Low Fat, Bodily functions and a general round up...

It had admittedly been a few days, maybe even a few weeks, I have reached that point of mania where I do not know whether I am coming or going or I am happy or sad, but I do still know a number of things:

1) All about livers, bile, wounds, RA, OT's, assessments of a non social work kind and hospitals... I am not kidding when I say I could publish the official guide to hospitals and not be sued based on my collective knowledge.

2) other things I know about and intend to discuss (SPOILERS) is poo and wee, no heaven forbid I should be grown up and discuss it in terms of urine and faeces this entire section of the blog will be poo and wee (DO NOT EVER SAY I DIDNT WARN YOU because THIS IS YOUR WARNING)

3) Low fat diets and the fact that they suck..and even though its one of my 33 three things I cannot cook or in fact cook without giving myself a serious lady garden wound (TRUE STORY)

4) How to be one of THOSE PEOPLE... I came I saw I moaned... I am THAT person and I have a badge and everything.... it says "ask me about poos and liver I'm your gal"

5) Anything else I declare that I have knowledge on for the remainder of this blog post....

SO in no particular order (or because I drank vodka, have a raging cold and am drugged on drink a cold remedy cures) I decided to create one of my amazing diagrams (see below or wish you were blind:)

This diagram pretty much (although not to scale) sums up my current life.... I ended up rushing girl child to hospital on Sunday because she was so ill, only to feel as the eternal Atheist incredibly bad when she announced that maybe this is all her fault because she asked god to get her through her op and then he could do anything to her which is why she is still suffering (I do not have enough words or emoticons for the stomach dropping heart stomping feeling that this invoked (((insert noose / epic parent fail HERE )))) but I do love pie; the kind with the crusty top not the numbers kind...

Turns out little miss girl child who could give thumeblina a run for her money can't handle the amazing knock out effects of a) FAT (which makes everything taste amazing - DO NOT get her started on this unless you can deal with tears, anger and throwing shit that you probably like) and b) knock out pain killers that make you vomit / not know who you are... I did try and explain that this is what mummy feels like everyday but for some reason when she was throwing tardis' at me she did not find quite so amusing...

So because I change topic more than my underwear (FOR THE RECORD IT IS DAILY) I got up this morning to find that mum had the cranks... for once I do not exaggerate, there was door banging, throwing toast at people and generally being a bit of an ass (Mum not me) , I did try all of the what works on me (if its not about me I'm not interested) including stealing her lighter, trying to make her laugh, eating said toast and offering cups of tea... there is only so much growling that a clinical depressive can deal with before she passes the task on to her husband.... turns out after girl child confesses that she kept my mum up all night by making her laugh about having her ear replaced instead of her liver... which made the bed shake which meant they could feel the springs and something about cakes that made my mum MAD (all day if you are wondering)

I digress and if I could be bothered to photo edit:

My mum's nose looking angry and.. (which is going to make her crankier)

my mum just having the cranks all round...

In other more relevant news (WARNING ABOUT POO) being a liver mum means being obsessed about 't poo, runny poos, smelly poos and just poo that isn't eeyore or piglet related. Girl child does not enjoy these conversations (understandably) but it was only on arrival to work (for the first time in like forever) that I finally understood where she was coming from. People do not talk about POO any more than they talk about prostitution or in fact HERPES.. yes I really went there (insert funny story about pulling a sickie by convincing my boss I had syphilis - true story). I'm going to shorten this story because as always I have plundered new territory and am happy to humiliate myself but can only reasonably go so far... So I had that moment when I needed to poo at work of all places, and I have this getting paid to poo but still not being comfortable enough to poo anywhere but my own toilet... there are a few exceptions that have taken me a number of years to build up to pooing in their toilet but PUBLIC POOING is in general a no no for me....  However after asking an expert and also closet pooer (real word people) I had discovered the joys of the basement toilet, so lost and dark (think twilight zone) that NO ONE human poos in there... until the day that I need to poo so bad I am probably going to experience death by explosive bowels.... 45 minutes I wait outside that toilet trying to pretend Im waiting for a client / important meeting or am in fact a cleaner... Eventually I admit it I gave up, drove home broke down the front door without speaking to a family member until my movements were satisfied.... my solution... basement toilets to be installed everywhere....

