A walk in the park

OK, I've had a gutful of this - I eat my greens, don't smoke and hit 44 still with a 32" waist!
Unless a (usually) moderate winter weekend intake of Bailey's, Guinness and/or middle-shelf cool climate reds is great cause for tumours - I really shouldn't have a greater than average chance of suspicious cell clusters arising!
A tangent in the b grade medical drama: bone tumour out of lower right femur, probably primary, no other tumours identified so far. Just big hard lump on inside of knee.
First suspected something wrong Jan/Feb when a binge gardening incident caused big pain in the knee for a few days, then no big deal but seemed a lump had arisen. I figured a hamam-style wrestle by an osteopath would pop it back into place and all would be well. Didn't work. But NZ South Island Lewis Pass hiking in March wasn't an issue.
Seemed bigger and started hurting the whole area April/May - X-Rays and Ultrasounds revealed 'suspicious tumour' a few weeks back.
Now awaiting biopsy results in a Northcote cafe, and a segue back to the original story becomes apparent: NQR knees hold nothing like the anxiety of NQR brains.
If malignant, what are the consequences of cancerous bone tumour cells invading nearby healthy tissue?: it's not like I'll be left in a vacuous stare not knowing my own name or what day it is. Perhaps a hobble, setting off airport x-rays with bionic bits and choosing less ambitious hike routes.
I mean, what really could go wrong with surgery? (likely regardless of whether benign or malignant). Nothing AFL footballers don't deal with several few times before they're 30.
We've been destroying knees in an impressive and spectacular manner since WW1, and the comparatively rudimentary science of putting them back together has had big resourcing since football stars became multi-million dollar commodities in the 80s.
Sure the possibility of cancer of any description is a scary beast: but compared to the spectre of brain beasties, the knee tumour is a walk in the park.

Backpacker resuscitation

Solo wandering in Turkey for just a few days after the Global Health and Wellness Summit in Marrakech (yep, seems incongruous in the context of this blog) and, along with hot springs and hamams, good things are bubbling.
Despite being a university city, there's zero English spoken here in Eskisehir (except a little by the Afghan refugee 22 year-old waiter last night where I had dinner). No French heard either. There follows the hilarity at doing an interpretive dance a hole-in-the-wall shop needed to get a band-aid for my heel.
There's beautiful food every few paces, and the great energy of thousands of uni age folk out last night by the river so refreshing after Istanbul - brimful with its cruise ship age touros.
There's about a kilometre along both sides of the creek here that has cafés full of 20-somethings playing backgammon and a hundred other board games over coffee/tea and laughs.
Not a tourist in town have I seen.
My primary purpose is a little blunted - I came here because it's centre of a hot springs province - yet there was the country's major military air show on Sunday. Fighter jets still ignite the sky over the city about every 10 minutes - seems I found Gaza not hot springs!

But there's more happening here than such standard kind of facebook travel snippets. I'm just beginning to really enjoy meandering about with no fixed itinerary, eyes open and spending good time in my own headspace - something I used to declare a regular need, not a want.
It's been a while - just remembering how much more awareness/observation/appreciation/learning was to be done during solo walkabout. Though the group travel of Morocco with a top bunch was fun, I think my backpacker is back (except I catch taxis from bus stations to hotels now - and they're hotels not flea pits!).
There's a renewal at being solo - distanced, vulnerable and at the helm steering my own course no matter what comes up. I'll never be the invincible 20yo Asia or 22yo Central/South America traveller again - but this little slice of solo sailing has brought back an independence and confidence perhaps not really known for years.

Next up (if this blog were a hardcopy travel journal it would have found itself moulding in the shed by now, but on it goes): there's potentially another chapter when I get home. I'd had no major events between Feb and Sept 1 - Prof Butler having doubled the dose of Lamictal to eliminate Boxing Day-style performances. VicRoads Med Review Board wanted a letter from him as an update before reconsidering my licence this month, which they've hopefully posted already or will some time in the coming month.

Dead end street?

