Sunday, September 27th

 This is Day 12 of this chapter of my life and things are going as they should.  I had been warned that a knee replacement is much more difficult to deal with than a hip and I am 9 years older to boot.  No matter, as Sonny said in The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel, "It will be alright in the end and, if it is not alright, it is not yet the end."

I can accept that but I would like to see some glimmer that the end is at least almost in sight.  What I'm having most trouble with is my lack of  flexibility in my back muscles.  So much depends on a strong back to deal with crutches and I'm very much lacking in that department.

Marilyn says we have been in the unit for 6 weeks already. We are co comfortable, it's hard to believe that we haven't lived here for ever.  

Recuperation means that I have plenty of time to catch up on reading and writing, and we've taken to watching Schitts Creek on Netflix.  It's an appalling show but we're hooked.  I compare it to I Love Lucy where a bunch of bizarre characters get themselves into crazy situations and have to work their way out - with modern ideas of sexuality to add an element of shock factor.

Thursday 24th September, 2020

 It's nice to be home.  While I was absent, the blinds were fitted to the new house and a couple of bedlamps appeared in the spare room.  I don't think there's much more be done until we can tick it off as being ready to live in.  It is a particularly comfortable home and a great place for an aging patient to recover.  And, we're ready to welcome visitors as soon as the Premier gives the nod.  He's saying it will be December before he raises the drawbridge  We can only wait and hope.

Jamie is not working today so is coming over to check that everything is as it should be for my recovery.  There are no stairs and the showers are easily accessible, with no sills to negotiate.  He's already installed a grab rail in one bathroom and will have a look today where else they may be needed.  It's been great to have someone to take on the responsibility for any building work.  I've never been very good at that sort of thing, anyway, and am well past it in my current recuperative state.

An hour after I arrived home yesterday, I had a call from the local Health Centre.  They had booked me in for a Physio appointment in a couple of weeks.  To save me making the 12-minute trek into the General Hospital, the Physio would see me in Longford.  Love it!

Wednesday, 23rd September, 2020

I managed to publish the two posts I had written in hospital.  My hotspot wouldn't work so I've waited until I arrived home.  They're out of order but, in the grand scheme of things, that's not particularly important. 

The last few days were uneventful; hospitals are busy places and I have great respect for the nurses who juggle the demands of their patients making sure that everyone gets a fair shake.  The constant pain made me nauseous and I couldn't eat the food that was brought around but, luckily, Marilyn found some fresh Californian grapes in the supermarket so I didn't starve.

All I craved was some scrambled egg and now that I'm home, it's being cooked as I speak.

I must say I have great respect for Australia's public health system.  From the initial assessment to the preliminary seminar when the process was explained, it has been flawless.  I waited less than a year and was able to have my choice of surgeon.  And everything is on hand in the hospital.  I was able to speak to any specialist I desired and the physios came to my bed.  That's service!  the fellow who ran the seminar even came to visit to see that I had everything I needed.  His name was Dan.

There's no doubt that the key to their success is clever recruitment.  My anaesthetists included Nazeem and Keiko, and the radiologist was a Pom.  There were any number of Chinese nurses on the wars, all professional and cheerful.  being in hospital isn't fun but the staff do their best to ease the pain.

When I was leaving I was taken down to what they called The Transit Lounge where I finalised the paperwork, had a glass of OJ and waited until Marilyn rang to say she was in the carpark.

Sunday, 19th September, 2020

I'm going to write this blog, assuming I can eventually hook in to the hotspot on my phone to upload it.  Of course, that eventuality depends on a confluence of events over which I have little control so I can only hope that goes well.  

I was first into the theatre on Wednesday morning, when the surgeons were at their brightest and the knives at their sharpest.  Everything seemed to go well and I awoke a couple of hours later in a private room.  Private room?  How did this happen?  It couldn't last and before long I was shuffled into a 4- bed ward when someone was found to be more deserving of a private space.

All the other patients were men, but that didn't last; there are two women in here now and I know they resent the lack of privacy.  The older woman across from me had a bad night and I suspect she is embarrassed to show her frailty in front of male strangers.

I have physiotherapy  each day and that is torture but necessary if I intend get home tomorrow, which is the current plan.

Monday, 21st September

This is the morning of Day 6 - Monday - of my sojourn in hospital.  I'm told I can go home when I've shown that I can cope with crutches.  I'm keen to display my expertise but I've only had one brief opportunity and that was on Saturday.  All of yesterday was spent staring at the ceiling thinking of what I could have achieved with a reasonable opportunity.

