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Are you eating properly?

I get asked this rather a lot, from which I can only assume I must be looking pretty haggard still! I think the honest answer to the question is “I’m trying to, though it’s not always easy”.

There’s a canteen at work, and I try to have a cooked meal there most weekdays – except if I have a lunchtime meeting, which happens all too often, when I just grab a sandwich. At least if I’ve eaten a reasonable meal during the day, it doesn’t matter so much if I don’t feel like cooking in the evening.

Evenings are more difficult – not least because Christopher used to do almost all the cooking in our household. When he was taken ill, I had to learn fast how to cook, and I’m still climbing up that learning curve. We always enjoyed good food, and I don’t want my standard of eating to drop too far, but now it’s entirely up to me…. I’ve been trying to cook at least one new (to me) recipe each week to try to expand my repertoire. I’ve found that if I’m spending an hour in the evening trying to follow a recipe, that’s an hour when I’m not sitting on my backside moping and feeling sorry for myself, so that’s got to be a good thing.

Two recipe books I’ve found to be very good (and almost foolproof) are Leith’s Cooking for One or Two and Delia Smith’s One is Fun – if you can get past the excessively patronising title (I do not find that one is much fun at all at the moment!). I suspect that my technique is not favoured by the experts – indeed I could often swear that I can hear Christopher’s voice saying in his very exasperated tone “I really must teach you how to chop an onion!”, but it’s effective (if slow) and gets the job done.

So here, on a positive note, is the recipe for my mother’s foolproof slow-roast lamb mini-joint, a dish I’ve recently learnt how to cook.

Preheat oven to 190C. Place a sheet of tinfoil in a small roasting dish. Make a bed of rosemary sprigs (if using the ones taking over the garden, shake off the inch of snow first). Put a boneless lamb mini leg joint on the rosemary. Season with salt & pepper. Put another sheet of tinfoil over the top, and scrunch the edges loosely together to make a parcel. Shove in the oven, and immediately turn it down to 170C.   Leave for three hours minimum, while the aroma of roasting lamb and rosemary fills the house. It’s absolutely delicious.

19 12 2010 Gillian recipe Comments (8) Permalink

One year ago today

It was exactly a year ago today that we learned that Christopher had oesophageal cancer, and not acid reflux or a stomach ulcer after all.

I was trying to write my Christmas cards over the weekend, and it made me reflect on all that has happened in the past year: an urgent operation to stent his bile duct, five months of chemotherapy, three bouts of radiotherapy, many urgent dashes to Cheltenham hospital, then the hospice, funeral, probate and dealing with the estate. And all that with me simultaneously trying to do my best to perform a pretty challenging job. It wasn’t all doom and gloom – we did have some good times on the way, most notably a thoroughly enjoyable holiday in Wales. But overall it’s not been a  good year by any stretch of the imagination.

Unsurprisingly, I found writing the Christmas cards to be extremely difficult. Even signing them “Gillian” rather than “Gillian and Chris” was very unpleasant. I managed to get through about half my list, then decided I simply couldn’t cope with writing any more. So if you would normally expect to get a Christmas card from us and you don’t this year, I’m sure you’ll understand. I’m not deliberately ignoring you or being unfriendly – it’s just that writing Christmas cards is too difficult at the moment.

I’ve really valued the support that all our friends (both on-line and in the real world) have so generously offered us both over the course of the year. That has been one of the positive things about this year. You probably don’t realise how much you’ve helped us both simply by reading and commenting on this blog, let alone the generous offers we’ve had from those of you who live close enough to offer practical help and support.

So this is wishing you all a very happy Christmas, and let’s hope that 2011 will be an improvement over 2010.

14 12 2010 Gillian cancer Comments (5) Permalink

Two strong men, please, and a ladder

It’s been well below freezing for most of the last two weeks. I escaped the worst of the snow, but there has been about an inch and a half here, which then froze completely solid. I managed to keep the sloping part of the drive fairly clear using a snow shovel and rock salt, but the flat paved bit has been like an ice rink. The car passenger door froze shut for three days, and on one morning this week the porch door also froze shut. I had to go out through the garage and kick it open! What a good job all the neighbours know me, as it must otherwise have looked very suspicious!