To say that girl child is a bit pissed off with having X amount of bile ducts, a miss functioning liver and cysts left right and centre would be putting it mildly... the poor girl just wants to eat her Ben and jerry's name sake (baked Alaska) in peace without having to seek out an aforementioned basement toilet.. so we have had to resort to cooking low fat... which kind of works for me as one of my 33 things to learn to cook:

It's easier for me to summarise and you reach your own conclusions based on my previous attempts:

Slow cooker chowder (I do not own tin cups) according to the book ^^^^^

^^^^^ and according to my slow cooker.... results pending

^^^^^ Italian bean stew

^^^ The real stew... but girl child ate two bowls full so maybe not that bad...

Throughout these two cooking attempts I did learn some vital lessons about chilli... YES we all know I am that woman.. and please bear in mind I have a raging cold.... I'm like man VS food, like MAN vs JAWS or man versus anything they will lose against... so I cut that chilli all naked and confident like (I laugh in the face of  heat) and I washed my hands with something approaching scorn afterwards....

Things I learnt..

DO NOT go for a wee... with naked hands... my lady parts are having the kind of party that NO one wants to be invited to... I'ma  firestarter 

pretty much covers it.... also do not put your fingers into any orifice of your own or others unless you are into S n M or really hate the other person...

How to be a member of my household, health care, tears, and kissing girls...

I have decided in order to summarise what is going on in this household to develop one of the many popular flowcharts that are so popular on facebook right now... yes you got it, this is your one opportunity to work out which member (if any) of my household you could really be... if you rank of any of these then please accept my apologies and if you are a hunger games fan a nightlock pill to be used at your discretion.


I appreciate some of this will require some explanation... but for a guide pre explanation I also created these helpful and somewhat accurate images:



^^^^^ a guide to choledocal cyst pain



^^^^ Rheumatoid arthritis (RA) VS broken toes



^^^^^^  How to be a member of this household

^^^^ How to be a FEMALE (or strong person) of my household...

Explanation or in the style of an science experiment in high school:

Introduction:

In this blog post I shall highlight the various symptoms and health problems of the King Love household and the reasons that 2014 has thus far sucked. I shall do this via photos / drawings and explanations

Hypothesis:

I predict that you cannot be a member of this household without a) developing some random or multiple condition and that b) you will be able to learn about health / treatment / medicine by osmosis

Method:

I shall observe and treat all five members of my household including and not limited to myself and report my findings over a two week period.

Findings: (Al la David Attenborough)

Man Child / Hubby: Has serious addiction to the US series of the office. Decides to watch the episode in which they develop their own personal styles of Parkor Gossip. He thinks this is hilariously funny and decides to parkor his wife (AKA me) around the bedroom... I will confess that in his random act of fun that this was both hilarious and dangerous since I nearly wet myself laughing when he all but knocked himself out on my shoe chest. Following day in which he was due to fly to Scotland (yes he is too posh to drive) he announces severe back and shoulder pain - four days later he is still best friends with the supermarket trolley and any pain killer he can get his hands on.

Boy child: Has girlfriend who is apparently far more interested in him that he is her. She actually goes as far as to buy him chocolates and an anniversary card after one week of them dating.... today he has coldsores... which he is miserable about when I told him no more kissing... word to the wise do not use any towels in my bathroom at present..

Nonna / Mum: Not content with girl child receiving all of the attention has decided to fully embrace Rheumatoid arthritis condition by developing cankles, swollen legs and apathy. Insists that she is a fully independent lady while singing "should have put a ring on it" 

Which when you know she can't in fact wear a ring on it is ironic. Also insists that I measure every single part of her body so that we can keep a log. Apparently I am not allowed to take the piss out of her fat legs and cankles.. but in the interests of science...

