That's me in the middle. Maggie, my partner is the one on the right. The woman in red is our pal Pepa Posted by Picasa

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And so it begins

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So, we left the story with me in hospital, being fed on gruel and camomile tea, having had a stomach tube fitted. The hospital kicked me loose on Monday with only two scheduled appointments for the week at that time: one with a nutritionist and the other with a cancer doctor, an oncologist—both in Elda. Because not everyone has the advantage of living in Culebrón, I should say that our local health centre in Pinoso (5 km away) is linked to Elda Hospital (25 km away), but sometimes, for specialist services, patients are sent all over the place. The hospital I'm going to in Alicante for the radiotherapy, Perpetuo Socorro, is a private hospital about 55 km from home. The nutritionist was a bit of a hoot. She gave us a box with 30 tubes to connect my stomach feeding tube to a pouch full of a Complan type food. That box was bulky but light. She also gave me a scrip for the feeding pouches, and the bloke in the chemist offered me a sack trolley to take those to the car. He also showed me...
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A surprising view

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Sitting around nattering, putting the world to rights, as one does, on a Saturday morning with friends. We were talking about how people make a living in Pinoso. The most obvious source of employment is in agriculture, particularly in producing wine grapes and almonds, though there are lots of other crops. Unfortunately, it's also true that there are hectares of good agricultural land lying fallow because of the problem of the "generational replacement". The farmers and winemakers are getting on in years, and their sons and daughters want to be teachers and scientists and influencers and local government officers and not farmers and winemakers. We'd talked about the salt that is pumped out of the salt dome, El Cabeço, and sent as a brine solution down a pipeline to Torrevieja where it is added to the salt lagoons there to increase the yield. Actually, the technical term for a salt dome, diapiro, also gives its name to a couple of wines produced by the local bodega or ...
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Submarines in the harbour

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Done it then. The prescribed treatment for my throat cancer and inflamed lymph nodes was three sessions of chemotherapy in Elda and thirty three sessions of radiotherapy in Alicante. Today I had the last session - everything finished. The medics tell me that I'll still feel sick, not be able to eat through my mouth, continue to have skin peeling off my neck, and whatnot, for a month or two yet. My next appointment with the oncologist isn't until 11 November (not at 11am) and the next time to speak to the ear nose and throat people who did the original biopsy isn't until mid December. But, for the moment I won't have to get up at 5.30 am to be ready for the ambulance to take me to Alicante every weekday and nobody is going to poison me with vile chemicals or bombard me with particles for a while. Of course nobody has suggested what will happen if it hasn't worked. I don't know whether they wade in with more of the same or if they give it up as a lost game and jus...
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