Mae is home

On Monday morning at 7am, Professor Morris did his rounds as he does seven days a week at that time and decided that Mae would recover better if she went home. She was finding the hospital environment distressing at night, especially as The Rules did not allow anyone to stay with her. It took the hospital the next 11 hours to finish with her and to organise the paperwork, but we waved them off into the evening just before 6pm and Nick drove her home to Canberra. Nothing is easy for them at present and the trip wasn't easy, nor the arrival.  But overall, I agree she is better off at home. Ric and Melissa were there to help out when they arrived.  David and I stayed in Sydney.

On Tuesday, David saw his hand surgeon at Royal North Shore Hospital for a follow up. I wish I could report his carpal tunnel procedure fixed the neuropathic pain problem but regrettably, no.  It was worth a try though. The next step is a consultation with another neurologist, and also a referral to a pain clinic.

Lets have some good news now! Our house is nearly finished. The builder, who is a very fine human bean, keeps telling us not to think or worry about the build, he will take care of all of that, it's all going really well, we should just focus on our daughter and if there is anything he can do, anything at all just say the word. So far the smooth and relatively trouble free progress on the house leads us to have the confidence to do just that. We haven't seen the house for weeks. Our priorities have shifted so radically that I find I barely give it a thought from one day to the next.

We will be going back to the mid north coast for a few days next weekend, and I promise there will be photos after that. We are going back there because we have decided to move out of the townhouse we have been renting and stay with friends if we are in the area between now and the end of August, when handover will take place. No sense paying rent for a place we are not using. As the money supply diminishes, we find ourselves turning into a pair of typical doddery tight-arse fogies. Yesterday at the chemists, we must have really played this part well.  The young assistant handed us our bag stuffed with meds and then asked sweetly if we'd both be going home to put our feet up now that the hard work of shopping was all done? Our reply: no we're off home to take some drugs! She laughed like a drain!

After the surgeon appointment, we drove to Canberra and have spent a lot of time at Mae and Nick's since then. We're staying with friends Marg and Keir nearby but not seeing much of them. But they cheer us up and it's doing us good. Keir materialised in the bedroom this morning with a cup of tea and wanting answers on the cryptic crossword.

Mae continues to improve physically.  Its a tough road emotionally. But physically she is going from strength to strength. Yesterday she walked for a good 30 minutes around the neighbourhood, even after managing a doctor's appointment followed by afternoon tea in a cafe. Pretty good for someone only 12 days after a peritonectomy.  My brother Derek says this surgery is the biggest surgery done in medicine. She is utterly determined to do whatever it takes.  Anything she can be in control of in this battle, she is willing to undertake. She is independent in her stoma management, gives herself injections, takes horrible medications and is lining up for chemotherapy. She is generally showing courage that takes my breath away.

This photo is for you, Nick. Taken as David and I left the hospital. They did all right at St George Hospital, given the very considerable constraints on performance imposed by funding. But we did smile that the award for "improved performance" was not given, and the award for customer service went to one of the mortuary assistants.