R.I.P.

R.I.P.  - my ovaries a.k.a The Yubari Melon Monster.


A year ago my left ovary was an unwelcome star of this blog and I went into hospital to have both left and right ovaries whipped out. Thankfully non-cancerous.


Today is a beautiful, late-summer sunny day in Sapporo and I am sitting in my classroom just round the corner from the KKR Hospital - this time last year I was sitting up there in the Women's Health ward, anxiously waiting and waiting to be taken off to surgery.


All well here - I am about to enter the final week of work before my holiday. The dentist visits are ongoing - but he has found the correct dosage of how to sedate a large, emotional non-Japanese woman and the cat is still wearing his bandage as he jumps around the neighborhood after bugs in the grass and birds on trees. Just hoping he doesn't meet the fox again - we saw it at 3.30 pm the other day! Merrily trotting along under the subway line in the grass area....amazing to see a city fox out in daylight.


Okaasan is doing ok - no hula dance outings, but she is going for late afternoon walks and doing some of the washing up in the kitchen. This morning Yujiro managed to get her out early enough to go to the dentist for a check up. It takes her ages to get bathed and dressed for going out - and she often gets to the front door wearing slightly off choices of clothes or out of season outfits.


I've finished rereading "And Still The Music Plays" (see side panel to the right) - which made me think I should TRY to be more understanding and kinder with Okaasan. Try.
As I cleaned her room this morning - safe in the knowledge that she was at the dentist's - I did it with the thought: "well, it doesn't matter if she has 3 years of magazines all over the place here, it isn't harming anyone and maybe seeing all these magazines gives her some kind of comfort."
The book is full of tales of dementia sufferers and their carers coping with increasingly strange or difficult behaviour - and the author's attempts to try and find out WHY the patients are acting like this.
Okaasan makes endless lists of information about cooking programs and food, and she screws up balls of newspaper and keeps them in plastic bags, and she has underwear everywhere...
I should be grateful that she isn't digging up all the rocks in the garden or following us around the house or shouting at strangers.
Regular incontinence, a messy room and passivity in conversation are things we can deal with.


AND......to celebrate having no ovaries - well actually the date is just a coincidence - tonight Yujiro and I are going to Maruyama Zoo in Sapporo for a Night Zoo Visit event. Guided walk round the zoo with the staff, dinner and wine and candles etc etc.....a little bit expensive for us (Y6,000 each!), but it is an event organised by one of my old students Saori Abe and sounds like a lot of fun!
Here is a link to a similar event in June....
The rain has finally stopped and I have a feeling it's going to be an interesting experience to visit a zoo at dusk....yippeeee!!!!


Anyway - better go to the gym now and work off some calories, then home to feed cats and Okaasan....and then off to the Zoooooooooo!!!