CROZIERS ON FIRE ...

Sunny afternoon in Panormo

Great week this week. The weather has been sunny and warm and K has been in better spirits – up in the morning and labouring over tea making – slow, but full marks for effort. In addition, the Urologist has put him on a different hormone injection which goes into his sit-upon rather than tum and doesn't seem to have caused such a bad reaction. The remains of the abscess was syringed again and a sample sent off to the lab for analysis – result after 2 weeks antibiotics, all clear.

The Thursday appointment clashed with our Knitting Bee, so three of us went in the car with me driving into the city centre and hatching a plan to park at the Marina Car Park which was a tiny distance to Soldier Square where the taxi rank was. Then as K can not walk far and needs a zimmer, he could get a taxi to the busy street where the Thursday Market and the Urologist's Office was. Such a nifty plan. In true Cretan form, the road was closed by a temporary barrier between the Marina Car Park and the Soldier Square so that all vehicles had to go all round the busiest part of town to get back to where they started which caused minor chaos and frustration. However, we all managed to do what we set out to do, so it was a minor success.

So, this week, we are winning.

On Monday I tried to set the house on fire. As the firewood delivered this year has been so difficult to get going, I remembered a few large pieces on the terrace and thought I would try to put one of those on the stove. It ignited like a rocket and got a wonderful fire going. 10 minutes later, I was trying to watch TV, wondered where the scorched smell was coming from, Skype called me over the TV programme on the computer and then the smoke alarm went off. I leapt upstairs and saw the floorboard round the stove pipe beginning to glow. Fortunately, we always keep a bottle of water up there and I soaked the area for a good 10 minutes to ensure that the floorboards were OK. I've forgotten who was on Skype, but they had a mad 5 minutes while I leapt about hither and thither. (Kimon was in bed dozing!) Rik the Builder came to give us a quote for a new chimney, insulation and so on the next day and made the area temporarily safe. We hope he can sort it out for us in the near future! We also need another supply of olive and not carob wood!

Yesterday, two ladies came from the Geropotamos Social Services and took our blood pressure. Then one of them stayed and helped me in the house by sweeping and mopping the floors. I am not sure whether they will turn up every Friday, but it did help a lot with my sore old back. Giving nursing care to K on a bed which is much lower than a hospital bed is very hard going. Anyway, this service is FREE and I am grateful for any help going.

Pharmacy Corner!

About the same time, Liz the Nurse arrived with two bags of bitter oranges from her friend Nancy's garden. I had the stickiest afternoon trying to make marmalade and recover all the pips from the jam before bottling. However, Nancy was pleased and I hope that she will enjoy it. The best part is always making the labels and the mob caps for the top of the jars! “Nancy's Garden Roumeli Orange Marmalade”.

Apart from our phone line breaking down again for nearly a week, we have quite a few anxieties from the UK with news that my very elderly Dad has been in hospital after having fallen and broken his arm. My brothers and sister in law have done a fantastic job in trying to sort him out and we hope that the Care Plan in place will keep him comfortable for the time being. We have a rogue tenant in our house who has been given ample notice but is not moving out or paying anything, so this means that we have to start the Court process to get the house back again if we do try to get back for treatment and we don't run out of time for the radiotherapy that K really needs. I also had the worry of waiting for a new UK passport and after several weeks of worrying and a few adventures, actually received it yesterday. Many people think that using Couriers is the best way of getting things to people but sadly it does not work that way in Crete. We had food parcels horribly delayed after Christmas and our experience of Couriers is not nearly as good as the postal service. Having made a definite appointment to meet the Courier in the Village Square on Friday and having telephoned to confirm this appointment on Friday morning, and having waited all afternoon in the Village Square – I had an interesting, rather stilted conversation with my friend the Flower Lady who lives on one corner of the square and has made an entire green sward from empty paint containers and a multitude of plants. After hours of waiting, telephoned DHL, tracked the package on line, found to our horror that someone else had signed for it the day before. Finally, having seen us waiting, the lady in the house next door to the cafeneon gave us the package which had been delivered and signed for by her on Thursday, Worrying! Infuriating! Still, all's well that ends well.

Sunday Lunch at Lake Kournas

SEVEN PLAGUES OF ALLSORTS …

Christmas as we know it doesn't happen in Crete – well they have a holiday, but it all happens at New Year when EVERYTHING closes down completely. However, Christmas eve was nice and I was encased in a floury apron for baking spiced apple pies when there was the sound of a crowd singing in Greek outside the house accompanied by children tingling triangles. The Papa was there along with adults and children and – I was unsure of the protocol - but I did have a basket of sweets and small chocolate Father Christmases which I offered to everyone with my 'Bravo' and 'Thankyous'. Kimon was asleep in bed, so missed all the activity.

