Saturday, July 26, 2008

IT'S DAME JOAN AGAIN

You know the drill by now. If you've got a mother you love, stop reading and back away from the blog.

Last night I kind of hurt myself, painfully. I'm used to the left kneecap moving off its tracks if I've been doing too much walking and not giving it a rest. It always happens in bed so I do the usual treatment to fix it which is too involved to go into but last night there was a new development. As I turned over, the quad muscle went into pain orbit and I really thought it had detached itself from the bone.

After the requisite amount of swearing and a lot of moaning, I tried to get out of bed. I couldn't stand upright at all. The knee had stopped hurting but not the rest of the leg. The only way I could get to the freezer and an ice-pack was to walk with feet and hands on the ground. Regardless of blubber I'm still flexible enough to do this. The minute I tried to stand up, pain. I always keep the nurse-on-call number by the phone but if I call then there are certain things to be done first.

After getting the ice-pack, unlock the back door in case of ambulance. In case of ambulance, put on nightdress. To make the call, put in teeth. Luckily I didn't need to call, the ice-pack worked on what must have been a tremendous muscle spasm from putting the knee back in place.

So where does mother come in? She rings this afternoon because she can't find the supplies she needs (don't ask) and I tell her they're in the sewing room, green bag, just inside the door. She says she's looked and there's nothing there and she hopes I get as sick as she is one day and have no-one to call. Wrong day to say this, not that it isn't said at least once a week, so she gets told to shut up and the phone crashed in her ear. I yelled so loudly, I think the whole street had a minute's silence.

Sister calls in and mother tells her she has enough supplies to last as she found them in the green bag in the sewing room.

22 comments:

River said...

Mothers. Hmmpff.

How's the leg?

Ann ODyne said...

that woman is torturing you!
WTF?

great sympathy re leg pain.
life's a bitch.

Jayne said...

Do a Jake the Peg routine on her one day, might make her shut up!
Seriously try and do some gentle swimming to strengthen it.
Take your mother along for company.
(you can see where this is going, can't you?)
Entice her into the lovely warm pool.....

JahTeh said...

Leg's okay today. My fault for slacking off on the TENS unit every night and not whacking an ice-pack on as soon as I got in yesterday and not taking paracetamol because I hate the taste and so on.

Jayne, I would love to swim but getting there is a bitch plus I don't have spare cash for the pool and I'd probably drown myself in a fit of depression.

She told the Doc the other day that I was a know-it-all and was stopping her from doing anything at all so she's decided to have a friend take her out. Good luck to him and he can look after her when she comes home exhausted or falls over.

Brian Hughes said...

The image of Witchy crawling about on hands and feet sans nightdress... it's enough to give anybody a muscle spasm.

Link said...

Settle Brian.

Ugh, I don't want to think about quad muscles coming away from bones. Ouch. Doubly.

Your Mother and My Mother should co-habitate. I once had to take myself off to Emergency in the middle of the night with mysterious excruciating pain in lower back, unfortunately at the time my mother was staying with me in my small flat--snoring--this seemed to make the pain worse.

On the way back from the hospital she is angry and in tears and asks me in an accusing and angry tone.

Do you have any idea how this makes me feel?

JahTeh said...

Jeebus Fleetwood, no way can you crawl with two knee replacements, hurty much hurties. I am very flexible, I can bend in the middle and put both hands flat on the floor, very yoga-like. It's not a pretty sight, it can even give me spasms.

Caroline, it frightened me for a moment but on the pain scale about a seven and a half.
I've refused to answer the phone all day and I have such a massive guilt cloud hanging around my ears. Bloody woman.

River said...

Yes, you're right, paracetamol does taste awful. That's why we swallow it super fast and follow it very quickly with a couple of squares of yummy chocolate that we broke off in readiness beforehand. I'll be going to bed tonight with voltaren gel rubbed in as hand cream right up to the elbows so that I can get through my stint at the checkout tomorrow. Because I foolishly carried home too much heavy stuff from my shopping trip in town. Lalala, *happy dance*, I have a new blender.

R.H. said...

Oh, what agony, I am moved to verse.

Damp Footscray
Lonely grass
Solemn love
Don't talk to strangers.

