Mum got a black eye

It was tomorrow a week ago or thereabouts that mum got a black eye. She has no recollection as to how it occurred. I had seen mum in the morning and then later in the afternoon the nursing staff at the first floor of the nursing home called me to tell me about it. It is a complete mystery, but then with mum's blood disease - a low platelet count due to myelodysplastic syndrome - it doesn't take much to cause this kind of bruising.

I had to take mum to the haematologist as it happened, on Tuesday last week, and at the time he said it was quite possible that the bruising could happen spontaneously. Other than the black eye, mum has been in good spirits these days. She is generally well-disposed toward the universe and has a positive attitude. "I don't mind living out the rest of my days here until I cark it," she will say to me with some light-heartedness. It might sound macarbre but older people tend to talk in these terms. When you get to a certain stage in your life and things start not working properly for no forseeable reason, every day can appear to be some kind of a miracle.

I haven't been writing on the blog this week mainly because of an irrational anxiety that people in the nursing home might have blamed me for causing the black eye. It makes no sense, I know, but with the disease I have I tend to get a bit paranoid about various things - and there's no accounting for it most of the time - for no apparent reason. It hasn't been a great week for me, what with the tooth extraction on the Wednesday of the week before. The tooth cavity has stopped complaining by the way, so that particular problem seems to have sorted itself out nicely. I am now able to clean my teeth almost normally. I still have to be a bit ginger about the back-left bottom quarter, but it's improving day-by-day.