All these years

I was just browsing around on wikipedia the other day and finally found out what a song means that I was completely oblivious to for a very long time.  We even used to play the song back in my high school band, and I certainly had no idea what the title really meant.

Anyway the song is "Turning Japanese" by the Vapours, which came out in 1980.  Lyrics include gems like "everyone avoids me like a psyched lone ranger" and "I want a doctor to take a picture so I can look at you from inside as well".  Who'd have ever thought it refers to what it is alleged to refer to!??  Wanna guess?  Maybe in certain regions this expression is common, but I sure hadn't heard of it until a few days ago.

If you can't guess what it means, and want to be put out of your misery, here's the link.

MP3 Player

Struth, am I behind the times!  This year sees me finally getting a mobile phone, and thanks to an Aldi special I just got an mp3 player.  It's quite strange how people jump to conclusions about me, as I've had a computer since age 15 (now 30 years ago), so they expect me to adopt technology quickly.  I took ages before getting a CD player and DVD player.  I was a lot quicker getting a video recorder as at the time I was living in Newcastle and working shiftwork.  Both NBN and the ABC used to close transmissions at about 1am, so I'd come home from work at maybe 3-4am and not have a thing to watch.  A lot of people in Newcastle used to put up 100 foot TV masts to get the prized Sydney TV reception, and I know exactly why they did so!

The not having a mobile concept has been interesting.  Everyone asks me for the mobile number and I used to simply reply "I haven't got one" and watch the jaws drop in disbelief!  Now I have to answer that question.  Fortunately my mobile number is pretty easy to remember.

And thanks to an Aldi special a couple of weeks ago, I picked up an mp3 player for $19.95.  What's more I've actually been using it and it has chewed up 2 AAA batteries already (although they were cheap ones that had been on top of the fridge for a fair few months).  Yesterday we bought a couple of rechargeables, as it appears this thing is a reasonably heavy load on the batteries.  I can at least have one in the charger, and one on the go.

Is my experience correct?  Are mp3 players really a battery hog?

Paracentesis again

Sheesh, I've had another injection straight into my left eye again (called paracentesis) so I'm all sore and re-eyed at the moment.  The process involves dilation of the eye, then application of a lot of lignocaine drops.  The next step is for a disposable plastic sterile adhesive fenestrated drape to be stuck over the eye, and along comes the ophthalmologist with the syringe of avastin.

It's weird getting injected, as you can see the syringe actually going in, and when the liquid is injected, you can actually see it wash over the front of the eye.  A bit like a wave hitting a porthole and looking out.  At this point it hurts so much the assistant says "All Done" and you instinctively shut the eye anyway.  An eyepad is stuck on with micropore and then you get up and fork over $750 for the privelege, of which Medicare will generously refund about $280.

What generally happens then is after about four or five days the vision in my eye improves noticeably, but after about 3 weeks it's back to how it was before (worse luck).  We have been trying, I must say, to get vision back, but I'm not real sure it's working.

What happens later is you get an OCT (occular coherent tomography) which is a special computer-enhanced photo of the rear of the eye (for which you pay $100 and Medicare doesn't give you back a cent) and this is used to check the state of the retina.  My last one I had about two weeks after the avastin injection.  This one showed a massive improvement, and yes, at the time, I was seeing a lot better from the eye.  However after another couple of weeks the vision got noticeably worse.

This time we're going to wait two months before doing the OCT, so we can check what happens after a fair bit of time has elapsed.  I think it may perhaps be time to give up on these treatments, as they're very expensive and don't seem to be doing all that much for my vision.

Cocos to Go

We finally bit the bullet and got the dreaded Cocos Palms removed.  They've been here at the house for probably 25 years or more - they are really big - but they have reached a height where we cannot reach them with the extendable pruning pole any more!

They were a habitat for flying foxes, and the wild bees used to love the nectar pods when they sprouted, plus they did provide some shade from the western sun.  But on the other hand, they dropped a hell of a lot of rubbish, and you could definitely see the distortion of the rear concrete barbecue area.  Our next door neighbour said the ones he had removed a year or so ago destroyed an entire retaining wall.

