Hello again

Hi everyone. Sorry for the break in transmission but I'm feeling a little bit better now. I visited the hospital yesterday and my surgeon decided that this saga had gone on long enough. He's happy to put a plate in my leg and hopefully get some of the length back. I won't be able to do any marathons but I should be able to walk on a flat surface without too much difficulty. As an inveterate Eeyore I'm somewhat doubtful but any improvement will be welcome. I hope to go back to the hospital in the next two months and then I will have the rest of the summer to recuperate. My greatest wish is to travel to my beloved Portugal (see pic) at the end of September so with any luck I might make it.

Update

Just a quick note to say the doctors have decided to operate on me again to put a plate and pins in my leg. Hopefully this will get me walking again and lengthen my leg a little. It's progress but it does mean going back to hospital... not for very long, I hope!

Thanks for all your concern and best wishes.

TM

Resting

I'm taking a rest for a while as I've not been feeling too well of late. I'll try to resume blogging as soon as I can.

Madness Down Under

I thought it was only in Britain that collective madness had taken hold on a national scale... not a bit of it! Sadly, Australia, normally a haven of common sense, appears to have fallen under this new form of madness.

Kevin Park, an 87-year-old war veteran, was admitted recently to Lismore Base Hospital, New South Wales, with a lung complaint. Unfortunately the alarm system used by patients to summon nurses was faulty and despite his best efforts he couldn't summon help when he took a turn for the worse. Staff knew the alarm system wasn't working and had resorted to issuing patients with handbells instead.

Kevin eventually gave up after 45 minutes and used his mobile to phone 000 (Australia's answer to 999) and summon help. A bit of a drastic step but it worked. When the nurse arrived, she didn't apologise but instead confiscated Kevin's mobile phone before returning it a little while later minus the SIM card and battery. That's what I call a bedside manner.

"I didn't know what was going on. It hadn't happened to me before and I wasn't even sure whether it was blood or sweat," Kevin said from his hospital bed. "Desperate people do desperate things. In the end I rang the emergency telephone number to ask them to get me out of here and somewhere where I would get some attention."

"Taking my phone was, to me, the biggest offence," Mr Park said."To me it's thieving. You can't ring out on the phones they have here so that mobile phone was my only access to the outside world."

A North Coast Area Health Service spokeswoman said staff took Mr Park's phone to prevent other patients being disturbed in the middle of the night. "NCAHS has apologised for any distress that may have been caused to Mr Park and his family," she said.

Don't you just love the way health authorities around the world employ such weasels to deliver their pathetic excuses?