Chapter 570 - Ask Not For Whom the Bell Tolls

 In my last post I forgot to mention that on Friday 28th August she suffered what in hindsight I conclude was a food allergy. We have eaten many servings of Bird's Eye "Steam Fresh" frozen fish meals together with full or half servings of Bird's Eye frozen vegetables of various types. We both find such meals flavoursome and easy to eat, especially on her part. On the night in question we both had parsley and citrus sauce frozen fish cutlets and also frozen fried rice, both of which we had enjoyed at other times. On this occasion though, at 1730, after a couple of hiccups her mouth produced a lot of thick saliva, was unable to breathe deeply and became distressed. She ate no more of the meal. She was only able to raise 1 ball on her 3 ball "breathing machine" as we call it. At 1745 I gave her some icecream, thinking this may lessen the thick gooey strands of saliva, but it did not, maybe worsened the saliva. She mentioned that her head was tingling. So at 1750 I gave her some sips of warm water which seemed to help. At 1800 she was able to raise 2 balls in the breathing machine and then she ate the small portion of ice cream. At that point the evening Carer arrived to help put her to bed. We inspected the Bird's Eye packages for mention of MSG which years ago was suspected of upsetting her conventional PD meds (at that time); there were no words or numbers suggestive of MSG on either the fish or the fried rice packages. Since then she has eaten a differently flavoured but similar frozen fish but not the fried rice. I have another of the same flavour of fish to give her as a test but hesitate to do so. I will avoid buying the fried rice again.

The week has been quiet. To satisfy her need to scratch at surfaces I found a short metal peg with which she is able to scrape the sand and moss between the pavers in our rear patio. She has shredded some wool again and has tried to knit a couple of rows. Then she came upon some patchworked squares based on the "flying geese" design (I think that's the name given to the V shaped design) which must have been the last serious attempt she made in such work. On finding a square where her stitching had missed the edge of a segment she began to pull the whole square apart in order to reassemble it. Seemingly errors were found in other squares so these were pulled apart as well; some scissor snipping and some simply tugging with fingers. I was saddened seeing her do it. Then while trying to hang up some clothes (I do the small items leaving her to place her blouses and slacks on hangers) she found that the elastic strap had become partially detached from the stretchy fabric of a sort of "under blouse" thingy she proceeded to just cut the strap away even though I attempted to explain what needed to be done in way of repair. I would have had difficulty with the repair and the original thread was elastic as well. Now on a beautiful Sunday morning she is hanging her clothes again, although she tends to be distracted into sorting and re-positioning what is already hanging, ignoring that to be hanged laying in the clothes basket.

An unexpected phone call yesterday from a nephew of the woman who had done our fortnightly house cleaning for probably the last 12 years. He said she had died, possibly last Tuesday some hours after she was at our place. She had told me due to a heart condition she had to give up work but was prepared to continue at our place until we found someone new; I said that wasn't necessary and that she needn't continue on Tuesday but she wanted to.

If she is inclined, we may go out to enjoy some take-away in the sun shine; she may even consent to a wheel chair walk along the river path.