Protestations.

-Robert.

A poet sharpens his mind, not his pen. Nothing fortuitous, accidental.

R.H. said...

Why do I bother.

Middle Child said...

Jesus - hurties - I joke about the very real danger that if I fell and couldn't move ar had an event its okay if the dog eats me because he would be hungry and it wouldn't be his fault...so don't do anything nad to him...better stop joking about that I might draw that reality towards me. Its a small cost for living alone.

Hope your walking tackle heals and causes less pain and the same with the mother.

R.H. said...

River if you stop saying 'Hi how are you' you'll get less pain in your arms. And we'll get less in our arse.

-Robert.

Ozfemme said...

Ouch. I agree with River. In fact, I think there would be a market for chocolates with liquid codeine centres.

Mother has a friend? good lord...

JahTeh said...

River, I agree with you, it's the carrying home stuff that kills. A new blender, SMOOTHIES!!!!!
Does Voltaren cream work for you? I got a cheaper brand by Cenovis and it was better.

Rh, what have you been up to, snaking about in damp grass?
And be nice to River, she may be on your next checkout.

Therese, I hope you carry a mobile phone on you at all times so you can call for help. It's the only reason I got mine after falling over in the park with no-one around. Pre-paid but if you're sneaky you'll make an arrangement with someone to transfer your balance when you have to top up so the phone company doesn't get it. I do that with my sister and she gives me cash for the next top-up. You can outsmart corporations.

Bella, how brilliant of you to combine two addictions into one.
Mother has a family friend who is just as caught in her web as we are.

R.H. said...

Professional niceness is the same in brothels and supermarkets.

It ain't worth much.

River said...

Smoothies, thickshakes, ice/fruit slushies, soups, looking forward to using it. Up till now if I made soup that needed to be pureed I'd be pushing the stuff through a sieve. A little hard on the wrist to be sure. Blender's very first job wil be pumpkin & sweet potato soup.
Voltaren does work for me and I didn't even know there was a cenovis alternative. I'll have to check it out. Saving $$$ is a priority of mine.
R.H. I agree that professional niceness isn't worth much and when I'm being nice on the outside but feeling shitty on the inside I'm sure my customers can tell. When I'm in a good mood, it's a totally different story. A lot of my customers are regulars and we've got to know each other, I like most of them so being friendly and nice is easy and genuine.
Jahteh, I finally got to meet my almost neighbour, Kath Lockett, who has made an appearance here in your comments. She is really nice. I was too busy in the express lane to have a good chat, but hello, how are you and several other things were said. I was on a happy high for the rest of that day.

River said...

Can you tell me more about how to transfer pre-paid phone balance? I always have plenty of credit left after my 30 days when I need to recharge and I'd like to give it to someone else. Does the other person have to be with the same phone company? My daughter K and I were both with Vodaphone for our mobiles, but she's with Telstra now.

Lord Sedgwick said...

river. I'm with prepaid Vodafone ... and no, I'm not begging for a few credits for an old Digger.

You don't have to recharge every 30 days if (when you recharge next time) you change to the '365' plan.

Off course you might have other reasons to stay with your current plan, but '365' works for parsimonious moi.

Ann ODyne said...

over at A LAN DOWNUNDER, F.X.Holden has a post about beating the mobile phones at their own game. I dunno what his URL is sorry.

R.H. said...

River, I apologise for that. As with most of my comments it wasn't intended to be personal.

River said...

r.h. no apology necessary, I knew it wasn't personal. Just thought that perhaps next time you encountered non-genuine niceness maybe you'd give a thought for the person "on the other side". Maybe there's a headache, stuff going on at home, the boss just told her off unnecessarily...All these things and more contribute to less than stellar service.

JahTeh said...

River, I saw that over at Kath's blog and it really nice to meet a fellow blogger and they turn out to be exactly like their blog. I don't include Sedgwick in that because he turned out to be a filthy lecherous ancient reptile with uncommonly large boots. (Gotcha MiLord)
I'm on a 6 month $30 pre-paid with Optus and so is my sister which means free texts and calls to each other.
The cream is Cenovis Osteo-Relief Cream with Glucosomine and I bought it at Safeway.