My Day Is Surreal

Somerset on Saturday -  in the gardens at the NT's Lytes Carey Manor and at Coburns Farm.

The two lovely Community matrons sit at my dining room table and talk me through the intricate maze of applying for Continuing Health Care funding and the options for now and later.  My mind fades in and out. They say Robin won't get it now but maybe in the future. It seems they are going to be the ones co-ordinating  his care - and  mine. I'm so so grateful to them, lightening my burden, and  to our NHS, stretched as it is to breaking point - the first ever junior doctors strike today.

My day is surreal..... as I make the next phone call,  arrangement, appointment, leave messages on answer machines, send emails, chop up avocado and tomatoes for lunch, put out the rubbish, watch Robin on the stairs, blow his nose .....and all the time there is this feeling of time running out.

 I feel numb, can't cry like I usually do.  I'm just carrying on as if everything is the same when everything is totally different.  I don't know how to balance on this shifting ground inside me.  I can't think about stairlifts anymore so I watch TV and eat squares of dark chocolate. Later, on the sofa, I hold Robin's hand, carefully because it's so swollen,  while he watches the News at Ten that he can't understand. And leave the washing up till tomorrow.