Mini Me Update [16/02/24] : The One Where It All Goes Wrong

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Hey everyone, how are you all doing? I’m sorry I’ve been rather MIA online for a while lately, it has been a bit of an overwhelm-on-steroids kind of time. I drafted this post a good while ago but only just got to deleting half of it, updating it and posting it. Every time you think things are so full on you can’t handle any more, it gets worse. I thought I’d do a little Mini Me Update in lieu of a regular post for the moment. 

In a nutshell to save you reading time : My mum has been unwell, I’ve been unwell, we’re maybe moving house, things at home have been vile, and my sweetheart cat Virgil has heartbreakingly died.

♥ ♥ ♥

My Poorly Mama

My mum has had quite a lot on her plate of late, with one thing after another. The heart attack she had brought ample problems, as did the medications she’s had to take ever since. But of course she has to be greedy like so many of us with chronic conditioners and so she’s got herself several other diagnoses to add to the list. 

Spinal Hell

Very long story short : My mum had severe back and leg pain develop last year that’s ongoing. It got so bad she could barely stand up let alone walk without crying out in pain. The NHS refused an MRI so I had to pay for one and the first few GPs refused to care. Getting help for the problems that were discovered by the scan has been a joke. 

She has  some severe and widespread deterioration, partly due to osteoporosis (thin bones like I have) and partly due to age. This has led to the likes of spondylolisthesis with four or more vertabrae slipping forward, fractures, and foraminal narrowing with trapped nerves. It seems to be those trapped nerves that cause most of the agonising pain in her back and legs. I know how painful nerve damage is and it’s heartbreaking to know hers must be even worse than I can imagine and I hate that she’s living with it. 

I’m helping with what I can getting her around the house, being there for her going up and down the stairs, doing all her meds, getting her food, and so on. The lack of independence, the unbearable pain, all of it has really got her to and it’s awful to see. 

Mystery Medical Conundrum 

Then came the unusually extreme epigastric pain at the end of December. The first GP fobbed her off despite my stating concern it could be gall stones or stomach ulcers (guess who was right?) Then came a midnight run to A&E, going to a different city as ours was shut down for three weeks due to the junior doctor strikes. 

She wasn’t admitted overnight but I drove her back to the hospital several times over the next 5 days for different scans and tests and the docs were still bamboozled as they were thinking it was a pulmonary embolism.

Meanwhile I became more sure my original theory about ulceration was right. I doubled up her Omeprazole and bought a huge bottle of Gaviscon Double Action… and the pain seemed better! 

I spoke with the only decent GP at her practice and she was brilliant. She agreed with my assessment and booked her for an endoscopy. It was a two week wait and the procedure itself was horrific but it confirmed stomach ulceration (erosive gastritis) with inflammation due to the aspirin she takes after the heart attack. The area affected is thankfully fairly small as the treatment we’d done during the two week wait had already significantly helped.

While she’ll need to maintain the treatment and be careful in future as she has to continue with aspirin, I’m grateful things didn’t turn out worse.

We did play Count The Ambulances one of the nights when I was driving through A&E to come home. Guess how many were queued up outside and around the entrance? 23. 

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Home Life

I mentioned briefly near the end of 2023 that we were hoping to move. It’s my parents’ house and yes, I still live with them so I’m helping to arrange it, but it’s all rather stress-inducing as nothing wants to go quite right. The house move has made things with my dad even worse. For a minute there I thought things might be getting better but that just shows how naive I am. Four years of feeling like you’re being treated like crap and then putting up with his crap on top of it has been exhausting.

I guess it would be an understatement to say things have been difficult physically. It is stupidly difficult to care for another person when you can barely care for yourself, so I take my hat off to all those who did it. At the same time though it makes me grateful to still be here so I can help my mum where possible. She’s the one who has always been there for me and does what she can to help given my health problems.

The migraines, or cluster headaches as they may be, have been pretty horrific and relentless. I’ll do a post sometime about the treatment I’ve tried for those who might be going through similar but sadly the latest one, botox, did nada and I’m now giving up on prophylaxis.

It’s fair to say it has all taken a toll. The pain is so immense I can’t think straight, the fatigue is getting harder to push through as I’ve got zero resources to push with, and the migraines have been back to back with little reprieve. I feel emotions I don’t want to feel because I’m exhausted and agitated and I’ve no time to really look after myself, and then I feel guilty for feeling like that. You know how it goes.

♥ ♥ ♥

Goodnight My Sweetheart Virgil

On 5th February, my beautiful cat Virgil went over the rainbow bridge. My dad killed him, but of course didn’t have the guts to do it with his bare hands. He took him to the vets to have him put down. For his convenience. He said it “had to be done” as part of moving house, which is so idiotic and twisted it doesn’t even deserve talking about. Virgil wasn’t sick, he wasn’t struggling.

I can’t tell you how devastated I am. I rallied against it and got into a screaming match but it did no good. All I got was an hour to cuddle with him on my bed and cry my eyes out. I had to walk away and I will never forgive myself for that. But like my mum said, if he wasn’t taken then my dad would have done it the next time I left the house. I couldn’t protect Virgil forever. Aside from the house move, I want nothing further to do with my dad. 

You know when you have odd moments in life where you think “how on earth did things ever get like this?” I’m having that moment right now. 

I really want to get back to blog post writing but it’s an uphill struggle. Even since the very beginning of InvisiblyMe, the process has been difficult because my brain doesn’t work like it used to. After what happened with Virgil, I don’t much feel like doing anything. But I do miss the blogging community and my online friends and seeing how you’re all doing, so I’m sorry for not being around. I’ll apologise in advance if I can’t reply to any comments here but I’d love to hear from you.

How’ve you been? What has the start of 2024 been like for you?

Sending my best wishes, take good care of yourself guys.

Caz  ♥

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