Day 2,152 (still not) in the Nanny June Care Home

The One With The Defiant And Out Of Control Toenails

A phone call came in from the care home this week:

Because of Covid, the NHS aren’t coming in to cut June’s toenails. Are you okay if we get someone private it in to do it? It will be about £20.

I am CEO & Guardian Of The Toe Nails now.

I remember seeing Nanny June’s toenails before she went into hospital, before she went into the care home. (Obviously while I was growing up they were fine - although her feet had become shaped like the pointy high heeled shoes she had insisted on wearing for decades).

I am not good with toe nails. The thought of cutting my own makes me feel that feeling you get when you hear someone else throwing up. So when I saw the yellow, gnarly, curled specimens Nanny June had been hiding on her feet it gave me the sweats. Worse still, how had I missed this? How had I not noticed? How many times had she missed her feet appointments? Forgotten them?

There comes a point where you care about someone so much but can’t care for them enough.

Around this time my daily phone calls from Nanny June would include a list of ailments. Sometimes it was a headache. Sometimes it was a really bad headache. Sometimes she called an ambulance. Then one day the same roles were played out but this time the ambulance took her to hospital. That day the headache was a stroke. I turned up on the ward (with my six month old baby on my hip) at the request of the hospital for me to come in and “calm June down”. Never has the medical profession invested it’s hope with such poor judgement.

She never returned to her bungalow. Never called me again to complain about her ailments.

But her toenails still remain defiantly out of control.