Free The Baking Life of Amelie Day by Vanessa Curtis

fine,’ I say. I sit up straight and force a smile back on. ‘OK. I’ll do it three times a day. Promise.’
    Mum and Tom exchange a few more ideas and concerns while I sit there all bored, staring at the leaflet stand in his office and trying to make cake words out of ‘Cystic Fibrosis’. I’m still struggling with that when Mum drags me off for my next two appointments.
    I’m kind of dreading these ones.
    The first is with the nutritionist, Diane.
    She’s the cleanest woman in the world. Her white coat is spotless and her shiny brown hair is tied back into a neat knot. Her glasses sparkle and her shoes are highly polished. Her office is very bare and tidy, with two identical pot plants placed one at each end of the windowsill. I reckon if Diane passed through our kitchen at home after I’d made a cheesecake, she might well have a heart attack from the shock of the mess.
    â€˜OK,’ she says, sitting behind her desk and gesturing at me and Mum to sit down. ‘I can see that you’ve lost just a little bit of weight, Amelie, since you last came in.’
    I last came in for weighing about four months ago so this is not such good news.
    Diane weighs me on her digital scales and then measures my height. She calculates my Body Mass Index, dividing my weight by my height.
    â€˜You’re quite a lot less than you should be,’ she says. ‘Have you been getting your maximum calories in every day?’
    I nod. This at least is true. Mum can’t pick me up on this one. I’ve been stuffing my face with cake, chocolate and crisps on top of normal meals for what feels like forever.
    â€˜Hmm,’ says Diane. ‘I’m going to suggest something to help with your weight, but I don’t want you to panic, OK?’
    Why is it that as soon as somebody medical says the words ‘don’t panic,’ you immediately want to scream and panic and thrash about?
    I feel cold and thin. The weight of whatever she’s about to suggest is already hovering over my head, about to plunge down and change my life yet again. I glance at Mum. She’s gripping her hands together so hard that they have turned white and she’s fiddling with the finger where her wedding ring used to be, except of course it’s not there any longer.
    â€˜It’s alright,’ says Diane. ‘Loads of people with CF have this. I’m going to suggest that you’re set up with a feeding tube at home to pump calories into you overnight while you sleep. It really won’t affect you when you’re awake at all.’
    I blow out my lips in despair, forgetting that I can’t breathe that well as it is. The short dip in oxygen leaves me coughing my guts up for nearly five minutes. Diane gets a grey cardboard bowl and holds it under my mouth while Mum hovers about chewing her lip and looking agonised.
    When I’ve finished I sit up again, exhausted.
    â€˜Sorry,’ I say. ‘You were talking about the tube. How would it go into my body?’
    â€˜Through your stomach via a gastrostomy,’ says Diane. ‘You’d have to have that put in under general anaesthetic. Then it would just stay in your stomach, closed off by a button during the day. It would be easy for you or Mum to connect the tube at night-time. We can get about 2000 more calories into you while you’re sleeping.’
    I nod. It’s amazing the things I’ve had to get used to over the years. Guess one more tube isn’t going to make so much difference. I still feel scared about it though. Not so much about the tube, but what it means about the general direction my health is heading in.
    Diane gets me to fill in some forms saying that I’d like to be admitted to day surgery to have the gastrostomy fitted and then Mum helps me walk to the next appointment because I’m feeling tired and wobbly.
    â€˜Poor old you,’ she says, squeezing my arm as we walk along.