...and so it ends

So the last posting on here was that M-I-L was actually ill this time. This posting is unpleasant but necessary to complete the tale.

It turns out that she was very ill. She was diagnosed with a very aggressive cancer and, after initally treating her, it became clear that it was going to be a losing battle in the end.

After a week they took the decision to stop treatment as it would be unpleasant and pointless. Following withdrawal of treatment They initally gave her a prognosis of about 6 weeks.
She lasted less than a week. Thankfully she was spared the prospect of it being drawn out and sinking further by the day for the full six weeks.

Despite everything, we're going to miss her. We won't have the same inane conversations about bus routes and the order the balls came out in at Bingo. We won't feel the red mist descending as she does yet another one of her individually innocuous but cumulatively really annoying foibles.

Even in death she has provided us with some moments of amusement and incredulity:
She appears to have saved every paper plate and plastic cup from every buffet she's been to in the last 10 years. We found cupboards full of the damn things. Quite when she thought they would come in useful I'm at a loss to fathom.

She's kept till receipts from things she bought 25 years ago - well, you never know if you'll need to take it back do you?

Anyway, it's the end of an era. I've been asked to leave the blog in place as a testament, and a health warning to anyone who is thinking that moving the in-laws in with could work out really well.

If you've enjoyed reading this blog, please spare a moments of silence for her, and make a donation to a Cancer Research charity operating wherever you live. Maybe someone else might get a chance next time around.

Thanks for reading

Update

A quick update on recent developments, and the reason for the lack of entries recently, follows:

M-I-L eventually recovered from the bout of the sh!ts (which lasted for several hours). However, after all of that shenanigans she actually became ill for real. Initially we took the assertions of being ill again with the usual pinch of salt (i.e. one the size of Cheshire) but it became clear that something was actually wrong with her this time ("The Boy who Cried Wolf" http://www.storyarts.org/library/aesops/stories/boy.html comes vividly into focus here!)

(As an aside, the moral of "The Boy who Cried Wolf" is supposed to be "Never tell lies". WRONG. The real moral is "Never tell the same lie twice" - an important distinction).

Anyway, the upshot is that it may be a while before there are any new posts.

...and the award goes to...

So, here we are. Five weeks on from the day that M-I-L had a dose of the sh*ts (which lasted for less than a day, remember), and she still hasn't been out of her nightie and dressing gown since.

Obviously, as a bloke, I'm used to the concept of making out that you're dying when you have a bit of a cold, but she's taking this to a whole new level. It's almost at the point of becoming an artform! She's even taken to using her commode because she can "barely make it to the bathroom" (allegedly - you should see her move when we're not in the same room! I've witnessed her virtually skipping down the hallway when she doesn't know she's being watched, only to have her start panting and rubbing the area over her heart when I follow her into the kitchen and she becomes aware that I'm there).

She is trying to turn us into her personal slaves as well. Whenever she hears someone in the hallway, she calls out in a pathetic voice to try and attract attention. Then she insists on being brought a cup of tea and a sarnie. She's particularly good at doing this just when we are leaving the house to go somewhere, especially if we are running late.

As a result, I've become quite adept at moving silently down the hall with a level of stealth not seen since Kwai Chang Caine walked along the rice paper under the tutelage of Master Po. I've also become selectively deaf; I simply don't hear her when I'm on my way out of the door. I just know that when we've all left she'll be up and in the kitchen making a ready meal.

She's also taken to deciding on a day by day basis what she wants to eat, and then expecting someone to go out to the shop to get it for her. I feel particularly aggrieved at being asked to get in the car and drive to the supermarket just to pick up a solitary Hollands meat and potato pie for her ("I'm not well, and it's all I can face eating" - yeah, right! When I'm ill, I don't exactly feel like shoving a stodgy pie down my throat).

She's due to get the results of her barium enema soon. I know how this is going to go already. They'll find nothing wrong with her and she will interpret that as "The doctors are baffled. They don't know what's wrong with me." I'll tell you what's wrong - self pity and a good dose of hypochondria!

I feel an Oscar coming on - Best use of ham acting, piss and lavender in a domestic environment!

Milking it!

About two weeks ago, M-I-L called out the doctor because she'd had a bad dose of the sh*ts overnight and had stomach pains. Given that she's nearly 80, and was probably dehydrated, the doc suggested that she should go into hospital to be checked out.

So off she goes to hospital where they stick her on a saline drip to rehydrate her, and take some the usual set of bodily fluid samples to test.

Within a few hours she no longer had the sh*ts and announced to the current Mrs James that she felt greatly improved. They decided to keep her in hospital overnight and took more samples, having found nothing untoward in the first set.

The next day she looked as right as rain, and her medical chart seemed to bear out that there was nothing amiss in her vital signs - blood pressure, pulse, temperature etc all normal.

Once again, they found nothing wrong in her samples and said that if she had no further symnptoms she could go home the next day. So it was that we collected her the next day looking the picture of health.

However, since she got home, she has proceeded to milk her experience for all its worth. She has lived in her dressing gown and has pretty much stayed in bed acting feeble - at least until one of her soaps or game shows comes on, when she leaps out of bed with cat-like agility and sits there in her chair in front of the TV to watch it. Televisual experience over she slopes off back to bed for further martyrdom.