Anyway, it's too late now, they've been hacked off to almost ground level and have been taken away in a rather large truck!

Nokia Mobile Phone

I need to get a few photos off my new Nokia mobile phone that Mum and Dad bought me for Christmas.  They were shot on our trip to Sydney on Sunday.  Taking pictures and recording of the Cliff Richard Concert was strictly forbidden but it's not something that is enforced too well.

Gee, people need to figure out how to turn the flashes off on their cameras.  There were photo flashes going off all the time in the Entertainment Centre, and unless you're within three metres of the subject a flash does you no good at all!  All it does is freak out the artists on stage, although I think they were fairly impervious to it in this case.  I hate it when people do it at our drama group plays, however - as it's very distracting for an actor.  You certainly don't need to use flashes in theatres - there is more than enough light already provided!

Worse, I suppose, is when you see people taking photos of FIREWORKS using flashes...  Apart from the three metre concept, so the flash has no effect at all, you're taking a photo of a light source, so if the flash did actually work, it'd reduce the light image you're trying to record...  Ah well, I digress.

It's just that you'd think that if taking photographs was strictly prohibited (as is written on the tickets and on signs up all over the place) you'd want to do it clandestinely and not announce your presence to all and sundry by setting off a whopping great flash of light each time you take a photo! After all, if push came to shove, you'll be infringing your ticket conditions by doing so and giving the organisers a perfect right to eject you from the concert with no comeback possible at all on your part.

What (also) cheeses me off, however, is the Nokia USB port, and the main reason for this post.  The Nokia has a standard USB symbol over the connector cover, and I had just had a cursory glance at it before.  I have three sizes of USB cables down here with the computer - USB B, USB Mini and USB Micro A and I reckoned the small one was going to be fine.

Well ... none of them work - Nokia have used a USB Micro B connector, which I haven't got, and they didn't provide it with the phone, unfortunately.  It's actually slightly larger than a USB Micro A connector, but flatter.

Anyway, I've ordered one online and it should arrive in the next few days.  I got one for $14.95 plus $9.95 postage and handling from a phone accessory place in Brisbane.  Nokia sell them for $39.95 plus postage and handling which I didn't bother looking up.  You know why they do this sort of thing, don't you?  I'll now have a range of four USB cables, let's hope I don't have to buy yet another one in the future sometime!

Cliff and the Shadows 50th Anniversary

On Sunday, Sharon dragged me along to the 50th Anniversary Tour of Cliff and the Shadows at the Sydney Entertainment Centre.  We saw a three hour show which included mainly OLD songs from before Cliff broke up with the Shadows and they went their own ways.  As a result, I wasn't familiar with many of the songs (after all it's not me who is the die-hard fan, it's Sharon), and I was disappointed he didn't do some of my favourites like "Wired for Sound" and "Devil Woman".  I'm even a sucker for the Eurovison entry "Congratulations" and other songs from "I'm No Hero".  But alas, it was mainly older stuff.

A couple of strange things happened.  Firstly, he sold out the 12,000 seats at the Entertainment Centre within about an hour and a half of going on sale, with virtually no publicity.  Cliff has an incredible fan base (don't ask me why) and they are loyal and plentiful!  I was on the Ticketmaster site within five minutes of sales opening, and as the first tickets offered were right up the front, behind the line of the front of the stage, I rejected them.  The next ones allocated were miles back, so I rejected them.  The third time I was offered seats a little closer, but right on the side and right in the back row.  You could see the centre booking out in front of you, so these ones I didn't reject at all!

After a few hours I went back on the Ticketmaster site to see what positions were being offered and they were completely sold out.  Not bad for a septuagenarian, eh?  There were, of course, pre-sales, but they were far more pricey than the standard $139 each we paid, and we didn't want to go that far.  He would have made a lot of money from this latest tour, which at his age may well be his last, of course.  (Although knowing Cliff and his penchant for being in front of an audience, that's probably not going to be the case).

