17th May 2015.

I would like to promise you that today's blog entry will be funny, but I am pretty sure that it won't.

On Thursday evening, after the dental debacle, I had a full on snotty cry. My husband was at a school governor's meeting, it had taken me 90 minutes to settle the baby, I was dreading taking my Dad to the Consultant appointment and, well, it just overflowed.There were times when I thought it would overflow as anger, and I tried *so* hard to hold that back. It's just not cool to blow your stack at children or old people, is it? Instead it came as a tsunami of tears - unusual for me.

Friday, as I have reported, was the day that Dad was diagnosed.

Saturday, my period started. This was a bit of a shock, as I have been put through a chemical menopause and, as the name suggests, I kind of supposed that I was done with periods. I have had chronic migraine, PMT, period pain, hot flushes and feeling dizzy, but I thought that was my body getting used to the medication (Prostap - it's also a treatment for Prostate Cancer, so a pretty strong drug) and HRT, which I started at the same time.

But, oh no. I'm sorry for the detail - but I may as well be frank, otherwise there is no point. This is the heaviest and most painful period I have had in my life. Bent double (which reminds me, inappropriately, of Wilfred Owen) gushing with each move, bits of body as well as liquid, and with the type of pain it's hard to explain to someone else. In the last 24 hours I have taken: co-codamol, naproxen, propranolol, HRT (?Livial), diazepam, buscopan - and Piriton - it's hay fever season too, don't you know, just to add the cherry to the cake.

I am trying not to moan at the 2 year old who stands on my belly with her sharp little feet, wanting to bounce, or twiddle my nipples (it helps her sleep and she does it so rarely - a hangover from breastfeeding - that it feels cruel to deny her when she needs the comfort. But OUCH.) I try not to moan when my 9 year old wants me to watch him play Minecraft and I want him to not touch me. I try to keep a brave face on.

I am trying to work out how to handle my in-laws. It's their birthdays this weekend and they want to visit, and they're concerned about my Dad, whom they think has had a stroke. Yet my mother has told me that she doesn't want anyone to know about the Dementia, not even my brother ( - I have refused to keep him in the dark, by the way.) However, morally, I don't know what to do about her request. Mum is of sound mind, so I should respect her wishes to keep my Dad's medical history private, at least for a few days whilst they process the idea themselves. But, am I colluding with her denial? Is this healthy? Is this potentially denying my father the care he needs?

And what about my in-laws? My relationship with them is tense at times, and to be honest I am pretty sure that my husband has been gossiping with them - his support network after all- about what has happened and how he has been left holding the baby. I can't go and tell them myself - I can't get off the bloody sofa. If I don't tell them, they will feel as though I have lied to them, or at least that I didn't trust them enough to let them know what was going on. If I tell them the truth, against my mother's wishes, but explain that she doesn't want anyone to know, well it make it look as though my mother doesn't trust them and, to be honest, I don't really trust them not to say something to her - accidentally - but, even so.

And I lie in my bed, curled around a hot water bottle, thinking about my Dad. The tattoo on his lower arm that he had done on a boys' trip to Blackpool in the 1950s - allegedly a girl wanted her name within, but he (wisely) refused and had 'mother' inked instead (I always wondered what happened next with the girl. Was that the end? I always think it's somewhat ironic too, as my Dad does not seem to have happy memories of his Mum. What was her reaction? Was she touched?)

I think of the birthmark on his left shoulder, that, when I was small, I used to think was a potato. I haven't seen that for years. I remember tweaking his nipples on hot sunny days, when men used to go topless, and him making a different noise for each that made me roar with laughter. I remember sitting behind him in the arm chair whilst he sat on the floor, combing his hair. I think of his expertise in gardening and plants that is being wasted, never to be retrieved. I think of the things he wanted to achieve with his life - opening a garden centre, for example - that he never had the opportunity to do. I think of the things he did do - travel to Norway alone on a freight ship (only to be told, in recent years, it was to see a girl. What a shock! Who was she? What is she doing now? My Dad, the least risk taking person I have ever known, must have either been very different back then, or in love...)

I've know he has dementia for many months. Somehow, being told he has dementia is a whole new ball game. He's going. The train is pulling out of the station and I am finding it hard to shake myself together. My darling, darling Dad.