WAITING GAME

Artwork at the Hospital

Life is a bit of a waiting game at the moment. The weather is rasping hot after quite a moderate early August and much more humid than any of us can remember. After getting the confirmation of the diagnosis that K’s prostate cancer had not spread to the bones or elsewhere, we breathed a sigh of relief for about 10 seconds until we contemplated an operation to remove the offending article and began to realise that we were not out of the woods yet.

Went to the beach early on Sunday before everyone else got there!

The 15^th August and the week or two following are the busiest time for Greek holidaymakers and the beaches are heaving. As it is so hot, K and I are resting during the heat of the day and getting up early for housework and going out at sunset to do the shopping. Driving through Panormo has been murder over this time with large coaches delivering batches of holiday makers to the huge palace (= Marble Butlins) all-in establishments where you could be anywhere in the world without getting to know about Crete or meeting the locals. The small access roads in and out of the village are constantly being jammed up and we have learned a lot of the back tracks here and there to avoid them. The sea which is usually clean and sparkling, has been none too clean this year either.

All our friends here in Crete and in the UK have been wonderful in their support and interest as K faces difficult times. Although there are treatments to deal with certain levels on the Gleason readings, the best option for K would be surgery – with all the added complications that this will entail. I am reading up and trying to be as conversant with this as I can because not all the medical professionals we have encountered speak English (which is unusual). We were given the options for treatment. Firstly, we were offered a robotic operation in an Athens clinic (the picture of the machine looked like a cross between a dalek and a bulbous space buggy) where the practitioner carried out the procedure from France or America via keyhole surgery and internet link. Call me old fashioned, but with the rate that our internet connection gets hiccoughs and the power supply cuts out, I just did not have any confidence in it. Neither would I feel capable of nursing Kimon for a week in Anna’s useful and handy, but not so airy or spacious flat in Athens on my own afterwards. Any complications would add 1,000 euros per day to the 8,500 euros cost for this treatment. As this looked very much like being a hostage to fortune, we declined. Thanks, but no thanks. Similarly, a private clinic in Chania could do it (conventional, not keyhole surgery) for 6,000 euros. So I looked the Urologist in the eye and asked him “If you were in this situation, what would you do?” He said that the Professor of Surgery worked at Heraklion University Hospital and with our IKA books, we could organise the surgery via the normal channels and get a good result. We made sure that we asked him whether each/any of the procedures would make any difference in terms of recovery and so on. He assured us that the prognosis for recovery would be the same in each case. The expensive, private option was for people to book a time and place at their convenience.

So we opted for Heraklion. Everyone says it is the best hospital in Crete and has good things to say about the professionalism of the staff there. If we are lucky, we may be able to get a room for me when I am not mopping a fevered brow, at a dedicated hostel, which has been gifted to the hospital by a grateful ship owner – so we are making investigations. It is Greek families who have to provide nursing care in Greek hospitals, so I will be busy.

Greek homework is giving me a few headaches!

The next hurdle was to telephone for an appointment, which involved a week of getting no answer at all. (We contacted the Urologist to check the number–“yes, right number but it is holiday time”)

We entered all the questions we needed to ask on Google Translate English to Greek and hoped it would make sense to the person at the other end as we read them phonetically.

On Monday, we called first thing. Got no answer again. Looked up the hospital on the Internet and phoned the Switchboard who gave us a different number. Phoned this, no answer. Phoned the original number several times and eventually spoke to the Surgeon. Scheduling operation no problem, but we needed call the hospital to make an appointment for a consultation. Phoned reception again, given another number, phoned this number given reception number again. Telephone tennis. After about 25 phone calls, got an appointment for a consultation with all the test results and scans (which K keeps in his own file) on 2^nd September. Exhausted!

Kimon felt as if he should have been given a gold medal for persistence! He is telling everyone that he would never have known about PSA tests from the UK. The Greek Doctor could not believe that all guys over 45 did not have the blood test as a matter of course each year – a very simple procedure which indicates a problem much earlier than symptoms do.

Parks are the shadiest places to be in August!

I still have to do battle with Easyjet since I can’t cancel the flight I had booked to the UK in September without surrendering all the money paid. Staysure Travel Insurance have never paid up on a claim yet - either emergency dental treatment in my first year or all the travel disruption in New Zealand at the beginning of this year which was genuine and out of my hands. My only hope is that a petition we signed to Easyjet to extend direct flights during the winter months MIGHT come to something. If there are flights in November, I might be able to reschedule my flight booked in September with only an administration fee to add. Customer Service seems to be in India and I am not very hopeful, but I will hang on to my booking until the last minute and see what flight schedules are available closer to the time and when we actually have a date for the operation.

Exhausted, slightly terrified but not daunted. We are not sure how we ever found time to go to work …. !