EVEN BETTER NEWS...

It's now just about 12h15pm and Dad arrived home about an hour ago. I spoke to the folks just a few minutes ago and they're both in fine spirits, especially Dad who has already had umpteen cups of tea. Apparently the hospital only made tea twice a day, which tasted like piss. Anyone who knows Dad will also know that his "normal" tea has the consistency of swamp mud and teaspoons, left too long in the cup, have been known to rust away adding to the sediment at the bottom. It's good to have him back...

GREAT NEWS...

I just got a text message on my mobile that Dad might be going home tomorrow...excellent news...

This Past Weekend - Part 3, Sunday...

Sunday morning was not much different to Saturday, up early to go fishing only to find the wind already blowing. Not a problem though as Mum was already awake and sitting up in bed, reading. We turned on the TV and tuned into the Japanese F1 Grand Prix which was just about to start. I didn't even know that Mum liked F1...go figure. She's a bit like Steph when it comes to sport..."oh, for fuck sakes, sport on the telly again", so it was a pleasant surprise to be able to watch the race with her. And what a race it was...just as I thought the German fuckwit was about to go and win another race, with 6 laps to go, the Ferrari engine goes and blows up. Disgust on Mum's part, as she's a "Schumie" fan (I thought she had taste), but cries of elation and punching of the air on my part. Yes, I support Alonso. There's just something about that square German jaw that makes me want to punch shit out of it... Today, we decide to shower and get ready earlier than Saturday and go and have breakfast at the same place we had lunch the day before. After breakfast and buying the newspaper for Dad, we arrive at the hospital right at opening time. To cast a little more light on Government hospitals in SA, let it suffice to say these are places you don't want to end up in when you come out to for the World Cup in 2010 (if it happens). To give you a small example, Mum had to take a towel through for Dad, as the hospital "does not supply towels to patients" (straight from the ward sister's mouth). Anyway, he's getting treated and that's the main thing... Dad's in fine spirits when we get there, except for the fact that he'd had the nurses making a racket again. I told him I think it's cultural...SA blacks have a tendency to speak loudly, but this is to let you know they are there and not sneaking up on you to steal your stuff or assault you. I notice on the digital machine above the bed that Dad's blood pressure is more or less normal, but that his heart rate is up by twelve beats from the day before. I ask the sister about this and she says it's a good sign. The heart is beating faster because it can as it is a little less restricted than the day before. A good sign indeed... Apparently Dad will still be in the hospital for a couple of more days, more for observation and rest than any special treatment, but I'd rather have him there for that period so that he can continue convincing himself that his smoking days are over and his lifestyle is changing for good. Some friends of my folks arrived while we were still there and it was during that time that I decided that things were looking up, that Dad was getting better and Mum was handling the situation, that I was going to drive home after leaving the hospital. If I had been in any doubt as to either of those reasons, I would have stayed on longer. As it is right now, I'm happy with the progress of both parents, so I'm happy with my decision to come home to my life up here in Joburg. The drive home, however, was not without mishap. The road was busy, with more trucks and heavy lorries than I ever remember seeing travelling between Durban and Joburg on a normal, "non-holiday", weekend. The accident I witnessed though, had nothing to do with lorries. I was about 175km from home and it had been dark for about 30mins. About 100m in front of me was a Nissan bakkie (pickup) and I moved into the righthand lane to overtake it. As I got into the lane, I heard a loud bang, saw a puff of dust from under the Nissan, and reslised that he'd had a tyre explode. The driver must have stood on the brakes (wrong thing to do in the circumstances) as he lost control of the car. It swerved in front of me, first left then right, upon which the righthand wheels dug into the road and the car rolled twice, straight across my path. Doing about 140km/hr, I stood on my brakes, while trying to watch what's going on and reach for the hazard lights switch at the same time to warn other drivers behind me. I noticed in my rear view mirror that other drivers had also switched on their hazard lights and were slowing down. The Nissan came to a halt, about 50m ahead of where it had started rolling, half on the fast lane of the highway and half on the grass verge between the opposing sides of the highway. I managed to stop without hitting anything, or being hit from behind, and pulled onto the grass shoulder with my full beam lights on to show what was happening in front of me. I noticed a child, perhaps 5yrs old, jump through the open hole where the windscreen had been, run across the highway onto the grass, an adult get up and run from the middle of the highway onto the same piece of grass as the child and grab hold of the boy. I saw another adult drag an elderly lady from the road and lay her down on the grass in front of my car. In total, there were five adults and two children in the bakkie, and each one of them had some form of injury except for the driver who was shaken, but unhurt. I grabbed my phone and jumped out of the car, remembering that I'd passed a police car about a minute before all the drama unfolded. I ran back up the way I'd travelled, waving at passing cars to slow down and move to the lefthand side of the highway. The policeman had stopped about 50m back from my car, and turned on his blue roof lights. When I got to him, he was already on the phone, calling for assistance. BELIEVE IT OR NOT, the policeman and I were the only ones to stop and offer any form of assistance to these people. To all the others who had stopped behind me and witnessed the carnage, and had carried on without at least offering to help, FUCK THE LOT OF YOU!! My car was still parked just before the accident scene, with hazards flashing a warning to oncoming motorists, but was quite ineffective when you are working in otherwise pitch blackness. The policeman had no charged batteries for his torch (fuck knows what he'd been doing with them) and no form of attracting attention other than a luminous strip on his overcoat. While he waved the overcoat to get cars to move to the left, I ran back to my car and grabbed a hazard triangle (compulsory in bakkies, as they should be in ALL vehicles) and started waving that at the oncoming cars. We were about 100m up the highway from the scene, and, needless to say there were some absolute fuckin' arseholes coming at us without reducing their speed. On two occasions, cars passed us doing more than the speed limit and one of them missed the Nissan by mere millimetres (I thought he was going to plow into the Nissan and complicate things more) and just carry on without even touching his brakes, while the other one saw the accident at the last moment and almost lost control of his car while trying to swerve out of the path of the Nissan. FUCK YOU TWO, AS WELL!! Happily, nobody connected the Nissan or any other person at the scene. An elderly man, a passenger of the Nissan, had been in the road picking up belongings just seconds before the speedsters came past us. If he'd been there seconds later, we would have had another accident. I offered a bottle of water, the only sustenance I had with me at that time, to one of the female passengers to offer to the rest of the victims while we continued slowing traffic. We managed to create enough of a backlog of cars so as to slow the entire highway down to a crawl, getting everyone to move across to the left. Needless to say, there was also a considerable amount of "rubber-necking" going on as people tried to see what was going on as they passed the accident scene. The first of the paramedics arrived within 15mins or so of the accident happening, and immediately the lady paramedic took a look at the elderly woman, who had been propped up by (what I assumed to be) her family, her back against the legs of one of the other female passengers. The elderly lady had considerable head injuries and I saw the paramedic feel for a pulse on the jugular vein, then lie the old lady down, so I fear the worst for her. I can't confirm it, but I think she died at the scene. An ambulance arrived, as did an Emergency Medical Services person from the toll company who control that piece of the highway. I asked him if he needed anything from me, but was told that they just needed my contact details in case there was an inquiry (I expect that, if the old lady did die, I might be getting a call for a statement). After that, I gave my details to the policeman with whom I had been directing traffic, and he said thanks for my efforts. As I got back in my car and reversed from the scene, a doctor was putting a stethoscope to his ears to check for a heartbeat on the old lady, but I don't know what the outcome was. The lady paramedic also came up to my window and said thanks for my assistance and I told her I'd given my details to the other two guys if they need me. As there was nothing else I could do, I got back onto the highway and immediately phoned home to tell Steph that I'd be a little later than expected. She said that she'd expected me to be home already, but was glad that I was okay and on my way. I got home about an hour later than expected, but unharmed... A weekend, as I'm sure you'll agree, I don't want to experience again...

