Poo and dilemmas

In the spirit of remembering all the stuff I was supposed to diarise but forgot, I'd like to go back a couple of weeks to my Mother's sickness.  Yeah, I know; I've said it before and I'll say it again, as far as being as good a diarist as Sammy Pepys I'm pretty shit.  Should I mention Gaddaffi?  Is that even how you spell Gadaffi?  Hang on, let me Google him......Bollocks - it's GadDafi.  Double D.  Actually, before we go on - have you seen his bleedin' face? Shiit man.  Who's he trying to attract? Y'know, some women go for the powerful despot type and well, powerful despots aren't known for their handsome-ness (is that even a word?) and I guess that if that's the type you go for a few wrinkles aren't going to upset you too much.  Hang on again, when I just Googled him I saw a link to something about his cosmetic surgery.....  Oh laugh, look at this quote..."The Brazilian doctor said he recommended a facelift to Gaddafi, 68, but he refused as he wanted something that would be less noticeable".

So, back to my Mother's illness.  She lives about 4 hours away from me so I'd been monitoring her complaints of having massive shivers and violent shits hoping she had a bit of an upset stomach and would throw it off.  I was getting mixed messages from the family; they all said she was ok but the woman across the road (a nurse) kept calling to say she was at deaths door and no one seemed to care!  Basically, I felt like the worst daughter on the face of the planet so I managed to get some emergency time off work and I headed up there.  She was in a bad way but I did notice she put on an extra croaky/victim voice whenever anyone called or came over.  Hell, we all do it - phoning in sick from work (can't sound too healthy!) or just wanting a bit of sympathy so I figured I'd give her that one.  There are just 2 more things I want to mention about those few days away.

First (and will I ever lose the image burned into my brain?), at one point, my Mother called me upstairs to look at the colour and consistency of her shit.  WHY OH WHY?  I had a split second to decide on what level of good daughterliness I was going for and whether my future inheritance was worth looking at the bowel movements of the woman who brought me into the world.  Damn, yes.  Yes the future inheritance was worth it and I duly stood looking silently down the bowl at the black, brackish water.  What was I expected to say?  It looked like a it should have twigs and the Lindow Man sticking out of it.  I sort of raised my eyebrows, 'ooh'-ed a bit, let out a big sigh and said 'Yeah' weakly.  Weirdly she seemed to accept that and flushed the blackness away.

Ooh, hang on - there was another poo situation.  The nurse from across the road bought a special blue topped container thing especially for shit samples so I could take it to the doctor for testing.  As a loving daughter I agreed and the next day slipped the thing in my bag.  Unfortunately, turns out my Mother had done it the night before and it wasn't fresh enough so the poo was rejected!  I only had to carry the thing around with me all day!  Y'think that's bad?  I kept forgetting to chuck it away - it had a label with my mother's name and date of birth on it so I couldn't really dump THE DUMP anywhere! Had the bugger with me for about 3 days before I finally just put it in with my Mother's household rubbish.  I felt bad as it was a bio hazard.  There was a part of me that wished I could keep it so's I could dramatically throw it in the face of an attacker.  Of course, I doubt any attacker would stand and wait whilst I rummaged through my handbag looking for a container of stale shit. 

The last thing is sort of a confession and it's terrible.  On the first night I arrived my Mother could do little more than sleep.  I went to the veranda and got some food for myself out of the freezer.  Next night I went back and all the ice cubes had melted.  Huh? I made sure I closed the freezer door properly but the next night all the meat felt soft.  SHIIIIT.  I'm vegetarian so I wasn't eating it but hell, was I now going to have to tell a very sick woman I'd cost her hundreds of ££s worth of spoiled meat?  I couldn't do it.  I closed the door again and hoped it would all re-freeze.  Then the guilt set in.  The woman was already shitting herself to death.  Was I on the verge of keeping quiet and allowing her delicate bodily eco-system to ingest a load of spoiled food?  FUCK, I could kill her.  Could I kill her this way?  Oh god - do I get bawled at by a sick woman I've come over to care for (I'm perhaps a shittier carer than I am diarist) or poison the poor cow to death?  I suspect I'm an evil genius.  I told her I was concerned the stuff in her freezer wasn't very frozen and wondered whether it had given her food poisoning.  She threw it all away so I think I got away with it. 

I'm so ashamed