Mixed weather

Last night Luke had his appointment with the orthopaedic surgeon following up from his scan of his knee. I was on speaker phone (for almost an hour) with Luke and the surgeon so I was also 'at the meeting' so to speak - our worst fears were confirmed, the new ACL ligament has stretched and loosened and subsequently his meniscus has torn again. The reason for this is not certain - the surgeon says the technique used by the Swiss surgeon who initially did the repair surgery can sometimes lead to this outcome - apparently his technique has not been used in England for about 3 years now. I cannot believe that the Swiss surgeon did not perform the best technique possible so we will just have to accept that it is one of those things. Luke now has to have the surgery repeated and go through all that intense rehabilitation of one month of icing with the Gameready machine and intense physiotherapy. I cannot believe this has happened and feel so sorry for Luke as he worked so hard at his rehab.

The problem is the timing of it - Luke is currently working on a 6 week internship in London that he cannot miss as it will hopefully lead to a permanent offer after graduation. Then we have a family holiday booked with everyone all together for 2 weeks, and then Luke has booked to travel through SE Asia with friends for a month before returning to uni in October. He has not had a holiday since his internship in Paris started at the beginning of July last year and was so looking forward to his trip to Asia. If he waits to have the surgery after that, the surgeon said scar tissue can build up on the meniscus and it will be more difficult to operate and it may hinder the success of it, although he is fairly confident of his abilities to deal with that. We have the week to think about it and Luke is speaking to the surgeon again on Friday with his decision.

This shot was taken this morning when I took Murdoch for a quick walk before breakfast. I was not sure whether to choose the colour or the mono version (see extra). It rained at lunchtime but then the sun came out again - the clouds down the valley were very interesting - see extra.

I took Thomas to the station to get the train back to Zurich, and he is flying back home tonight. I will be on my own until Gavin returns on Thursday - he will be feeling very tired after 2 days in Chicago.