This Past Weekend - Part 2, Saturday...

As we were only going into the hospital at around 10h30, I woke up early to see if I could do a bit of fishing (of course I took my rods down, just in case I got some time), but the wind was up earlier than I was, blowing from the North East and not good for throwing flies. Instead, Mum and I pottered about around the house, had a cup of tea and a slice of toast to keep us going until after we'd been to see Dad, when we'd go and have a decent lunch somewhere. Around 10h30, we got the car out of the garage and headed into Port Shepstone hospital. Dad was propped up in bed, a pillow supporting him, with all sorts of sticky pads stuck to various parts of his chest and shoulders and a couple of them leading cables to a digital machine above the bed. He was in surprisingly good spirits and I know this cos he crapped all over me for driving down to be there. We chatted about how he felt (okay, considering), what sort of a night he'd had (noisy nurses in the ward), and what the prognosis from the doctor was. As I mentioned previously, the doctor has told him he is never to smoke again, or he will die. I can tell by his tone of voice that he will now give it up for good though. Dad is not usually scared by medical problems and they are usually seen as an inconvenience, but this time is different. He is not scared, but is angry at himself for getting to be in this state. What was that about hindsight? Dad has always been of the opinion that, when he goes, it will be sudden. This episode, however, has given him new food for thought. He's also had enough time alone in the hospital, so far, to think. He's stated that he has now given up smoking (even said he wasn't craving one after two days of not having had one), is going to change his diet (we joked about going out shopping and top of our list is carrots - Dad hates carrots) and is going to try and get some exercise, even if it just means walks on the beach (something that hasn't been done in a while since Pandora couldn't manage it). I hope, for all our sakes but especially for his and Mum's, that he keeps to his word. Anyway, at about noon, the nurse told us in a roundabout way that we had to leave and we went and had lunch, followed by grocery shopping. That afternoon was spent in fron of the TV, watching the Currie Cup rugby semi-finals where both the teams I wanted to win (Sharks especially) lost. The final is going to be a humdinger though, going by the semi's performances. That evening, we had "Stovies" for dinner (years since Mum made them - for those who don't know, it's a Scottish dish of boiled potatos with ham and veg on the side) and sat down to watch a series drama called "The Commander". It's an English police drama and is quite good. During the commercial break, I switched to the TV guide and noticed that Scotland was playing France in the Euro 2008 qualifiers. "Oh, shit", I told myself, not expecting a favourable result. Much to my surprise, when I switched over with about three minutes left on the football clock, I saw that Scotland had gone one up...ya fuckin' dancer!! We happily watched the end of the game (Mum is as staunch a Scotland supporter as I am) and then watched the end of the drama. With not much else on the box for the rest of the night, Mum ended up dozing off on the couch and then went to bed around 9:30pm. I sat up for a while longer, watching the final qualifying round for the Japanese F1 Grand Prix, then went off to bed around 11:30pm...

