My very best friend in all the world

Continuing the five-year old story . . .
Spousie had travelled back home on Sunday afternoon and I was beginning to go down with a cold. Unfortunately these treatments hammer the immune system and leave patients vulnerable to all sorts of additional unpleasantness. I didn't know if I was permitted to take the aspirin that Vicky had to offer me and so I needed to telephone Elaine to ask her if she could possibly find that out from Maria.

On Monday I was up early to get to the front of the queue for chemo because on this day, more than any other, I wanted to get back to the hostel as quickly as I could. A treat would be awaiting my return. Wouldn't you just know it but the cannula had been inserted badly and so my drip was running really slowly. The only thing I could do to hurry things along was to hold my wrist at a sharp sideways angle for hour upon endless hour.

Of the four hours on a drip in chemotherapy, only one hour is the expensive toxic stuff, the first two hours as as well as the final one are assorted solutions to flush the kidneys to prevent the Platinum from causing permanent damage. Watching the clock ticking away at glacial pace I suddenly had what turned out to be a brilliant idea. Could I please just drink a litre of water and get going? Yes, I could! And the chemo department even called the radiotherapy department to say I was on my way and in a hurry. I was in and out of there and into a taxi back to the hostel before my feet could touch the floor because there, waiting for me at the backpackers', was my wonderful sister!

She had taken time off work and flown the width of Europe to sit at the bedside of her sickly little sister, just as our kind mum had done three months earlier. There had been occasions in our past when I had been unspeakably vile to my sister and there was nothing I had ever done to deserve this kindness and love besides sharing two remarkable parents.
The last time we had shared a dormitory in a backpackers' had been more than half our lives earlier. We had been caught up in a military coup and coincidentally, escaped to Thessaloniki.
WOW! HUGS! TEARS!

Wonderful sister was less than 40 blips into what has now become a very well-respected journal and when she explained to me what blip was all about and how she was asking people to guess where she was, I took great pleasure in showing her some of my favourite discoveries.