TWO LEFT FEET

Sunday lunchtime at Bali - High Season!

4/36 Treatments and Counting. Friday Night. Back from the hospital after the last radiotherapy session this week. Kimon opted for a late afternoon slot, which works out well for us as we have the whole morning to travel out and about while the hospital car parks are at their most ludicrous and return home after lunch - for a queue in the waiting room, treatment and then a nice afternoon nap. If we feel energetic enough, we can go for a slow walk with crutches in the hospital grounds to our friends at Gregorys Coffee Bar or collapse for the evening.

A heaps better experience than last time around.

This may be important!

First of all, we were amused that patients could only find out what they needed to know from other patients. The two doctors on duty were working completely flat out and did not seem to have people on hand to carry out the admin. After retrieving Kimon's very large hospital file from last summer (which was the biggest and fattest the Doctor had ever seen since K had been in four different departments last year) the Doctor left it on his desk on Tuesday and K reported that it was still on the desk where he left it today. The chances of retrieving it a second time seem a bit slim to me. We were told about a special diet sheet which we asked about several times and ended up looking up things on line. It seems counter-intuitive requiring K to eat white bread, white rice, no vegetables and lots of MEAT and Fish. We heard from another patient that avocado, bananas and peaches are also OK. If Blog-followers have any friends in the know, perhaps they can double check this for us. We think it is to stave off Montezuma's revenge, which for K would be a bit of a disaster.

It might say, please close the fridge door and return the teaspoons, we are not sure

K was mightily amused by the banter which was going on in the waiting room while all the blokes in the queue were arguing politics vehemently. Meanwhile patients in beds are being wheeled in and out, wheelchairs dance round one another in the narrow corridor and people rush in and out of offices at great speed. In the middle of all this frenetic activity, the argument in the waiting room carried on at full force and one chap was called for his treatment and turned as he went through the door, pointing his finger and saying “Don't go away, I'm coming back to finish my point!”.

We were given prescriptions to take down the road to the Pharmacy and chatted in the busy shop while quite a number of customers came and went. We took out the instructions written in Greek to ask her and I translated the instruction and put it by the side of the Doctors scrawl. All these matters are greatly confused by the fact that Greeks shorthand-write “pm” for morning which to us means “am” - so my annotations confused her completely! It must have caused masses of missed appointments between Greeks and English speakers over the years. The Chemist assuming that we were complete idiots took out a large black marker and wrote a number against each pill and instruction with the matching big black number on each box. Brilliant, but almost as a whisp of an afterthought she added that, of course, number 2 was a suppository. K and I fell about laughing and thanked her for telling us; it was good to know. K joked that it would have been so hard to take with a cup of coffee. I can only conclude that a good number of prescriptions must be dealt with this way in Greece because she could not understand our hilarity. Not a glimmer of amusement did she share while we were clutching each other and falling about after a week of deciphering where we were supposed to be and what we were supposed to be doing without any clear directions at all. Huh, mad English – how childish about dealing with medicines! Anyway, now we know … if the capsule looks extra large, stop and double check the Greek instructions.

Our lovely little beach - space for cars - then ...

Yesterday, we found a brilliant little beach about 12-15 mins drive from the hospital. Not 5 star by tourist standards, but wonderful for us. Accessible by car and easy to park; a nice shady coffee bar; straight out on to a small beach for a decent swim with a shower and changing cabin and then easy to get back to the hospital again. Most beaches leave K standing at the top of hideously uneven steps or track, leaning on his crutches looking down wistfully and thinking, “maybe not” – so this was a God-send. Few places are disabled friendly in Crete from any point of view. We found one ramp at the hospital which leads to a glass wall and the entrance door well

away to one side of it! It went nowhere … we had a giggle but next week I will take a photo.

... right near a shady place to have morning coffee

Sadly, we stopped at Katerina's Ouzerie today for a quick lunch and had been told that Katerina's mother was in the hospital in a coma. We sent our love and best wishes to them. We had just ordered lunch when the phone rang with the message that her mother had just died and we realised that we would have to leave everything we had ordered behind and make a fast exit so that they could make arrangements. We know that the funeral service takes place within 48 hours so poor bereaved families need a standing start, I would think. Katerina had been such a kind friend to us last September, so we wanted to find a way to show our sympathy. We will have to ask the right thing to do as customs vary so radically from the UK to Crete and we would hate to get that wrong too.