I’m travelling to London (again) today.  I have to go to accompany my 90 year old mum to a hospital appointment.  She hates doctors (my doctor daughters are, of course, the exception), and hospitals, and taking any sort of medicine, including over the counter jobs. She really doesn’t want to go.

‘I’m fine.  I feel fine.  They’ll only give me pills, and they”ll give me side effects, which will make me worse’ she says.  

Fine, except for the shortness of breath, the tingly hands and feet, the skin lesion that won’t go away, failing eyesight and hearing, the fact that she is housebound…  

They’ve called her in over a dodgy blood test, and the implication is, that it could be something nasty.  You know the one.  Begins with a C.  She hasn’t quite grasped that, and it’s down to me (with support from my girls) to make sure she goes, and doesn’t put up that knee-jerk wall.

I am of course, fervently hoping that the news isn’t as bad as I fear, and at 90 she will just play her remaining years out in comfort without any ghastly interventions. But, I’m going to hold her hand, and listen carefully to the experts, ask questions, make sure she understands and accepts that some treatment may be necessary to make her life more comfortable …  Just like she used to when she took me to the doctors as a child.  When she made me take disgusting medicine ‘for my own good’.

When did I turn in to mother?