It is about a month since my last entry. Life has been mostly good with a couple of minor hiccups, an abscess under the broken tooth was the most noticeable but antibiotics soon cleared it up. I also had a dental check-up and have arranged for a root canal after Christmas and if that is successful I will then get a crown put on the tooth. The eye took a long time to recover and is still giving a few minor issues, sometimes it feels as if a contact lens has slipped and my vision is really poor from it, it does get better in a couple of hours. I had the follow-up telephone consultation, and the nurse doing it said at the beginning of it she thought I would likely need a face-to-face appointment, I do and will be going back in the new year. The fatigue after the eye op and abscess was very present and I found it stopped me doing more than usual and when I was active I would pay for it later. Over the last 10 days or so my fatigue has returned to my usual ups and downs with it.
The teen cats are hitting their first birthday, unsure when they were born but it was in the first half of December. They continue to be furry cuties and have become affectionate and communicative with me. Sakli always meeps at me when he comes in and chirrups at me if he is sat somewhere and I go into the room. Latika is most vocal around meal times but does meow at me when he comes in sometimes. For a while, they haven’t been playing with most of their toys that are scattered around the house. Over the last few weeks they have been playing a lot more with them, I keep seeing toys in different places or stepping on them if it is dark. I recently bought a dehumidifier as I was getting a lot of condensation, it has worked really well. Since getting it, it clicked with me why condensation might have been worse this year. Two cute petite panthers often pop out when it is wet, and come back in soaking wet, repeating this several times a day. And in between they are snoozing in their favourite snoozing spots whilst the water evaporates from their fur.
Other news, well there isn’t much for me to report, life has been fairly quiet. When I have met up with people it has been lovely. Due to the continuing wind and rain, I haven’t been getting out as often as I would like for walks and the window of dry days seems to occur when I was feeling most fatigued. I am looking forward to some dryer days so I can get more walks in. On one of the dry sunny days, I did take advantage of my bus pass and for a bus ride with a walk somewhere different in the middle. Whilst I don’t wear a mask in most places I do on buses and am often the only one doing so. In fact, I rarely see people wearing masks now and only do so in small enclosed spaces or if I am indoors in a very busy place, so I think that like me many people are being less cautious. Recently some friends have had other bugs and two or three have had COVID-19 so it is still out there which has prompted me to wear a mask in more places. I am more concerned about post-COVID-19 fatigue than being seriously ill (though with my history of repeatedly getting pneumonia it is a risk to be aware of), I really don’t want my fatigue to be worse hence my caution.
My mother’s dementia has continued to progress and my stepfather has reluctantly decided that he can’t cope any longer so she is going into a care home this week. I think it is the right decision for both of them and the rest of the family. Moments of her being really present and lucid are becoming less frequent now and much of the time she spends sleeping and needs increasing levels of help with personal care. Living beyond cancer you are aware that you are fortunate to still be here but when you watch someone with dementia fading away I think you realise that in some ways having cancer is not the worst that can happen. With cancer, there is usually a hope that you can be cured or given life-extending treatments but with dementia it is a slow decline, being aware that your faculties are fading away. My mother’s lucid moments are very infrequent now, when they do occur she knows what is going on and what the impact she is having on my stepfather and the family. During the height of the pandemic, she often said she wished she would catch it and die so she could avoid the decline, which was difficult to hear. When she did have COVID-19, it was relatively mild for her. I found this attitude challenging and the way the Tory government threw old people into care homes to empty hospital beds adds to the difficult feelings. However, as someone who believes in the right to die for people with terminal conditions to prevent suffering, I can understand where she is coming from. My paternal grandmother was the opposite of my mum, even as dementia took away her mind she was I believe mostly happy and hung on fiercely. My mum though is not happy and before she got dementia spoke about how we are kind to animals and put them to sleep when their suffering is such that their quality of life is so poor it is cruel to keep them alive. Her view was that we should be able to the same kindness we give animals to humans who are suffering. Against this is a viewpoint put forward best by a doctor I worked with many years ago when asked about euthanasia, he felt it was wrong because you never knew when a new drug or treatment might arrive and change the prognosis significantly. Personally, I waiver between the two viewpoints and I suspect many of us would do so whilst some will take a definite stance on one or the other.
It has been wet and windy all day so far and was yesterday, it has just become sunny and windy, so I am going to end this blog and head out for a coastal walk and trust I won’t get drenched. I am sure it will be a lovely walk, with big waves to see and plenty of fresh air to blow away the cobwebs and even if it does rain whilst I am out, I will have had a chance to notice the good bits of being out on a windy sunny December day. I hope life is more good than bad for you at the moment.
paulbysea 