This Past Weekend - Part 1, Friday...

Friday started as most Friday's do...up about 7am, shower, shave, shampoo, shit, (no shag this time), shumshing to eat, schlepp off to the office... All was going well until Mum phoned at around 11h50, and I could hear straight away there was something not right. Turns out, my Dad had had a "mild" heart attack. What I could get out of her didn't tell me much as she was understandably weepy and distressed. I asked her if I needed to be down at the coast with them (about 6.5hrs drive) to be with them. Typically, as a colleague later put it, Mum said that it wasn't necessary. For the time being, I left it at that. At about 12h30, I phoned Mum, who had just arrived home, still in a state, for an update. At about 7am that morning, Dad had got up, done all the usual stuff and complained about a sore chest, saying that it was "worse than the night before" when it was thought to be gas, or suspected shingles. Dad had a doctor's appointment already set up for 11am, so they weren't too concerned at that time. By 8am, however, Dad said that he couldn't take the pain any more and Mum would have to take him to the doctor right then. Off they went, and once there, the doctor told him he'd suffered the "mild" heart attack, gave him a nitro tablet to melt under his tongue and immediately had him hospitalised at Port Shepstone (about 30mins from home). Mum had stayed with him right up until when she'd phoned me with the news, just after he'd told her to go home as there wasn't anything she could do except stress him out further. Stress him out? Imagine what she was going through... In between the phone calls, I'd been questioning myself about going down to be with them and had almost decided not to, due to the cost of the travel (things are tight since the build). It was at that time that I could have slapped myself for being so selfish. What if things were worse than I'd been told? What if I was putting a cost on not seeing my Dad alive again? I cursed myself and immediately told Mum that I'd be down later that day, that I would drive down, leaving the office immediately and hitting the highway after getting home to pack a few things. After letting Steph know what was up, and telling our Illustrious Leader as I was leaving the office, I went home to pack. The drive took me about six and a quarter hours, uneventful, except for thoughts running through my mind about what the future might hold and again berating myself for initially being so selfish. I arrived at Mum's at 8:50pm, about 10mins earlier than I'd expected to be there. Usually Mum greets me/us with a little wave and a smile as we drive in through the gate, but this time she didn't and I could see on her face in the glare of the headlights that she was taking strain. While I let the diesel engine run for a couple of minutes to cool the turbo down, I held Mum who started sobbing quietly, then we went inside. I poured us both a stiff single malt, sat her down and told her to tell me the whole story. Now that I was there, I could put a picture of events together and ask some questions. It appears that the doctor has told Dad that he is extremely lucky to have had this "mild" heart attack and that it was brought on by his excessive smoking (at one point, a few years ago, Dad was known to have regularly smoked 90 cigarettes on an 8-hour shift...you work out the math on that one!). Due to the smoking, he has had severe hardening of the arteries, to which the doctor has told Dad it will never get better but will get worse and will kill him if he carries on. Needless to say, Dad has vowed to quit and so has Mum. Ironically, in the week leading up to the attack, Mum and Dad had both been cutting down on their smoking with a view to quitting altogether. Anyway, Friday ended up with Mum in better spirits (she only had one drink so it wasn't that). I think it was because I was there, had spoken her through the day's events, reassured her as much as I could, and we'd put a plan of sorts to carry out on Saturday...into the hospital (visiting hours between 11am and 12pm) to see how Dad was progressing, and some retail therapy for her (even if it was only groceries). So, at around 11pm, we decided to call it a night...

For Want of a More Challenging Fishing Experience...

I've decided that, unless we got to a trout resort, or Steph needs a few trout for the freezer, from now on I'm going to target one of South Africa's best fighting fresh water fish, the Yellowfish. I'm a member of a forum, Fly Talk which, though based in SA, gets subscribers from all over the world and where one can exchange all sorts of information fishing related. On the forum, I posted a brief note asking the members where their favourite sites on the Vaal River would be to catch these sought-after fish (which are taken on Catch And Release only), from which I was referred to another bloggers site, Yellows On Fly. It's an interesting site, full of valuable information and maintained by Keith Wallington who is obviously more of a fanatic about catching "Yellows" than I am (for the moment anyway, or at least until I catch my first lunker). I'll add the link to my list down the side for anyone who cares to pop in there now and then...