Funny turn

Two friends were supposed to be coming on Saturday. We were all going to get pissed and have fun and go round a stately home with my National Trust card. However, Mr Grumpy and I had colds, so did one of the friends, so we cancelled.

Lucky thing, too, because on Saturday night Mr G had a return of the strange symptoms he got from time to time before his strokes. Only now we know what they are. His vision goes blurry, or reduces to a pinpoint, his face is flushed, his extremities freezing and they're all signs of his blood pressure having suddenly shot up for no reason at all. When he checked his BP on his little machine, it was 183 over 104. Normally, since his strokes, it's been something like 140 over 88.

I asked anxiously whether or not I should call an ambulance but he preferred to wait and see if it went down again. By the time he went to bed at ten, it was 173 over 90-something. Yesterday it was 163 over 88. He hadn't done anything energetic, there was no reason for it to have happened. But it was very, very worrying and as I was about to eat when it happened (and didn't want to waste my nice cod steak), the result was stomach ache all night, as I was so tense, followed by many trips to the loo yesterday, the return of my IBS.

This has plunged me into a dilemm. I had just started looking for my own home again so I could get all my belongings out of storage, which is costing me £200 per month. But how can I leave him when he could keel over with another stroke? Friends remind me that it could happen while I am out at the shops, and I can't watch him like a hawk 24/7. But if I move, I'll feel like the rat deserting the sinking ship. How can I do it? If we were married or in a committed relationship, there would be no question of my staying. But as I am in a halfway state, sharing his house but not fully together, two separate lives rubbing shoulders uncomfortably under one roof, where does that leave me? No wonder I can't sleep at night.