Psst.. Have you Got Some... Stuff?

All Christmas, Joe and I have been struggling to get reliable supplies of our drug of choice.  But before you call social services (and they tell you they have no staff to spare), the drugs we have been missing out on are... paracetamol (which is known elsewhere as acetaminophen, and sometimes by the brand names Panadol or Tylenol).  Basically, those little white chalky tablets that you can buy for a penny each in supermarkets, that give you a little relief from pain.

We have all had colds and sore throats over the holidays.  I'm saying this not to get sympathy, but just to explain why paracetamol tablets might become hot currency.  For in our house, paracetamol tablets are as rare as hen's teeth.  After the last couple of overdoses, when Julie managed to ferret out boxes that we didn't even know we had, we locked away our dwindling supplies and have never dared to replenish them.  In the supermarket, we steer carefully away from the pharmacy aisle as if it were haunted.  And although aspirin and ibuprofen are not a risk, we have become so superstitious that we have avoided keeping stocks of any painkiller.

Inevitably, as the worst wave of the cold hit us, both Joe and I smuggled in a pack or two from the corner shop.  They were hidden in  coat pockets and down the back of bookshelves.  We both knew this, but we didn't want to admit to it in front of Julie.  We didn't even dare trust each other with the location of our secret stash.  You might find us horsetrading in hoarse whispers in the corridor: "Do you have any?", "Yes, but I need to take some more at six so I can get through the evening.", "But I can't get mine out until Julie goes to bed or she'll see where I put them."  I resorted to endless mugs of tea.  We nursed Duncan through one of his usual spectacularly high fevers using baby medicine.

But we survived, we are all well now, and the one person who we all dreaded getting sick - Julie - was the only one who never so much as blew her nose.  Preparing for exams in January - mostly exams that she was unable to take last year when she was in hospital - she has been rising early every day to stick to a punishing revision timetable.  Freed from work for the holidays, I have been hovering over her, dragging her out for walks, and supplying endless cups of tea and coffee, mince pies and nibbles.  It has been the most normal parenting I have done in a long while!

Which is another reason why it feels like the right moment to say goodbye to the Juliesmum blog, at least for a while.  It is not that Julie is now "all better" and life is back to normal, whatever that normal might be.  I still care for her, she is still not in full time school, she still leads a very different life from most of her friends, and her future is still uncertain.  We are still frequent flyers at A&E, she is still in the care of local medical teams, takes high doses of psychoactive drugs and is currently in the middle of the awkward transition from CAMHS into adult services.  Yet at the same time, we all know a great deal more than we knew when I began writing this blog in the summer of 2011: we have become skilled, expert at caring for Julie, and (too) familiar with some of the labyrinthine workings of local services.  Much of my experience is now often quite technical - I know what to do, and why, even if I sometimes wish we did not have to do it. It is often still an emotional experience, especially when she does something dangerous or frightening, but I have written about most of these experiences before, sometimes several times.  The one new recent experience, as Julie begins to respond to CAT therapy, I cannot write about fully, because I cannot and will not write about the ghosts of her inner world.

Writing a blog starts as a conversation with yourself, and I have been particularly grateful for all the commenters who have joined in that conversation, helped me come to terms with my situation and cheered me up.  Eventually conversations do come to an end and I think the time has come to move on.  If I do return it may be to a different conversation.