Looking awkward

Today has been a day of activity. My brother and my boyfriend were here so we put them to work fixing the fridge this morning. The panel-cover was coming away from the door and there was an almighty midnight-snack-exposing creak which needed fixing too. After the fridge came the firewood which needed chopping smaller. Dad has been quiet all day again. He fell asleep yesterday evening with his head facing sharply to the left and looked uncomfortable. Today he stayed in that position all day and seemed in pain when we tried to help him move to face anything other than the wall. We called the NHS out of hours service again and a doctor came to see Dad. She told us there could be several reasons for the neck pain and concluded there is no danger in moving Dad but that it is simply a question of comfort. We now have a prescription for a morphine patch which we can get from the pharmacy tomorrow. It will release 12mg an hour into his system, through his skin, for 72 hours so is a much more constant dose than we are currently able to give him. The doctor said that if it is only pain-related this may enable Dad to sit holding his head straight again. It is also possible however that it is caused somehow by the metastases in his brain and will not be remedied. At least we can relieve his pain, even if he sits a bit wonky.

Grumpy Grumps

Dad was quiet today. He was awake most of the day but got a bit grumpy towards the evening. After a lot of fussing from the nurses, Mum asked if he was comfortable and he shot her a look so i asked if he needed anything or would rather we all piss off. I got told in a weak-voice "Piss off." Fair enough. He ended up dozing-off watching the television while we were eating dinner, rather noisily, across the room. My brother came today after work, so is here for the weekend. This helps us tell one day from another. We will have a full house tomorrow as my boyfriend will be here too. He has been away completing a course, so perhaps tomorrow we ought to celebrate the end of his exams with that party Dad mentioned. My brother will be in charge of drinks!

Bookworms and coffee

Having all now recovered from last weeks gastro incident, we all felt up to a challenge. Mum and Dad’s combined lifelong book collection has been sitting stacked against a wall at the top of the stairs for most of this year, since the bookshelves collapsed. So we went out, bought a bunch of bookcases and spent the day assembling. Or rather, I spent the day assembling under Dad’s direction, whilst my boyfriend steered us clear of Mum having a meltdown over the internet suddenly going belly up. When it came to putting the books onto the shelves Dad took a more active role by insisting on dusting some of the books and was keen to prioritise shelf space to his travel books over Mum’s French Asterix comic books. Dad seemed happy to look through some old favourites again, clearly remembering which books he enjoyed the most. He is getting confused every so often again though, as demonstrated on Saturday morning when he asked why I had changed out of the brown dress I’d been wearing earlier. This confused me as firstly I don’t own any brown dresses and secondly the only other outfit I had worn on Saturday was my pyjamas. It also immediately made me think of an incident two months ago in a pub when Dad put some sugar wrappers into his cup of coffee, stirred them in and then drank it. Thankfully Dad doesn’t remember much from that period. I will forever remember it as the moment I saw with my own eyes how seriously ill Dad was. As with most people, it’s true that he didn’t always pay attention to everything, but the lunacy of stirring rubbish into a drink before drinking it was not my Father. His brain metastases were still undiagnosed at this point, but all his symptoms pointed to them.