The garden has been completely buried under the snow and ice, but then the thaw came and with it I was able to see what damage had been done. I have a terraced garden, with retaining walls made of concrete blocks holding each of the terraces in place. I looked out of the kitchen window to find that the ground heave caused by the soil freezing and melting had displaced some of the retaining blocks. I was looking out onto a wall of unsupported earth, and a stretch of the retaining wall was lying in a heap on the ground. That was pretty worrying – the thaw was continuing at pace, and I really didn’t want the garden to end up in my kitchen!  I put an urgent call in to a local garden maintenance company, asking them to send around two strong men and a ladder to put the blocks back before things got any worse. A year ago I wouldn’t have even imagined that one could phone up and request such a thing, but now I do it almost without a blink. I bet Chris would have a wry smile though……

11 12 2010 Gillian status Comments (1) Permalink

Some practical coping strategies

I wrote earlier about the canonical text on bereavement, and how I thoroughly disagree with the underlying thesis, at least as applied to my own situation. I don’t think that trying to find some Grand Unified Theory of Grief is helpful. I have however come up with an empirical hotch-potch of practical strategies which I find help me cope with the stress I’ve been going through this year, and which could be useful in other contexts too.

  • When it all gets too much, shouting or howling at the top of my voice is surprisingly cathartic. It’s a good job this is a detached house, as I used to be a cox and can project my voice a long way if I choose. Any nearer neighbours would have called the police by now……
  • Teeth-grinding (bruxism) is a particular problem I have when I’m stressed. Unfortunately, it’s entirely subconscious, and mostly occurs when I’m asleep. If left untreated it leads to stinking headaches and (worst case scenario) fractured teeth. My dentist has sorted me out with a dental splint to wear at night. It doesn’t stop me clenching my jaw tight, but it does distribute the pressure over all my teeth, limiting the damage. And given that I am wearing through the plastic bite-guard, I’d much rather be damaging that than my teeth.
  • Regular massages really help relieve the knots and tensions in my back, shoulders and neck. I find it really helpful in reducing the likelihood of a regular tension headache triggering a migraine. I’m trying to have a massage every fortnight, just to keep my back, neck and shoulders moderately supple and relaxed. Otherwise I find that my shoulders are permanently up somewhere around my ears and I get an unshiftable tension headache.
  • Accepting that I get very tired with little provocation. If that means coming home from work, having a cup of tea and going straight to bed for an hour or two before dinner, then so be it. Oddly, that mostly seems to happen on a Thursday. (Shades of Arthur Dent in a Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy? He never could get the hang of Thursdays…)
  • And if all else fails…….Chocolate. I keep a large bar of Cadbury’s Whole Nut in the larder, and make sure I never run out!
10 12 2010 Gillian cancer Comments (1) Permalink

The saga of the pension

Chris had been a member of the company pension scheme since he first started work for them about 18 years ago. It’s quite a small scheme, as it only contains those of us who were working for the company when it was privatised some ten years ago – at which point the rather good final salary scheme that we were both on was promptly closed to new employees. So there are only a few thousand people in the scheme, and a relatively small number of active pensioners. Hence you might think it would be fairly straight-forward to administer.

I first phoned the pension provider the week after Chris died, to stake my claim to his pension. I was a bit confused that the various bits of paperwork I had about the pension had two different addresses on them – so I asked which I should use to send them a copy of the Death Certificate. Neither, it turned out; they had moved to a third address but hadn’t updated their headed notepaper! Although they said they had mail-forwarding arrangements, I was very pleased I’d checked as it would at best have led to a delay.

The first set of paperwork they sent me to fill in was missing one of the enclosures, which they said was “vital” for processing my application. So I had to phone them to chase it. After that, it seemed to go smoothly for a while and the widow’s pension is indeed being paid monthly into my bank account. It’s not a lot, but enough to pay for a cleaner and one good holiday a year, so will considerably improve my quality of life.

However, they also said that I “might be due a lump sum” at the trustee’s discretion. That seems to be a legal thing to keep any lump sum outside the estate for inheritance tax purposes. There was also the mystery of what had happened to Christopher’s Additional Voluntary Contributions, where he had put a lump sum from his redundancy payment directly into the pension, not knowing at that point that he was terminally ill. I phoned several times and also wrote to them asking what was happening, but just kept getting holding responses saying that the trustees were “looking into it”. Not very comforting! Perhaps the trustees don’t actually meet all that often?

