This little piggy . . . went to the show!

Posted on April 19, 2017 by John

We walked across from home to go to the Sydney Royal Easter Show last week. I have to admit we went on Seniors’ Day because it was only $15 entry instead of $31.50 – a bargain. We joined Viv and Chris there – they came by train. 

It was a lovely Sydney autumn day, about 23 degrees with some showers predicted – but they didn’t arrive. First up was the cat show. Lovely cats, but not many of them, unfortunately. Then a bit of wood chopping, always a favourite – those blokes sure can swing an axe!

We wandered through various other shows and exhibitions, including the “Fashion and Style Pavilion”  – which is really a huge clothes shop for women. We had some lunch overlooking the main arena which had a very sedate judging session in progress – horses and carts. Well, I think it’s called Show Driving – horses pulling little two-wheeled or four-wheeled buggies. It was rather pleasant. The drivers were dressed very smartly – women in fancy hats and men in bowlers, all with special rugs over their knees. The horses were nice too!

Cute piggies all squashed together.

Jan and I went to see the chooks. There were some very fancy chooks with pompoms on their heads, some very big chooks of various shades and some extremely loud cockerels. Then the goats and pigs. The “sow and litter” is always a favourite of ours. Cute little piggies clambering all over each other and their massive mum. These particular piglets all wanted to line up wedged together for some reason.

As usual, our annual experience of the sights and sounds of the countryside was good fun.

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Back to normal, with extra metal

Posted on April 4, 2017 by John

Jan’s just back from a hospital hip follow-up where the surgeon declared her fully healed! OK for driving, travelling and any of her normal activities. She was, however, encouraged to NOT run any marathons just yet.

Before and after.

The special toilet seat with handles and the special shower seat have gone back to the hospital. Jan’s claiming she still needs to sleep on my side of the bed for a while. I’m quite used to her side of the bed now, although it’s further to walk to the toilet in the middle of the night. Oh, the joys of old age – nocturia.

Now she’s gone for a solo drive up to the shops in her MX-5, her first drive for seven weeks. I washed her car and checked the tyres and oil so it would be ready for this day. Unfortunately, when I turned the key to take it out of the garage for cleaning, the battery died. Can’t complain, it was nearly 10 years old, so it’s done well. The NRMA man came and replaced it, so it was no big deal.

Of course, I had to take the MX-5 out for a run after I’d washed it. It’s a lovely little car, still in great condition with very few Ks on the clock. Makes a change from driving my bus, the Forester. Mind you, I know what I’d prefer to be driving in the typical Sydney traffic jams. Automatic makes life a lot easier in stop-start city crawls.

 

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Great theatre based on a terrible tragedy

Posted on March 18, 2017 by John

Jan managed to get some $20 last-minute tickets to the Sydney Theatre Company’s production of Chimerica. The bargains came after a tipoff from our neighbour Paula Chegwidden who had found the secret STC website. Coincidentally, she and her daughter Emma went along to the same production and were seated right next to us!

We knew we were going on the same night so I drove us to Walsh Bay. We had some tapas before the play in one of the little restaurants overlooking the harbour , always a good Sydney experience. Then we found another coincidence. Chris phoned me while I was at the restaurant and, when he found out what we were doing, told me Vivienne was going to the theatre with friend Moya. We managed to meet up at the interval for a chat.

I wasn’t expecting too much from the play. It sounded a bit dry and political.

As tanks roll through Tiananmen Square, a young man holding shopping bags walks out to block their path. It is an image that has come to symbolise courageous and defiant protest, and yet the name of the hero – known simply as ‘Tank Man’ – has remained a mystery.

But it was superb. More than three hours (excluding the interval) but it didn’t flag at all. An amazing production that included some music and dancing and marvellous stagecraft. This was a great play written by Lucy Kirkwood. It was was first staged in London’s West end to great acclaim, and went on to win an Olivier award.

I remember Tiananmen Square very well. I visited it in my Hong Kong years. In 1989 I helped put the news of the massacre on the front page of the Sydney Morning Herald.

The play was very moving. We all loved it. 

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Eel by gum

Posted on March 12, 2017 by John

Jan is walking well now, almost pain free and at a reasonable pace. I’m no longer allowed to call her The Patient.  Today for a bit of excitement, we went to the Eel Festival at Elizabeth Farm in Parramatta. Lovely day today – 29 degrees and sunny, although there’s more rain forecast for the coming week.

The blurb says: This family-friendly festival celebrates Parramatta’s namesake, the eel, and its significance to the local Darug people known as the Burramattagal who for generations have gathered during eel season to feast, trade and share stories.

Elizabeth Farm, Australia’s oldest homestead (1793) , is always worth a visit. It’s a lovely old bungalow, very luxurious for its time. 

Eel tasting.

The eel festival was fun. We saw a couple of eels in a tank, we ate some eel cooked in paperbark over an open barbecue and we saw some ingenious eel traps being woven from reeds. Jan even had a go at weaving herself. She didn’t manage to create a whole eel trap, her creation was more like six inches of rough twine.

There was an interesting old guy telling tall tales while demonstrating how to carve a club from a bit of tree. A pleasant outing. 

In the week we’d explored some more parts of the riverside park near us. We took a walk around an area with a big kid’s playground. I’m a big kid, so I had a go on the flying fox when no-one was looking. It was good fun and I didn’t break any limbs.

PS: Thanks for all the lovely comments on the blog and the best wishes for Jan. I haven’t yet received many requests for home surgery, but it’s an offer not to be refused lightly.

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A simple DIY guide to hip replacement

Posted on March 1, 2017 by John

Jan’s still going well. She went to her GP who examined and dressed the operation wound and pronounced it good. He told her she should be walking without the crutches now.

She’s managing fine crutchless around the house, but is using one crutch for longer walks. It’s still a bit painful, but as I told her cheerfully: “There’s no gain without pain!” You can guess how well that went down. So the tap, tap, tap has been replaced by tap . . . tap . . . tap! 

I was doing some research into Jan’s total hip replacement and found an excellent guide to doing the operation. Jan’s prosthesis is a DePuy Triloc femur uncemented. There’s a Pinnacle 52mm solid cup with a poly hooded liner and metal head.

The maker of the hip is DePuy – and they publish a very handy Surgical Technique .pdf guide to using their gear. It’s an easy-to-read step-by-step booklet. There are even some interesting videos to watch (although I haven’t yet summoned up the courage for those). Here’s an example from the guide.

“For the posterolateral approach, place the patient in the lateral decubitus position. Ensure that . . .  the patient is secured to the table to  improve accuracy. Center the skin incision over the greater trochanter, carrying it distally over the femoral shaft for about 15cm and proximally in a gently curving posterior arc of about 30 degrees for about the same distance. (Figure 9). Incise the iliotibial tract distally  . .  develop the incision proximally by blunt dissection of the gluteus maximus along the direction of its fibres.”

Highly-paid doctors, like lawyers, like to use a lot of complicated jargon so ordinary people can’t see how easy their jobs are.

As any sub-editor would know, this jargon could be easily be replaced by two simple sentences. “Lay the patient on her side and tie her to the table so she can’t wriggle around. Make a big cut starting at the top of the leg and going back a bit into the bum cheek.” 

When it comes to inserting the metal bits, I like the way the guide advises “using moderate mallet blows, advance the stem into position.” Hmmm what’s the definition of moderate?

Anyway, I reckon I could do one of these after studying the videos and getting the special tools (a bigger mallet). I suppose the patient would need some sort of anaesthesia. Panadeine Forte? I guess Reta McLeod knows a bit more about this.

 

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