Skip to main content

The Journey Goes On


Hello all, Catherine Wright here writing on behalf of one whom because of his current position, cannot make contact himself. After many weeks in a state of limbo, yesterday morning my father had the surgery which would remove his troublesome prostate and make sure we will have him round for a few years yet. My mother and I drove him to the hospital at around 9am where he was promptly fitted with an attractive gown and special leggings to prevent blood clots. All he was lacking was a pair of heels and he would have given Liza Minnelli a run for her money.

At 10am he was given a pill to make him drowsy before he was given anaesthetic. He told us all that these sort of medications never work on his alert personality and was promptly snoring within five minutes. A little after 11 a team of very kind nurses wheeled him into theatre where he was nipped and tucked for about four and a half hours. During this time Mum and I had a quiet lunch at a lovely cafe by the beach then sat in the family waiting room, wanting to be as close to dad as we could. The beautiful Sister Mary visited us throughout this time, giving us all the gentle care and attention that her many years experience, and high status in the hospital could afford. Dr Samalia rang us just before 4 to let us know that Dad was in recovery and would stay there for a couple of hours as they monitored his blood pressure which had (quite understandably) dropped a bit. They have sent what was removed off to a lab to be examined and we will hear in a week or two the results which will tell us how successful the surgery really was. However, we are quietly hopeful for the best possible outcome.

We were finally able to see him at about 5pm. He was very pale and still under the influence of many drugs, but we sat with him for the few hours while he slowly came too. The nurses who were constantly in and out of his room, checking the many monitors and tubes running in and out of him assured us that he was doing very well, and by the time we left he was alert enough to watch a little of the rugby, and engage in some light conversation with the man across the way from him about the blunders of both teams. We were exhausted when we got home but immensely relieved to have that part of this journey over.

Today we returned to the hospital to find Dad sitting in a lazyboy by the window patiently waiting his lunch. Though he is still uncomfortable and has a long way to go, his night was good and he was even able to attempt a short walk during the course of the day. It is a testimony to the prayers of all those who have so kindly lent their thoughts towards him how rapidly he is recovering from his surgery. We gratefully thank every person who has offered support in whatever measure over this last period. We have felt so cared for in so many ways and it is impossible to express how deeply we have felt your love. There is still a great way to travel on this road but we have no fear as we face it. God bless you all.
Labels:

Comments

gregcarroll said…
Glad to hear things are going well! Best wishes from us all 'at school'.
Greg
22 June 2008 at 22:13
JoanK said…
Thanks for the news - prayers, blessings and cyber candles coming your way from Canada
22 June 2008 at 23:32
Anonymous said…
What a lovely surprise to hear from you, Catherine, writing in the same vein as your Dad [funny that!]
I am just so grateful that you did, because I was about to write something about the candle still burning at St John's for those who need our prayers when I remembered it was still burning at 11 p.m.!!! Aïe! I had agreed to put it out for the night, leaving a night light in its place as usual, and had forgotten. (now out, I might add)
We all thank God over and over for his faithfulness throughout this period to Kelvin and all of us. Tonight we rejoice with you in Kelvin's amazing day today and continue to pray for rapid and complete healing. May you and Clemency, with Bridget and Nick, continue to be upheld and know you are loved to bits by our Lord and all those who know your family.
NIE
22 June 2008 at 23:38
Kathryn said…
Thanks so much Catherine for keeping us informed. I'm so glad that your Dad is doing so well - and now we will pray for a good recovery and good pathology reports. Best wishes to your Dad,to your Mum and to your whole family and of course may God Bless You All abundantly.