Another strange thing was the reaction of three ladies sitting next to us.  We were at the back right hand side of the audience, and as a result of the speaker stack, you could only see the left hand third of the large screen behind the stage.  If you'd been a lot lower, or more square on it wouldn't have been a problem, but a large number of people would have had the big screen obscured for them.

At the brief interval at half-time, two of the ladies went off to complain about the lack of vision in the large screen.  I wasn't sure what could be done about it.  No, I was sure what could be done about it - nothing.  The way things were setup there was no way anything could be done save lowering the speaker stacks to the floor, which may have had an adverse effect on quite a few things.  Well one of these ladies got a bee in her bonnet, and went off to complain to someone down near the mixing desk.  After ten minutes had elapsed she came back to the seats, and announced "They're not going to do anything about it, we're going home".  Her other companions then begrudgingly left with her!  Earlier on they were saying it was the first time they'd been to a Cliff concert and what with the guy's age, there's no guarantee they're ever going to see him again!

As a result they missed about ninety minutes of the concert that they had paid about $139 each to see, merely because a large part of the big-screen was obscured.  You could still see them on the stage, and you could still hear everything fine, but as a protest, the three of them left.  I'm damn sure that according to the conditions of sale of the tickets they would not be given a refund.  And in the 12,000 attendees we really didn't notice their form of protest due to their absence!

Anyway, we moved along three seats after they left to stretch out a bit and got talking to another guy who said he was from Maitland.  We asked why he hadn't seen the show in the Hunter Valley vineyards the day before and he said he was appearing in a play for Maitland Repertory Society, and only had this Sunday off.  Turns out he is in "Breath of Spring" currently running at the Maitland Playhouse and we had seen him last year in the "Maria Martin Murder Mystery".  He was the father who got killed.  Interesting coincidence that of the 12,000 people in the Entertainment Centre at the time, we had already met the guy (within a theatre) sitting next to us!

Cliff is a consumate performer and always puts on a good show.  Hell, Sharon has been to six of his concerts, and the amazing thing is that I've been with her for three of them!  I could think of better artists to see than Cliff, but then again I could think of a lot worse.

Knockin' back the pie?

As a taxi driver you have the option to flick a switch in your cab, turn the radio to silent, and transmit everything from the car to the base.  It's called the M13 alert and is compulsory in every taxi in NSW.  Usually, however, the transmissions are false alarms, and you can simply hear what's going on in the cab, which can be quite interesting.

One night a driver flicked his switch accidentally, and I could hear very clearly everything going on in the cab.  He picked up a couple of passengers, asked them where they were going (which is very useful info should the driver actually be in trouble), and set off.  You could hear the blinking lights operating, acceleration away from lights and so on.

The driver went up Darby Street Cooks Hill, and there is a famous late-night pie shop halfway along.  The passengers hurriedly told the driver to stop, while they dashed into the shop to get pies.  "You want one yourself driver?"  "Nah, I've just had tea" "Go on, it's our shout, mate!"  "Nah, sorry, couldn't fit it in".

At the time, the driver was completely tieing up one of the three transmission channels completely, so we switched off Channel 2 and were issuing jobs on Channels 1 and 3 instead.  Things went on for about a quarter of an hour and we'd listen to the driver with the M13 on every few minutes to make sure it really was a false alarm.

Eventually the driver twigged something was wrong.  It was quite a busy time, and no radio transmissions would have been received by the car for a while.  He should have at least heard a few jobs being called and a few cars calling in.  He flicked the switch off and came through.

"Yes, car 57, you've had channel two tied up for the last twenty minutes"

"Sorry control, everything's okay"

"Yeah, we got a bit worried about you when you knocked back the pie, but we assumed as much"

"Oh...  Sorry"

It was okay, he hadn't said anything stupid or emabrrassing.  This was not the case all the time!