Also has broken own toe in bid to not work and illicite more sympathy (get out of the tea rota) current mood agressive / dragon like avoid at all costs.

Girl child: 

Generally pissed off after night of excruciating pain and possibly sleeping with my mother who farts as well as snores (sorry mum but I have to record fact in the name of science) Still has weeping sores (ewwww) and generally pissed off with the medical profession. Despite being worlds healthiest eater is cross that now has to follow low fat diet and cannot eat ice- cream (insert rage here), feeling angry enough to write a self help guide for teenagers. Made me cry because she was so sad / angry / pissed

Me: Apathy and full education in nursing. Have discovered that previous blood phobia is singled down to just gushing blood. Have learnt significant amounts about wound care, pus, arguing with health professionals, not retching and basically being a grown up. Bi-polar / depression put on back burner because when 2 out of 3 females in the house cry its hard not to join in. Also medication expert. Has to avoid current pharmacy for fear of suspected hypochondria  / munchausen's by proxy.

Have been forced to abandon single bed status by sleeping with girl child - this is both fun because we watch the hunger games in bed and say how it is so not the same as the book and not fun because I am frightened to move for fear of busting open girl childs stitches



^^^^^ yes we really are this glam in real life (we do autographs for a fee)

hubby had a birthday in which mum and i had to put together an emergency cake - trust me when I say that we googled easy birthday cakes for boys (LIE) and it came up with lego cakes... we spent an entire DAY swearing - well ok mum ate all the chocolate fudge and I smoked more than the government allowance to create this:




No it wasn't our finest moment but we reached the dont give a shit quota by the time we presented it to him:



Hes not usually this blurred but actually given the state of his cake this is probably an improvement on the fake "I LOVE IT" face he was forced to wear...

In conclusion for the whole month it is apparently SOCIAL WORK month, which I am proud of and love the below image since 99 % of my family and friends say "dont social work me"

BUT... I am supposed to be starting my new job in two weeks and right now I just don't see it happening....

The "Tabs" free hospital, hunger games and other ramblings...

*BASED ON MY FB RESPONSE THIS POST HAS TOES*

Last night... I thought I was actually going to die... I appreciate that I am both a hypochondriac and a wuss, but ermergerd does not even begin to cover it. At approximatly 9pm or as hubby would have it known after the fifth episode of toddlers and tiaras (I have no shame, plus it gives me something to yell at the telly for) the eye headache set in. I don't have this often but when I do the best thing is to give in and go to bed... which I did because I am now medical expert and also any excuse to sleep is going to be met by my own personal agreement.., so I crawled up the stairs and lay in my bed feeling sorry for myself, at the height of this I tried to cajole myself out of being a big wuss by reminding myself what girl child has recently been through and the lack of complaining she has done about it.. did not work or make me feel any better. As many of you know I am an self centered, ego centric person and as Freud would have it my ID, EGO and SUPEREGO are always at war with one another (I only put this in to show that I still know stuff) and if its not about me I'm not interested. I lay there for a further half hour working out what I wanted my funeral to be like, my final last words and what I could possibly be dying from since the pain was so bad. If it wasn't for the not tolerating any kind of noise or light I would have googled it, as it was using my own knowledge I could only predict: Swine Flu, Eye Cancer, MRSA, Toxoplasmosis, self pity or acts of god. This as you can imagine caused even more distress when I heard my mother fall through the door possibly cussing. I have to say possibly cussing because by this point I had convinced myself that both of my ears had also dropped off as a result of whatever fatal disease I was suffering from. Hubby yelled at me to get downstairs because he wanted a second opinion on a broken toe.... WHAT? I spend a week in a children's hospital and now I'm some kind of medical expert. I staggered through the bright lights yelling something about who dropped what on what (trust me I was in pain I couldn't be expected to make sense) and that I couldn't drive anyone anywhere... amazing the effect that a bright purple toe has on an eye headache... you do not have to be an expert to look at mothers toes and recognize a broken one.. I couldn't do sympathy or empathy at this point I wanted to die, so I went back upstairs feeling even more pathetic that people had broken livers and toes and I just had a headache... which lasted all of about 5 minutes when I had to take off all of my clothes and lie on the bathroom floor just to feel better. For about 30 seconds of this I thought about how I didn't want to die naked and then got to a point where I didn't care anymore... which is when the pain hurt so much that well there is no nice way of putting it I had to become acquaintances with the toilet.. I have no idea when or how I made it to bed, but I do know that hubby clearly ministered to me in the night based on the flood of water and flannels I woke up to this morning. Was mildly disappointed that for all that pain I hadn't actually died but woke up feeling not dead which was an improvement.