An easy, fun and liberated year with upwards of 25,000kms on the car clock - weekly cello lessons in Mt Martha and a 3 day per week client an hour up the road in Glen Waverley (with Mike Oldfield's Tubular Bells redlining the car audio): then I saw the neurologist's face last night after telling him of a couple of more complicated episodes through the year.
It looks like "normal" all stops - again.
"I'll try my best" he said of his report to VicRoads.
The sadness about planning a life without driving is giving up Red Hill lifestyle: life among the boobook owls is magnificent, but I won't go through another year or more living here without a licence or public transport, can't do it.
So, inner city living/suburban living? There was a time when I would have embraced it - bands at Richmond's Corner Hotel, Fitzroy St eateries and Queen Victoria market. Sitting on the beach last night processing I figured I need to plan for connectivity this time around - and that necessarily conflicts with the sort of lifestyle I've chosen the past 20 years.
I'll find out mid January, about the same time I find out another MRI result.
True to this blog's name, I'm now utterly bored and tired of this b grade medical drama and want to change channels. The critter in my fusebox has taken on a Seinfeld face - several too many seasons.

a "favourable" letter

It's a year and a couple of weeks since I looked at a kindly whalloper blankly with dilated pupils and couldn't tell him my date of birth ...

New neurologist is a gem.

Beyond having merely a professorial fascination with the rarity of my fuckedupedness, he's an advocate: and what a change that makes to my world.

So, having confined the complex partial seizures to (usually) just the morning one - which now after 21 years is much like vegemite and toast - he declared Monday evening he'd write a "favourable" letter to VicRoads ... though he's still not too happy with the EEG results, he is convinced by my experiential ones.

All the reasons I built my little slice of goodness in the messmate gum forest of Red Hill are the same reasons having no ticket to drive can send you insane.

Hopefully VicRoads Medical Review Board backs Dr Butler's call and reinstates my licence before Christmas.

I owe way too many friends, family, colleagues, clients and neighbours too many favours for the past year.


I shouldn't, but still do, get pretty uptight about the MRIs. I think for anyone who's had them on a regular basis they'd know the dual anxiety. There's the result. Nobody can ever say that's going to be favourable - until you've got the radiologist's comparison to the last 6 months. But there's the stripping down - the defacement.

That's the bit where, despite all your work on being 'normal/ish' again - ocean races, mountain range adventuring, pleasing a few clients along the way and feeling confident about being on a ladder to clean the gutters again - they strip you back to a hospital robe. They lay you flat, there's the serious procedural tone of the nurse, the clamping down of the head mask where, through the little mirror you see nurse retreat behind the door and radiologist checking computers - then there's the little journey backward into the tunnel, and the fucking hideous cacophony begins.

All of which are a jolt. A kick in the head. A revolting half hour in a bread oven tube with digital jackhammer pulses. All of which says things aren't right, you're not ok. You're treated just as the 85 year-old next in line - and he looks like he's never buying a green banana again. You can go forward and drop a #3 to raise the #2 in howling, pitching, screaming Bass Strait - but fact is you've got a 'mass' in your brain. And it has potential serious ramifications.

Anyway, v thankful that this time around the time between scan and results was just a day (rather than the fortnight of worry it has been in the past) - and the result, compared to the last scan, showed no change.

And my garden's burst of spring colour - the ranunculi, irises, and those William Guinness columbines - has never looked better.

Cocktail hour

EEG results were still too active for new doc's liking. New plan. New drug.
Lamictal now being introduced into my days - on top of the 400mg breakfast 600mg dinner Tegretol. Keeping a daily log which will hopefully show some change over the coming 2 months. Then, hopefully, I've got a good shot at driving again.

Blue glacier juice & mountain bling - fossils return to sea

There's a take on the world that only rambling time in a range like NZ's Southern Alps can give. See, this ridge, these crests were all seafloor just two million years ago - not too long ago in geological terms. Geologists get excited about the meteoric uplift of Mt Cook and her 16 sisters: these peaks and ridges are moving skyward at 15-20mm EVERY YEAR.
...and yet the hundreds of Southern Alps glaciers - like Dave and Jim's favourite 'Rob Roy' - right now seemingly have that uplift in check.
There's about the same amount of shaving, shearing and grinding going on as tectonic heave; the ice returning particles of granite and shale - seafloor hardened to stone by cataclysmic forces - back to the sea, suspended in beautiful milky blue glacial juice that makes postcard creeks and streams (with the glittery splashes of pyrite - mountain bling).

