It’s that tough pointy end of the year again and I’m in a battle of Tetris-Like levels with my fridge and only me to eat it.
A conversation with my cousin on my birthday at the end of October instilled in me, I would be very happy to be able to sleep for the whole week of Christmas, eat and catch up on TV.
Here’s to staying home alone, where I don’t lose my independence and I already know I’m going to be spending time alone. Its weirdly better than being around family, but still being all alone.
I might even be able to talk a carer into making me a ham and cheese toasties and putting it on my bedside table.
Here’s to an easier 2024 and for December not to fly around so quickly. So say all of us.
Once upon a time pre-treatment, I was given some very handy advice for when seeing specialist doctors.
I was told “take a book!”
I was actually going to see her neurosurgeon. So, she knew I’d be waiting. Reading materials in hospital waiting rooms my mum and I would compete as to who had the oldest magazine. Best game ever.
Meanwhile, fifteen years on and I’m still waiting in the waiting rooms and I’ve next levelled and packed my iPad.
Only thing is, I’m one-handed and have half the eyesight. I cannot balance my bag, keep-cup (medicine) walking stick, let alone iPad on top of all those things. So, here I am taping out a blog post on to my phone and I’m now feeling weirdly seedy, Super.
If you recall? I gave the advice early on, any doctor you have to wait for is a doctor worth seeing.
Still true. Next time? Not bringing my iPad. Too heavy.
So, as per usual I’ve had a few new carers recently. One has picked up my Friday shift, so I’ve got a new Girl Friday.
We got along instantly like a house on fire. She is close to my age which is rare and good to have some variety for sure. She has a long red plait hanging over her shoulder with petite features making me want to refer to her as Elsa from Frozen and I haven’t even seen it.
All was well, in my first 8.5-hour shift with her when we got on the topic of football. We were doing so well. Our teams were playing each other that night and she’s a Magpie’s supporter, that’s the team mascot for Collingwood. It was nice knowing you.
Over for the last weeks of the season I made several early morning texts to her, the morning after, along the lines of “I’m your face!” When Carlton beat her team. It’s OK, I knew she could take it. The game was on.
I suggested if our teams faced each other on grand final day and her team won I would get a tattoo of a Magpie on my butt! (it would be my first) and tiny. I suggested if the Blues, (yes, the Carlton mascot) won she had to get a Huge Blues tattoo across her upper chest on the left, it’s fine. She laughed. Stating “not a huge one?”
I continued to mention I would get started designing our tattoo’s. Could have been a limited release. Alas, no tattoos were undertaken. That’s the right term.
Feeling like I’m behind on so many things right now, including blogging. It just seems I can’t catch up. There are often layers of red tape and bureaucracy to wade through to maintain life as I know it now. Let alone try to expect more from life like Normal people take for granted.
Yes, I know. It’s going to be a rough few posts so strap in. It’s that time of year again (October) where I try to keep my head down and avoid getting stabbed in my heart and soul any more than normal. I just can’t take it. This time of year is traditionally hard because it’s my birthday at the end of the month and it’s always shit.
It’s my belief a person’s birthday is special. It’s the one day of the year that they are special, celebrated. I don’t mean fireworks but people showing they give a flying tutti fruitti.
It shouldn’t surprise anybody that I’m single. What!? How? You seem like a reasonable and decent human. Don’t worry, it’s the million-dollar question even my google mini can’t answer. Today’s post will not be about that.
My favourite question of google is “Where’s my husband!” I just want you to know google does not have a sense of humour. She responds with enquiring if “He” had an appointment, seriously.
So, I digress, normally, my family would arrange a Ladies Lunch for the day of my birthday. Often not contacting me until the week before to lock in a location and getting family further away to be included. I am roughly in the middle of my two siblings and their respective partners and my mum. So, travel for everyone but myself was required.
It’s frustrating that these days is considered so late as if I don’t have an offer from family, it’s too late to find a friend to do hangs with so I’m not alone. All my friends are busy. Often away on weekends. Which is fair. They are allowed, it’s just shit being alone on your birthday, to be continued.
