The War Council is assembling. Val Jerram is at our sides daily. Richard Jones is here now from Madang. Carol Dover is flying in from Vanuatu. Marg and Mick Horwood are providing shelter, food and their good counsel. And yesterday, after an exhausting 36 hours of travel, our son Hans arrived from Hamilton, Ontario:

There are a lot of journeys involved here.

The strangest and most difficult of all these journeys is a sort of recapitulation of life itself. We are all, every one of us, you, as you read this, on a great journey – the journey that lasts exactly one lifetime. Now, as the friends who are fortunate enough to be able to engage in the battle on the field itself gather, we are joining ranks and marching together. As Marg feeds one her pet Magpies on the veranda the bird seems to wonder why she is in such a rush:

The daily routine must be maintained, but time seems to fly past at a dizzying speed.

I’m not the General of this little army. I can feel that my capacity to cope is fading daily. I’m blessed beyond reason to be surrounded by such a capable and loving cadre.

Along with the Magpies came a pair of Butcher Birds:

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Eunie had a rough day yesterday in the noisy MRI machine. They did a general one of the whole area and a special one of the area around the liver. That’s enough medical details. The point of this is to determine whether the tumor is operable or not. Also under consideration are chemotherapy and radiation treatments.

The action seems to be moving faster. Eunie was told last night that she will be having some other kind of test today. I don’t know as yet what it is. I will be leaving for the hospital in a few minutes. I imagine that it will be a day or two before we have an answer concerning treatment.

Please understand that I may not be able to answer every comment that is left here on our jornal. The time is simply not available. I’m not ignoring any of them. I read every one and so do many other readers. I know that you will understand if I do not respond to a comment directly.

When I reoriented myself this morning after a restless night and a couple of hours of trying to go back to sleep and finally giving up, I was startled to see, after getting my computer going, that it has been only two days since I last posted here. It seems like a week.

First, let me tell you that we are once again amazed by grace that we find ourselves safely and comfortably sheltered, fed and counseled by dear old friends. We are presently staying at the home of Mick and Marg Horwood in Brisbane.

I stumbled out into the garden this morning to take a couple of pictures, because I can’t stand to write without images, even if they have little to do with my subject matter:

Above is an image of promise, fat little strawberries growing warm in the morning sun.

The title today, The Way Things Happen is very ambiguous. I don’t have a lot of time to write, so I’ll have to cram it in quickly, like my breakfast. What follows is a digest of random happenings mostly good, some less so. Don’t expect it to make any sense.

My charger for my Canon G11 has chosen the morning to give up the ghost. Fortunately, I brought my Olympus SP590UZ along and it uses AA batteries. So, when the Canon battery dies, I’ll still have a camera. Okay, bad news, good news.

As I mentioned, we have once again found safe haven to protect and nourish us as we face the current terrors.

Our dear friend Richard Jones showed up yesterday evening from Madang. I am astounded, but not surprised at the love that is being poured out for Eunie. Carol Dover, recently relocated in Vanuatu, is also flying in soon.

This is a plant I found in the Horwood’s garden that seems unlikely – possibly designed by a committee:

You will note a very nice lemon tree in the background.

Our son, Hans, arrives today from Hamilton, Ontario. It’s difficult for me to express my emotions now, because I have to maintain a certain numbness. It will be good to have him here to see his mom and hear with us what the future holds.

Regular readers will know that I don’t throw my religious beliefs in your face. It’s not the purpose of this journal. Ask me, I’ll tell you. However, I must say that it is a strange experience to be wandering in this desert of profound negative feelings, which you can imagine for yourself. What makes it stranger yet, but eases the journey, is the way that every time we get to the point where I am thinking to myself that I simply do not know what to do, some unexpected door opens and I find an oasis of relief. As for myself, I attribute this to God’s mercy.

Eunie and I have always known that we would have to travel such a road at some point. I always hoped that I would simply drop dead some day and Eunie could carry on. She’s so much better equipped to deal with life than I. Now the sequence seems to be in question.

All that I know for certain is that a couple of nights ago we nearly lost her. However, with the help of Val and her doctor’s house call (!), we got her back. I told Val quite frankly that, if she had not been there for us, Eunie would very likely not have survived another day.

That’s about all the rambling that I have time for this morning. Today is going to be interesting.

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I won’t go into the gory medical details, because it’s only the outcome that matters. Three nights ago, after seeing Eunie go downhill rapidly for several days while we were waiting for our appointments in Brisbane, she crashed. She was nearly unresponsive, could not stay awake and would not eat or drink. Val’s private GP came to the house after his office hours and said that we needed to get her into the Gympie Hospital, which we did the next morning with difficulty in Val’s car. He blood pressure was shocking. The anti-inflammatory she had been taking since receiving a stent in her bile duct had caused her to bleed in her stomach. They hooked up many hoses to her and began to rehydrate her. They also gave her two units of blood.