"Cars go back to normal transmission on Channels 1 and 2"

Breaking Bad

How many of you are watching the series on ABC2 called "Breaking Bad"?  I've managed to catch every episode so far, and have been amply rewarded.

It is the story of Walt White who is diagnosed with terminal lung cancer and has been a high school chemistry teacher.  It seems he has missed the boat and wound up in this not so glamorous job, whereas some of his colleagues have done a bit better.

Seeing his brother-in-law, who is a DEA (drug enforcement agency) operative at work, Walt begs him to ride-along on a raid to see the guys cooking meth-amphetamine.  With Walt's chemistry background he is interested in cooking crystal meth as by doing so he can raise a lot of money in a short time and leave a lasting legacy for his family.  After he dies, Walt knows they will be lumbered with debt and have a really hard time of it.  His wife is newly pregnant, and his older teenage son has cerebral palsy, and thus needs constant care.  He teams up with a former student, Jesse Pinkman who has been cooking meth before, but nowhere near as good as the stuff Walt can produce.  (By conicidence, Jesse was actually at the place raided by Walt's brother-in-law in the ride-along, but manages to slip away unnoticed by everyone except Walt who is under strict instructions to wait in the car).

You've read the above paragraph and if you haven't seen the show you're reckoning it's pretty heavy going.  Well, I forgot to mention.  It is a comedy.  The second episode was an absolute hilarity where they tried to dissolve a body of a rival crystal-meth dealer who tried to kill them (it was self defence) in a bath of hydrofluoric acid.  Walt had told Jesse to get a polyethylene container at the hardware store, but Jesse couldn't find one big enough and reckoned the bath would be good enough...  Hydrofluoric acid eats through just about everything, including enamel-steel baths and wooden floors.  With the bath on the upper storey and Jesee and Walt below in the sitting room, a very interesting entrance is made by a partially dissolved body!  What a mess, and what a laugh-out-loud situation!

The ludicrousness of the situation is amply shown, in a very black and laid-back manner.  I've been having a look at the US website (see link up the top) and have had to stop reading.  We are up to Season 1 Show 5 in Australia.  There are 2 more episodes in Season 1, plus another 13 made in Season 2, and they've just proudly announced the starting of the making of Season 3.  Great to hear, but a lot of spoilers on that website, no doubt!

Anyway, it's on ABC2 on Friday Nights at 9:30pm for at least another 2 shows.  Let's hope Season 2 shows have been bought and can be played straight onwards.

Council's Liability

I visited my podiatrist today and got chatting.  He mentioned that there was an incident a few weeks back where one of his clients came into the surgery all battered and bloody.  Apparently there was a tree growing close to the concrete footpath just up the street from the surgery and the roots had pushed up through the path causing a trip hazard which the poor old dear had fallen foul of.

He then mentioned that the VERY NEXT DAY there were workers with jackhammers digging up the footpath and effecting a repair.  He was impressed as to the immediacy of the action.

The reason, of course, for the council's action is due to the way the liability laws for these things are framed.  As long as a council has a reasonable maintenance programme in place (eg they inspect the area maybe four times a year) and effect repairs as they become necessary, then a problem with the footpath is not their responsibility.  They are not expected to know about every nook and cranny of their local government area.

However, if they are made aware of a potential problem, and do nothing about it, then they ARE liable for problems arising as a result.

In this case, the poor old dear who fell over probably won't have gotten any relief from council for her fall, but no doubt she will have told council about the problem.  Hence, from that point onward, the council is liable for future slips and falls.  This explains the fast action.

The moral of the story is, if you do notice dangerous things developing such as distortions in footpaths from tree roots, and any other potentially dangerous situations, let your council know about it, preferably in writing or by fax (although a phone call or email is possible).  Once they have been informed of the problem, they are then liable for any eventualities caused by the problem.  This'll get em going and you'll get stuff fixed!

And then there was one...