They did eventually pay out the lump sum and AVC  at the end of last month, but forgot to tell me about it! The first thing I knew was when I went to get some cash out of the cashpoint and found there was more in my account than I was expecting. I had to phone them up and say “This isn’t a complaint – but have you just paid me some money direct into my account?”  It would have been nice to have received a letter first – if only to stop me worrying that someone unauthorised was laundering money through my account……

The latest installment of the saga happened today. I’ve just had a letter of apology from them for sending out a “Pensions Focus” newsletter last month addressed to Chris! If anyone should have known he was dead, it was them! I did think at the time that it was decidedly obtuse of them, and that people less robust than me might have got very upset. As it was, I merely found it amusing – the latest in a long line of sub-optimal communications from them.

Overall, I think their heart is in the right place, and I have absolutely no complaints about the results. But I do think that maybe their procedures could do with tightening up considerably.

07 12 2010 Gillian cancer Comments (4) Permalink

One shelf at a time

One of the things I’ve needed to do is to sort out and dispose of Christopher’s clothes. That’s a really tough job, so I’ve been taking it slowly and doing it just one shelf/drawer at a time. I’ve been sorting the clothes into a number of categories, each of which I’m dealing with separately:

  1. Clothes in “nearly new” and eminently resellable condition – such as his suit & jackets, a new batch of polo shirts which he bought earlier this year, his “smart” shirts etc.  I’ve donated all of those to my local Oxfam. They do a “tag a bag” scheme, whereby the donor signs up for GiftAid and is given a sheet of stickers with a unique identifying number on them. That enables Oxfam to claim back tax on the amount the clothes raise, at no extra effort for me. They seem to have it well-calibrated too – the sheet has twelve stickers on it, and so far I’ve donated ten bags full of clothes with probably another one or two yet to go.
  2. Clothes with a lot of wear left in them, but a bit frayed around the edges or otherwise not really resellable, including his warm but somewhat worn winter coats and some sturdy shoes. I’ve given those to two homeless shelters (one in Worcester and one in London) to hand out to those who need them.
  3. Underwear, plus the sweaters with large holes in the elbows and the really shabby T-shirts etc that were fit only for gardening in (not that he ever did…..). I recycled all of those at the “clothes bin” at the tip. Some of his shoes went the same way.
  4. Clothes that I closely associate with Christopher, such as the brown microfibre jacket that he loved, and the sweaters I knitted him over the years. I haven’t decided what to do with those. Malvern is such a small place that if I gave them to a local charity shop I can bet that I’d later walk slap bang into someone in town wearing “his” clothes. And I don’t think I could bear that. So for now I’m keeping them.
04 12 2010 Gillian cancer Comments Off on One shelf at a time Permalink

Three wheels on my wagon……

Driving home on Friday night, going up the hill in the dark, I suddenly heard a very loud and scary bang. Funnily enough, I could better relate the so-called “five stages of grief” to my thought processes then, than I can to the bigger things going on in my life.

  1. denial – it was only a loud and scary bang. Everything will be fine.
  2. anger – I bet I hit something that fell off that landrover which has just pulled to the side ahead of me. How dare he be so careless!
  3. bargaining – come on little car, we’re less than half a mile from the house. Please get me home and I promise that I’ll phone the garage straight away to get you fixed
  4. depression –  It’s a flat tyre. That will be expensive. Haven’t I got enough to deal with, without a puncture too?
  5. acceptance – no one was hurt. It won’t be that much money and I can afford it.  I got the car home safely and the garage will be able to sort it out on Monday.

Some minis have run-flat tyres, but mine doesn’t – instead there is a space-saving spare. I’ve never changed a wheel before (that was always Christopher’s job) so I thought I’d better ask for some help/tuition.  So I phoned my neighbour, Maggie, and said that I needed a husband – could I please borrow hers for an hour on Saturday morning?! Tim was really helpful, and showed me how to change the wheel – though I am not confident that I would actually have the strength needed to loosen the nuts if I ever had to do it on my own. But he also pointed out the damage that I’d done to the wheel. I’d clearly hit something metal in the road – possibly a bit of angle iron or similar – and had bent the wheel rim so badly that it had deflated the tyre. It wasn’t going to be a simple case of replacing the tyre; I’d need a whole new wheel.