Eunie bounced back eventually after a morning of us hearing discouraging words. Yesterday, she was stable enough to transport her by ambulance to Wesley Hospital in Brisbane. She is scheduled today for an MRI and some other tests. There will be some other kind of scan also.

As of last night, she was in no pain. I expect within a few days to hear some prognosis from the oncologists.

NOTE: I am going to try to answer all of the comments that I am receiving and all of the email messages. Every message is important to me, but I may not be able to keep up with the flood. I’m sure that you will understand this.

When I walked out on Val’s little porch at the top of her back stairs yesterday afternoon I saw a thermometer. Still wearing three sweaters in the warmest part of the day, I wasn’t sure that I even wanted to look at it. I finally decided it was important information and noted, barely visible in the faded red line 20°C. I can’t work out what that is in F, but it’s a lot colder than I am used to, having lived in the most tropical of the tropics for nearly half of my life.

Looking at the mounting of the thermometer, I was amazed to see that it is from Madang and another era long gone. If you click to enlarge, you may be able to read:

MODILON MOTORS
TAXI  PHONE  55
MADANG

Let me tell you that it’s been a long, long time since there have been any taxis in Madang. I can barely remember one or two of them when we arrived in 1981. This thermometer obviously predates that, since I don’t know how long ago you could dial a two digit number in Madang. It may have been a special sort of line:

I have not had time or energy to do much but walk around the yard and shoot a few pictures. Nevertheless, I’ll show you some.

I don’t know what kind of tree this is and Val could not find it in her garden book. Hopefully, someone will identify it and leave a comment:

The tree looked a bit forlorn and scraggly. I have to remind myself that September is spring here.

The Nasturtiums were about as red as I have ever seen:

They always remind me of water lilies which are growing out of the water.

Val tells me that this is Browallia. I wouldn’t know better. There is a yard next door that looks like Sanford and Son’s  Junkyard, or Steptoe and Son,  if you are from the UK. Here you are looking through the fence from order into chaos:

Apparently there are orange and yellow varieties. It looks to me as if this particular bush can’t make up it’s mind.

Hiding down in a corner in the late afternoon sun I found some Azalia blossoms:

The light was fading, so I didn’t hold much hope. The result isn’t bad, if you don’t mind a soft look.

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Eunie had a very rough day yesterday. I am quite concerned about her. Since her earliest appointment is not until the 2nd of September, we are playing a horrid waiting game. There is a care centre just two doors away from Val’s house. We will go up there today and get someone to come down and look at Eunie to see if there is anything that they can do for her. She does seem a bit better today.

Well, life’s vicissitudes being what they are, we now find ourselves in Gympie, Australia a couple of months before we planned to be. We had planned to take a long-overdue holiday break in Australia for a few weeks later this year.

We are staying in the home of our long-time friend Val Jerram, whose name has appeared many times here on Madang – Ples Bilonng Mi  before and is going to pop up more or less constantly in the misty future as we get treatment for Eunie’s medical problems. Read to the end of the post for news about that.

Though I should have known that it would be so, if I had had the power to think of some of the less pressing matters other than those which are daily squashing my mind into a sort of pudding-like substance incapable of no higher functions than basic animal instincts, the most intense of which is at the present time stark fear, I would have realised that I was in for yet another treat – it is freezing cold here in Gympie!

Sorry about that last paragraph. I just wanted to see if I’m still capable of writing a reasonably long sentence that is comprehensible. Did I make it?  I can’t tell.

Anyway, having missed several days of posting this month, I was determined to write, if for no other reason than to prove that my fingers still work. I ventured out into the freezing cold on Val’s veranda and got a shot of this blackish bird pecking away at some undoubtedly tasty grub in this bare tree limb:

I took the shot with the Bird Watching setting on my Olympus SP590-UZ. Though there are some aspects of the camera that don’t suit me, the 26X optical zoom is great and it has a wide range of “scene” modes that make it easy to get shots that would require a lot of fiddling with manual controls otherwise.

A few seconds later, I got the above bird’s handsomer cousin:

This place is a crazy house of birds all day long. I suspect that birds are going to be creeping in on the fish soon.

Here is a shot from Val’s veranda of the old Gympie courthouse:

I haven’t seen it up close, but it looks to be an interesting place to visit. This small city is also the home of the  Gympie Muster, the second largest country music festival in Australia.

Braving freezing temperatures this morning, I snapped some snapdragons:

And another one:

And that was the first morning in Gympie.

