Weekly Gratitude List – May 5. 2012.

On Saturday, my cousin/nephew Vignesh, who has featured in my blog posts on a few occasions came over from Navi Mumbai and brought a delicious home made cake sent by his lovely wife Kamini. He spent the whole day with us, let my father have his heart full of talking to a captive audience, treated me for a fantastic dinner at a newly opened restaurant near our home, paid for the fruits that I purchased on the way back and generally endeared himself to me despite knowing that he does not feature in my will. And to add some icing on the cake, on safely reaching his home, sent me a text message saying that he enjoyed the visit and regretted not having done that many times on earlier occasions.

Sunday was an anticlimax. Very relaxed and peaceful till late afternoon when my father complained about unease and wanting to see the doctor again. I succeeded in postponing that to Monday.

When I took my father to the doctor on Monday, it transpired that on his own initiative, after reading the literature that accompanied the medicine, he had not been taking one medicine. Both the doctor and I blew our gaskets and it took me the whole day to recover from that. He was most contrite and kept apologising, but would not understand my angst. I finally had to tell him that if he wanted me to give the care that he needs, he has to obey the doctor and keep me informed of any deviations that he wished from those instructions. He reluctantly agreed.

Tuesday went off reasonably well except for my father once again coming up with complaints and wanting to see the doctor. The doctor was not answering my phone calls and eventually returned my call to advise me to be firm with my father that he has to put up with some inconvenience and take the medication as advised. I found it difficult to make him understand that but eventually he came around when I advised him that he was driving me to depression, which would be a great accomplishment for him as nothing or nobody had ever succeeded in doing that to me in all these years. Perhaps it was that inspired statement, or his finally seeing that I was nearing breaking point, he calmed down and stayed that way for the rest of the day.

Wednesday was drama time with a lot of sulking and slouching and taking it out on the help. I am grateful that Mangal is mature and capable enough to handle the situation. My young friend Srinivas called me to set up a meeting with him in the afternoon and I had a most satisfying hour and a half with him at a cafe and thoroughly enjoyed the two tall glasses of iced tea and a waffle with black berry sauce and vanilla ice cream. As a bonus, I got to meet his lovely wife Sujatha and daughter Lavanya, later at the park and I think that I goofed up be letting on to both of them that Srini had spent the afternoon with me rather than working his butt off.

Thursday went off peacefully till late in the afternoon when the problems started all over again and I had to assure my father that I will take him to the doctor on Friday before the week end. He also suddenly wanted some fancy clips to hold his towel in place on the rack in his bathroom, and I went hunting for them and was blessed enough to find them in a neighbourhood shop. The shopkeeper also promised to deliver one more clip of a larger size on Friday at home. Extremely nice of him considering that he would have to go about a kilometer to do so.

Padmum had sent our family to a link to a blog that had written about my father’s cousin and I showed it to my father on the screen after enlarging the fonts. He was quite thrilled and took off on a reminiscing trip and I had to patiently hear him out. Sad that he is hard of hearing as I could not participate as I simply refuse to shout for such matters.

On Friday, instead of taking my father to the doctors, I requested that they come for a house visit and they readily obliged. Till they came, a bit later than the time originally agreed to by them, my father was like a cat with a new litter, pacing up and and down and asking me to ring them up and so on. They finally turned up an hour and a half late, and examined him thoroughly, though not to his entire satisfaction. He kept on pestering them so much so that they suggested that another opinion be sought from a Urologist. Later in the evening, when I called the urologist for an appointment, he readily agreed for an early one and since at short notice, I could not arrange a driver, I drove him to the appointment during peak hour traffic and I am grateful that the drive both ways went off without incident. The urologist confirmed earlier diagnosis and said that further treatment will worsen matters.