If it wasn't funny you'd cry.

I woke this morning to discover my lips were all but glued together. You'd think by now I would have learnt that I can't have antibiotics without developing mouth ulcers and oral thrush. I even have the medication for it, given to me by the Klinik. My tongue has gone white and looks like a relief map of Tonga.. little islands of raw pink flesh in a sea of white fur. Gross! The inside of my top lip has about five ulcers on it. They sting like mad and are seriously affecting the enjoyment of my new found addiction to pickled gherkins and cheese.

We went downstairs for breakfast where-upon I devoured two thimbles of cornflakes, flinching with each tiny mouth-full. I then had two shot glasses of my Goji juice, which the hotel staff kindly bring out to me each morning from the fridge in which they store it. Now that stuff really burns!.. like tomato juice only more acidic.
I still credit it with my rise in platelets. If only someone did a definitive test on it. Either way I'm not going to stop taking it. The alternative is Neumega injections costing about the same as a small second-hand car for each shot.

After breakfast we headed out on the 1KM walk to the Klinik for my blood-test. It's a nice walk. Most of it is through the middle of a large park that I have mentioned previously. It's opposite the "Fachklinik" (Don't ask me how to pronounce that!) and despite what you might think, it's an Orthopaedic hospital. You know.. the one where everyone is on crutches.. Anyway it's huge! Probably a couple of hundred rooms in size.
So all the patients who smoke, (and that's probably most of them) limp, hobble, or perambulate in their wheel chairs across the road to the park, to engage in their habit. The park is almost always full.

If there is one single word that sums up this part of the world, it would have to be "Clean". There simply is no litter anywhere. With one exception: The Park opposite the Fachklinik in Bad Heilbrunn. Cigarette butts litter the grounds and they overflow the bins that are everywhere.
It would not be hard for one to draw the conclusion that smoking causes broken legs. The two afflictions appear be intrinsically inseparable.

This morning as we walked along, I couldn't help but notice that the smokers had all formed into little groups. Much like they did when I was at school a hundred years ago. One park bench was inhabited by a group of blonde nurses, another a group of brunettes and yet another was solely for those in wheel-chairs. I couldn't help but wonder if we were at serious risk of getting caught in the crossfire of a Turf War!
I can see it now... The women hurling their crutches through the air at each other, the crippled in their wheelchairs clashing head on while old men in zimmer frames totter at each other at a snail's pace, cursing each other in German as they topple like wibble-wobbles through a haze of cigarette smoke.. Yeah I've been here way too long! Even getting out doesn't seem to help!

We arrived at the Klinik unscathed and were greeted by Karina who had a package for me.
I wasn't expecting anything and it looked like a present of come kind from Toyota! Woohoo!
Inside was a cap personally signed by Jarno Trulli and Timo Glock of the Toyota Formula 1 Team, and a letter from Toyota Motorsport Germany, wishing me a successful recovery so that I can get behind the wheel of my "Fantastic" AE86 race car once more. Wow! I'm totally blown away!
I must give a huge thank-you to Bruce Sollitt for his involvement. I really appreciate it! Thanks Bruce!

We made our way to the nurses station and bumped into nurse Natalie coming the other way.
She asked me to take a seat and she proceeded to slide another one of those darned needles into my arm in search of a vein to leech yet more blood from. They don't actually use a syringe.. it's a small "butterfly" looking device with a needle and a long plastic tube. Once they get a flow into the tube a syringe is plugged into the end of it, the plunger retracted, and it slowly fills.
Thankfully this all happened without me really noticing as I was engaged in a conversation with Christine the office manager. She was asking for my credit card so she could pay to have my stem cells sent back. I suggested that I might pay for it at the other end, as she had no idea what the charge was likely to be, where as I already have a quote from World Couriers that I can accept. I passed onto Christine the instructions for filling the dry shipper and requested that I be around to supervise the priming when the time comes.

Now that brings me to another observation. Money. Sarah and I are hemorrhaging it on treatment costs in sums that are just mind boggling. Yet at the same time we haggle over the price of the most simple grocery items.
Take yesterday, I wanted to buy some pickled Gherkins. I could buy the large one for slightly less than two small ones. I could potentially save about 20cents. And you know what.. I actually stood there and seriously considered my options. Meanwhile lets return to the Klinik where my blood has just been tested in the same amount of time that it took me to write the last paragraph. Natalie gives me the results.. WBC 4.5 and platelets 61.
She tells me that my thrombocytes (platelets) are low and that I should return to the Klinik on Friday for a shot of Neumega. That single shot in my arm will cost yet another small second hand car.
In the last two weeks I have been given three platelet transfusions, and I can expect to have around the same number next cycle at $1200 each. Add to that the $2000 a day just for staying and eating their food, then add to that all the miscellaneous items and you can see what I'm talking about.

Sure it's money very well spent, but never in my life have I spent such huge sums as if it were peanuts. I sincerely hope it's the last time too.. on several levels.
Those Gherkins.. I dunno if I should be worried about that extra 20cents or not!?

We made our way home after doing a spot of grocery shopping at Tengelmans. Bread, cheese, gherkins, tomatoes, salmon and a bottle of cab-sav for Sarah. I bought myself a Magnum icecream. (I figure a man needs to have some vices). We amble along through the park, past the smokers, past the walking-framed gladiators, past the "Fachklinik", down into "Im Fachswinkel" lane to our hotel. ..and I wonder to myself.. Why does my life seem like it's somewhere between "Ground-Hog Day" and a script from a bad German porn movie??

...Ron