There are marine fossils up here, returning to the sea from 3kms up.

... and then car licence suspension really doesn't seem to matter.
Nor unidentified gob in temporal lobe.

Nor much else really, other than making time for more mountain time (and a couple of Monteith's Black Ales along the way - a great lubricant of philosophical cogs)

Blow, don't suck

Well, just as life was getting almost normal (whatever that means) ...

Hoofing the pug along Nepean Highway between Rosebud and McCrae, things got kinda weird last Tuesday night.

I think they must have got weird in a succession of seizures, because I had already pulled over once near the McCrae lighthouse (I remember I couldn't read a text message) before pulling back out onto the road, coming around Anthony's Nose and there: police had set up a breathtesting station right in front of me.

Whatever was going on was not General Seizure, I did manage to operate the machinery fine while being instructed into the little station the whallopers had set up: indicating, slowing, coming out of gear, stopping and all that. But the police officers knew something was up when this bloke with dilated pupils, glazed over look of emptiness and apparently no capacity to speak sucked on the breath-testing device instead of blowing (I know I know, but you're only allowed to laugh AFTER the MRI results!)

Three times they tried before they got a reading that indicated I hadn't been sinking pots all arvo at Stella's. Along the way they also used one of their indicators to tell them I wasn't strung out on disco bikkies or hydro.

I'm guessing the tegretol found in the car search gave them the answers they needed, and for the next 20 minutes I sat on the sea wall with a copper, really trying to answer his questions, but with total disconnection from speech.

By the time an ambulance came to take me to Rosebud Emergency for the mandatory 4 hours of observation, I was able to chat with the coppers (highly embarrassed) and thank them profusely for their empathy throughout what was the biggest 'episode' in two and half years.

Won't be driving in a long time.

And one day it might even be funny that of all the places in the world to have a seizure my right temporal lobe chose a police booze block. It'll also be funny to think what they made of my beekeeper's smoker in the back of the car: because I saw later that they pulled it apart to find only charred gum leaves, not what they'd perhaps expected.

Having another MRI in a few hours to determine whether growth of the mass had anything to do with this big and prolonged episode. If not, and it was just what neuro calls "a more active phase" of the epilepsy, then I might be able to chuckle ... and write the Rosebud coppers a thank-you letter for their patience in dealing - with great empathy - with what they must have thought was a complete moron.

Renovator's delight going cheap ... inspect now with online walk thru

'No noticeable difference'

Good stuff to hear - 'no noticeable difference' in 2 years.

There's a slight narrowing of a blood vessel adjacent to the mass, not a cause for concern. There are also a couple of fluid spots, not a cause for concern either. Neurologist doesn't feel he needs to see me for another six months, and no MRI for another 12 months to keep an eye on it. His 6mth update report to VicRoads states that he considers me "an acceptably low risk" to continue driving.

Liver function test also as expected: a lowering of one particular enzyme indicates liver is working harder than normal, and there's a slightly lower than normal white blood cell count. Both are indicative of taking 800mg of Tegretol per day.

We had a little family celebration with a Cambodian lunchtime feast at the Purple Orchid in Springvale.

...I start Yoga again on Monday.
Atlas comes out later this afternoon. There is MUCH to do/see out there.
May get that tenor sax octave key fixed.
(...and sorting out my superannuation doesn't seem like such folly.)

Fragil- or perhaps a pint of Harden the Fuck Up

A beautiful weekend camping down Foster way with Kim, Nix, Andy, Anna, Felix and Pearl - in magnificent Victorian autumnal weather ... grand times and many a laugh (kids pretty harsh with their letter to the Easter Bunny though).

Results Friday.

It's Wednesday night and I've had my 3rd glass of the local pinot gris.

Having a YouTube night on the couch -it started with toe tapping Mumford and Sons (the 4 part Gentlemen of the Road series), moved to their bookshop session of Lion Man, and somehow ended up at Sting, Fragile (went looking for a live version with the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra).

Of course I should go to bed.

