Summer in the Tao; Ken the father arrives for a holiday

I don't know how to tell you this, but we received some 'not good' scan results last month and in the run up to Ken flying in, we managed to fit in the usual CT scan, an additional MRI scan, ultrasound, hospital and then, more ablation (ie, the zapping Tash had once before.)

Results:
Natasha's liver is universally refered to as 'hard to read', the couple of years of Chemo, old tumour sites, ablation and the ongoing hormone treatment has left it in a bit if a state however it gives the radiologists something to concentrate on! (they are responsible for ultrasound, CT and MRI scans, interpreting the results and providing a report to 'The Slev' our Oncologist, who decides what to do next).. Her usual radiologist saw a 3.4mm area on her CT that he could not properly diagnose and so requested an MRI to confirm or disprove the notion that there was something to be worried about, still unsure we went off to see "Dr Lazer" who performed the zapping last October, she confirmed that there was a 'local reoccurrence' and ablated it out the next day.

Now you need to understand how our decision making schema works with these situations, it is not how you would expect - I know this as I have received a few too many odd reactions to my casual 'oh it's OK she has more cancer' comment, it is good cancer, that is what you have to understand.

If you already have secondary cancer, your descision making schema gets interesting

As happy as we were to have met and 'defeated' this new (mini) foe so quickly, it's timing left a lot to be desired as that week had been reserved for our 'dry run' hosting guests in preparation for Ken's imminent arrival. As we sat in the hospital room waiting to be discharged, Tash received a call to signify that our first guest, Ben her American academic friend (sorry, this is a simplistic description, but I don't have the time to go into detail about Ben's exceedingly complex geographical lifestyle definition) had landed from Berlin and was outside the flat.

Pete and Lucy flew in on the Thursday, just as Ben was leaving and they crossed again with Ken on Friday. In retrospect it was a mistake to have done this as though the procedure is small by our standards, it still requires a general anaesthetic and it is still invasive and so requires some complete downtime afterwards, that is to say nothing of the time that Tash and I required to deal with what was happening. But..... well, we may not do this again, though we got through it and enjoyed having such good company.

After 10 years of waiting he finally got his arse in gear (with a little help) and at 07:00 'Papa Kenny' and daughter hugged and celebrated both being in the northern hemisphere together again, the last time was 15 years ago.
Tash, Ken, myself, 'Hans' and mini Ken (because I always get lost taking the non-M4 route back in to London from Heathrow) drove back home in England's best attempt at glorious sunshine. During the drive we had time to orientate the big guy to his new country's customs, namely, we are not called 'pommies' in our own country and that using the popular shortened name of the Pakistan cricket team, thought perfectly acceptable in Australia and the rest of the world, has some serious 1960-1970's based connotations in this country and should be avoided.

Ken + 4 hours - the singlet appears - Ken has arrived.

Our biggest fear for Ken +1 was that he would fall asleep during the day and screw up his night time sleep, a common problem for his daughter. Bearing in mind that this is England, we put 'Operation drink-awake' into practise. Being old hands on the kangaroo route (Ken's suggestion, "you hop over to Bangkok and then hop over to London") we have tried various methods to get through the day and have found that drinking and socialising is the only sure fire solution.
'Operation Drink-Awake' started at midday at the Narrow Street Dining Room, which has one of the few locks coming off the Thames. Sitting outside we discovered a small hitch in this otherwise brilliant plan, Ken can put away pints as fast as Tim Henman goes out of Wimbledon, i.e quickly - switching to shandy we had lunch, not sure what state he might be in by the evening.

The answer was, surprisingly good, the evening turned into a bit of a drink-a-thon in our local, the Captain Kidd, with Pete and Lucy who had come over to see us from Spain.

Pete, from Pete and Lucy is Tash's friend from the Croft clan . Tash, as I may have said before, has been lucky in that she has been adopted by families in every country that she has lived in. It seemed appropriate then, that Ken should meet Mr and Mrs Croft.
You have to appreciate at this point that two storey houses are a rarity in a country with so much open space as Australia, let alone the three story 17th century, seven bedroom mini manor house, that is the Croft home, so Ken spent a reasonable amount of time just walking through the house exclaiming "how many bloody bedrooms does this place have", ohh yes and he nearly fell down the stairs, as he pointed out, there are not so many stairs in Sydney.

Ken is a straight forward Australian guy, if you can remove the negative connotations from the concept of an Alpha male, then my father-in-law is just that, he really is the leader of the pack and though it is sometimes funny to see otherwise normally dominant men fawn around seeking favour in his company (though sometimes not, I have to say), most of us are just happy to be in the big guy's presence.
So it was a great relief to walk into the kitchen on Sunday morning to see early riser Ken and equally early riser Mr Croft discussing how finicky and messy these coffee making machines are (they, like us have an espresso machine) and why can't people just stick with instant coffee as Mr Croft emptied the kettle into two workman sized Maxwell House infused mugs (I was so pleased to see Ken find a like minded soul so early in his trip, that I ignored the fact that they were inadvertently referring to people like me in their conversations, feminine coffee drinkers that we are!).

My sister lives in Swanage and rather conveniently runs a weekend Bed and Breakfast house, so it was fortuitous that we turned up at the beginning of the week. Ken knows Lesley and Jason from our wedding, so after meeting the Crofts, this was more of a 'downtime' visit. We turned up, opened a bottle of wine, had a barbecue and chilled out.

On Tuesday we left Swangage and drove up to Basingstoke, first to see my Mother and then in the evening, out for dinner so Ken could meet my Father and the rest of my family that didn't make it over to our wedding. All in all it went well, Ken being the smoothy that he is, sweet talked all the ladies at the table, almost distracting us all from the England match going on in the bar area.

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