Life goes on, and this week I have
quietly celebrated another birthday – a day of enjoying some extra contact from
family and friends, including plenty of chuckles as I contemplate having as
much birthday fun ‘as a seagull with a French fry’, or even reflect on the following:
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| Never forget - your body is a temple... even if the steeples are pointing in the wrong direction |
It is now over 12 months since I had
surgery to stabilise my spine with rods and screws – and when I recently asked
my oncologist if it was time to have a review of my left hip, he agreed! So yesterday Brian and I choofed off to
Warrnambool to meet with a different orthopoedic surgeon.
After all the rain we’ve had of late,
driving along some of the country roads requires quite some concentration,
dodging potholes and roadkill (there were 2 dead koalas) and also marveling at
the swollen dams and flooded creeks and low plains. But I did some of the
driving too and that was good.
It was quite a worthwhile trip, as the
surgeon was actually very good at explaining things from the xrays, though he
reinforced the precarious position of my hip and the severe risk of
pathological fracture, with the risk of a fall being my biggest threat. However
he agreed to refer my case to the specialists at St Vincent’s Hospital to
review, particularly considering that the cancer is currently stable. Maybe there's some new cement that can be injected into the bone to strengthen it, as originally proposed. So perhaps
one day I will have a call to come to Melbourne (probably just to tell me that
nothing has changed). Meanwhile he also gave me a referral to a physio to
explore options of improving my mobility, perhaps using crutches, so we’ll see.
Brian’s health continues its usual
pathway of having ‘good days and bad days’, and despite trying some different
pill combinations we don’t seem to have struck the magic answer, though there
has been some improvement I think. His Parkinson’s symptoms are currently well
managed. He has just now returned from the chemist with a fistful of scripts between
the two of us. We have long since passed the free script threshold so that's a blessing (very sorry
all you diligent wage-earners, but your taxes are appreciated).
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| Brian doesn't mind the trips down the street - it's the photos he objects to... |
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