Cerebral Soup - The Archives

Playing Nurse

playing nurse

Actually I tell a fib. It hasn't been fun and games at all. I realized this evening what it means to be looking after someone who isn't 100% mobile. Suddenly my workload has increased by 1.5.

The Boy is not stable yet - and obviously still recovering from his aches - which means that I have have to pick up the slack in regards to all the household chores, cooking, shopping and so on. Plus that is all increased because he's kicking sitting around here instead of being at work, so mess production goes into overdrive.

Then is the obvious - the Broken Boy can't easily move around. He's not used to crutches and has been applying special wraps to try and relieve those muscles. Which means he's aching below and above. So it's a case of dropping everything to play fetch and help. Which is not doing wonders for my concentration span either.

Yes I have thought about sticking velcro tabs to basic essentials and then just keeping them attached to him.

Also the number of phone calls to both the apartment and his keitai are driving me to distraction. There are so many things to sort out though I just have to put up with it. Although I might suggest to JMum that seeing as he can't run to answer the phone and I might be too busy to do so immediately she may not want to keep ringing the different phones until one of us picks up one of them.

I do feel mean about vocalizing this - just tired and cranky. Of course I wouldn't leave him to fend for himself. He feels bad about it too - to the stage where instead of calling out for help he tried to do something himself and ended up falling over, and taking the glass table and all the objects on it (including a glass full of ice coffee) down with him. So instead of a 5 second dash, it turned into 40 minutes of re-settling him and making sure he was OK, cleaning, fixing the table where the stand had bent and rearranging everything to prevent it happening again.

So it's frustrating and tiring for both of us. But I'm going to try and look at the positives.

1) It could have been so much worse
2) It's not forever - maybe 6 weeks to 2 months, and he should be more mobile as time goes on
3) Lots more exercise
4) Good training should we ever have kids

Already though I can feel that tight knot in my stomach getting worse from the extra layers of stress. And the extra shopping I'm needing to carry back is aggravating my own not fully healed injuries. And did I mention the tiredness and crankiness (and the whinging....)?

There is a word in Japanese - "shogunai", which pretty much means "well that's just the way it is". There has been much uttering of this word from both of us. I'm sure we'll both be needing to vent now and then to relieve some of the tension, but for now it's all just shogunai.

Mind you with all this nurturing and caring I'm doing, you'd better keep a close eye on me. If I start wearing aprons, baking cookies and thinking headbands look sexy - please just shoot me ok?

Posted by mjd-s on August 22, 2006 11:51 PM