The Choice by Bernadette Bohan Read Free Book Online

warned me of this. Ger had already left the house for work, and I could hear the children stirring in their rooms. They would be getting themselves dressed and needing breakfast in a few minutes. What was I to do? Come on Bernie, I said to myself, you can work out a way to get out of bed without your arms. I couldn’t sit up, and I found my knees were painful to bend too so I couldn’t use them to propel myself. Eventually I managed to roll onto my side and slide out of bed, but when I put pressure on my knees I collapsed. They were like jelly.
I sat on the floor by the bed. This was bad. The children were arguing about something and I heard a door being slammed. I had three things to do: 1: Stand up; 2: make breakfast; 3: take them to school. At that moment these three things seemed like the hardest tasks anyone could ask of me. I couldn’t imagine how I was going to get through the first half hour of today, let alone the rest of it.
I half stood up, gritting my teeth against the pain. The phone was on the bedside table, and I managed to lean my body over to pick it up. I called Gerard.
‘I can’t move,’ I whispered, ‘All my joints have seized up. I don’t know what to do.’ I explained how long it had taken me to get up and how worried I was.
‘Will I come home?’ he offered. ‘Or will I call Pauline for you?’
Pauline was a neighbour, and had a lad at the same junior school as Richard and Sarah. Over the course of the next few months I would have cause to thank God for Pauline many times.
‘I’ll try her. Don’t you worry for now. I might be feeling better later; I’ll see how it goes.’ I needed to hear Ger’s voice, but I didn’t want to worry him too much. I already felt better for talking to him.
‘OK, but will you call me to let me know? Oh, and try the hospital too – they might be able to help.’
‘Yes I will. See if you can come home a little early though. Bye.’
Then I remembered the information leaflet in the prednisone box by my bed. I shook it out of the box and read it. Sure enough, there was an extensive list of side effects, including something they described as muscle weakness or joint pain . Was that it? It made no mention of excruciating agony – how odd. How typical.
With great effort I got myself downstairs, calling the children on my way. I persuaded them that it would be fun for them to get out the breakfast things and pour out their own milk and orange juice this morning. While it saved me from reaching into cupboards it did not make for an entirely mess-free kitchen, and when I looked in on them after calling Pauline to ask her to take them to school my heart sank to see the spilt cereal and puddles of milk dripping onto the floor. They were both giggling. I knew then that I would have to stay cheerful for their sakes.
‘Never mind,’ I said to them. Some of my standards were just going to have to slip.
After I had gratefully sent them both off with Pauline I collapsed onto the sofa. The pressure on my knees from having been up for three quarters of an hour had left them aching more than before and I needed to raise them up. I called the hospital as soon as I thought there would be someone there to answer.
‘Oh, don’t worry, Mrs Bohan,’ said the nurse in a reassuring voice. ‘That is just one of the side effects of this drug – there are various different ones and everyone reacts differently. The cortisone does reach the joints and can cause some discomfort.’
Discomfort? I managed a rueful smile. I still had the leaflet tucked in my pocket and my hand shook as I scanned the list for other symptoms. Abdominal pain, acne, allergic reactions… increased appetite, hair growth, nausea, fluid retention, osteoporosis, indigestion, depression, headaches, hallucinations, insomnia … I stopped reading. I knew if I continued I would start imagining I had all these