MEDICAL EXPERTS

Well, we have been home from hospital for a little over a week and time has speeded up so much that we have been hard at it trying to get the house sorted out and keep on top of the mobility exercises and wound dressings. Today, we managed to get out and about and I realised that K is getting much better at moving around. Little by little, things are getting much easier for him. Our lovely friend Liz, a retired nurse who has moved into our village from the UK, arrives at 10 am each morning to give K his daily injection of anticoagulant and stops for a cup of coffee, just like having a District Nurse in the village. What amazing luck is that?

Our heads are trying to escape from the institutional regime of hospital and we are now trying to keep on top of daily meds and all the appointments that are clocking up. We will see the Urologist for the second hormone injection on Tuesday after seeing a Neurologist for an electronic picture of his leg to show where the DVT and/or the neuropathy is placed. Our social life is tee-total for the time being to see whether this will have an impact on the PSA blood tests which will guide the medics into whatever treatment comes next. Kimon looks a little glum over this but he needs to be given a slap on the back for not smoking or drinking for nearly three months. The house smells nice these days.

All of a sudden, it seems to be the Christmas build up period and lots of activities are being planned. On Thursday, I had a girlie day off and we went to a MAKE Session being held at a cafe in Rethymnon while another mate from the village kept Kimon company and brought some home made brocolli soup with him. The group decided to make little clothes and items to hand over to the Red Cross just before Christmas. There were about a dozen ladies there, all skilled at sewing, crochet or knitting and we had a good make session and lots of chats. On Saturday, Liz toiled over heavily laden with card making supplies and we had a mammoth session in the warm, gluing, sticking and dolloping with glitter glue. Fabulous! Today, Sunday we got ourselves up and showered, and after K's daily injection, we set off for a table top sale at Varan Episkopi which takes place each month at an old olive mill and opposite the village taverna there. It was a good opportunity to sell unwanted household things and stock up on Christmas goodies – pickles, flavoured oils, raki, hand made soaps and home made clothes and knitted goods. Liz bought crackers and mince meat for pie making. All we need is to do some carol singing! The weather was a little cloudy, so Kimon found a seat in the local kafeneon for a nice Greek coffee followed by a simple lunch. Lots of friends turned up and it was good to catch up lost time since we saw everyone about three months ago.

The house seems to be in good shape and has not let in any water. I managed to wriggle up onto the shed and bathroom roof with a small pot of roof paint and a roller to finish off the waterproofing while K was having his afternoon siesta on the last sunny afternoon this week. We had just enough paint left to complete the job except for the part where I had painted myself into a corner. Anyway, that is one job jobbed – although I'm not sure my plimsolls fared very well. We also had a pile of admin waiting for us on return from hospital – phone and electricity bills, car MOT during which we discovered that we needed to get a proper copy of the car log book which was not available when we bought the car and all the government computer systems were in disarray. We now have to get this done before we can renew the car insurance in December and get the car tax. Also lots of medical appointments both in Rethymnon and Heraklion (not looking forward to going back at all). So we have lots of busyness that we could do without.

The weather has been a lot of sunny intervals, windy and cloudy but not too cold yet. We have had a small delivery of logs and await a full load soon. The log burner is doing sterling work and keeping us very snug and helping us air the washing which doesn't quite dry outside these days.

We owe all our friends such a huge thank you for practical support and good wishes across the miles this year via our 'moral support' page on Facebook. It has really propped us up when things got so very hard in September and October. Hopefully 2014 will make happier reading and we wish you all a good build up to the festive period and lots of love from us both.

CLOUDS AND SILVER LININGS

Nearly two months have passed since we arrived at the University Hospital for Kimon's prostate cancer operation and what a long time ago all that seems now. It was summer! The muddle over his admission, the long wait during the op itself, the horror of the days afterwards when he was sent to Intensive Care, the even greater horror when he came out after 15 days and the intensive nursing course we have sweated through in the month since he came back on the wards again. We were so happy that his bed was moved from Pathologiki back to Urology where he started. It seemed a haven of peace and quiet after the incessant ward rounds and blood taking from packs of student doctors needing to practise on somebody. Everyone in this ward is much kinder and more helpful and we have the daily visits of George the Physiotherapist who has helped us enormously. As well as the op, the neuropathy in the legs, the tracheostomy, feeding tube and IV lines, Kimon has had to deal with ongoing hormone treatment for the prostate side of things (very sore and uncomfortable) and trying to get himself as strong as possible on the thin rations of identical bowls of unidentifiable broth which have turned up twice a day at lunch time and at dinner while everyone else in the room tucks into a plateful of food. It has no taste at all and we try to syringe it into Kimon when he is not looking because it is so unappealing. Katerina at the rent rooms made special chicken soup for him, but either by coincidence or not, the levine tube blocked when we tried to give it to him (it smelled delicious) and our errand of mercy turned out to be the opposite when the tube had to be taken out and put back again.

Progress is much faster than we would have imagined and we have been working on getting K's leg muscles and limbs unstiffened and unswollen by daily lifting and massage. It is a bit like trying to change a 12 stone baby which was totally impossible at first but which is now getting easier by the day as more movement returns to his limbs. In fact, we have worked with him in baby steps as it is much like going through these stages of development in terms of arms, rolling, sitting up and in the last few days a few staggering steps with the help of willing family members. Although we are still have trouble deciphering what he is saying, Baby has been determined to start potty training as soon as the catheter tube was removed which is really good sign of emerging independence.

Dressing baby with all these tubes sticking out and bottles to manoeuvre through sleeves, and the techniques to make things work easier has at times been hilarious and both K and I have ended up either in complete knots of plastic tubing or wearing his soup when the levine tube has backed up and the result was colourful, to say the least. Keeping baby in clean clothes without a washing machine has also been an on-going task! Anyway, a few days ago baby sat up in bed and shaved his beard, cleaned his teeth and had a good wash and brush up on his own. All good therapy!

I am praying that this will all end soon and K will be well enough and have got all the necessary papers stamped by all the doctors in the hospital to go home because we are beginning to feel like hostages who will never escape. We have been waiting over a week for the tracheostamy tube to be adjusted or removed so that without a feeding tube, there will be room for K to swallow some more nourishing food. He is feeling the cold and needs to put some meat on his bones, so we really hope that the ENT Department will get round to him soon and we can start to plan for getting back to the house and making it accessible for him. We can't believe we are approaching winter because our summer was limited to a couple of weeks when all K's pals came to Crete.

Friends have been fantastic in sending good wishes and practical help. There were moments in the early weeks when I did not think that either of us would make it, but praise God, my back has held out with the help of Ibuprofen from the UK and I haven't succumbed to all the nasty bugs that were floating around in the hospital (lemon, honey, echinacea fizzy tabs and Carolyn's banana bread for breakfast) plus Katerina (the Nurse) who looked after K at night, and Katerina (Rent Rooms) who has plied with wonderful home cooked hot dinners every night. It is small things that count, and all the good information that has come our way has made all the difference. A physiotherapist friend in England Emailed half a dozen work sheets from her hospital which I managed to access on my Kindle.  These exercises have made all sorts of things possible as K gets his strength back. HUGE THANKS TO EVERYONE.

If you have a mind for prayer, please pray that we get home very soon now! X x x