So, you might ask yourself, how hard is it to get as jab of tramadol? When you really need it. First, I do have an injectable supply at home. No syringe or ability to jab myself but a start. A nurse can come to my home and inject me, but I’ve not had time to get the paperwork in place to have my MEPACS be able to do that and when I contact them, they don’t have a Nurse on shift.
Isn’t that their one job?
I, of course rang my GP Medical Clinic first and they had no appointments free. I explained my dilemma and they never got back to me. My acupuncturist who is also a GP was happy to stab me as per usual, but not with Tramadol. I’m not getting out of bed, showered and dressed just to go sleep in one of his rooms with needles in me. It was the first thing I had cancelled that day.
One of my newer very cheeky carers inquired as to my wellbeing. I told her it would be easier to get laid than get a jab of Tramadol, she told me that would have sorted the migraine. I reminded her getting laid did not actually equate to an orgasm that might solve the migraine. She reluctantly allowed me to have that.
Turns out it’s also easier for me to beat my carers with my wit than get a jab of Tramadol.
About seven years ago, a regular Monday carer, let’s call her Monday. Turned up to work on Monday after her team the Bulldogs had won the Grand Final on the Saturday. She stood at the kitchen sink preparing herself to do the dishes, I had reason to ask if she was still hungover? She replied she was still “Dusty!”
This is not what the kids are calling hungover these days. Monday’s tattoo was on her upper back just below her neck where she had gotten a Bulldog tattoo. She already had tattoo’s so not a stretch.
I used to have a younger (25-year-old) carer that was a Richmond supporter. She would tell me all about the start of the season and how swell her team was expected to go and she and her family would travel to the Punt Road, Richmond Oval to watch them practice. I would have to remind her I didn’t need to know. Lord love her.
Her team won the Premiership, I think one year I had her and we were lucky enough to run into my people. I like my people to meet my people. I mention previous carers all the time. They are so much a part of my life when their lives take them away from me the stories, I share keep them present.
You may have been around long enough to read me express my thoughts on Aussie Rules Football and that is, I have little interest in it, except to say at the end of the season I want Carlton to not be on the bottom of the ladder, Collingwood not to be on the top. And for the Cup (the trophy if you like) to stay in Victoria or interstate.
Until 1990, it was known as VFL, and all teams resided in Victoria. Yes, I just asked Google! And then after teams started to merge with others in other states around Australia. So, with the exception of my last preference that the Cup remain in Victoria I definitely would prefer Collingwood doesn’t win.
Carlton, a very common team to be followed by Italians was not doing well until mid-year and suddenly, they were in with a chance.
I honestly thought my father might have had something to do with this from, you know, up there. What! It could happen and the weeks of the Semi-Final’s, they fluffed it. I didn’t watch it at all but again, consult my carers and google for the long and short answers. I love that my carers do watch it and have an interest.
So, if you read my last post, you would have caught their line that the “Most Hated Team” won. I know people that love them. However, they have had the culture of being “One-Eyed!” And racist and homophobic, etc, etc. need I say more?
Apparently, after the win this year Smith Street Collingwood was one big party. A celebration. Locals I know in that area lost their voices and were very hungover the next day. It wasn’t me hungover so I’m with it.
It’s also just recently been the anniversary of my father’s passing. I know, it’s been a year already. A friend said she would have said six months. But a year. Exactly.
And it’s shit to be sad about the likelihood of being alone on my birthday, sad my father’s passing when there is a war in Ukraine. Still.
The most hated football team in Australian Rules Football win the grand final this year and the No-res, won the referendum the last weekend in Australia which was to finally recognise the First Nations people in our Constitution. It’s a fucking travesty. We might be the last country to do this.
Now I feel I need to unpack each of these things. And FUCK! ISRAEL! think I can unpack that or Ukraine to be honest. Humans are just awful right.
Part of October sucks. It’s not because it’s my birthday and I’m getting older. Not at all, if you think in simple terms, you get older or you die. You choose. Exactly, so I’m perfectly OK with being 51 this year.