Mother's toes were twice the size this morning, so I find not only the wounded Girl child on the sofa but also my mother..

Since we were due a hospital appointment anyway it made sense to do the whole A n E thing at the same time. Now my mother will kill me but I figure that since I spent the majority of my annual leave in one hospital or another that its OK (most people go on holiday and visit exotic lands, I visit and sample the local hospitals) Mum has recently been diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis and as a sufferer myself I know this is not funny.. however certain aspects of it are, maybe this shows a lack of my own maturity (and I'm comfortable with it) but I found it hilarious that after all the guidance they give her about looking after her joints that they hand her an information pack that weighs more than a bible. (don't worry I'm not that selfish I did carry it for her)



So we hobbled around to A&E in which mum who had understandably refused to wear shoes then complains that her slippers are wet. As is the way we arrive to find disgruntled people banging on about waiting times and should they just die on the spot to get some attention and I knew we were in for a long wait. Fortunately I had planned ahead and had a copy of Catching Fire (new behind the times hunger games obsessions as inspired by girl child) however it turns out if you have to wait 2 hours it's rude to ignore your long suffering mother so I offered to read some of her literature to her...


Me being me of course found the most appropriate leaflet from the bunch....






According to my mum it's not appropriate to read such things in public but then I remember who I was and did so anyway, was a bit worried half way through that I was making my mum laugh so much and having a good time that they might throw us out for having to much fun and not really having an injury...

Turns out there is a lot I don't know about sex and arthritis such as; sex doesn't cause arthritis and arthritis doesn't cause sex. Also I love to exaggerate but this leaflet didn't require it, some of my favorite parts being: "what should I do if sex is difficult?" the answer "change position" - even I don't need to make that funny it just is... I also enjoyed the section on "if all else fails vibrators are excellent for stimulation, not just your genital areas but aching joints" - it was at this point I was worried that mum would die of humiliation or wet herself but I carried on regardless. Of course I was only kidding when I said any minute now there's going to be a karma sutra for arthritis...

Turns out there is (Hubby asked mum if we could borrow this later) but I was more amused at my mother's rage that there are five positions for women and four for men, but that the only reason there were any at all was because all men think about is sex. Also that she wondered if the figures were grey to represent 50 shades or some kind of equality drive. Found myself a little concerned that my concentration was focused on where I could get a trolley and pillows from...

Eventually we saw a nurse who said yup its broken here is some tape and sent us home, to find hubby had done the wound care for the girl child (thank god) and had everything under control.





I have officially turned my living room into ward two and am currently accepting patients...

ADDENDUM - My mother having nearly wet herself laughing reading this blog post (because she knows its true) has requested that I inform my readers that she is not in fact a dirty be-atch (bitch) and that that white stuff is not foot fungus or narcotics but talcum powder.

A hospital guide for parents -part 1

We are on day 5 of being in the high dependency unit at BCH, girl child is finally recovering from surgery and on her way to looking like a human being again, so this is the first opportunity I have had to log my thoughts on the whole experience thus far....

