The week’s flown by. Another visit to the skin cancer doc brought good news yesterday. The new biopsies were all clear, except for one they’re a bit doubtful about. A small area might need radiation. I asked what that would be like, my impression being that it would burn the skin and be a bit painful. No, he said, that used to be true but they’ve learnt they can use lower power these days and it shouldn’t hurt. OK, that’s good to know.

So now, one more appointment in three weeks’ time and that should be the finish of my skin cancer troubles.

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Back home again after my second overnight stay in hospital. The skin cancer surgeon wanted a second go at the site on my right temple, same as before. He felt he needed to get more samples of tissue out for biopsy, to check if the cancer has spread. I won’t know the results for a week. Fingers crossed.

He was running very late on Thursday. My op was scheduled for about 3.15pm but I didn’t go in until about 6.30pm. Then I missed all the fun, as they put me to sleep this time. I awoke to some fairly painful tidying up around 7.30pm. I have a photo, but it’s too gory to show. I bled a lot more this time, but it’s stopped now.

As I said, I seem to be having medical incidents (I was going to say problems, but they’re not big problems), one after another these days. Getting older, I’m afraid.

Once again my good mate Keith drove me to the hospital on Thursday and picked me up yesterday. Good friend.

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I was/am a bit annoyed that I got a bill from the anaesthetist wanting to be paid the full amount, $600, before the operation. I had no option but to pay in advance. It means I have to claim it from HBF myself, which shouldn’t be a problem, but I’m not happy about having to pay up front before the service is performed.

By the way, in today’s paper, HBF say they are going to return $41m surplus to customers like me due to reduced demand last year, due to fewer operations being performed due to COVID. That’s great. I don’t know how much we’ll be refunded, they say they’ll let us know in the next couple of months, but I’m pleased.

HBF, RAC, P&N Bank – three WA companies that I use, and I am highly pleased with their services.

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I mentioned that I finished the six book series about a third world war, after Russia invades Ukraine. That’s near 3,000 pages. The author is James Rosone with Miranda Watson (I’m not sure what role she plays). This guy is a prolific writer! I’m onto his next sequence of books, about another world war 3 scenario. This one is a bit strange – not the story line, which is quite plausible, but it’s written as if to be history, written after the event.

It’s very jingoistic, being written from the American point of view, where the Muslim world are the baddies, teaming up with China and Russia. America has a new political party, an alternative to the Democrats and Republicans, with a strong leader who knows how to put things right. It makes me roll my eyes so much I might have to send them on holidays to relax the muscles.

When I’ve finished this, there’s another series of books on the second American Civil War – that is, in the near future, post Trump. As I said, he’s a prolific wordsmith.

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Dang, I’ve inflicted the first bump mark on Evie’s derriere. For some reason I find it harder to reverse into my garage in the Peugeot than I did with the Verada. I don’t know why – it’s a slightly shorter car (the Pug, I mean) and I slightly bumped the pillar just now. I guess now will be the time to test whether a car “lotion”/polish I bought off the web will do what they say. It polishes marks out by magic on the web. Hah! We shall see.

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This will get me kicks in the shins, but I can’t help noticing how nearly all the troublemakers in vaccine doubters, quarantine breakers, border closure illegal crossers, arguers, abusers of police and so on, are …….. women! It’s rare to see a bloke reported or chased. It’s all the mouthy women, especially the young ones.

The brazen border crossers who drove from locked-down Victoria, through NSW to the Sunshine coast in Qld – it was a married couple, but it was the woman who was driving and has been arrested. No masks, no quarantining. They reckoned they had to be in Qld for the husband to take up a job, but how about endangering two whole states in the process? Amazing.

Brrr, it sure has switched to winter, suddenly. For readers in colder climes, a maximum temp of 20deg probably sounds like summer, but for us, it’s getting to be sweater weather. And 7deg minimums, brrrr. My Viennese friend says our winter and their summer are about equal temps at the moment. In other words, although it’s summer in Vienna, it’s still bloody cool by my reckoning, and hers too, I think.

Of course, 21 June will be mid-winter here and mid-summer there.

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I had the stitches removed from my former skin cancer site yesterday and it’s all healed quite nicely, except for a few black spots.

Doesn’t look much different, does it? “Lord, I am afflicted by a bald patch.” Oh dear.

Anyway, that’s not the point — the surgeon came in after the nurse had taken the stitches out, and after humming and hah-ing, he said, although the report says there’s no spread of the cancer, he’s not sure that he got it all out. Therefore he said he would like to lift the skin graft and have another look. Or, I could have radiation.

At first, I said radiation sounds like a cleaner, less painful idea, but I asked him what he thought. He wants to do the surgery (being a surgeon, I suppose he would). Therefore I’m booked in for 10 June for a second go. I’m OK with it, except that I have to go through the stitches and bleeding all over again.

At the same time, I showed him how that side of my eye has drooped. He agrees, and says he’ll do a small lift to correct my “brow-ptosis”, ptosis meaning droop. I think I’d better have it done because my right eyelid doesn’t fully open and my eye is watery. It’s harder to read, with unbalanced eyesight.

I also asked for a full check of my scalp. My GP says “Oh, they’re just keratoses, nothing to worry about”, but my former GP dismissed the temple thing as “Just a cyst” and so I didn’t take it seriously. I want a full check of my scalp.

So it goes on, medical appointment after appointment. Dum de dum.

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Pretty amazing, in my opinion. It’s a glass swimming pool between two halves of an apartment building in London. It’s 35m above the ground. With the weight of that water, it shows how strong glass is. It’s fascinating to look at, but I reckon if I were swimming in it, being able to see through the water to the ground would give me acrophobia and vertigo.

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To be continued……..