Side Effects

A potentially humorous post - which never lived up to its potential (sorry)

I mentioned in my last post that generally I don't think of Paul being ill. I know that Paul has momentary absences, memory loss (currently about 50%) from one day to the next, and functioning/processing difficulties which make it difficult for him to absorb and apply new information.

But, on the whole, we have found coping mechanisms for most of the difficulties; little systems which you might do anyway, but which have added use when memories aren't going to be carried from one day to the next. Having a shopping list which you add to as things are used up or about to run out, for example. And these systems allow us to maintain that screen of 'alrightness' because we rarely have to directly face the fact that parts of his brain, at the moment, simply don't work as they are supposed to do.

But sometimes this fails us, because our lovely screen means we miss the obvious!

We're on a fairly tight budget for our food shopping, but on a 'good' week (not too many impulse buys) it's easily sufficient. We also have our wonderful weekly organic food box which we pay for separately. However, for several weeks in a row we just kept overspending...

I should also add that we went up to using a second freezer at Christmas time, but by mid February both freezers were packed with food...

And, that the fridge was always crammed full of food too - with some of it reaching use by dates and going off....

Hmmm...

Eventually it struck me - could this have anything to do with the fact that Paul, since he was doing the bulk of the cooking, had also by default been left in charge of shopping lists and menu planning? Erm, that would be tasks which really relied upon remembering what food is left half open in the back of the fridge (or hiding in the freezer) and processing information about what food needed using up most urgently, and planning combinations of food to cook/buy using these bits of information. Not to mention remembering to defrost food we needed

In fact, expecting Paul to do all the tasks he was least able to do, every day. And then wondering why things weren't running quite as smoothly as they might!

Maybe it's not just Paul's brain that isn't working properly!!!