Mum and Dads 29th Anniversary (by sarah)

Last weekend saw mum and dads 29th annivsary, origonally we were all going to go away in a cottage together for a little holiday but that had to be canceled for a miride of reasons not least being that mums operation would clash with the end of the origonal plans!

David and Michele (my bro and his girly) came up and stayed in Stroud and Alaric was back from London. Mum had wanted desperatly to go on a boat trip of some sort - again part of the orginal plan had involved a narrow boat. So Barbara got us the boat times from Gloucester docks for us on friday (Mum and dad came up straight from the hospital from mums tests so we lost friday).

Saturday morning in my military style I made people get up and get ready and had I thought to phone David and Michelle we would have actually got out on time but I didn't and they over slept. Poor Alaric moaned and moaned becuase I'd made him get up at 9 o'clock! (a bone of contention about what is early and what is not!).

Anyway off we went and onto Queen Boaducea II for a forty-five minute cruise.

The driver was absolutly helious! I kept telling dad someone had cloned him yet agian - I think at the last count he has four clones (Douglas Adams, Terry Pratchette, Ale Holly from Red dwarf and now this boat driver!). Anyway he was full of interesting facts and little comic snippits and a dry wit in abundance.

The weather was actually really fantastic for October and it had that freash autum tinge to everything 🙂 I get to take lots of interesting pictures of old industrial archetecture including coragated iron anexes from the 1920's!

There were also tall ships (the old pirate/sailor type of ships) moored along the way and a few unfortunate fishermen who where cheerful even if we were ruining the days catch! Gloucester is actually a sea dock even though it is in land and we were taking a cruise up a canal built by returning solders from the Napoleonic Wars! The thing is massive with dry docks and swing bridges and log ponds galore!

There were other interesting boats too like boats that where used by the 'dad's' Navey during the war and really old experimental concrete barges!

(Can you tell I really really enjoyed this trip!)

I was really chuffed actually becuase I been collecting little snippets about the Second World War and was in need of a boat to carry my solder from Dunkirk so was exstatic to spot the little plaque saying that the boat had been to Dunkirk - they also mentioned it the commentary and me and dad went and pestered them for extra details after the trip 🙂

One of the best bits though was that Barbie waved at Dad - she blatently had the hots for him even though she was next to Ken and he was with his family - her little boat came right up along side ours and she waved repeatedly at him :). Jean absolutely adored the little boats and the water in general though this did cuase some issues with keeping her still on the trip!

David inadvertatly polluted the canal and almost dive bombed Barbies boat with his water bottle which fell out of his pocket into the water! He wasn't best pleased as the bottle hadn't even been opened yet.

We then had a quick trundle round the antiques market (well David and Michelle did we just went looking for them as they had our child with them!).

To round the day off we went back to the Mill where me and Alaric prepared a meal of Nachos for starter, falafles, pitta bread, salad and dips for main and Barbara special trifle for desert. We also had champagne in the flutes from the wedding which fortunatly hadn't gone into storage yet! Though one of them did get broken - by me at the end when I announced I was clearing them up before they got broken :/

David and Michelle rendured Mum and Dad speachless by presenting them with an oil lamp to match the one they have at home - complete with shade and glass chimney bit. Alaric was in high spirits and decided that my dads head needed cling filming to stop his communications with the aliens at Climperwell (don't ask).

The next day Sunday being the actual anniversary we went for a meal in Pizza Express after some fruitless hunting for a place that no longer existed :/ This was really nice too 🙂

Mum’s Doing Well (by sarah)

Mum is coming home from the hospital today, they have already removed one drain and are going to take the other one out later - she's recovering much faster and better than expected so hopefully everything will be fine.

Big Bad Hypo (by sarah)

As some of you know Dad is diabetic this is slightly different to the gestational diabetis I had during the pregnancy. The link will probably make reading this post easier - sorry everything isn't clearer.

Last night we got back to Gloucestershire and having put Jean to bed I set out to do some sorely needed work, I saw that it was late and went to find Dad - who was laying on the bed, he responded dopily and I initially thought he was just tired. But when he came out onto the landing he kept checking his glasses becuase he thought they were dirty - this gave me the first glue as it ment his vision was blurry and as soon as he stepped into the light I saw the sweat pouring out off him covering his face and bald spot.

Dad was deepish into a hypo (hypoglycimic or low sugar levels) if I had left him or not checked on him he would have gone into a coma and died before I would have fetched him for breakfast in the morning. I was so annoyed with myself as I normally check he's eaten enough and keeping the sugar level steady-ish but of course with all the hospital stuff it turned out he had just had some toast for both breakfast and lunch with a bannana thrown in for goood measure. I hadn't thought to check and hadn't been at home when they where having these meals as I'd fallen asleep on route back from Highgate to Upminster and had ended up in Leytonstow (sp).

He was on the very cusp of it being a major hypo and failed to navigate the stairs perfectly which scared me (he slide down like three steps). I had to initially feed him as he wasn't with it enough to do this him self but I have had to deal with worse hypos in the past (he is a type 1 juvinile onset diabetic - insuline controlled and had a bit of an allergic reaction or something to a new type of insuline made synthetically in the 90's. On that stuff I had been unable to get him out of the coma even with the sugar solution and so had had to call an ambulance.) We'd been doing so well and he hadn't had a hypo for a while 🙁

Until...

The day of mum's opp. he'd just started to go hypo then too but me and David spotted it and fed him lunch - now he had eaten properlly that day and so everything should have been fine but I think that stress may have an effect on his metabolic system or something, I know tempuratures can affect things.

I was in the middle of dealing with this when Barbara came to find out what had happened to us and then ensued a confused conversation about why had I let dad get that cold - realisation that she thought I ment HYPO-thermia and that was sort of straightened out though she still insisted that I make him a hot drink :/ Alarmingly for me she thought he was fine and just a bit sleepy though his behaviour was erratic and speach slurred etc...

