Good news and bad news

OK, the bad news first.

The damn trains are on strike across the country. I didn't know about this ahead of time, and am now trapped in Santa Marinella all day enduring the Italian train employees' little April Fool's joke on the rest of the country.

In addition, I can't get my [expletive deleted] Telecom Italia modem to work, so I am stuck relying on my mobile internet stick. Due to the utter inability of Italians to engineer something so that it actually fulfills the function for which it was intended, the Tim website account attached to my internet stick will give me any amount of detailed information,except the one thing I actually need to know, to wit, how much time I have left of my monthly 100 hours. The message you get to tell you that your stick is running low on credit leaves you about ten or fifteen minutes warning. Very helpful, thanks guys.

Also, although they tell you when you sign up for it that you can recarica your stick at any tabacchi, just like your cell phone, what they don't tell you is that the guy at the tabacchi won't have access to the Tim company computer without which the money you put on your stick, about 30 Euros, will not get you 100 hours. Due to the byzantine complexities of the way these people have set up their system, it will get you about four. This means that to recarica my internet stick, I have to go either into Rome or to Civitavecchia because Santa Marinella does not have a Tim store.

Which I can't do because the FRACKING TRAINS ARE ON STRIKE!!!

Aaaaand

I have broken my glasses. We had a windy, blustery day and although I was laid up, I HAD to get cat food. So I ventured out with the brolly and the wind caught it and smacked the stick straight into my glasses.

Also, I am in my third week of back pain. I wrenched it and have been walking like a penguin ever since, unable to do any housework or very much of anything.

And just now, you will not believe it, my upstairs neighbour, the mad Italian woman who amuses herself by periodically screaming like a lunatic at her daughter and smoking on her balcony and dropping the ashes into my flower pots, just banged on the door to tell me that my boiler is flooding again.

Where was I?

Oh, yes.

The medical stuff.

I spoke to them yesterday, and they told me that all the doctors involved, oncologists and whatnot, saw the results of all the scans and have unanimously concluded that I will not require chemotherapy or radiation therapy.

They have said that this is the best possible outcome, that we caught the thing early enough that they will not have to do anything drastic. The tumour is not growing appreciably and has not spread at all into the surrounding tissues. There is no sign of any cancer or badness anywhere else (that was the PET scan) and that the only thing that is required will be a single surgical intervention. They will remove the tumour directly, leaving all my important and useful bits where they ought to be.

They will call me within the next couple of weeks to schedule the surgery. After that, there will be more MRI scans to make sure there is nothing in there they missed, and I will have to carefully monitor the situation for the rest of my life.

So that's the good news.

I told a friend last night and she said, "My God, it's amazing! The other shoe has dropped, and it turned out to be a fluffy bunny slipper."

Yes.

But just this once.



~