Home & busy

We’re home. Italy was wonderful. At last we had a good holiday, with plenty of time for relaxation & flopping.

We stayed in two places, firstly Bardolino on the east side of Lake Garda, secondly in the city Verona. The food was good, the people warm & friendly. One of the waitresses even took it upon herself to teach us some Italian. Whether we will still remember it if ever we get to Italy again is another question. It was dry throughout. The rain that came, fell at night – just a couple of nights. One morning there was a bit of drizzle as we made our way to breakfast but it had stopped by the time we’d eaten. The heat was overwhelming, most days getting higher than 40˚C, 110˚F. That's hotter than it was in the tropics in Singapore or the West Indies.We found ourselves changing our lifestyles. We were up early in the morning, did our sightseeing by noon, back to the hotel for a siesta in the cool of our air-conditioned room in the hotel, before venturing out late afternoon when the worst of the heat was over.

We actually came home on Saturday, but life has been a whirlwind of activity since we’ve been back. Sunday was devoted to catching up on “The Archers”, my bit of soap on the radio, sorting out the washing & catching up on some of our friends at the golf club. Would you believe it, our friend who had a leg amputated last year (or was it the year before, time goes so fast), managed to fall while transferring from his wheelchair to his comfy chair & landed with a thud on his one good ankle, breaking it.

Monday was also busy. First it was the library. We cannot last long without a book on the go & we’d both finished our books on the flight home. Then it was to the dentist’s. While we were away I’d managed to lose yet another filling as well as chip another tooth. I managed to get an appointment Monday afternoon. We then did a shop. We were virtually out of fresh food. Even our freezer was low as the last time we went supermarket shopping, all the freezers were empty. Eventually we got to our local pub to catch up on news there. Nothing so dramatic, though one friend had her 80 year old mother in hospital. Another couple slipped out of a wedding reception being held there just to say hello.

Yesterday was a trip into Lancaster to the hospital to Dermatology. While we were away the Fox’s eczema had got even worse. I’d rung up on Monday & managed to get someone else’s cancelled appointment for him.  He’s now been put on two new lots of pills, one an anti-fungal (he’s got some fungus growing between his toes), one an antihistamine to ease his itching & yet another cream to try. They're also sending him off for phototherapy. He should be starting that in about a month. We should hear more exactly by the end of next week. Once he starts he will have to attend three times a week for 8 weeks. That’s going to be as time consuming as my radiotherapy was, but at least it can be done here in Lancaster rather than Preston.

Today is flu jab day, a relatively quiet day. Tomorrow we will be back at the surgery for yet another blood let. Next week I’ve got another mammogram to attend. The week after that it will be chemo time again. By then the phototherapy will be due. It’s all go.

But at least we’ve had a good holiday, something we can look back on with pleasure to keep us going through the period ahead.