Scattered thoughts

Today I have anger. I am pissed and I would very much like to yell at someone and can't.

I've been suspecting for a little while that some of our post has been going astray. I've been trying to organise a headstone for mum's grave and twice now the paperwork has gone missing in the post (incidentally the woman at the Masons sounded rather incredulous that this had happened which is one of the reasons I'm so wound up. As if I'd make it up and ask her to send out the same stuff three times. This time I've asked her to send it recorded delivery and add the charge to the amount for the headstone).

Now some of the paperwork we need to buy the house has gone missing in the post meaning that the whole process of that has been delayed and I am really fucking angry.

So I called up Royal Mail because I want to talk to someone, an actual person about this problem and my concerns about the lost post and I get a bloody phone tree that doesn't put me through to a person but to a recording that redirects me to their website and tells me to fill in a form. I'll fill it in, but I have the feeling that it will eventually come back with "not our problem".

In the meantime it's entirely possible that our post will go missing again. And who knows what already has?

It's one year today since no1typo died. Ben and I are spending the day out so don't worry too much about me, I won't be moping too much. The tribute that Phil and I wrote for mum's funeral says really all I want to today about her, so I've posted it again below.

--

( Tribute to mum )



This entry was originally posted at http://lizziec.dreamwidth.org/418232.html. There are currently comments on the original entry.

...and the mole just whacked us rather than vice versa :/

( In which I bitch and moan about the amount of paperwork to be found with regards to mum's estate and Anwell Vetinary Centre in Coulsdon )

In trying to wind up mum's estate we have been stymied at many turns by a complete lack of paperwork. Apparently mum didn't like to keep paperwork of any type. I won't go in to too much detail here, because it makes me grumpy and you don't need to know about it.

For one of the things I need to prove I am mum's daughter, which apparently involves sending in my birth certificate, and this is where a huge problem I've been meaning to correct for a while comes in. At some point in my growing up my long form birth certificate vanished. No idea where it went. I don't remember ever having it. When I applied for student finance in 2002 I had to physically take my short form certificate in to the council so they could photocopy it.

The reason I had to take my short form birth certificate in person? Ah yes, that would be because my parents in their infinite wisdom, stuck my short form certificate in to my baby book. With glue.

Generally I've managed to avoid it being a problem for some years. I have other forms of ID. However, this set of paperwork that needs it has forced me to order one on a rush from the General Register Office, who I have to say are fantastic. I paid a premium for a next day service and they delivered. You can order certificates online, and if you can wait 16 days the price is a fairly reasonable £9.25 (to put in context, to get a death certificate copy from the registry office after registration is completed is £7 - if you get copies at the time of registration it's quite a lot less).

The GRO helpfully search one year either side of the year you name, just in case you're wrong about the exact year - which is what they had to do when I asked for a copy of daddy's death certificate (mum didn't keep that) because I had no idea when the death was actually registered (he died on Christmas day, so the registry office wouldn't have been open much between christmas day 1991 and january 1992).

I paid more than the £9.25 for my birth certificate because I needed it as a rush job, and they've delivered. Really the price serves me right for not just ordering one when I've thought about it countless other times over the years. But it's now here and I can finish that lot of paperwork and yay! And hopefully I'll never have to go through the embarrassment of sending my baby book anywhere to prove who I am in the future.

I put mum's facebook account into memorial mode a few weeks ago and then tried to ignore the problem of mum's online presence, but it's something that I've been thinking about increasingly over the last couple of days.

One of mum's friends thinks we should delete anything we can't lock down (ala her facebook account), but I'm not sure I can bring myself to do that. It feels a little bit like erasing her life. Which sounds ridiculous. But there's where my head and my heart been going on this question.

Any thoughts from you, my lovely friendslist? I'm not sure I can be objective on this.

Continued from here.

( *Minor rant about mormons and visions of my father )

As I posted earlier, mum died this morning at just gone 10am. It wasn't a huge shock. I mentioned in previous entries that she had got dramatically worse over the weekend, and yesterday afternoon during visiting hours Phil and I tracked down Fiona, the Macmillan nurse to see what was actually going on, as we hadn't seen an actual doctor who would tell us anything since the beginning of the previous week.

