Monday 18 November 2013

Leaving soon, so excited....

Tomorrow at this time we will be in Jordan, hopefully at the airport and waiting for our flight. It's a long journey; we leave Pardes Hanna at 7.00 am when Boaz, one of Oren's brothers, is kindly driving us to Meggido junction. Thanks Boaz! Then we get on a special bus which takes us all the way to Amman; we bought an inclusive ticket from Fly East, the cheapest way to fly to the east from Israel, and it is quite convenient too. If we had flown from Ben Gurion airport in Israel it would cost much much more, I don't understand why. So then we wait a few hours for our flight, which goes to Abu Dhabi. In Abu Dhabi we wait six hours in the airport, we aren't allowed into Abu Dhabi because we are Israelis, but I don't think I would want to go out anyway, it's the middle of the night. Then we get on the next flight, which goes to Manila. We get to Manila on the afternoon of the day after we set out, and wait three hours there for the final connecting flight from Manila to Puerto Princesa. In Puerto we have a hotel reservation for the night, and the next day, which is Thursday, we will finally get to see Chasamba. It's a marathon.
We have heard from friends and from the owner of the yacht club that Chasamba is fine, still floating and quite dry. Whatever we find, as long as she is floating things will be ok. We know how to renovate and clean, and it will be a labour of love, helped along by good cold Philippine beer (at least for Oren) and plenty of mud crabs, pork baby ribs and shrimps, sweet orange mangoes and coconut curry.... You can tell I'm getting excited already!
Here is the link to Chasamba.com, where I will post all our sailing related news, just click on the Chasamba.

Wednesday 6 November 2013

I'm not leaking!

Sorry for the delay in updating! I got carried away planning our next moves and forgot I had left you all hanging on the edge of your seats waiting for the next installment of this thriller...
Well, the leak test was truly awful, just as I thought it would be. We got to the hospital at about 10.00, reported to the x-ray department and were told to take a seat. After an hour it became evident that they had FORGOTTEN about me! Then, when they realized I existed, they had to start trying to get hold of Professor Shpitz, who was in the operating theatre. To make a long (long long) story short, eventually he turned up and ushered me in to the x-ray room. Of course, because this is Professor Shpitz, and everyone was falling over themselves to be useful, we ended up with two x-ray technicians, another doctor and a nurse as well as Professor Shpitz all clustered around my bare bum while I lay with my back to them on my side. The test consists of an enema with radio-opaque fluid which is introduced while x-rays are taken of the area where the join was made. This fluid is sticky and icky, and in my case the second it hit my inner bits they decided that, no, this was going OUT, and it then stuck to my legs and the hospital gown so that I got all stuck together. At least it didn't hurt much, it was just uncomfortable and very embarrassing, just as I had feared it would be. I could only hope that everyone's eyes were more on the x-ray screen than on my private version of a tsunami. As soon as I was allowed to I jumped off the table and ran (or waddled, since my gown was stuck firmly together, restricting my movements to little baby steps....) for the toilet, which mercifully was next to the x-ray room. There I stayed until I was sure everything that wanted out had come out. Then I had to rip the gown off my legs forcibly and try to get dressed without my legs sticking together meanwhile.
But, somehow, I survived and as I was still frantically trying to pull on jeans over my sticky legs I was informed that the news was good, the join is fine and I can have a reversal! So it was all worth it. I just hope I never need that test again.
Now, the date for the reversal was more or less in our hands, except that the waiting list meant that we had to wait at least a month or so. We went home and thought about it and decided to wait for three months and meanwhile to go back to Chasamba for a good holiday and to get her back into shape after a year and three months of sitting on her own being used as a target for bird poo, a convenient anchoring place for barnacles and a home for rust. So, we leave for the Philippines on the 19th of this month!!!! And have an operation date ready, the 3rd of February. We get back to Israel on the 14th of January, just in time to get all the pre-op blood tests done, and conveniently to do the three month check up of markers and CT too.
I will keep updating here, but will also post on www.chasamba.com, which is our sailing blog, until we come back.