Health update

We have a guy at work who opens his mouth to change feet. His thought processes are unusual to say the least and he never ponders anything before just saying it.

I spent 8 hours in a car with him once and ended up ready to kill him. He would have been horrified if he realised how offensive he is, he doesn't mean it.

The other day he was holding forth in a fairly full room. His second cousin had breast cancer or something. I was 5 metres away talking to someone else when suddenly I was called at the top of his voice "Your cancer is fixed now isn't it?"

All eyes swivelled and there was a momentary silence "I wouldn't say it was fixed" I said cautiously "but I'm okay"

"well it must be fixed then" he said "your hair is really long again, you need a hair cut actually"

People are now looking at me strangely I shrug, say "whatever" and decide my empty coffee cup needs filling.

Anyway it isn't fixed, but it isn't progressing very fast. I am starting a new course of radiation this afternoon and we will see where it goes from there. Apart from the travelling to Hamilton every day I quite like radiation, fast, painless and appears effective.

One thing that was bugging me has changed with the change of government (a coincidence?) Late last year the local medical laboratory introduced a charge for a blood test that is an ovarian cancer marker. At $10 a time it wasn't a large charge but I objected on principle to having to pay anything. It felt as though they had singled out the women this test is important for and decided to hit them up because they are a fairly captive audience. I was so annoyed that I walked out and complained to everyone I could think of including Tony Ryall (National Health Spokesman at that time Minister of Health now). Eventually Tony sent me an email explaining they were allowed to charge for some tests in their contract and there wasn't much that could be done about it. I corrected the misinformation they had given him that they had been charging all along but really wasn't too much to be done except continue to complain to anyone who might be vaguely interested (health professionals mostly). As of this week they dropped the charge (said they just decided they would). I claim the victory as mine :-)