The car and I limped to the garage on Monday morning on the space-saving spare, and the handling felt very different. However, it snowed overnight and the spare wheel which the garage ordered for me on Saturday morning still (as of Tuesday afternoon) hasn’t arrived. It’s on a lorry somewhere that has been delayed by all the snow. And there is no way that I’m going to drive the car back home up the steep hill through the snow on three good wheels and one skimpy one, so the mini is staying at the garage until the wheel arrives. I do hope that’s tomorrow, but more snow is forecast for overnight, so I’m not holding my breath.

30 11 2010 Gillian status Comments (1) Permalink

The five stages of grieving?

I’ve been lent a book by Kubler-Ross and Kessler called “On Grief and Grieving” which is apparently one of the standard texts in Bereavement Counselling. Their basic thesis is that there are five stages of grief

  1. Denial
  2. Anger
  3. Bargaining
  4. Depression
  5. Acceptance

Apparently people are expected to go through all five stages of grief so that they can come out the other side. Although there is small print saying basically “your mileage may vary”, the whole book reads to me as though it is trying to superimpose a standard pattern on what to me is a very individual situation.

I have to say that I do not recognise much of their canonical pattern in my own situation. I’m not in denial, am not angry at the situation and certainly am not trying to bargain with fate. I know perfectly well what has happened, that no one is to blame, and that it’s just one of those things that happen all too often.  Depression however I do recognise – I’ve been there since Chris was diagnosed two days before Christmas last year and still am. I don’t agree with the word “Acceptance” either for the final stage. “Accommodation” better fits what I aspire to – finding a way of living without him without forgetting what we meant to eachother.

I’ve always been wary of “one size fits all” self-help books, and reading this one hasn’t changed my opinion of the genre. I think I’ll just muddle on as best I can without trying to conform my feelings to some external regimented pattern.

26 11 2010 Gillian cancer
invective Comments (4) Permalink

A murder mystery plot…..

Imagine the following scenario:

Someone who is highly allergic to feathers books a short break at a comfortable but idiosyncratic hotel, making sure to specify “no feather pillows or bedding” on the booking. On arrival they check the pillow and duvet. Hmmm, seem to be microfibre. That’s ok. Off they go to a birthday dinner at the hotel where rather too much pink champagne is drunk. (Actually, scrub that last detail. I don’t think one can have too much pink champagne!) Rather late that night they collapse into bed, only to find that they were wrong about the pillows – they’re goose-down not microfibre. Cue massive allergic reaction leading to major asthma attack. On descending to the hotel reception, unable to breathe and with a horrible rasping cough, it’s clear that the receptionists have clocked off for the evening and there’s no sign of the night porter. Fortunately the maitre d’ is still around, as the party is still in full swing. He and a junior waiter raid the housekeeper’s store to find some synthetic pillows and clean pillowcases, and promise to tell Housekeeping of the near miss the next morning.

After copious quantities of prescription medicine and several hours of sleepless wheezing, disaster is averted. But after a very pleasant breakfast the next morning, the victim goes back to their bedroom to find the chambermaid had made up the bed afresh – with more feather pillows! To paraphrase Lady Bracknell, once might be an unfortunate accident, but twice looks suspiciously like attempted murder! I’m sure that Agatha Christie could pad that basic outline out into a full novel – probably starring Miss Marple as another hotel guest.

But apart from the unfortunate (and very unpleasant) incidents with the bedding, I thoroughly enjoyed myself on a short break in Sussex last week for my sister’s birthday. The chambermaid, however, did not get a tip!

23 11 2010 Gillian Day out Comments (3) Permalink

Passing on the family heirlooms

Chris didn’t come from the sort of family who had £43M Chinese vases sitting on the bookcase, but he did have a few things belonging to his grandmothers which he strongly believed should be kept in the family. Indeed, he explicitly left them to his sister in his Will. So today I met up with Sophie and her husband for lunch, and handed them over. There was a carriage clock which had originally belonged to their paternal grandmother, and two paintings which their other grandmother had made, one being of their mother Sally as a teenager. Christopher and Sophie had very few mementos of their mother, who died before we got married, so I think Sophie was particularly touched to be left that.

I feel very pleased that I’ve been able to deal with that bequest, and I know that the pictures have gone to a good home where they belong and will be cherished. But I do have a couple of blank spaces on the wall now which I shall want to fill, so I think I might make a trip to my local art shop come picture framers at the weekend to choose something suitable…..

21 11 2010 Gillian cancer Comments Off on Passing on the family heirlooms Permalink