It’s time to stop annoying my children.

A few things have happened this last week or so that have conspired to make me stand back and realise that it is time I stopped annoying my children. (Well, perhaps not completely…but…)

The first two things that happened were my oldest daughter went to stay with a friend for a couple of days and a friend of mine was writing an essay on the subject of “Loss” as part of her NCT training.

Iona, going away for a couple of days in no way bothered me at all. As a mother, knowing where my daughter is/was I was relaxed. It didn’t occur to me that the same wasn’t true of her.  Meanwhile my friend’s battle with her personal fears about losing a child, or anyone she loves, particularly if it was sudden, as she wrote her essay had also surprised me. I hadn’t known she struggled with this fear. I don’t think this is an irrational fear, a lot of people go through it and often, as in my friend’s case, it is rooted in a soul wrenching event from the past. Taking the opportunity to face it through the essay showed real courage. Most people – especially British people I think- prefer to duck these issues.

So, why did these two things conspire to make me think about my own behaviour?

Well, Iona came home with her friend and I was sitting there unable to breathe. I’d had the day to myself as Heleyna’s godmother had taken the children shopping and brought them home with lots of new clothes. I had decided to use the quiet to have a shower, only I couldn’t make it upstairs, so I gave up.

I had already been to the doc as an emergency a few days before and had been booked in forrenal and cardio bloods in another three days so I got it into my head that I could hold out to then and see a doc when I went for bloods. Yes, I was being utterly irrational. I had allowed my hatred of going to the doctors to over-ride any good sense I might have.

My daughter was cross. She put her foot down and organised me another emergency appt. She called the taxi and asked her friend to stay with the children.

Off we went. Then she had to arrange for my son and daughter-in-law to take over from her friend while she stayed with me at the docs as I was on the nebuliser. To be honest, I felt so ill, but I was squirming with embarrassment that Alex and Anna had to come over for the children. Why? I have no idea. It’s not like they would resent having to help out.

But this is one of the reasons I try and avoid doctors. I have to struggle with a taxi and alarmed drivers who prefer their fares to be breathing properly it seems, and someone has to be there to take care of the younger ones. It might not seem like much; but when you are very ill and have brain=fog to boot, it feels like a massive legistical nightmare.

Iona then said something, that right then, I didn’t really appreciate. She said she knew she would face a problem when she got home because I was just finishing the steroids before she left and they weren’t helping. A while later I realised, that instead of having a great, relaxed time with her friend, she was thinking about what she would face from her recalcitrant sicko mother when she got home.

And then it occured to me that the reason it hits the fan so often is because I keep thinking I don’t need to go to the doctor. And the reason I keep thinking that is because I HATE going, not because I genuinely think I don’t need to go.

There are many and varied reasons why I try to avoid doctors, but this is still no excuse for putting my children through it, just because I can be a stubborn cuss. So my Spring resolution is that I will attend medical appointments when I need to rather than wait so long I have to be shipped in as an emergency. I will do this. Honestly…no, honestly I will.