Fiona said she was shocked at how much worse mum was yesterday than she had been on Friday, and confirmed what I already felt - that we were looking at an extremely short period of time, probably just a few days. Fiona felt that mum would probably gradually slow down her breathing and fall into a coma and gradually stop breathing. She said we could stay at the hospital if we wanted, but that she felt we needed proper rest and that it would happen regardless of where we were - even if we just went to get a cup of tea, and so Phil and I decided that we would go home at the end of visiting hours. If were looking at a situation that could go on for days then we wanted to be fresh enough to deal with it. And in the condition that mum was in on Monday evening when we left, we knew it would be a strain. Her breathing was more laboured again than it was on Sunday, and her tongue had stopped working. She tried to say lots of things to me and Phil when we arrived, the only period she was really awake for, but unfortunately we couldn't understand any of it apart from our names. And that it was lovely when we wiped a cold flannel across her very hot face.

Fiona felt that the deterioration in mum's condition was caused by the fact that the tumour had grown so large that it was 1) causing swelling in her throat, making breathing difficult, and 2) pressing on the nerves and muscles that controlled mum's tongue, which is why it was we were struggling to understand anything she said.

As I said, when we left on Monday night it was clear we were looking at days at the most. I was worried we were looking at hours, but deciding there was nothing more we could do at the hospital, we came home.

We'd not been home long when the nurse looking after mum last night (Tidings) called and said that in the short time we'd been gone, mum was worse and that we should thing about coming in. We had dinner, and headed in, supported by my auntie Pat and uncle Allan. She was worse, and when we got there, Tidings told us that though mum was calmer, she had spent a good deal of time calling my name. We all sat around her bed and talked to her, and around her, and recalled memories of our childhood and the lovely times that we had had. All the while her breathing got worse and worse. She was also in a good deal of pain, the first time she's really been in pain since she was admitted to hospital on 29th April. They gave her a top up booster of morphine, besides what was in her syringe driver, but it didn't really seem to help much with her pain. Meanwhile she was sweating profusely, and we tried to keep her cool with wet flannels. After a while she rested more, Pat and Allan went home, Phil first dozed on the floor (to the horror of a nursing assistant), and then in the day room, where said horrified nursing assistant insisted that he move to, and I dozed fitfully in the chair next to her bed, waking every 20 mins or so to reassure her that she was ok, we were ok and that it was ok for her to let go if she wanted to, because we would be looked after. I tried to keep touching her arm and hand, though she kept withdrawing them to posture against her chest, which I think was a pain response.

We left her at about 7am. She seemed quieter, and though her breathing was a little worse (it had got steadily worse through the night), she was cooler and seemed to be in much less pain. We decided to go home and get some sleep, and come back at around 1pm.

So we left her, after telling her we loved her and we'd be back later. Came home, ate a little and fell into bed. Was woken at about 10:10 by a call from Fiona telling us that mum had died just a short time before. They had washed her and put her in a comfortable position and she had looked much easier. Even her breathing was a little better. A nurse was still with her, and Fiona had just gone away for a little while, and in that five minutes she'd simply stopped breathing. Fiona said that it was a very peaceful end.

She asked if we wanted to see her, and said we could hold her hand if we wanted to. We wandered down to the end of the ward, and she opened the door. And there mum was. And it was awful. I've never had such spontaneous tears as I had then. Immediately the door opened and I saw mum they started. She looked peaceful, yes, but she didn't look like my mummy. And seeing a body without seeing breathing is strange and odd and not nice. I couldn't touch her. I don't think I can bring myself to see her again after the funeral home lay her out. I'm almost regretting seeing her like that because I can't get the picture out of my head. But at the same time, if I hadn't seen her, the last image would have been of her in dreadful pain and discomfort. That image is still with me, in fact. I'm crying as I write this. I don't know which I would rather have. But I have them both, and I really hope that soon I can stop fixating on those awful thoughts of her and see her as she was most of the time. Fuck Cancer. It wasn't supposed to be like this. She was retiring in a year and going to have a huge party. And now she never will. I checked my irc logs. You know, it was less than four months, barely over three, from start to finish? First symptoms of tingling in February. It's barely May now and she's dead. Fuck cancer. Fuck it right in the ear.