On 15 July 2008 (I remember the date well, as it's my father's birthday) I had a testicle removed due to a seminoma, and it was quite a straightforward procedure.  I was in and out of hospital in one day.  Here's the message I typed up at the time describing the incident.

I went in to the new section at the back of Wyong Hospital at about 7:20am yesterday. I played in the band at the official opening of Wyong Hospital in about 1979 or 1980. At this point it consisted of two main wards and a small casualty section, with a few smaller ancillary buildings scattered around. There has been an incredible amount of building going on there in the last thirty years and the facilities now are enormous. The latest extensions at the back are very new and modern, and very easy to get lost in!

I was second on the operating list for the day, and got into the theatre at roughly 8:20am. I had a general anaesthetic and woke up at 11:30am in recovery minus the right testicle.

The surgery involved cutting through the lower abdomen and removing the testicle and other associated connections, so there's been quite an invasion of the body. It's REALLY sore at the moment.

I didn't require too much analgaesia after the operation - just one pethidine shot at 11:30am and two panadeine forte about 4 hours later. Mind you I'm on doloxene as required spaced at least four hourly for the arthritis anyway, and this also works to avert the surgical pain.

I had a catheter inserted, a drain sutured into the wound, and naturally a cannula for a saline drip (seems to be de rigueur for most hospital admissions this day and age anyway).

At about 12:30pm, they finally managed to scrounge up a room for me. It was a massive single bed private unit, normally used for maternity patients. It even had a baby bath in the corner, which I didn't actually use. Occasionally some of the ancillary staff delivering meals or cleaning the place would ask me how my baby was going!

The operation was a definite success. (They didn't leave it in accidentally or remove the wrong one for instance!) I still have the marks made by some sort of felt tip pen by the surgeon consisting of his intitials and a rather large arrow pointing to the offending piece of tissue. This will take weeks to wear off, they tell me!

I had lunch at about 1pm after the operation - no restrictions. I was fairly well starving by then, and the lunch was great despite minor congealing of the mashed potatoes. I suppose the hospital food does suffer from having to be transported in racks over what must be an enormous distance from the kitchen.

The flowers arrived shortly after lunch (thanks again) and I chatted away with Sharon and my Mum and Dad for quite a few hours. 15 July was, in fact, my father's 78th birthday, so we had a bit of a celebration for him. It was a fairly quiet affair, though, given the circumstances. Mum and Dad live at Kanwal, so it was quite handy for them to get to the hospital. Sharon stayed with them overnight as well to save the drive back to Wyoming and return early the next morning.

Tea arrived at about 6:30pm, a cuppa at 8pm and then no more catering until breakfast at about 7am next day. Problem with me is my arthritis frequently keeps me awake for all hours at night, and it was no exception that night. With the Tour de France at a rest day, I was lost for viewing (I have been avidly following every stage this year), but I got myself a card to operate the TV set and saw a selection of Foxtel channels. Mum and Dad went home at about 6:30pm, and Sharon and I watched an old episode of "The Last Detective" on UK-TV before she was kicked out at the end of visiting hours.

I managed to get a couple of two hour sleeps overnight, which is possibly more than I am getting at home these days. Problem in the hospital was going without coffee and snacks for an extended period. In 2006 when I spent 2 weeks in Gosford hospital I could at least patrol the corridors at 3am and use the food and beverage machines liberally sprinkled throughout the building. Mum and Dad had brought me in some supplies of fruitcake, cheese and biscuits and a couple of bananas. They were very welcome to get me through the night.

I wasn't so mobile last night, however, what with tubes hanging out of me everywhere, and also being connected to inflatable cuffs around the calves which would inflate and deflate alternately every fifteen seconds or so to avert cases of deep vein thrombosis. Left leg goes up, left leg goes down. Right leg goes up, right leg goes down. Homer Simpson would have been enthralled!