It’s the fact that family don’t get on board to see I might need them around. If you have followed me for a while, you might recall I had a baby sister born on my 8th birthday? Yeah, best birthday present ever. However, we only shared one birthday together where we were both sick. I’ve one photo of us during the day with mum at the dining table tasting the ice cream cake mum had made and when my baby sister, let’s call her three. When three was only fifteen months and a week old and she was gone.
My aunt said to me last November at a family gathering. No idea how this came up, but my aunt said Three’s funeral to date was still the saddest funeral ever. I had been 8 years old changing nappies and getting up at night because when she got big enough for a cot, the cot outgrew my parents’ bedroom at the front of the house and she took up residence in my room. If she woke during the night and my mum, let’s face it dad isn’t the first parent to jump out of bed in the middle of the night, is he? I would get Three up and carry her towards my parents’ bedroom often intercepted by mum on the way. None of this is wrong, it’s just I think it only occurred to me in more recent years helping me celebrate my birthday means we are not celebrating Three’s birthday. This year, Three would be 43. That’s sobering isn’t it!? It’s a lifetime but it’s something one doesn’t forget.
Some years ago, two of my family members chose to call me at 11.55pm, chanting “it still counts!” Clearly, oblivious I’d been through every emotional roller coaster all day feeling no one gave a fuck. I even finally had my dad trained to call me on my birthday. You heard me, I had to “train” him.
Yeah, I offer a certificate 2 in how to get your parent/significant other to remember to call you on your actual birthday. It’s a Cert 2? I think it would be.
For years, I’d call my father on his birthday every year, he’d be a little embarrassed even telling me it didn’t mean anything and I’d remind him it was HIS Special Day and it should mean something. It was always a pity I couldn’t be there in person to do something nice for him. I regret now, I never sent him a card even. He would have lived off that forever if I had done that. He would have had it on display forever. My mum I would send a card too because obviously I love her too and there would actually be hell to pay if I didn’t. In more recent years with the going to hell that has become of my handwriting, I’d outsource my mum’s card to be written by one of my slaves, OK, my lovely assists, my carers, my mum wasn’t thrilled about that either, you would think she would appreciate not needing a translator. No.
So, sadly the shit birthday is the start of thinking what the plan is for Christmas and where I will be and who I will be with? Also, how accessible it will be and how much time I spend there alone despite being under the same roof as actual family. If I’m not in my apartment, who will love and feed Mika, who will water my plants? One of those cannot be revived, but they are all important.
I had decided to take a year off in what would have been my father’s last Christmas thinking I’d go spend the following year with him and I have to regret about that too, because he didn’t make it. I had gone home for Christmas the year my father had had his heart attack in the early era of the Plague. (You are all aware this is my term, for Covid 19?) and all my carers asked him polite questions “How are you? How long have you lived here? Is it you and your wife?” And oh my God! So dramatic, I could just feel how sad he was. It was overwhelming, my father was horrified by learning his heart had stopped on the table, I wasn’t belittling his trauma however, I kept needing to remind him the surgeons had warned him this can happen. I reminded him the surgeons hadn’t spent however many hours getting his heart and arteries in peak for him to die on the table. I also explained to him when they move you from the surgery trolley, they put a timber board under you by tilting your body up, sliding the board under you then pulling you on the timber to another trolley that you stay on when they relocate you to recovery and then even up to the ward. Yes, I know this because I was conscious when this happened with me. I was alert, needing to pee and very unhappy, I had iodine floating around my arteries in my brain that made my blood pressure drop and nurses start panicking I might expire so they panicked, running around the room. I had wanted to remind them “I’m awake you know? And I can see you! Just calm down” I guess I need to context that now too?
The Christmas I spent alone, my older sister had attempted to be supportive by telling me I could make the decision to be where I would be happiest, even if that meant home alone. I later learnt she had been in my neighbourhood spending Christmas with a friend, more socially isolated than I am, but that it hadn’t occurred to even stop in for a cup of tea, was brutal.
So, birthdays suck and generally so does Christmas. So, alas my heart and soul is death.
Hell onWheels/Life One Handed 