Brother update

All is going well. Temperature normal now. Apparently, he's never allowed to dive into a swimming pool again, and has to wear a helmet if he skis or plays golf in the next twelve months.

But so far all is well...

Second operation

Well, my brother had his second op yesterday -- an acrylic plate inserted in his head. For days, there has been nothing but stitched-up skin and a bit of hair between his brain and the world. Scary stuff. I'd hate him to fall over or bang his head! If I were a doctor I'd be keeping him in bandages, or, better yet, donning a helmet.

So far all is well, though tonight he is running a slight temperature. His biggest risk at the moment is infection -- if he develops one they have to open him up again. I imagine they've got him on a pretty tough antibiotic regime. My mum and dad have gone up to Sydney to see him, and Mum was freaked out by the size of the cast of the piece of skull that had to be replaced. Main thing though is that they've got it all, and that so far the ops have gone well. Now, if we can just keep those bacteria at bay...

Valentine's day: our day of giving thanks

My brother had a brain tumour removed today -- a tumour the size of a tennis ball. Fortunately for him, it was benign -- a meningioma, but it had invaded the meninges. Benign brain tumours can kill -- just because the space within the skull is limited. So the question becomes: how could he have such a big tumour and be asymptomatic. No headaches. Nothing. How lucky was he.

None of us worried about it. A specialist had told him years ago that he had a bone abnormality -- his forehead seemed to have changed shape, gotten bigger. And it had. Recent scans showed the skull there to be 2 cm thick, whereas elsewhere it was 0.8 cm. No one queried anything else much, and it was only by chance that he went to a plastic surgeon to have droopy eyelids lifted so he could see, and the plastic surgeon refused to do anything till he'd had it all checked out.

Now comes the waiting game. Part of his skull has been ferried interstate so a replica can be made of it, and put in his head. The biggest risk now is infection.

So, he's lying now in hospital, being woken every half hour. I imagine his progress will be slow and painful -- at the moment he's doped up with morphine. But as long as he does improve, everything will be fine.

It's hard being so remote to it. He's interstate. Times like this we need to be geographically closer. I'd like to go in tomorrow and see him, but I can't. Can't contemplate the trip up because classes start next week, and I'm not on top of things.

We do need to give thanks that they found it now. And now we're left scratching our own heads about how no-one, not one of us, was worried enough about his lump to insist of further investigation. Was it because our grandma had a strange lump on her head? (Maybe she had a tumour too.) Was it the lack of concern by the doctors? Was it just our need to believe that everything was okay? That old head-in-the-sand attitude never helped anyone. I'm just glad he got to it when he did -- before there was any damage. The consequences could have been horrific. And now I'll pray for the bugs to stay away, and for his op next week to be just as successful.

Sorry day

For the first time in a long time, I felt, today, as though we might have a government with courage and integrity. Today is the day Kevin Rudd said sorry. I'm sorry too. Sorry for all the past injustices. Sorry that it went on so long, that it's taken so long. I'm sorry there has been so much exploitation, and I hope today can bring a new healing, a new start.

Let me add my voice to the many thousands: I'm sorry.

So fast, so fragile

Warning -- if you are at all squeamish about animals, do not read on!

We lost a finch the other day. Like all stories in this house, it's not a simple one, and requires telling -- maybe just because I need to tell it.

On Thursday, I was changing the water in the aviary, when a blur went past my head. Now, to put this in perspective, our aviary is quite large -- over two metres tall in parts, three metres long and a metre deep. I've never kept birds before and don't really like the idea of it, but at least they can fly about in this. We had no intention of getting birds in the first place, but caught a couple of canaries soon after we moved into the house, and have gone on from there. Last year, we lost half our thirteen canaries, when The Gadget Man accidentally left the cage door open. I managed to recapture one who was trying to return by opening the door for it, and it went very happily in.

At the end of last year, we bought four finches to keep the canaries company. We now have about 40 (and are back up to 11 canaries); the finches fly in a flock. They sit in the vines at the top of the cage, whereas the canaries have colonised the middle of the cage, and fly about as individuals. The finches roll the canary eggs out of their nests. And pecked a mouse to death -- or so my children said. So, to lose a finch was not that heartbreaking a deal, especially when considering how to handle the population explosion. So, yes, it wasn't a big deal except that for two days she tried to get back into the cage. She tried desperately.

Because she was so desperate, I tried to recapture her and let her back in, but our finches are a lot wilder than the canaries. I can go up to the canaries in the cage and talk to them; if I get too close they may or may not fly off. But the finches panic every time I go near them. (As does the one lone quail at the bottom of the cage, but he's getting better gradually.)

As we were having dinner on Friday night, out on the deck, we saw why the finch was so desperate: she was a baby, and her parents were feeding her through the wire of the cage. So Gadget Man, being inventive and practical, rigged up a trap: he took our old, small birdcage and lifted the top off on one side, so it seemed hinged, propped it open, put some seed in the bottom, and rigged up a great long string so that we could tug the whole lot shut. Then we waited. Gadget Man got tired of this, so I took over. Eventually, the little bird fluttered in, and when she was two-thirds down the bottom, I tugged the string. The cage lid fell; the bird rocketed up -- and there was a flurry of feathers.

Success! Inwardly, I exalted. I had caught her, and would be able to return her to her mother.

The exultation lasted all of a split second, because the bird plummeted down and lay still on the bottom of the cage. Sir Talkalot reckoned he saw the cage lid hit the bird's neck and bounce up again. Although I was watching, I didn't capture the scene in such fine detail. In any case, it seemed that I had employed a very blunt version of Mme Guillotine, and had broken the bird's neck.

I was devastated. My good turn, my kindness had become a cruelness (though not as cruel as condemning her to death by starvation -- at least it was quick). Perhaps she didn't break her neck -- birds are prone to heart attacks as well -- but in any case she was dead, and I was left wishing I'd waited that fraction of a second longer, that I'd left the string-pulling to Gadget Man, anything, any little change that would have seen a different outcome.