I am convinced that hospitals do not exist as a place to sleep, because in addition to this, the intravenous pump beeps like crazy every two hours until the nurse either punches in some more numbers, or replaces the saline bag. They also do observations every hour for four hours then every four hours post operatively. This means you get your pulse, blood pressure and temperature taken at 8pm, midnight, 4am and 8am (plus or minus half an hour) all through the night. The nurse on night duty kept being disappointed by me being awake when she came in to do the observations, but I don't know what they expect.

Come morning, however, when I had dozed off, I was awoken by my surgeon doing his rounds at about 7:45am. All was fine, cannula, catheter and drain can all be removed and I can go home provided I passed urine and an ultrasound confirmed my bladder had been emptied completely. Breakfast then arrived at 8am, and then my nurse started disconnecting me from things for the next half an hour. The requisite urine being passed, and proof the bladder was empty meant she removed the drain from the wound at about 9:30am, and I was discharged at 10am.

I then had to wait nearly an hour for the hospital pharmacy to fill my post-operative antibiotic prescription, given as a precaution to avert possible infection, but this was a minor hiccup.

I arrived back at Mum and Dad's at 11am, stayed there for lunch, and got back home to Wyoming at about 2pm.

Since then I've fielded quite a few phone calls - thanks everyone for ringing - it is very reassuring. The star caller was Bonnie, of course. We had quite a long chat about lots of things.

Anyway, we await pathology for any further news. I will visit my GP in a few days' time, and a community nurse will visit me to remove the staples on 25 July, but I'm not really going to hear much more significant info until I can visit my urologist (Dr Finlay McNeil) which is on 31 July. He specifically wanted to wait until 2 weeks after the operation before seeing me. It will be at that point when I hear if I should need chemotherapy, radiotherapy or nothing further. Anyway, nothing along those lines has been indicated so far - although it is very early days yet.

99% of testicular tumours ARE malignant, incidentally, but if there has been no spreading of it into the abdominal cavity the removal of the testicle generally cures testicular cancer. The disease has a 99% cure rate. Lance Armstong seemed to have no problem winning seven Tours de France after suffering from the same affliction. Mark Latham (remember him?), and TV presenter Chris Reason both seem to have gotten over it fine.

I intend to join them.

Anyway, with tonight's coverage of Le Tour just starting on SBS, I'll leave you all with it, and type to you later!

Storm boy

We got back from staying at Clarence Town at my parents-in-laws' place yesterday to find an inch of water through the garage.  We had a drainage channel installed across the driveway a few years ago to avoid problems, and it works on all but incredible rainstorms.  Since the drain has been in, it has come into the garage only twice; once last night.  In looking further it seems Sydney had its biggest storms in ages which prevented a result in the third One Day International between Australia and the West Indies.

Kangy Angy topped the rainfall to 9am on 13-Feb-2010 with 122mm, and Gosford came in fourth with 75mm.  The evidence was here, although we missed the storm itself.  At Clarence Town itself, however, there was no rain: in fact it was one of the hottest nights I've experienced for a long while.  Some rain would have been welcomed to bring down the stifling temperatures, but it obviously pulled up just a little bit to the south of us.

Difference of Opinion

A while back when I was driving cabs on a Saturday Night I took a couple of twenty-something guys out to Valentine from Newcastle.  This was about a $20 fare at the time - nothing to be sneezed at, really, as you'd be taking about $250 in total for a good Saturday night, so it was 8% of the nightly takings - some nights the proportion would be higher.

Of course you'd get the occasional "bolt" - where your passengers would get close to their destination, and simply bolt.  And in every case where I've been the victim of a bolt, I'd never seen the passengers again.  Hell, one night I went from Wyong Golf Club up to Morisset with a group of three passengers, and I'm pretty sure I saw the house where they ran into - but of course when I knocked on the door, the guy answering it played dumb and said he had no idea what I was referring to.

Naturally for a police charge to be lain you'd have to be able to identify the passengers (huh!) and be able to find them again later so the police would actually be able to lay charges.  Not much chance of that, really.

So when I dropped these two off down at Valentine, my heart sank as one of them threw open the door and was off like a shot into the dark.