It's no wonder  that there are so many books written and movies made about hospitals: here is displayed every human emotion and there is an unlimited number of story lines for the most jaded scriptwriter.

If you want humour, or tragedy, human interest or pathos it's not hard to find a good example in a hospital. Opposite me is an elderly woman, born in 1929.  She's physically frail but mentally sharp as a task.  By the sound of her voice, she has not been well-educated but not much has passed her by.  She needs an MRI scan and the doctor has been asking her to recount her medical history: ninety years of it.  You can hear her making connections in her head to pinpoint when she had her hysterectomy,  using her son's age at the time to narrow it down. "He's 60 this year and I remember he had a bike for his 8th birthday so it must have been 52 years  ago.   Remarkable! 

The Physio test hasn't gone well and  I'll be here for at least one more day.

Friday, September 11th, 2020

 Marilyn and I had an hour to waste between appointments yesterday so stopped in to Mowbray for a cup of coffee.  There was a time, say twenty years ago when we first moved there, that the only food available in the town was Hungry Jack's but there has been real boom in the takeaway market in recent years. As part of its Refugee Settlement program the Australian Government singled out Launceston to take hordes of migrants from Nepal and Bhutan and they've made a real difference to the flavour of the area.  The older migrants have found it hard to integrate, keeping their language and even their style of dress, but the younger ones have integrated well, getting jobs, buying cars and hanging out like the rest of us.

We met one the recent incomers yesterday at the coffee shop we went to.  He took our order - two coffees and some fruit toast - and went off to prepare it.  When it came, we were delighted to find that his interpretation of 'fruit toast' was a toasted sandwich, stuffed with sliced banana and pineapple.  His offsider, a young Australian woman, gently took him aside to explain that the Australian version of fruit toast is a slice of bread with a touch of cinnamon and three or four sultanas.  I think I prefer his take on it.

I'm reading a book by Stuart MacBride at the moment, set in Aberdeen.  One of the characters is sent off to buy some takeaway: Haggis balls, a Macaroni Cheese Pie and a deep-fried Mars Bar.  Hmm.  I don't know what to think of that.

Wednesday, September 9th

 There's not a lot of variety in our lives at the moment.  It was a break from routine to move from Dilston to Longford but, now that the first rush is out of the way, we fall back into the normal day-to-day activities which rule our existence.

Except, yesterday we received an invitation to attend the Annual Induction Ceremony of the Rotary Club of Calamba, Philippines.  It's a bit hard to fly there at the moment but we were able to be present through the magic of Zoom.  The whole Ceremony enterprise was taken very seriously; we even had a dress code.  No sitting around in tracky pants for us.  I was expected to wear a traditional Barong Tagalog and Marilyn a short, formal dress.

A friend reminded me that it didn't matter what I wore from the waist down because it wouldn't be seen on the screen; like the old joke about newsreaders wearing pyjama bottoms with their suit jacket and tie.  It might have been fun to play that game, maybe wear a kilt, for example, but I did the right thing: black formal pants, appropriate shoes, and barong.  I had had my hair cut on Monday so I thought I looked pretty sharp.

Marilyn took it seriously too and wore a very pretty summer dress she last wore to a wedding in January 2019.  We didn't anticipate that we would both experience an odd problem.  Our 'formal' shoes have not been worn for months; instead we have been wearing flat-soled casual shoes everywhere. As soon as I tried to walk, I couldn't get my balance.  The tiny heel on the shoes was enough to throw me off-kilter.  Marilyn was fine until today when she complained of pains in her calf muscles. Is this all part of getting older or are our bodies evolving to accommodate our new, less-formal lives?

Most of those involved in the Induction Ceremony were gathered in a hall in Calamba but there was a handful, like us, who were involved through Zoom.  Our faces were displayed down the side of the screen and we could be heard if we chose to speak up.  The ceremony was in three parts: the first part was a welcome to the Rotary District Governor and the Club's reporting to him on what had happened in the previous year and plans for the next.

The third part was the Club's reflection on the year's work and recognition of what had been achieved.

The second part was what interested us, when new officers were sworn in and we might see our friends parading around or talking.  In fact, the small speakers in my computer, together with the mixture of English and Tagalog being spoken made it quite difficult to follow what was going on.  Nevertheless, it was a wonderful experience and we need to look at ways of doing it again.

I had to log out a few minutes before the end because I had a 'phone call from the hospital to tell me my knee replacement surgery has been scheduled for next Wednesday, 16th September.  Oh, joy!