Christmas Day itself was quite jolly with nine of us celebrating in a collaborative effort to bring a turkey dinner and all the trimmings from various houses to one place – Buzy Lizzie's – on Christmas morning. We arrived in fine fettle and had a lovely feast, but K needed to leave early and get some sleep. When we arrived home, he was a bit shivery so he sank into bed thankfully. We had plans for an outing the next morning, but everything went askew when K couldn't sit up or get out of bed. We tried for an hour or more but it was nearly impossible to do anything other than manipulate him to a chair, give him a quick wash and brush up and put him back to bed again. He was like this for over a week and having tried to get a Doctor to see him over the Christmas holiday was nearly impossible. It was like the underwhelming force against the immovable object – we had to get him to a surgery. It was ten days before we could get him up, telephone the Specialist who advised us to take him to the hospital at Heraklion. Anna and I looked at each other and thought …. NO! In the end we took him to our local Health Centre and met up with our favourite Doctor, Kyria Zoe. She checked his blood pressure, temperature, chest and took a blood test on the spot. The result was that the white blood cells were very high, and the red blood cells low, blood pressure very low. So she thought that he had been fighting a virus or infection, but his chest was clear and we needed to feed him up and get him strong again. However, overnight bags in case of a hospital dash have been packed and ready since then.

I looked for iron rich foods and all sorts of nutritious, delectable dishes. Kimon had been lying down for over a week which does hamper food shovelling and he had not been at all hungry. All a bit worrying when he had lost so many kilos in hospital and was painfully thin. Research on the internet has been hampered by an intermittent service all over the holiday and then no service at all for the New Year. Then the phone went off and the internet came on, then they both went off and stayed off. We pay quite a lot of money for this dodgy service, so we sighed and wondered how we could inform OTE, the telephone company which only provides a coded number to report faults which can be made from a land line. As every phone in the village was down, it was all very annoying and they could not let us know when we will have any service back again.

On Wednesday, Kimon was up and ready to go out, but still in a lot of pain. We needed another visit to the Health Centre to get a prescription for the anticoagulant injections which Liz has been administering each morning. We saw a different doctor who wondered why we didn't go back to England, wondered why the Urologist did not prescribe these injections, tried to get a prescription for 3 months supply and ended up with a short order for 20 days only! (We were relieved because there was no way we could pay up front for 3 months of injections and a supply for the month was all we wanted or needed). Kimon has been in agony since his last monthly hormone injection just before Christmas and I wonder if this may not have caused all his problems. I have tried to deal with this by giving him Neurofen, but it had a limited effect. On Wednesday, as I got him ready for bed, we were both horrified to see a large abscess emerging along the operation scar and red area all around – no wonder he has been in such pain. I knew I would have to see about it in the morning, but in order for him to get a good night's sleep managed to get very light gauze smothered in Savlon on the spot and masking-taped a lightweight plastic box over the area so that his shirt and bedclothes do not come into contact with it. After 5 minutes, he was sound asleep – I was relieved that something worked, even on a temporary basis. I don't think I have ever had to do so much thinking on my feet …

In the middle of the night, the abscess burst causing all sorts of blood loss, emergency clearing up, bedmaking, laundering and a visit to the Urologist the next day for tortuous examination and cleaning. Getting K up, cleaned up, horrid compression stocking on, injection done and then encased in padding for travelling in the car took a great deal of time. Just putting on socks and shoes is amazingly difficult on a swollen leg. We hitched a lift by texting a friend in the UK who could contact her husband on the other side of the village!  On top of all his other medication, K is now on heavy antibiotics also. Wondering whether we are still doing a battle against nasty hospital bugs picked up in Intensive Care, I deep cleaned the kitchen and bathroom with lots of bleach on our return home, in case we are harbouring germs anywhere in the house.

We wish there was much more to report, but news is a bit thin from the sick room. The weather here is cloudy with some sunshine and some heavy rain torrents most days. Building and cleaning the log burner takes a lot of time and energy from me and we have had to invest in some “hot logs” - artificial ones made of saw dust which seem to burn well amongst our other duff supply of carob wood which soaks up rain water and burns terribly or goes out altogether if left on its own. Olive wood is very much better but there is not a lot available.

Looking on the bright side, have received some smashing parcels from friends in the UK: foodstuffs like tea bags and mustard powder, DVDs (especially valuable when the internet is down), a marvellous wearable blanket which both K and I have made use of, sweeties and lovely treats. A non-slip carpet gripping mat went straight down on the bathroom floor and provides insulation against the cold tiles and a non slip surface. Fantastic! Big hugs to all my marvellous friends back home.

Yesterday and today have been much warmer and I keep putting on jumpers and taking them off outside. We hope all our folks in the UK are keeping warm and dry after the horrible storms we have heard about before the news went off – We send our love from afar … (Will post this when the phone line and internet return … it might be some time) ... back on line 11 January! x