Welcome to the Taooftash

But first.....

Tash's treatment update

Prior to our weekend in Verona I had my 3 weekly checkup with Dr Onco II who gave me some results from the CT Scan I had around New Year. It appears that the trial has thus far been quite successful. He had chosen to discuss my case in his Radiography Review Board meeting and the general consensus between this group of "experts" was that there is now only one visible spot in the liver that has remained unchanged throughout the last 6 months. In August 07 when I began this regime, there were four, therefore, he is satisfied that the drugs are doing their job and my disease is considered stable. So we will continue on as we are, for the time being which is great.

All good then. Like most of you, January was quiet, except for one particually boozy weekend with 2/5's of the Croft family, our only early year excitement was scheduled at the end of the month. Sorry folks, Tash does not "celebrate" Australia day in the traditional style any more, we had somewhere better to go than the Walkabout pub on Embankment.

Last Friday morning Tash sat on the bed and told me how she was getting concerned. Slowly over the course of the previous weeks the same troublesome stabbing liver pains had started to return, this was just a heads up she said, but we needed to be a bit cautious and watch what happens here. I thought Tash was joking at first, the last thing I need is another Italian travel disaster link out .

We didn't have much time to ponder this possible bombshell, there was a plane to catch. Verona beckoned.

Francesca the second twin to get married link out , is now pregnant. Tash wanted to present her with her belated wedding present, before getting started on the baby knit..., we never know when we are going to get over there and of course there was the lovely Gaia, Laura and Pier's daughter to see.

For the first time Tash had convinced me to stay at the parents house in Mortorio; I am shy, what can I say, and lets not forget that the Italian 8 hour rule still applies (from landing to comfortable via the confusion of a foreign language, driving on the wrong side of the road and the baci experience, mano et mano kissing, which I don't mind, but takes a bit of mental readjustment).

We spent the first evening with Francesca and Ale, Stefania and Lorenzo. It was very nice to have that time with them as you forget how much they have come to regard Tash as a part of their immediate family.

As is the Italian way everything revolves around food and neither Tash nor myself will ever be found to complain about that. At this time of year the food of choice is gnocchi and for those in the know the place to go is a small family restaurant on top on one of the first mountains in the Italian bit of the Alps (3rd valley over from Lake Garda, second along from the valley where they make Valpolicella - valley of the cellars, as Francesca translated in one of those "oh I never thought of it like that" moments).

My morning started earlier than Tash's as Pier and I spent a couple of hours on the next mountain up walking in the snow and in my case, as you can probably see from the pictures, getting bright red from sunburn.

Tash, the girls and baby Gaia followed later, favouring a less strenuous pre-gnocchi walk, with Ale appearing minutes before we were seated for lunch claiming a 24 minute "house to restaurant" driving record, apparently there was only a couple of minutes for the "bed to car" record.

Lunch should not be rushed in Italy and we didn't, eventually having to come back down the mountain because Pier had to get started on our dinner, only 3 hours away.

This wonderful day finished with an evening at Pier and Laura's with Robbie and Nicoletta, the other couple who were married in our Matrimonial Marathon last year.

Sunday provided another reason to thank our gods for the ability to eat, Stefania out did herself, not only by seamlessly managing to integrate my dietary needs without having to resort to handing me a "special plate" whilst keeping the meat monster who sits on my left happy too.

After such a wonderful weekend the good/bad balance just had to find a way to reset itself..........

..and it did about 20 miles out of the Thames Estuary as we were coming to land. Tash is an intermediate flyer, sometimes good throughout landing, sometimes hand holding is required, the look on her face during the pre-landing hand hold check told me something else was up other than our planned plummet towards Standsted.

We landed, disembarked and then took stock of the situation, there were no toilets between us and the baggage reclaim and this was Sunday night, separating us and Tash's relief was the dreaded Stansted immigration queue where even British passport holders wait for half an hour just to briefly flash their little burgundy book at the worryingly officious, non smiling desk clerk.

In front of us was the mother of all queues. Fortunately I spotted a toilet and sent Tash off there with instructions to go native with her Australian passport and tackle the shorter non EU line, meeting up at the baggage carousel.

I got through the line quickly, even affording a casual smile to the clearly overworked and grumpy immigration officer and was further rewarded by spotting our bags as I approached the carousel. I picked them up, went to the rendezvous spot and waited .....and waited ....and waited. I was starting to consider that this scene was becoming more like a film, but could not work out if it was to be a quaint English romantic comedy starring Hugh Grant, as I stood there being quaintly English, bags in hand, with a now completely empty carousel behind me watching the continuous streams of people who were not my wife walking past me through the Nothing to Declare passageway, or was it going to be a horrendous nightmare film where agents of oppression kidnap Natasha and I spend all my time convincing the police of her disappearance - "Yes that's her, a knitter of conscience, no she is not an enemy combatant, I have no idea how that crochet hook ended up in her hand luggage...."

Tash finally appeared and I could clearly see that this was to be neither one film or the other. The toilet visit had been severe and she knew that there was more to come so we had to shift.

Even before we had reached the motorway the car had started to smell like there was a baby in it, I took this as a sign to "put my foot down" as we say and Ale's 24 minute up the mountain record was in danger of falling to my late night Stansted to London in ummm don't ask how fast..... speed attempt.

By 2am we both had an idea of how much trouble we were now in, I have a strong constitution, so didn't think that I would be joining Tash in her current bucket and toilet extravaganza. However I was doing a very impressive impersonation of the human torch with a temperature far above normal.

And so that was how the good/bad balance was reset by Noro, the winter vomiting virus link out .

By 8am after finally having had enough of an aural ringside seat during Tash's bathroom visits, (about every 5 minutes throughout the night), I gave up, repositioned myself to the sofa and let my illness in.

The next time we spoke, at 8pm on the Monday night, neither of us felt well, but we were both glad to be alive, Tash had made it through her bathroom purgatory the night before and was stable, I was no longer on fire.

In retrospect we both agreed that those pains that we talked about the previous Friday were probably not pangs of tumour growth but maybe the first waves of Sunday preparing for the offensive.

Tash finally made it in to work on Friday after a couple of days quarantine. It was not the best time off, but the most time we have spent together since being in Thailand this time last year, which was nice.

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