And to all a good night
20th December, 2006
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One of the low points, without doubt, was feeling the cool breeze of the hospital air-conditioning blowing on my bare bum as the backless hospital gown flapped in the air. My groin surgeon was a nice guy but two chatty get-togethers in two years was two too many.
"We'll have to stop meeting like this," he said as I was wheeled into the operating theatre for my second hernia repair.
There have been other moments of stress in the past year, most recorded here in this weblog. There have been some entertaining moments, too, one of which was watching the Liberal Party turn a state election campaign into a stand-up comedy routine. Laurel and Hardy would have been proud. There has been the usual, friendly, bonding interaction with my fellow Queenslanders - car wing mirror kicked off by psychotic cyclist, chased by psychotic truck driver, and the extended middle-finger treatment from several hundred others during my daily Toowong-city commute. Ever the frustrated diagnostician, I decided I was suffering from malaria and spent several days shivering and sweating in bed before gathering the courage to go to a doctor to find out I had an infection that was simply and quickly cured by antibiotics. "You're sure it's not malaria?" I insisted. "Yellow fever, beri-beri? Anything remotely exotic?" I pleaded as the receptionist dragged me out of the surgery and pointed me towards the street. Never more than a heartbeat away from hypochondria, I also self-diagnosed several heart attacks, dementia, skin cancer and glaucoma. The jury is still out on dementia but I'm clear on the rest. Our furniture continued to diminish, one chair spectacularly, my legs flying in the air along with the contents of my glass as I rode the splintered remains of the chair all the way to the tiled floor. And the search for replacement outdoor furniture continues. We still have three chairs left out of the original six so I suppose there's no hurry. While in a state of temporary mental imbalance, I agreed to do the Story Bridge climb. I confronted my vertigo demons and almost passed out with fear while so doing but survived to boast about it. My mother-in-law provided one of the year's more uplifting moments when she called me to complain about the sluggish performance of her new-ish car. It refused to travel faster than 25km/h and her fellow motorists kept abusing her, she said. She took it to a mechanic, expecting a substantial repair bill. He looked under the bonnet and fortunately also looked under the accelerator pedal, where he found the high-heeled shoe that had become wedged there. There were several big moments in the year, not the least of which being the day I married my dearest wife, Katrien. She has made me happier than I could have ever imagined and I wake up every morning thanking God that we are sharing our lives together. I love her more than I could ever say. So it has certainly been an eventful 2006. I wish you all a very merry Christmas and may 2007 bring more adventures and happiness to everyone. Thanks for reading and I hope you will all visit here again next year... |
