Boxing Day, my family Christmas Day. Busy, noisy, happy and very basic. The boys are being potty trained, there was much peeing and not all of it in the toilet. Oh yes, forgot to say, the boys don’t like using the potty, they would rather use the toilet. This makes it all even more urgent as potties are easily available and can placed close to where the trainees are, not so with toilets. Boxing Day resounded to the cries of ‘wee, wee’ and the pleading response ‘ hold it, hold it’. Unfortunately the scooping up of the boy was not always fast enough so that by the end of the day there were multiple damp areas on my oatmeal coloured carpet but worse was yet to come. I was tidying around in the kitchen, Jack was playing with his Scaletrix (huge success) and Evie was toddling around him looking really cute in her white fairy dress when the cry came from Jack ‘Evie’s poo’d on the carpet’. A daughter whisked her up and carried her……into the sitting room, where she finished what she had started. Apparently the accident occurred due to lack of parental communication, Mummy had removed the nappy and had thought that Daddy was putting the clean one on, wrong! I resigned myself to using my Vax at the first opportunity.
The dynamics between the cousins are interesting. Jack loves Evie; Amy loves Jack; Izzy loves Amy. The boys tolerate Evie but love Jack and Amy. Amy and Izzy play well together, Izzy just about tolerates Evie. Now son and daughter in-law are growing a new baby and on Boxing Day asked if we could have a listen in, so off we went into a bedroom for a bit of privacy and quiet. We took Evie up with us, and since we had Evie then Jack had to come as well, and this meant that Amy and Izzy also came along. So there we are, 3 adults and 4 children all listening to electronic beeping when a weird shrieking came from the other side of the room, a cat was stuck in the bedroom and desperate to get away, DIL was laughing so much that we had to abandon our eavesdropping on little tiddler. The Royle family have nothing on us!
Last night I removed my insomnia to a spare room, hoping to allow Hubby to have a lie-in but unfortunately I had not factored in my Mother’s love of phoning early in the morning. I was awoken at 7.30 by Hubby speaking very loudly as he walked into the spare room brandishing the telephone, it was Mum. I’m going to sound extremely harsh now but please remember that this 80 year old is currently working her way through the medical dictionary for the 3rd time and last month it was M, Macular degeneration. I took the phone to find Mother informing that time was of the essence as she had Necrotising Fasciitis. I attempted a phone triage, ‘
Why?’
‘It’s going up my arm. There’s a tingly sensation. People have their arms amputated. I phoned NHS Direct, spoke to a stupid girl. There’s a 3 hour wait in casualty.’
‘Have you called the on-call G.P service?
‘There isn’t one’
Mum, there is. Mum, Mum, are you there?’ She has put the phone down.Redial.
‘Mum. Phone your G.P’
‘I’m sorry. I never bother you. I’m frightened’.
‘Yes Mum I know. It must be very scary which why I want you to phone your G.P whilst I get dressed. I’ll have a quick cup of coffee and then get………Mum, Mum. Have you put the phone down? Mum’
Redial.
‘Mum, it’s me. Will you please listen to me?’
‘No. I’m phoning C (my niece), she’ll come round’. Phone goes down.
I go to the computer. Find my mother’s G.P’s phone number. Ring and get put through to the on-call service. Speak to an extremely helpful technician and explain my, or rather my mother’s, problem. They say a doc will be there in 1 – 2 hours time. A text comes through from my niece who has been summoned by Mother, I reply telling her that I’m sorting it and to go back to bed. She replies saying that Nanny is hysterical and that I will need armour.
The temperature outside is -5, I de-ice the car and drive carefully over the ice encrusted roads, in just under an hour I pull onto Mum’s drive. Going indoors I inspect Mum’s hand, raised blisters surrounded by angry, red skin and it does look very sore. There are further patches stretched up her arm. ‘Shingles’ I decide, I am loudly disabused of this diagnosis until the on-call doc arrives 15 minutes later. ‘Shingles’ the on-call doc pronounces and leaves us with a prescription for Acyclovir. I returned home 4 hours later having collected her tablets; made the pastry cones for cream puffs (don’t ask); arranged her flowers; sorted her washing; done the washing-up and made sure that the cupboards and fridge were stocked. I also received lectures on catholism; the state of midwifery nowadays and how lucky I am to have such a close family. Thank heavens I’m at work tomorrow.