The other guy was still in the back seat.  I remember him saying "It looks like I'm a bit more honest than my mate - he's done the bolt but I can't bring myself to join him - What's on the meter?"  He then paid me the fare and walked off, leaving me collecting my jaw from the floor!

Palliative Care

I just watched a recording of the Four Corners programme on palliative care by Deb Masters (A Good Death) and, as I so often do, sat there nodding frequently in agreement with the views expressed.

Since my hospitalisations I am now always fascinated by decent medical stories, and this one was a great start for Four Corners for 2010.  In it we were shown, first-hand, the stories behind four people's final days on this earth.  All of them had cancer (two of them bowel cancer, one pancreatic and one breast).  In all cases the cancer had metastisised (spread) to many other organs.  They were fortunate in one regard in that they knew death was approaching.

The show posed more questions than it answered, of course.  There are not many places in the country setup for dieing.  Accute care and intensive care beds is where it probably happens the most, however they are not ideal places in which to die.  I can assure you of that from experience.  The palliative care ward at St Vincent's hospital in Sydney tries to provide such a place.  It makes sense spiritually and economically as well - it costs $3,000 - $4,000 per day  for an ICU bed, whereas a palliative care bed is from $600 - $1600 daily.

I nodded emphatically with Darryl Calver's comment "...I don't care what it is I have to take, legal or otherwise, [to] stop the pains so that I can go out and enjoy my last 18 months".  It might seem strange, but I know exactly what he means.

I nodded again at Sandy Riches's comment "It's mental anguish, you wake up every morning and you think 'I'm still here you beaut' ".  I can remember poor old Bev in the bed opposite me at Royal North Shore for nearly 7 weeks saying exactly the same thing.

And I nodded probably most emphatically at a comment from one of John Peart's relatives: "Dad saw his dad go through it and Dad was always strong about euthanasia but obviously it's illegal but his theory was that if you're in that much pain then you shouldn't be sitting there suffering"

It is pathetic that in this country and most others, you'd be prosecuted for being cruel to a pet if it was in constant pain and not euthanised, but as soon as the victim is human, the option is simply not available.  In fact we frequently see people assisting others in suicide charged with murder in this country.  There is a BIG difference between assisting suicide and murdering someone.  A murder victim generally does NOT want to die.  Someone wanting to commit suicide generally does.  However our legal system doesn't make any distinction.

When I was in RNS last year a woman in a bed diagonally opposite me was diagnosed with terminal gastrointestinal cancer.  The curtains were drawn to give her a semblance of privacy, but I could hear what the doctors were saying quite well through the thin drapes.  They were suggesting she needed operations and chemotherapy and so on, but she simply said to them that she wanted NO treatment.  She was even refusing regular medications as the nurses came around, and to the nurses' credit, they were complying with her requests, not trying to force her to take medications she didn't want.

She justified it to her sons (one of whom had flown over, taking time off from his relatively important job in the USA, the other was an Associate Professor of Marketing at a local uni) that she'd had a good life already and given that death was inevitable anyway, she didn't want to die with tubes stuck in her and weak from the chemotherapy.  I know that this choice is not what the sons wanted, but it was what this brave woman was insisting on, and I hope she got it.  It wouldn't have been my choice, I can assure you, but given that it was what she wanted with no doubt about it, I felt strongly about her right to make that choice and have her wishes fulfilled.

I never saw the conclusion to this, as they insisted she was transferred to RNS Private Hospital instead of the public one.  Mind you the nurse to patient ratio in a private hospital is generally WORSE than in a public hospital anyway, so it may not have been the best move.  A transfer to the St Vincent's palliative ward might have been in her best interest, having seen this Four Corners programme.

I just hope that when I am facing death I can be as courageous as this grand lady.  I think the victim is better off to deal with it than the relatives anyway.  When I was told I had a 20% chance of dieing last year I was grateful for the honest appraisal, and accepting of the fate.  After all, there was nothing I could do about it.  However I saw the effect it had on my wife and parents and it was not a pretty sight.  It's harder on the carers than the victims.  Perhaps that's a topic for a future programme - support not only for the afflicted, but also the relatives.