BUT, it occurred to me that another possibility for a 'bigger' result of the MRI is pull up stumps and sit in a Portuguese fishing village with no other aim than to learn the Fragil guitar solo, and learn it well.

Then it also occurred to me that Drama Queen sneaks in under the second glass. Down Gippsland way - Foster Pub, Toora Pub out Wilson's Prom Country - you'd get a whack on the shoulder about now and told with a wink you might need a pint of Harden the Fuck Up.

Sage advice. Bed time.

Trying to smile in General Electric's tunnel of love

And the big wheel keep on turning, neon burning, up above
And I'm just high on the world...

MRI time last Friday night.

...now the wait for results.

'Bigger' = a big walk someplace.
'Smaller' = a party and bonfire rumpus that you'll be able to see and hear across the Pacific.


This is about 4th time in the big breadmaker with its crazy sounds - it's not a Friday night outing anyone would elect to do, and like any unpleasant task injecting some sort of fun can alleviate the anxiety and stress of it a bit.

...She put her hand in my pocket, I got a keepsake and a kiss
And in the roar of dust and diesel, I stood and watched her walk away

Other times I've regressed to 8 years old (not difficult some might say) and cast a role for myself in a new Star Wars, having commandeered Luke Skywalker's pod, shooting off to some bizarre planet.

...It helps to smile.

She said you are the perfect stranger, she said baby, just keep it like this

This time I got a grin courtesy of ancient Knopfler ... though you're not allowed to tap your feet in this General Electric Tunnel of Love.

And girl it looks so pretty to me,
just like it always did
Like the Spanish city to me, when we were kids




...and now i'm searching through these carousels and the carnival arcades
searching everywhere from steeplechase to palisades
in any shooting gallery where promises are made
to rockaway rockaway ...

Get Better Bear wants back to HDU

Brand new kitten to Get Better Bear: "wanna play?"

Get Better Bear to self: "Shit ... life was a whole lot easier back in High Dependency Unit"

Notes from Hobart-Mornington birthday voyage ...

Started my 40s at Joker helm on the 9pm-1am watch reefed down with #4 up (for comfort not necessity) doing 9s off 20 knots in signature Bass Strait confused slop with the occasional surf - about 20nm off Cape Liptrap bearing 294 for the port phillip heads - wouldn't be dead for quids!

Two miles off sorrento backbeach, about to enter port phillip and head 32 deg for home stretch to mornington - 30ish dolphins just torpedoed in and surrounded boat to say happy birthday - life is grand.

If I could only capture a night pic of dolphins bursting out of black sea almost within arm's length, no moon - exploding in green phosphorescence like star burst fireworks. Will have to consult sister Em on the execution, will have to sign up for more ocean time for the opportunity.

Made it

4 days, 19 hours, 4 minutes and 17 seconds

Arriving at Constitution Dock ...
Pic courtesy of superb Hobart hosts John and Allison, who made it their mission to fatten me up again.



And below ...
Roll cloud, only the second I've experienced at sea - the sort of front that says reef down, get the four up and hang on for a right belting.
Picture courtesy Rolex Sydney Hobart - Carlo Borlenghi images

Back on the water

I fly to Sydney 5pm Christmas Day for the 1pm Boxing Day start of the 66th Sydney-Hobart.

I figured if I can drive again, I might ease back into some offshore racing.

Bowman on a Syd-Hobart entry (Geomatic Joker, sail number M9000) probably isn't easing back in after five years out of my sea boots ... but do 'bucket list' items get scheduled for year 3 of some 5 year plan when my learning is that there is in fact fuck all guarantee of any year 3 or 4 or 5?

I think not.

Hoping to make it this time: 2004 on Outlaw turned horrendous, the experience from Gabo Island to our pullout point 70 miles south, head into 5 metre chaos, is best described as a 16 hour car crash.

And should it be the same again or worse, wouldn't miss it for the world ... this is living.

Bass Strait hurts.
But it's hospitals and couches that kill.

Back on the roads II

I've been up and down the Arthurs St Rd 6 times in the past 36 hours, stopped for a magic late spring arvo bay swim on the way home from the hot springs Thursday evening, then swung by Budgie and Cheryl's magnificent new place in McCrae for a glass on the deck and a wander in their beautiful garden.

