You’ve all been so lovely, with your messages and notes and emails. I’m more grateful than I can tell you to feel this massive cradle of support all around me. To our surprise and delight, my Godmother continues to stick two fingers up at the prognosis and despite a really bad day on Friday, is once again holding court from her hospital bed and bossing the nurses around.
The way her medication is being administered now means she’s no longer wracked with pain, so we’ve seen glimpses of her famously indomitable spirit over the last couple of days. She despatched me yesterday with a wave of her arm to go get her some of ‘that Ataxia yoghurt’, which she insisted was the only thing she could possibly eat. I’d never heard of it, but I assumed it was some special old lady thing like the luncheon tongue that my mom insists on eating every Sunday, and I was happy to go find it for her.
Ninety minutes and several supermarkets later, and with an increasing sense of desperation at where the actual fuck I might source this wonder food, I managed to speak to the lady who generally helps my Godmother with her shopping and it turns out that Activia yoghurt had been in plentiful supply under my nose all along. As I took the bollocking for writing it down wrong and keeping her waiting, I was chuckling on the inside at this God-given demonstration that despite her failing body, she really is still very much calling the shots.
I’ll tell you what, I thought I’d found the holy grail of dieting yesterday when I was in one of the more upmarket grocery stores looking for the elusive Ataxia yoghurt. I noticed a stand full of seaweed squares, which were being marketed as the ultimate salty snack at just twenty four calories per bag, I was so excited. Healthy, nutritious, virtually fat free…what’s not to love, right?
I didn’t even make it back to the car before I had my nose in the packet. I spat my first mouthful out right there in the car park, I mean they were utterly rancid. I can imagine they tasted like something that had washed up on the beach and died…oh, hang on…
My own eating has been a bit hit and miss. Not the wrong stuff, and not even the wrong quantities but if I tell you that I’d eaten my daily calorie allowance by early afternoon yesterday, it’ll give you a sense of how I’m being pulled towards food as a source of comfort. Not bad food, but still a day’s worth of food squashed into a morning…perhaps I was hoping that the mechanics of eating might act like a balm on my frayed nerves? Old habits really do die hard.
I just toughed it out and coasted through the rest of the day on water with a face like a smacked arse. It seems that my ability to moderate my food intake is a tiny bit compromised by my fragile emotional state, you know? On the other hand, I recognise that it’s happening, and knowledge is power…at least it shouldn’t catch me unawares.
Let’s keep on 🙂
