Wounded wife
God, it’s so long since I blogged that all my hundreds of fans must have dissipated! Well, I am resolving to blog frequently to maintain interest, and for my own discipline. God knows I need it because I can be so dissolute, wasting day after day on internet-surfing, reading books and playing the piano.
I’m not getting enough exercise and my back really hurts - day and night - non-stop. Aaargh! I do have a major arthritic problem of non-operative spinal stenosis causing chronic pain, and I’m supposed to get out and walk. But that hurts more than just sitting around, so it’s a bit of a bind, and this suburb is so boring!
Anyway, I have been rehearsing with several musicians each Saturday at my place, and that’s quite good fun - hard work a lot of the time, but good fun. Tomorrow’s the final rehearsal before we go off next weekend to play at the Merimbula Jazz Festival. It’s called the Jazz Travellers (a name I coined in 2000). We have piano (me), drums, bass, tenor sax/clarinet and a singer.
I’m also in a nice little trio called Jazz Therapy, so-called because it makes us feel good. Come to think of it, I once played with a trad band called Major Fieldgood (”made-ya feel good” - gettit?) and that was fun too. My mate Des Shaw from that has given it all way because he now has emphysema, and you can’t play the trumpet with that!
So next Tuesday Glenyce and I pile into the car and push off (actually - pull off) with the caravan for the NSW South Coast - always beautiful up there - staying at Orbost overnight on the way. We’ll do our jazz playing, listening and socializing and then come back in a week’s time.
In the last blog item I blogged on my rash, which has now vanished completely. But Glenyce (my wife) recently saw the GP and got a referral to the same dermatologist who looked at a couple of almost invisible things on her face. She has a squamous cell carcinoma on one cheek and a basal cell carcinoma on the other, and they need to be removed surgically.
A fortnight ago she had the first one cut out of her right cheek and I’ve had the task of daily dressing of the wound with hydrogen peroxide and then vaseline. After the first 48 hours she removed the wound dressing for the first time and I took a photo of the nice, neat 8 or 9 stitches:-
And now she has a bigger cut in her left cheek, up near the eye, which is slowly turning a sort of reddish-purple. We trust that that won’t become too bad, because she assiduously applied an ice-pack regularly after she came from the surgery. When she first takes the wraps off that one on Sunday I’ll take another photo to continue this little saga of the wounded wife.
Stay tuned!