In His Love, Kathryn, Perth.
23 June 2008 at 05:13
Anonymous said…
Catherine that's so beautiful and so descriptive, and even more amazing that the next morning he sent text messages describing how okay he is. Then three more this morning! He must be bored! Our thoughts and prayers continue [as does the candle/light burning.]
23 June 2008 at 09:58
Alden Smith said…
Thankyou for the news Catherine. You write so well and with great clarity. It is good to hear that your dad is on the mend. You are all in our thoughts and prayers.
23 June 2008 at 11:42
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Ko Tangata Tiriti Ahau

    The Christmas before last our kids gave us Ancestry.com kits. You know the deal: you spit into a test tube, send it over to Ireland, and in a month or so you get a wadge of paper in the mail telling you who you are. I've never, previously, been interested in all that stuff. I knew my forbears came to Aotearoa in the 1850's from Britain but I didn't know from where, exactly. Clemency's results, as it turns out, were pretty interesting. She was born in England, but has ancestors from various European places, and some who are Ngāti Raukawa, so she can whakapapa back to a little marae called Kikopiri, near Ōtaki. And me? It turns out I'm more British than most British people. Apart from a smattering of Norse  - probably the result of some Viking raid in the dim distant past - all my tūpuna seem to have come from a little group of villages in Nottinghamshire.  Now I've been to the UK a few times, and I quite like it, but it's not home: my heart and soul belon...
Post a Comment
Read more

Kindle

 Living as I do in a place where most books have to come a long way in an aeroplane, reading is an expensive addiction, and of course there is always the problem of shelf space. I have about 50 metres of shelving in my new study, but it is already full and there is not a lot of wall space left; and although it is great insulation, what is eventually going to happen to all that paper? I doubt my kids will want to fill their homes with old theological works, so most of my library is eventually going to end up as egg cartons. Ebooks are one solution to book cost and storage issues so I have been  using them for a while now, but their big problem has been finding suitable hardware to read them on.  I first read them on the tiny screens of Ipaqs and they were quite satisfactory but the wretchedness of Microsoft Reader and its somewhat arbitrary copyright protection system killed the experience entirely. On Palm devices they were OK except the plethora of competing and incomp...
10 comments
Read more

En Hakkore

In the hills up behind Ranfurly there used to be a town, Hamilton, which at one stage was home to 5,000 people. All that remains of it now is a graveyard, fenced off and baking in the lonely brown hills. Near it, in the 1930s a large Sanitorium was built for the treatment of tuberculosis and other respiratory ailments. It was a substantial complex of buildings with wards, a nurses hostel, impressive houses for the manager and superintendent and all the utility buildings needed for such a large operation. The treatment offered consisted of isolation, views and weather. Patients were exposed to the air, the tons of it which whistled past, often at great speed, the warmth of the sun and the cold. They were housed in small cubicles opening onto huge glassed verandas where they cooked in the summer and froze in the winter and often, what with the wholesome food and the exercise, got better. When advances in antibiotics rendered the Sanitorium obsolete it was turned into a Borstal and...
3 comments
Read more

The Traitor

A couple of people have questioned me privately about the Leonard Cohen song The Traitor , and about Cohen's comments on the song, "[The Traitor is about] the feeling we have of betraying some mission we were mandated to fulfill and being unable to fulfill it; then coming to understand that the real mandate was not to fulfill it; and the real courage is to stand guiltless in the predicament in which you find yourself". What on earth does he mean, and why am I so excited about it? For the latter, check with my psychiatrist. For the former, my take on the song is this: The Traitor is another of those instances, as in The Partisan , where Leonard Cohen uses a military metaphor to speak of life in general and human love in particular. Many of us hold high ideals: some great quest or other that we pursue. These are often laudable things: finding true love, finding the absolute love of God, becoming enlightened, spreading the Gospel, writing the great novel or some such ...
8 comments
Read more

Camino, by David Whyte

This poem captures it perfectly Camino. The way forward, the way between things, the way already walked before you, the path disappearing and re-appearing even as the ground gave way beneath you, the grief apparent only in the moment of forgetting, then the river, the mountain, the lifting song of the Sky Lark inviting you over the rain filled pass when your legs had given up, and after, it would be dusk and the half-lit villages in evening light; other people's homes glimpsed through lighted windows and inside, other people's lives; your own home you had left crowding your memory as you looked to see a child playing or a mother moving from one side of a room to another, your eyes wet with the keen cold wind of Navarre. But your loss brought you here to walk under one name and one name only, and to find the guise under which all loss can live; remember you were given that name every day along the way, remember you were greeted as such, and you neede...
Post a Comment
Read more