Most of the rest of todoay has been a bit of a blur. Everyone's being awesome. So awesome that I don't know how I'll thank them, ever. We've called people, organised various things, and know which funeral home we'll be going with. I've picked an outfit for her. We've even sorted through a few of her physical posessions (though only her shoes, and toiletries). Tomorrow we're going to sort out the paperwork at the hospital, and then go and register the death with Wandsworth registry office, which is the district that St Georges falls in. After that we're heading to the Funeral Home, a local company called WA Truelove and Son, to start sorting out the funeral.

Bleh. Today was exhausting and hard in its own way. But I think last night, when she was in pain and crying and struggling for every breath that was hardest and worst. Possibly the hardest and worst night of my entire adult life.

Finally, ben signed mum off IRC tonight. It makes sense but feels awful.

20:47:49 -!- typo [typo@dm-11449.pok.me.uk] has quit [Exit: fuck cancer]

Sorry for the brain dump. Needed to get it out before I could sleep, and before I forgot it all.

ETA: 12/07/11 No longer filtered

Mum definitely worse today. She's stopped eating and drinking, though they're nourishing and hydrating her through the NG tube. She was confused, and had spent part of the morning shouting at the nurses and trying to get out of bed - by the time visiting hours started they had someone sitting in the doorway making sure she didn't get out of bed. When she wasn't trying to get out of bed, or thinking she needed to go to the toilet when she didn't she was asleep and barely responsive when she was (where before when she was asleep she would respond). The one time she was got out of bed, she kept her eyes shut the entire time. Her breathing is noisy and towards the end of visiting hours she would stop for a few seconds at a time, though it improved a little towards the end of the evening. When we left, the ward had sorted out a person whose sole job for the night was to sit with mum, though I don't know whether it was because they were concerned about her breathing, or her attempts to get out of bed, or both.

After today my gut feeling is the same, if not more reinforced. We're not looking at very long at all I think. A couple of weeks at most. Though, she wasn't expected to make it past last weekend, so I may be proven wrong. Time will tell I think.

ETA: 12/07/11 No longer filtered

Most of you know mum has been diagnosed with a large cancerous tumour in her nasal cavity, stretching back a long way, wrapping itself around mum's carotid artery and causing a number of highly unpleasant symptoms, all of which led mum to be admitted to hospital yesterday, somewhat unexpectedly.

When we went to visit mum it was clear she was much worse than she was yesterday - hooked up to a heart monitor, nasal oxygen and several different lines and things going in to her - also looking weaker than yesterday and much sleepier.

Long story short, when the doctor saw me and Phil she said there was a good chance that mum won't live through the weekend, and in the end, after a good deal of discussion, we agreed to a DNR (Do Not Resuscitate) order.

While we discussed all of that, my bag was stolen from next to mum's bed, where I'd stupidly left it when the dr came to talk to us, which meant I spent an hour or so that I could have spent with mum searching for my bag, reporting the theft and cancelling my cards. That was an hour I couldn't spend with my critically ill mum, and if she dies tonight I really don't know how I could ever forgive the person who took it.

We've spoken to mum. She knows about and agrees with our decision. She wasn't upset or surprised, at least, not that we could see. We said all we wanted and needed to to her, and she said what she wanted and needed to, to us. From that point of view we are incredibly lucky, but it was one of the hardest things I've done in my life. She said she didn't want us to stay, and so we came home, but I can't sleep right now.

I must be feeling better because today I was feeling well enough to mess with people's heads.

Yesterday we got a letter from NPower saying that if we took our Gas supply as well as our Electricity from them then we could have an £80 discount per year from them. This was actually something of a problem, given that we do not have a Gas feed - we are purely Electricity only. It struck me as unfair that because our flat is rather backward we don't get an £80 discount on our fuel bill.

So today, because I was feeling rather troublesome I called NPower and spoke to one of their Customer Representatives (who even appeared to be in a call centre in this country).

I explained to him the problem and promised him that if we were to have a gas supply then we would get our supply from them. His response was something along the lines of "you what?!"

I argued my case to the best of my ability but in the end had to settle for NPower taking us off their dual fuel mailing list and sending us out details of some boiler guarentee thing which gets us £20 off per year. Ah well. It was worth it just to mess with someone's head ;) Bwhahahaa.

ION: Sky appear to have sorted their Heath Ledger tribute with 10 Things I Hate About You appearing magically on Sky Anytime today with a description saying practically that.