Pakis sent Packing

After the T20 match last night, where Pakistan fell three runs short of victory, Australia completes a clean sweep of their visit, winning ALL the tests, ALL the 50-over matches and the one T20 match.

It must be so disappointing for the Pakistanis in that not one victory was possible for them.  I suppose it really points to the fact that they really haven't been playing enough cricket lately, given all the security scares in Pakistan, and the fact that opposing teams just don't want to tour their country.

As if that wasn't enough Shahid Afridi's weird nibbling of the ball in Melbourne last week and consequent two-match suspension casts another gloom over proceedings.

And what with the West Indies dispute between the Cricket Administration and the Players' Association reducing the strength of this nation, it is looking to be a pretty one-sided summer for cricket in Australia this year.

Let's hope the Aussie DO get beaten once or twice by the Windies in the One Day series starting on Sunday.  These one-sided matches are no good at all for the spectators.  When we went to the SCG for the One-Day match a few weeks ago, the game was fairly obviously going to be won by Australia, the crownd got bored, and there was a hell of a lot of anti-social behaviour going on as a result.  At least last night's T20 match did keep the interest up until the last over.

We can also hope that things improve in future series.  One-sided matches are boring, and that's not what we want.

Reacquaintance

I can't believe how long it has been since I've made a post, so apologies to all.  The computer has hardly been turned on in the last fortnight for two reasons: 1) I've had other things to do and 2) I've not been all that well.

On 29 January I re-entered the operating theatre at Royal North Shore hospital.  Fortunately this time it was actually a scheduled event and it was only for a gastroscopy.  I've been having increased chest pain recently, and what with my costo-chondritis it is very difficult to tell where it's coming from.  Last year I was convinced it was the costo-chondritis, and was horribly wrong with dire potentially fatal consequences.  This year I reckoned it may have been the oesophagus again, and as soon as I saw a gastro-enterologist he immediately agreed that I needed a gastroscopy.  He also said that it needed to be done in a major public hospital (not a clinic as was being mooted by my GP).  The reason being is that 25% of oesophageal ruptures are actually caused by gastroscopes themselves!  And given that I'd already had one of them the odds for me were a lot higher than the person-in-the-street!

He also said if I wanted the gastroscopy at Gosford Hospital I could well be waiting three months.  So I was referred back to Dr Steve Leibman at St Leonards (who saved my life last year) to arrange it all at Royal North Shore.  It took just fifteen days under the public system, and it didn't cost me a cent.

The good news was, as Steve said visiting me after the procedure, it was all good - there wasn't even any inflammation at all.  It was great to meet Steve again - we do get on quite well.  He looks so at home dressed in scrubs inhabiting an operating theatre.  When they wheeled me in, he was playing with a power cable over in one corner of the room looking like he really belonged there!  All in a day's work, I suppose.  I certainly challenged him a lot less this time than on 7 Feb 2009!!!

You hear so many complaints about the public health system not working and how things go wrong.  I have nothing but praise for it, and can speak with some authority, having been an avid consumer of medical services for over three years now.  Nurses DO make minor errors, doctors DO occasionally misdiagnose things, but I can't speak more highly of a health system which is going to be without doubt one of the best in the world.  It is something we can really be proud of as Australians.

I woke up after the gastroscopy (they pump you full of valium) in the recovery ward at RNS (I've been there a few times before!) I was ushered out to the discharge ante-room, sat in a lounge chair, given a cup of coffee and a delicious ham sandwich (I had to fast for the procedure so I was quite peckish at the time) and I was like a pig in mud.  Steve came in to let me know the good news and about half an hour later I went home.  It was quite a good day.  I slept a lot the next couple of days (the valium at work) but the recovery was complete and overall it was a very pleasant experience.

Now if only I could shake off this morbid head cold!  The first cold I've had for probably four or five years....