coping – Shrinking Horizons

Although today I really have felt close to tears. The lovely sunny weather has only emphasised how our home has become our prison. I really must find a way of removing this feeling of being trapped and by someone I no longer know, who tells lies and makes up stories. We have a lovely home but the ever present shadow of the AP is sucking the light out of the place and we don’t feel the pleasure we initially had at living here.

Today, a friend came to visit the AP to ask if she would like to go out with her for a day and during the rather rambling conversation the AP announced that she was a hundred and six years old. God forbid because that would make the LSO and myself seventy eight and we would have lost ten years of our lives not a mere five and with more to go. Oh Horror! There is no way the LSO and I would be able to sustain a level of care at that age and if the AP is still in this life then she will have to be in a Care Home.

But there is a light appearing at the end of the tunnel. My lovely cousin and his wife in Scotland are indeed having the AP for a month and she leaves four weeks today. Am I counting the days? I certainly am and although I mustn’t wish my life away it will be lovely to have our home back, our lives back and some spontaneity back even if only for four weeks. She is trying to find excuses for not going and was secretly hoping she would be having an appointment at the hospital for the removal of the rodent ulcer. That will not be the case as the lead time is at least two months to just see the consultant, then a further two to three months before the actual event.

We no longer have our farmer friend coming to eat every evening because he has made a wonderful recovery after his double bypass. I should now be able to get to grips with the weight loss. Today’s weigh-in was a bit disappointing because although I haven’t put any weight on, I haven’t lost any either. On top of that I have developed another stye, this time on the bottom part of the same eye as last time. I am feeling a bit sorry for myself and the eye is swollen, painful, itchy and it kept me awake last night so no doubt part of how I feel is down to lack of sleep. Pathetic, I know but it all adds to the feeling of unhappiness and general malaise. I do think that once the weight starts going down again I will feel more buoyant and more able to cope with life in general, hopefully next week …

A single word that is alien to me. Since my diagnosis of Type 2 Diabetes I have been reading as much as I can about the disease and how to cope with it.

As a working mother all my life with two children and a husband with a demanding job I never really had time for ‘me’. I retired eleven years ago and found it an exhilarating experience. My husband retired a year after me and we never looked back, we made the most of the early years. Seven years ago we moved away from the South East of England to a much better life in Norfolk but because we left our family behind we upsized rather than downsized. If we had stayed in the South East my mother would not be living with us because that house would have been too small for us all to live together.

Do I regret the move? No not really although I would have preferred to see more of my children and grandchildren but on the other hand I count myself lucky that until seven years ago I had a great deal of contact with them. The truth is children have their own lives to lead just as we led ours and we do have contact constantly through technology. I sometimes regret the decision to bring my 99 year old mother to live with us but whilst she is pleasant, as she is at the moment I can face the days without too much trauma.

But back to the reason for the title of this blog. The word that comes over all the time when I am reading about Diabetes is ‘overwhelming’ and in a way I agree with that because there is so much to think about but what really is overwhelming is the need to suddenly put ‘me’ first. How do I do that when I have never thought about myself since being a teenager and on top of that, along with the ‘long suffering one’, we have to look after a 99 year old who cannot be told the problem?

Small steps first I think is the answer.

Tag: coping

I will not cry.

Me