Billy's Belly Button Reconstruction

While the jury is still out regarding whether or not Billy will have a new belly button, I can report that he is recovering from his hernia surgery! The poor guy had to go under the knife on Monday morning, in yet another foreign country. He had surgery to repair a hernia in his umbilical cord (I know, we still have those?!). They installed some mesh to reinforce the wall, so hopefully it won't happen again.

Faithful followers of William Peter may recall that he had an abdominal hernia surgery in Sweden circa 2002 (or 03?). That was during our backpack journey through Scandinavia. On the whole, I must say that the Swedish hospital was far superior in all ways. The upside to the Australian hospital was that he and I could understand what people were saying (and he did not have to fear that he was about to die--based on a misunderstanding of the purpose of gasping noises Swedes make while speaking). The downside, he didn't get those nice, knee-high stockings this time, nor was the hospital run as efficiently as we would have liked.

For example, we were told to arrive at 7am sharp. No easy task for two lazy bums who prefer to wake at 7:30am. We arrived only to sit, and sit and sit. While we sat there, we realised that they were calling forth people one by one to review their records and to take vitals (blood pressure and weight). They took those vitals in the waiting room, in front of everyone. When they called Bill in, it was to a room 4 ft x 6 ft with no natural light or windows. Ick. The nurse asked him all sorts of questions, one of which was, 'Do you have a service provider?'. At first I thought this was a question about insurance, but as Bill stumbled, she clarified, 'Do you have someone at home to take care of you after the surgery?'... so I jumped in, oh yes... 'I can provide the services.' I wonder if they will pay me for that.

Anyway, by 9:45am I confessed to Bill that I had to leave to head to work! So I left him to fend for himself. Terrible, I know. Anyway, more importantly, I did return to the hospital once he was brought into the recovery wing!

He had a slow recovery... before heading home he had to be confident that he could walk up and down the hallway, and make it to the taxi cab without getting ill. This took a long time... I think I called the taxi around 9:30pm, and we were home by 10. The thing that annoyed me was that I was constantly having to orient different nurses to Bill's condition -- and each person seemed not to have read the special notes about his inclination towards nausea. So they gave him pills which made him nauseous and then wouldn't give him the anti-nausea medication. I just couldn't help wondering, would the Swedes have done that? ;)

So he's okay... tired, weary, not anxious to return to the office... will report about aformentioned belly button soon.

I Survived!

Last night was the last night Ormond was not serving food, starting tomorrow students are starting to arrive and we are back to the 21 meals a week plan. It has been a harrowing month, and at times my energy reached extreme lows due to the lack of proper nutrition. Thank goodness for Kersti, or I surely would have perished weeks ago. We made it through the last night via a pizza night with the SCR, to celebrate our triumph.

As I may have mentioned on here previously, we have a new Master coming in this year, and so this weekend we have two days of planning to discuss the new changes at the College. While we won’t be here for most of it, we are excited to partake in the process, as I think a lot of great changes will take place.

Wilson's Promontory

So this weekend we managed to escape the stifling heat of Melbourne (it has been over 40 degrees Celsius or over 110 degrees Fahrenheit for several days), and headed to the coast to go camping at Wilson's Prom. We rented our car and picked up our friends on Friday after work, only to learn that our friend Lisanne had decided to bring her mattress, boogie boards, and chairs with her. Once she realised that we had not rented a moving van for our trip, we shoved what we could and left the rest behind. We folded up her foam mattress in the back seat between her and Brian, separating them in case things turned to blows, and headed out. We got in just before dark, but not before the mosquitoes were out in full force. It was quite hot with very little breeze, and unfortunately Kersti was attached by the mossies in full force. She ended up with well over 70 mosquito bites, and is still recovering.



But we had an awesome time, the "Tidal River" campsite is located right next to the beach, and we could hang out during the day and night at the beach. We went on a nice hike to a remote beach on Saturday, then hung out near our campsite as our other friends arrived.




Saturday night, around 4 AM, the wind really picked up, with gusts over 40 knots. The tent next door collapsed on the people asleep in it, and one tent down the campsite blew off into the trees at one point! We woke up the next morning to see that most of our friends had taken down their tents and were crammed up sleeping in the cars. Fortunately, our tent had held up well!



So after recovering Sunday we went for a beautiful hike around the Tidal River site. We got excellent views of the area, despite the wind. We then made the 3-hour drive return to Melbourne, to discover that things were still hot, but at least below 40

Enjoying the sunset at the beach near our campsite.

The group on our hike, with some major wind!

Showing off that masterpiece in sculpturing: the sand ball!

We didn't leave our chairs very often.

One of many wombats around the campsite, they will break into your tents if you keep food in them!

It was Kersti's kinda beach, no major wave action and crystal clear water!


Fashion statement or protection from the bugs?

At the end of our hike


Looking cleaner than we actually were at this point.