Greetings from your foreign
correspondent. Back from the confines of hospital and creeping round
the house a little gingerly since the wearing of loose pyjamas seems
the best choice right now. All went well. My pesky gall bladder is
on its way to Athens for Histology and whomsoever the recipient is
can be confident that they are very welcome to it. I have three
minor incisions, some prickly stitches and an allergy to the wound
dressings used by the hospital, but we smartly changed these and I am
trying various combinations of alcohol (topical!) and anaesthetic creams to cool
down the itch until I can consult Niko at the Pharmacy on Monday.
I had an interesting time in hospital,
sharing a room with another lady who had had her spleen removed
(horrid op) but was making a good recovery. As she had a constant
stream of visitors – young and old – bringing flowers, cakes,
home made goodies and so on all day long, it was lovely to see how the extended family worked, Cretan style. She was looked after
fabulously by her sister (I recognised her complete exhaustion)
during the night and a changing pattern of friends by day. The two
sisters both had a trio of gorgeous looking young sons with curly
black hair, bushy beards and flashing eyes. (Coor!) When one of
them explained in perfect English that my giddiness was due to low
blood pressure, I asked him where he had acquired perfect English.
He said that he had been at University in Birmingham for four years.
They were a wonderful family but the
best thing to observe was hair wash day. If anyone remembers the
dressing of the bride scene from My Big Fat Greek Wedding, this
evening had all the lovely moments of communal fiesta! First of all,
sister arrived with two large bin bags and a washing up bowl with
another four people. I watched intrigued to see what would happen,
since my night carer had used large bin bags to wrap round my middle
and got me to lean forward over the shower, but this variation was
much more fun. One bin bag was placed inside another and their bases
rested in a bowl on the floor. The patient was helped to lie down on
her bed top to toe with her head hanging from underneath the bed rail
and her hair into the open bag. A young lady (think she was a proper
hairdresser) armed herself with shampoo and the room began to
smell of nice perfume as they worked. About three older ladies
trouped backwards and forwards from the bathroom with large water
bottles of hot water from the bathroom while they washed, massaged
and rinsed while the water gathered into the ballooning bin bags. It
worked well. After the shampoo, the hairdresser got out her
hairdryer and brushes to start styling for the lady now seated. The
older ladies in the group dug about in shopping bags and produced
freshly washed and ironed sheets and set about stripping and remaking
the bed. I can't think of anything nicer or more healing than all
these acts of kindness and teamwork. The whole experience certainly
beat day-time telly into a cocked hat as they danced and joked
around each other. It was clear that this lady was a very special
person with a benign army of friends and family - she had visitors young
and old who all greeted me and wished me perastika
too. I hope she gets well very soon.
My plan for finding someone to help clean
the house fell flat a bit because we were given the details of a nice
young lady called Lena, but sadly her mother-in-law died the Saturday
morning we were supposed to meet and greet her, so it all had to wait
another week and I was limping about the kitchen looking for mops,
sponges and bottles of bleach with much less energy than the week
before. Anyway, Lena seems lovely and has agreed to come twice per
week and we will see whether she likes us and we get on with her to
make things permanent. We are hopeful.
Then Rik the Builder, who had been
consulted about replacing one of the upstairs windows way back in the
summer managed to get the manufacturers to put it together, also to
arrive at the weekend and I could see that my recovery period was
going to be anything but peaceful. As luck would have it, one of the
sheets of glass got dropped and a corner broke, so it has delayed the
installation another few days, for which we are rather grateful. We
had also discussed finishing the painting the roof and outside of the
house – since I was out of action – with a friend in the village
and after three reminders, he eventually turned up to start this
morning! This will be good and we can be reassured that we are
ship-shape for winter without me having to shimmy up the ladder and
skate about on the roof with rollers on poles this time around!
The skies are very grey this morning
with a hot wind from the south. Most of our chums are away in Matala
at an archaeological weekend to explore new sites down south. I am
sorry to miss so many treats but seem to be living under a long
period of force majeur these days! Then other friends from England
phoned to say they were on holiday near Rethymnon this week and I am
turning over in my mind whether I feel strong enough to drive all the
way there only a few days after surgery. The wound site is OK, but
my eye-sight is still whirring a bit after the anaesthetic and the strength of the winds is increasing all the time. Not a good time to be out and about, sadly.
I still have one procedure to go as
they remove the stent from the common bile duct (hopefully) by
gastroendoscopy and after this I hope that things will be back to
normal, whatever that means! In the meantime, the winds are
beginning to howl and I think the roof paint has gone on, just in the
nick of time.
Adieu x
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