It occurred to me last night that while the ward and nurses are lovely and take spiffing (it's been that kind if stay I need to exercise my extensive vocabulary!) good care of my baby girl that what they really need to include in the welcome pack amongst the smiley cartoons, stickers and other related child friendly stuff is a guide for parents so that we can understand the hints and tips of the trade of being a hospital parents and most essentially an etiquette guide. Don't get me wrong I haven't suddenly become a lady or completed finishing school, there's just some things I've had to learn the hard way...

1. Sleeping...

Do not expect to get any solid sleep in the ward, not even when your child has made significant progress and you can finally relax. Firstly if you are lucky enough to acquire a sleeping vessel (more on vessels later) in the HDU they do not allow camp beds, but recliner chairs in case of emergency, understandable but do not be fooled by the term recliner chair. Once you have sat and attempted to sleep in it after the first day you begin to hate it's very existence with more and more furosity  as the days go by. It does recline indeed but only to a certain extent which unless you are shaped like a W does not suit or fit anyone's actual body shape. This is even worse if like me you have never slept on your back a day in your life, although I did try sleeping on my front in this baby the thought of my ass in the air for the whole ward to see was just too much. You can also rule out the foetal position because trust me on this it just isn't happening.

In addition to the bleeping and shuffling and noises of pain (that's just the parents not the patients) obviously regular observations have to occur which means that while you are not sleeping in the recliner chair you have to leave a gangway for the staff to walk down in the night to check monitors etc... This often leads to having a bum or two in your face in the early hours of the morning, also if you don't leave a gangway, you are at risk of waking up to find a nurse on your face, trust me when I say these blighters are both determined and acrobats, I wonder if it comes with the training.

And as for the air con you can be guaranteed that wherever you sleep in this ward you will be under the air con unit that has a mind entirely of its own, and it makes the most amazing noises throughout the night, causing me to feel that I may never be able to sleep without it's rumbling when we make it home. Also the plumbing has this system where all the sinks turn themselves on for cleaning purposes and this is normally around 1am making every parent on the ward need the toilet (of which there is only one of) and have to fight their way out of recliner blanket hell (see below) to fight for the toilet.

1a Sleeping equipment

This required its own sub section because firstly the time to get your basic sleeping essentials, pillow/ blankets and sheets is as soon as you spot he laundry lady (around 7am) noted by her greeny blue outfit. Trust me when I tell you that blankets and pillows in this ward have monetary value, there are days when I would swap my soul for an extra blanket. As for pillows it's a dead mans shoes position, you have it swipe them from the last discharged patient if you actually want to acquire one... Think the hunger games only for pillows.

The blankets in themselves are of an odd nature, neither one thing or the other, initially all folded up they are like dumb bells these things weigh a ton, so you can't actually use them doubled up unless you have sensory issues and enjoy deep touch, if you are like me and don't like to feel like you can't move/ are being suffocated in your sleep then you have to unfold them all the way, which makes them into an enigma because then they become the thinnest blankets in the world and you require at least 3 of them.. Thus getting you back to the being smothered to death problem. Somewhere throughout the not sleeping night when the air con really has at it you will find your self hoarding these blankets like some kind of blanket whore despite how much you hate the damn things. Also here blankets do not cover the entire body of an average sized person, so you have to invent this crazy patchwork system, which when you have a nurse on your face in the middle of the night all falls apart.

Basically expect to miss sleep while you are here...

2. Dress code

You can gauge how long a parent has been here by their clothing, we all naively come in here dressed like rational human beings with clean clothes and matching underwear... The longer you are here the more mismatched you become. Pack what you like in preparation by the end of the stay you won't give a crap who sees you wearing what, and or when. I know this because in a I need comfy hospital clothes I had hubby buy me some jogging bottoms with the word geek on them in tardis blue (natch) well when I first put them on and discovered that these were indeed the chav pants to end all chav pants in that they highlighted my ass and lady garden but sagged everywhere else, that there was no way in hell I was wearing those in public. Turns out by day 5 the public don't care and I can hug my ass and lady parts and no one bats an eyelid...

