The Happy Drunk

Today I’ve been “the happy drunk”.

My legs are like jelly and my head isn’t working too well but despite that I feel pretty cheerful if very tired. I certainly wasn’t up to making my usual Friday trip into Sale to my favourite fishmonger and I’m just hoping I am a lot fitter by tomorrow. Mind you, I have lost my appetite and probably wouldn’t have been able to eat my fish even if I had bought it. By this evening soup was all I could manage.

One thing I have learnt is to take each day as it comes and simply let my body dictate the agenda.

Elaine, the community MacMillan nurse, rang Ann this afternoon. She has tried without success to persuade our GP to prescribe something to lower Ann’s anxiety state. She did however come up with something useful. She says she can get me the top rates of DLA with just a letter from the GP stating that I have cancer.

For those who don’t know what DLA is I will explain. Disability living allowance is paid to registered disabled people by the state to help offset the additional cost of living that disability nearly always incurs. There are two components, a care component and a mobility component. There are three levels of payment for the care component relating to the level of disability and in the same way there are two payment levels in the mobility component. Registered blind people are automatically in receipt of the lower levels of payment for each component.

Cancer patients, it appears, qualify for the highest levels. Seeing how much we are currently spending on taxis each week we could certainly make use of the extra cash.