It's great to be home

I'm at home in Perth now and it is great to be here seeing the family. Zandy is with me and will stay for three of the four weeks that I'm here. My brothers are both flying in from their homes in Tasmania and Northern Territory in another week and we're having a celebration for Dad on Easter Saturday.

We've spent a lot of time just sitting chatting so far. Dad is being prompted by many people to talk about his life and things that he has done, so I'm learning new things about what he did. It's giving me an opportunity to clarify some of the stories I've heard over the years and get the story straight. We all thought that there would be plenty of time for this - even he did - so we're now cramming it all in.

Yesterday, an old work colleague dropped around and we got the whole chronological timeline of his working career. It was great because Frank would say "Graham, do you remember such-and-such and the time they did that?" and Dad would respond and we'd get the whole story with clarity of detail that was surprising since some of these things happened 35 years ago. He says it's because he forgets these things until someone prompts the memory and then it just pops into his head as though it were yesterday.

The tubes you can see in his neck are connections that allow the hospital to take blood when they need to without having to puncture more holes in his arm. He says that the arm connections were stinging, so by going straight into the neck, it is much easier. His blood count is down so they'll give him more reds next week, but his platelets are up to 101 (apparently something around 150 is normal and they don't give platelets until they are down to 10) but we're keeping an eye on him. If he starts to feel woozy then that is an indication that his reds are down and we need to get him to Emergency so they can give him a transfusion.

Now that I've seen him in person and spent time with him a lot over the last four days, I'm prepared to let go and see other people. So, I'm spending time with my sisters singing today and going to a performance of Bach's B Minor Mass tonight.

Life is okay.