I was then stuck with a dilema - in his worrying about mum he had not packed his blood test kit - I had checked up on medicans and made sure he had all of them but had stupidly assumed that the blood test kit would just be with them. This ment we could not monitor Dads sugar levels and so we are running a bit blind. I didn't want to feed him too much sugary junk as that would just result in a short term high - at this point I was cursing myself for not having pinched the diabetic uk mag I'd seen in the bog at their home. I waited a bit and he seemed to be coming out of it and we both agreed that I would make him some proper food with the long term carbohydrates in (now I've probably got this all round my neck as I'm not medically trained and haven't really looked into things too well but I think that its the things like startch and that that the body actually has to digest to get the sugars that makes them long term - again I have no idea what the actual terms are or even if this is correct.)

This shook me up a bit and at some point I'll have to tell mum that I let him go that hypo - mew :'(

I get concerned about the hypos becuase as far as I know its not just the danger of death from the coma but each time it happens brain cells die, and capillaries do something odd which can result in blindness, uncontrolled sugar levels can also lead to gangreen and all sorts. It is so important that the surgar is controlled.

I've been trying so hard with this one as well as mum has type 2 diabetis and I have got the special cook books and read up on the GI of certian foods and stuff like that but I just wasn't thinking with everything that was going on.

Mum’s Opp. (by sarah)

Mum had her oppuration yesturday, they removed the lump from the breast and the lymph nodes undernieth her right arm. When I went to see her she had blue lips and very pale with two drains coming from her breast (this was two tubes full of what looked like just blood ending in what I think of as a plimsol bag). She was also drifting in and out of concousness whilst sitting up with the cup of tea they'd given her to re-hydrate/replace the fluids she'd lost (I'm really not sure this is a good technique as I thought tea was a diarrectic and it contained milk when she was feeling quesy from the drugs and it was hot and I had to keep rescuing it otherwise she'd have tipped it all down herself!).

Apparently she had been bleeding alot and they'd had trouble stopping it, she'd just come off of the oxygen which she would have hated as the masks make her feel closterfobic. They had given her morphine as well for the pain and she really was away with the fearies!

To my suprise there was actually stuff to wash your hands with though it did run out whilst we where there and I was actually really impressed as when one of the woman fell over on route to the toliet three nurses appeared like lightning from the woodwork!

Jean was very quiet and still for most of the time in there, she was fine with mum if a bit subdued but seemed highly concerned about all the other people on the ward. When she started to become fractous I took her out of the ward and instantly had a hell of a fight on my hands as she wanted to go back and got annoyed with me as, 'Nanny ouchy, Nanny stuck, no like, Nanny!' She seemed quiet concerned that we had left nanny behind.

Mum did look very bad when we went to see her - I actually cried a bit when I took Jean outside to the shop that was supposed to be open until 7 but was closed at 5, but Al visited later on and she was fine and coherant by that point.

I was concerned as well to find that mum only had one sexy white stocking on to help prevent clots - they had been unable to find a vein so had had to take the other one off to find one in her leg. I saw the results of their search today and I haven't seen bruising as bad as that since my nan died and her skin had gone paper thin. You could really see that it was bleeding under the skin. (mum normally has to take asperin as a prescription thing but had obviously stopped taking it in the lead up to the opperation but I think that perhapse it hadnt been stopped long enough).

I am a bit perplexed that she had trouble stopping bleeding yesturday and today they've given her Claxan (sp) which is the blood thinner I had during the pregnancy, this is 'just incase' and she had two stockings on today - her feet have also blown up like balloons which worries me quiet alot as she's had history of blood clots in the legs.

Still she seemed almost herself though a bit concerned that one boob seemed to be bigger than the other!

We now have to wait three weeks to find out what sort of cancer it was and wheather chemotherapy is needed. She will start the radiotherapy at about that time just to 'make sure' . She's alot better than we were expecting and they might let her go home tomorrow even though she will still have a drain in.

We are happyish as the main concern for me really was the strain of the opperation and the anasthetic.

Not instilled with confidence (by sarah)

Mum is due for her op today which is why I havent posted this before but she is under the care of the same hospital trust that a) basically killed my uncle (I have not posted about this due to legal reasons which is why I'm not going to mention anything specifically either) and b) mysteriously lost my notes from the pregnancy so that the drs and stuff here knew nothing of the blood thinners or antibiotics I'd been on and stuff things up over me having the emergancy c-section and stuff like that, took my panic alarm away from me and told me I had to walk to get help when the day shift had told me I mustn't get up without help and should use the alarm and so on and so forth. c) gave a diabetic fruit juice for breakfast each day that contained sugar and then wondered why his sugar was all over the place. d)didn't have enough beds for the heart attack victums so put them onto the terminal ward and then wondered why the non terminal patients begian to get depressed and didn't recover too quickly.

These are the people that have mums care in their hands and though the actual breast cancer nurses and doctors actually seem to be trying and are friendly and helpful there has already been an insidend that makes me nervous. Mum went for her pre-op tests and was given a name thing from the files and only realised when she had sat down that it was not her name. She took it back and pointed this out and the had a quick look on the file trolly and the receptionist person (or who ever it was dealing with the files) said they couldn't find it, mum pointed out that she needed the file and they said, 'its not my problem I'm going home' and thats what they did.

This ment that mum could not have the tests done and infact there was a bit of a panic as with out the test results and notes already in that mum could not be emitted for her op. To be fair the Dr was very upset and then hunted down the notes within 3 days which was good of them but this really just doesn't bode to well.

I posted this so late becuase I didnt want mum to read it before she went in for the op.