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
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