The same thing used to happen for the first few days of going on, or increasing, her pain patches, as the body is simply not used to it, and so like a lot of the drugs she takes, it always seems to always be a case of weighing up the pros and cons (side effects) of each of them. I put an anti-itch lotion (Animine lotion, with 1% menthol added by the chemist – an old recipe that Dad used to have made up for himself) on her back every night to ease an itchiness which we presume is a side effect of one of the drugs. It always gets worse whenever she goes onto a course of antibiotics for bladder infections, or the like, which happens from time to time.
Still, her suffering is a lot less than when I first came up here, when she had painful ulcers on her remaining foot and was on pain patches to deal with that, and she still has plenty to live for with an abundance of love of friends and family in her world, and lots of interesting conversations/topics on the ABC radio. She does need to rest for a lot of the time, but refuses to have a TV in her bedroom, and she still enjoys getting her hair washed and set at her hairdressers most Wednesday mornings.
Whenever I take her to the doctors for a warfarin level blood test, she also enjoys going for a coffee at the local coffee shop after it, and then to check out if Millers (a dress shop next door to the coffee shop) have any new items of clothing she might like. She even buys some occasionally. Ok, now on to some of the interesting things in our world since the last update. One was a visit by one of Mum's old (yes, old as in age, but also in terms of length of time they have been friends LOL!) friends, Pauline Gilbey (below, with Mum) the Saturday before last (22nd May).
On the afternoon of the same day, we went out to the farm (for a few hours anyway) for a "Boob's Off" party. My brother Phil's wife Shellie goes into hospital tomorrow (2nd June) for an operation to have her second breast removed after the first was removed last year due to breast cancer, and this party was one of the ways she is dealing with the loss . . . sort of looking it square in the eye, not hiding the problem away somewhere, and making as light of the situation as possible. As you can see (below) she had a little help with this . . .
There was even a beautifully made & iced cake made for the occasion . . .
The following day (Sunday 23rd), I took Mum out to the 80th birthday party of another of her friends Lorna Jackson, who is the wife of an old (as in from a long time ago) boyfriend of hers, George. Mum is the one in the wheelchair on the right in the pic below, and you can just see George over to the left reading out the tribute he had written for Lorna to celebrate her birthday . . .
Speaking of birthdays, Shellie had hers last Friday (28th May) and Mum and I took her, and her mum Alison, and her friend Paula, and her son Harley, and DJ, Harley's friend, to a birthday lunch at the International Club the following day. Phil was working and couldn't make it, but everyone seemed to enjoy the food and the company.
And now finally . . . I get to the morning rainbows. Mum's room gets sunlight in the morning, so I have hung my faceted crystal ball in there near the dooray to catch the sunlight as it streams in in the morning and do what it does best - refract it into the room and create little rainbows all over the walls and ceiling. I took a quick video of them one morning, and here it is . . .
And one last thing . . . for those who did not see the winner of the European Song Contest, it's Lena, representing Germany, with "Satellite". It's a bit of a crazy/quirky love song, but this 19 year old German girl sings in English and has the weirdest accent. It's kinda cute, and probably was that "X" factor that resulted in her winning the competition. Enjoy . . . and blessings to all . . .