We get a feeble voice whispering "Hello! Hello! Get me a cup of tea will you?" Then when she takes it through she gets "Would you butter me some toast as well?" and so it goes on. She's been eating, drinking and defecating normally for the last two weeks , but she still makes out that she's at death's door.

A few days back, my son heard her get up, leave her room, walk briskly down the hall to the kitchen and, when she saw him there, she physically changed her demeanour to make out that she was having to cling onto the wall/door frame to stand up straight, and asked him in a feeble voice to support her across the kitchen to get to the kettle (presumably for another cup of tea and soup - see "Making Lunch the M-I-L Way" below).

She claims to be unable to carry anything because having a saline drip in her arm has drained all her strength. She's as right as rain when she thinks there's no-one there to notice or hear her. As soon as she realises that there is someone around to notice, she puts on her pathetic 'I'm not long for this world voice": especially whenever the phone rings so she can get some long distance sympathy.

My daughter overheard two comments she had with her friend when she came to visit.
Comment 1: (by M-I-L)

"You know, I'm not being looked after properly. I've had to make my own meals" (like she does every other day that she's not ill!)

Comment 2: (by her friend)
"So what exactly is wrong with you now?" (clearly as baffled as we are two weeks after the initial illness!)

She even told our cleaner that it was probably down to the super powerful painkillers that she was taking that she was ill. That may have been so except for the fact that she hasn't taken then for a week and a half - that's some lasting effect they have!

There's nothing more wrong with her than a major attack of hypochondria.

It makes my blood boil.

Making Lunch the M-I-L way

Ingredients:
One packet of Cup-a-Soup
One teabag
One teaspoon of sugar
Milk
Hot water

Equipment needed:
Kettle
Mug
Teaspoon

Method:
Place the spoonful of sugar in the mug.
Place the teabag in the mug.
Pour a little milk in the mug.
Boil kettle.
Wander off to bathroom whilst kettle boils.
Empty packet of Cup-a-Soup into mug.
When kettle boils, pour hot water into mug containing Cup-a-Soup.
Look around to try and find mug containing teabag.
Stir soup using teaspoon.
Find teabag submerged in soup.
Remove teabag from soup.
Look bemused.
Stir soup again.
Drink soup/milk/sugar/tea.

Handy tip for the future - use two mugs next time.

Cheese Toastie, anyone?

It is a constant source of amazement to me how M-I-L has managed to stay alive this long given her inability to observe, or even comprehend basic safety measures.

I went into the kitchen and found a Breville electric sandwich toaster soaking, fully submersed, in the kitchen sink (thankfully not still plugged in!)

When I asked what the bejasus it was doing in there, she replied that she was soaking it to get some burned-on cheese off it.

I suggested that basic common sense probably dictated that you didn't submerge electrical appliances in a bowl of water. She looked somewhat bemused and asked why not. I pointed out the obvious reasons and the fact that the instruction leaflets that come with all things electrical always include safety advice to that end.

Her reply, clearly indicating that she thought she'd outfoxed me was "Ahh, well I haven't read the instruction leaflet", to which my intentionally over-theatrical response was "Thank God for that, it'll be alright then as long as you haven't read them".

Maybe I can persuade her to plug it in and take it into the bath with her next time she's in there. But then again, I'm sure the safety instructions tell you not to do that as well and, as I now know, she hasn't read them.

Sign of the Times?

A while ago, I got to thinking about those signs that people hang on their gates to stop intruders. Usually with a picture of a large dog and bearing the legend "I can make it to the gate in 10 seconds - Can you?" You know the sort of thing I mean.

Anyway, there are things more frightening than dogs in this world and I came up with an idea for alternatives. The identity of M-I-L has been blanked out on these mock ups, partly to protect her identity, but largely because I fear that the Gorgon qualities of her image might lead to legal reprisals from readers. Anyway, see what you think - this could be big!





Have an enjoyable New Year's Eve; I know I will because she's not back until Wednesday!

Is that your final answer?

It’s been mercifully M-I-L free for most of the Christmas hols as M-I-L has gone away for a few days. However, she did give us one moment of despair before she went.

She’s big on watching “Who Wants to be a Millionaire” (even makes a point of video-taping it if she goes out when it’s on). Anyway, I had to make one of those dreaded excursion that involve going into her living room while she’s in there, with all the horrific potential for her starting one of those inane conversations which make me lose the will to live.

I noticed that WWTBAM was on TV and she was looking rather puzzled and asked me if I knew the answer to the current question that was on screen. The question was “Which of these is a flightless bird?”:
A. Cassowary
B. Crow
C. Coot
D. Cuckoo

I told her it was Cassowary. She looked at me and said “I thought it might be, but I wasn’t sure. I mean, I know the other three can fly but I’ve never heard of that one so I couldn’t be certain.”

Classic – what other possible option could have been right given the fact that she knew the other three could fly?

I had to beat a hasty retreat from her room to laugh with the proper sense of decorum.