Busy, busy as ever.

At the end of January we had a mad dash around Fortaleza for Neu’s medical care. Leaving the house at 7 in the morning we drove to the West of the city to a hospital where Neu had to leave a fresh blood sample with the transplant team (this has to be done every three months), then North to the other side of the city and the clinic for more blood tests and Neu’s monthly check up with the dialysis doctor. We got out of there in the early afternoon and after lunch, drove East to another hospital to book more tests and a consultation with Neu’s transplant doctor, followed by a big shop in the supermarket, finally getting home around 8 at night, absolutely shattered.

We are still waiting for Neu to be called for a possible transplant, we were told that  once he got on the list (which he did in November 2014) he should get a call almost immediately because he is highly compatible but that hasn’t been the case. Neu’s transplant doctor expressed surprise that he hadn’t yet been called when we saw her in December but two months on and he’s still waiting. On the other hand, it’s given us a bit of much needed breathing space and as Neu is doing well on the peritoneal dialysis, we are both quite relaxed about the whole thing. Neu is fishing as much as he can and we’re getting on with some of the jobs that have built up around the house and garden, the transplant will happen when it does.

We finished off the fence in the garden so that we now have a dog free area, which includes the balcony outside our front door, somewhere we can sit in the shade, enjoy a meal or relax in a hammock without the dogs leaping all over us. Another reason for having the dog free area is that I can now sow seeds and put in young plants without the dogs promptly digging them up again. I relocated a rose-bush from the back of the house, as I dug it up, it fell into 2 pieces but amazingly they have both taken and only 2 weeks on are already putting out flower buds. The jasmine cuttings have also taken, my basil seedlings are looking good, as is the rosemary and mint. The hydrangea Neu got me for Christmas has put out some pink flowers and I’m hoping that at least some of the chamomile seeds I scattered will sprout.

 

I also sorted out the problem we were having with the drain from the shower in our son’s room, turned out that where 2 bits of pipe had been badly joined, a root from the coconut tree had found its way in and, although the root was only relatively small on the outside, the beast I pulled out of the pipe was, as my son described it, like a series of electrical cables covered in hair. It almost filled the entire diameter of the pipe for the whole of the root’s 2 meter length. I only remembered to photograph it a couple of days later, by which time it had shriveled up a bit but it’s still pretty impressive and now it’s out of the pipe, that shower can be used again, it’s good to get all these odd jobs done.