THINKING ALLOWED

I am thinking I've been terribly slack visiting friends' blogs and even attending to my own.  I feel it's part of getting older when things can accumulate in one's mind and finally you don't want to think any more for a while.  This flower look so peaceful it made me feel more settled.

Firstly I had the sad news about my 66 year old niece.   I am glad to report that she and her sister are off on a holiday together.  Not sure where to but I sincerely hope they manage to enjoy it.

Secondly, K and B arrived home after a wonderful holiday with their #3 daughter in the US but Karen's ear was affected on the flight home and she ended up with labrynthitis so was unable to return to work as scheduled.   She's doing OK now and back at work since Thursday but I was worried about her.  I was concerned for her as B had to fly to Adelaide for a couple of nights and then to Sydney for a couple of days.  She managed OK on her own thank goodness.  They live about 20 miles from us so not easy to just pop in for a minute or two.

Thirdly our eldest granddaughter who has known for a year or more she has gallstones finally ended up in emergency last Friday as she had suddenly gone yellow.   She rang the health line who of course told her to get to the hospital ASAP if she couldn't get an appt with her doctor within an hour or so.  It was decided she had a gallstone stuck in her bile duct and needed immediate surgery to remove it.  She had gone to a public hospital and they said they'd have to send her to large new public hospital who would be unable to attend to her before the following Wednesday.  On top of that they couldn't say for certain when they would be able to do the gall bladder op.  Possibly a few weeks further on.   She then decided she had better go private and the hospital arranged for an ambulance to collect her and take her to St John's Murdoch (not far from our place and where I have been on several occasions).  They arranged to have a doctor available at 8pm that night but it took three hours before the ambulance turned up to collect her.

She eventually arrived at the hospital at 9pm.....to late for an op that night so it was scheduled for Saturday morning.  When they did the endoscopy they found TWO gallstones wedged in the bile duct.   She rested in hospital on the Sunday and on the Monday afternoon she had her gallbladder removed.  She spent another day in hospital and then was more than ready to go home on the Wednesday.  I kept in touch with her by phone and Phil and I popped up and spent some time with her on the Sunday afternoon.

The say our public hospitals are doing well but from things I've heard of late that is definitely not always the case and I am only so glad that Phil and I decided to keep up paying for our private health insurance.  It probably stops us from having a holiday each year but we are so settled in our home right now I am not sure that matters and when I think of the thousands of dollars we've received over the past 10 years or so HBF owe us nothing and we are well ahead and have been able to have any treatment required just when it is needed.

Fortunately, although Karen wasn't quite well enough for work she was able to help out with C's two little girls which took some of the load off C's husband.  We are too old to do much in the way of caring for youngsters but I promised to help out perhaps financially with hospital bills etc.  It is the least I can do.  We are not that well off but I can never see family go without and that's the way I was brought up.   Karen fortunately has the same feeling about family so we support each other when we can.

I think most of you know I can't walk very far and always use a walker when out and about.  Well, when we arrived at the hospital to visit C we found a huge crane and very large truck blocking the road where Phil would normally drive to drop me off at the front door or, hopefully, find a disabled bay near the front door.  We managed to find a disabled bay not too far from the hospital and off I set.  As we neared the road the large truck drove off and a very nice workman showed us a way to get to the front door and then proceeded to walk with us to make sure we were safe.   He was just so great and warned us it would be the same next Sunday.   We told him that hopefully we wouldn't need to visit again the following week.

I must apologise for my neglect of your blogs and promise I am going to try and catch up during the next week or so.  I need to say thanks to those folk who have still been following my nonsense and I will try to get back on board there as well.  In the meantime, I hope everyone has a good weekend.