I'm designated driver for Monday night's Vic Tourism Awards dinner in Melbourne, off to Mark and Ginny's wedding at Phillip Island today ...

Seems I have a life back. Out of it all I have great empathy for the 15 year olds hanging around the general store, or the 80ish year olds shuffling the Rosebud shops strip in their Grosbys - both groups' worlds constricted to a 2km radius, and wholly dependent even within that bubble.

Took to the freeway yesterday to do a photo shoot for a restaurant client ... I'd forgotten just how fun driving is: picture Zeppelin's Ramble On turned up to the ear bleed sort of level that threatened to lift the poncy Peugeot's front end off the bitumen, me with Cheshire cat grin in the passing lane (with an exaggerated point and laugh for the wanker in the BMW who I caught picking his nose) and the door panel being flogged as though it were in a photo finish for the Melbourne Cup.

I've compiled a playlist of 44 hitting-the-road tunes because, with licence reinstated, there's even the option of running another US hire car out of oil.

Now, might just slide down to Ray's bakery at Flinders for brekkie; because I can.

Anyone need a lift?

Back on the roads

Licensed to drive again as of this afternoon

... 18 months and 25 days after the falling down thing.

Road trip.

(But in the meantime it'll be huge just to get myself to work tomorrow, maybe grab milk, check out the beach, get coffee, perhaps even visit people again.)

... liberation. Normalcy.

Found my feet

Down from the mountains now (eating from one end of San Francisco to the other).
Pulled out at 18 days, 350ish kms.
One icy blast - the rest blue skies and superb September in the Sierras. Still the summer's wildflowers were out, cascades, waterfalls, streams and what seemed a million lakes were hypnotic after a wet early summer, rainbows, Spielbergesque snow flurries, cascades, eagles, deer ... and not so much as a blister.
Time, after about day 7 or 8, to let the mind freewheel, to muse on much, and not a lot of anything at all.
A perfect plod.
Every big walk brings its realisations, tangental ideas and rejuvenation as the trudging enables back rooms to open and creativity to seed - but this wander in what are surely some of the world's most inspiring vistas also came with a big green tick on my own recovery card.
This blog is peppered with references to the healing powers of the sea - but it's been in the mountains that quite literally I've found my feet again, and feeling hardy (though never again boyish invincible) for it.
The falling down, the acceptance of absolute vulnerability and feebleness that goes with scalpel in skull, the hideous weakening of mind and erosion of fortitude that goes with each hospital visit; up and over and around mountains each day these past nearly three weeks was a rebuilding not merely of the calves and quads.

Solid and strong comes from the granite and shale hours; the endurance demanded by days of switchbacks also reconstructing a self image of enduring.

John Muirisms I am fond of articulate it far better than I ..

"In every walk with nature one receives far more than he seeks"

“Climb the mountains and get their good tidings.
Nature's peace will flow into you as sunshine flows into trees.
The winds will blow their own freshness into you, and the storms their energy, while cares will drop off like autumn leaves.”

... a couple of fine crafted post plod ales in the autumnal Berkeley sun with Dave and news from Scotty, Sarina and Cailean of young Ash's arrival: it's a beautiful world ... again, and I'm standing sturdy in it ... again.

The hills are alive

Still can't drive. But I can hike.

I'm making long overdue walk happen.
Can't afford to, but can't afford not to.

Rough route: Yosemite to Donner Lake(ish) , 20(ish) days.

Fly to SF Aug 25.

Wildflowers and redwoods, diamond and burgundy tarns and that joyous Ansel Adams rounded granite.
First three days may well be cartwheeled the way I'm feeling.
A bit over a year since the shake-up, there's much to celebrate. Sierra Nevadas are one of the grandest places on earth to reflect, and sing.

- Pic isn't Pacific Crest (John Muir trail negs from 93 are 'archived' somewhere in my shed, a far more risky trip in there than any above-the-treeline foray!) it's from the Rockies - Grand Teton NP more specifically, 04.

The clinical summary ...

This gets the ball rolling to get life back on track ... it's also a clinical view of the past 13 months, stripped of the emotional rants, life questions and pleas for more time by the sea ...