Packed

Friday.
The last day of term for Mog, the first day of the holidays for Little Fish, and the deadline for moving the TA kid elsewhere. No hatemail please; no passport and no plane ticket so no possibility of coming on holiday with us.

A placement sorted late on Thursday afternoon. A good placement; I'm very pleased and I know the TA kid will be loved and well cared for. This is good, and finally I can tick one thing off my worry list, and get on with the many many other things instead.

Packing.
One check in bag each, plus an additional bag for each of the girls to carry essential medical supplies.

One carry on bag each, into which I somehow need to shoehorn a suction pump, a ventilator and battery, a feed pump, assorted catheters and an unfeasably huge box of medications. Regulations have apparently changed (although there's nothing on the website confirming this), and it is no longer possible (indeed the individual informing us of this claims it has never ever been possible, funny how we managed it last holiday, and the one before that, and the one before that then - yes, all after the regs changed) to take extra carry on baggage even if you have a child who can't breathe without it. Marvellous.

One wheelchair per child.

Minor hiatus with the discovery that what I had thought was our final bag was infact the case for Mog's three-wheeler; useful to have but means I am short one suitcase. This is fixed by shifting our dressing up box supplies out of its ancient case and onto the floor, and filling it with nappies and wipes, whilst uttering a swift prayer for it to stay intact for at least the flight out. Coming home doesn't matter quite as much; we can replace things once we're here.

I thought I'd be clever. The doses of Mog's drugs are nice and even at the moment; this means that in theory at least she could take tablets rather than the liquid versions of quite a few of her medications. Given the current restrictions on flying with liquids, and the complications involved in taking liquid medications through security*, I thought I'd try to get some tablets instead. I phoned the surgery, the notes were taken, the tablets duly prescribed, and the drugs were delivered in two plastic bags. Lighter than usual, I peeked through and saw the name of one drug on the side of a box, and thought no more about it. Mistake. Big mistake.

Did the bags contain the tablets as requested?
Did they contain the liquid version instead?
Or did they infact contain very little at all except a note to say drug unavailable?

This is not the best thing to discover at 7PM the night before you fly to Switzerland. A little panic ensued, until, in tearing Mog's bedroom apart, I discovered another bottle of the missing medication, cunningly disguised as a box of Mog's feed. Of course this means we are somewhat shorter of feed than I'd thought, but we have enough for our holiday and a few days afterwards, and right now that's all I care about.

Now I just need to find somewhere to put all this lot safely
but not before printing out the plane tickets, extra baggage allowance info, booking confirmation slips from the hotels, and the myriad of other minor bits and pieces which need shuffling into it.

I might sleep at some point tonight.

Of course, thanks to the wonders of time delayed posting, by the time you read this, it will all have been 24 hours ago (and oddly, that's calming me down as I write it!), and we will be in stunning Switzerland and hopefully well on our way to settling into our hotel.

I'm pretending I have not seen this weather forecast.
Tia

*at one point during our first trip to Florida, shortly after 9/11, it looked as though the only way to get Mog's meds through would be for me to taste all of them. Whilst I'd have quite enjoyed the deep sleep her several sedatives would have induced, I'm not sure I'd have been much help to the girls once in the air.