Also do not bother with make up or hair spray or any of that because you won't care and the just out of bed look is the fashion. In fact us long stay parents will sneer at you and feel pity for you when you first come in all clean and fresh faced, knowing what is in store for you...

3. Food / parents room.

Apparently amongst the not sleeping and worry and dressing like a chav you have to eat food, like real food. There is a few schools of thoughts about this and the food situation is not unlike the food situations in an office

- no matter how much you love it, it is not acceptable to eat liver and bacon on a liver ward.. It's just wrong 

- you can label your food and store it in the fridge but someone will still eat it, so if it's storable keep it in your bed locker

- if you really can't be bothered to make a sandwich and have to eat take away for the love of god don't eat it on the ward with the nil by mouth kids... Also makes the rest of wish we had what you did rather than our pathetic turkey sandwich

- additionally if you do decide to have a Chinese banquet in the parents room, complete with candles and romance please be aware that when I am in there I am likely to drool and watch you shovel MSG into your mouth as the candles flicker (true story) Also this makes the room smell like Chinese food for three days so everyone ends up with cravings

- don't bother with any diet, the day consists of munching your way through your body weight in junk because it whiles the hours away. If secret eaters were to come in here they would have a field day, except that there is no secret to the fact that is perfectly acceptable to eat an entire box of donuts in an hour..

4. The bathroom

There is one bathroom for parents on the entire ward, therefore you must observe the timings of other parents to ensure that there are no conflicts in others schedules or bowel movements (trust me this ward is obsessed with bowels). If you break into anyone elses routine by trying to sneak in a wee outside of your allotted hours the rest of the parents will give you stink eye for the rest of the day.

Showering is okay provided that you have no objections to being stoned in the shower at a rate of knots and you don't mind not being able to adjust the temperature. It is a pot luck of an experience as to whether today's shower will be bolts of ice or scalding meteorites. The ward provides towels and when I first got here I made the mistake of using only one, unless you are the size of a matchstick always take 3 into the shower. Also towels are as rare as pillows due to I suspect the nature of the size of the towels. Last night I foolishly got excited and thought I had lost weight as when we first  arrived I could not fit the towel all the way around, last night I could so I did a little naked bathroom dance before realising that I had got my hands on one of the fabled adult towels. This brought me down to earth with a bump but I have refused to put said towel in the laundry for fear I may never see it again!

5 Other parents.

In order to prevent yourself from going mad it is necessary to make allies while on the ward. Even though I have spent my entire parenting life avoiding other parents and not making friends in the playground (not dissimilar to my childhood) it is an evil necessity with this ward. There are right and wrong ways of doing this..

- when you first arrive avoid eye contact, otherwise this invites the ward gossip to introduce herself tell you her life story and pump you for information that she can share amongst the other parents. This gives her status and allows her to retain her position as head parent. Additionally this allows her a sense of over inflated ego and she will spend the rest of the stay giving you the advice of how to be a liver parent and how to do it "her way"

- There are two types of liver parents, the competitive and the non competitive. Competitive parents children have far worse conditions than your child regardless of diagnosis, have the most amount of hospital stays (and wear these like trophies) and speak fluent hospital. They are also the ones that us other parents know that the staff have nicknames for and the most irritating. Non competitive parents just get on with their children's disease and can have a conversation that isn't purely about them. 

- the parents room is a tricky one, some parents go to have parent adult talk and others go for just some alone time, you have to gauge this by whether they have their face buried in technology or are glancing around the room looking for conversation. 

- it is okay to talk about stuff other than livers and poos and bowels and farting, but don't expect the conversation to veer to far away from these topics, as this are what we have in common. Shared knowledge is an important tool in dealing with other parents..., knowledge (not unlike towels and blankets) is power..