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Yesterday was scary. Eunie is sick, there’s no doubt of that. She could walk slowly. She put on a brave face, starting out at 05:30 for a cab ride to the Brisbane airport. We had to stop over in Townsville for a couple of hours and then fly to Brisbane, where we were met by Val. Then we had a little over two hours to Gympie in her car.

Eunie’s been resting today. I hope she gets some energy back. Watching any loved one, especially a spouse, go from strong and healthy to desperately ill in a matter of a couple of months is a shocking experience. It’s my first time.

I could do without it.

I found it impossible to post yesterday. I spent most of the day running around frantically trying to gather last-minute paperwork to send to the insurance company. I finally sent a twenty-three page fax. This makes a total of seventy-three pages of documentation I have sent. I’ll have more information for interested readers at the end of the post.

Thanks to Alison Raynor for sending me a couple of beautiful images of Sunrise at Mt. Beppo in Queensland not far from where she lives in Toogoolawah. The images were only 800 pixels, so I didn’t have much to work with, but they are so pretty that I could not resist them. I was also grateful to have someone else’s work to show, as I have no time to dig through my own to put together a decent post.

This one had some electrical wires in it that I had to remove. It’s a lovely, peaceful scene:

The lighting is unusual, but it has a very natural feel.

I could not resist turning it into a watercolour. It has just the right composition and tonal qualities for a painting:

I particularly like the contrast and the way that the rays of light on the right are accentuated.

This shot is a real beauty. All I had to do with it was pump up the vibrance and contrast and adjust the colours just a bit to make it look good on the black background:

As with the other shot, the lighting lends a wonderful naturalness to the scene.

And, of course, I had to fiddle with this one also. Again, the watercolour filter in Photoshop gave the effect that I wanted.  Not all images look good when faked as art. These two worked very nicely:

The arty effect on this one is more obvious if you click to enlarge it.

In case you’re wondering about Mt. Beppo, here is a Google Earth image of where it is:

You can click to enlarge and put in the coordinates of it or just put “mt beppo queensland australia” in the Google Earth search box.

Thanks Ali, for providing me with two very nice images to amuse our readers and myself. Thanks also for your call last night putting me onto the best air fares to get to Brisbane.

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Tomorrow, we fly to Brisbane in the morning. Our friend Val Jerram will meet us and take us to her house in Gympie. I hope that Eunie does okay on the trip. We have to make a stopover for a couple of hours in Townsville.

Eunie has appointments for tests beginning on September 3.  She will have an MRI and some other kind of scan – I think an MRI involving a contrast dye. She then has appointments on the 6th and 7th with two other doctors. At last the ball is rolling.

I’ve mentioned several times the lovely apartment that we have stayed in since we have been in Brisbane. I want to acknowledge and extend our deepest gratitude to our dear friends of many years in Madang, Mike and Di Cassell for putting out the welcome mat for the very pleasant and convenient accommodation provided to us as a gift of love.

We have always had a deep sense of family with our closest friends in Madang. Never have I felt it more and never have we needed it more.  There is nothing like being in deep need to find out who your real friends are.

Today’s post won’t be windy. I’m winded. I had no idea that I was going to be so busy and feel as if I’m accomplishing so little. Yesterday evening was our last night with Trevor and Karen, who came down to Cairns to visit us. It was, of course, bittersweet. We left Eunie alone for a while to get pizzas to bring back to the room to eat while we watched a couple of movies.

Naturally, I had my camera with me and there is no such a thing as killing time if you have your camera in your hand. You can divert your attention to creating something, even if it is inconsequential. As I saw the variety of lights on the Esplinade, I got to thinking about lights. Brilliant, eh?

Man’s lights and the lights of nature – both illuminate. Some of man’s lights are beautiful. Think of the streams of glory from a stained glass window or the adrenaline beauty of fireworks. Others are horrid, such as the deadly flash of a thermonuclear bomb. Nature too provides a variety of lights, benign, such as the moon, or nurturing or deadly as chance may be in the sun’s rays:

Some of man’s lights are open to a wide range of artistic interpretation. Here I captured the tail lights of passing cars in a fifteen second exposure with the camera rather shakily balanced on top of a post:
The cars are mere streaks. Most people have blurred into non-existence. As I looked at the image in the preview, the title came to me instantly. Watch Long Enough – Everything Changes.

But some lights are different. They illuminate, but not through the sensations of the eyes. They illuminate the soul.

I positioned myself quite a distance away for this shot, so I think that I can honestly say that it is candid:Trevor and Karen dropped everything that they were doing, blew a bunch of hard-earned cash, and came to be with friends to share our suffering, cheer us up , provide necessary counsel, cry with us, laugh with us and shine some much needed light on the subject of hope. This is not to mention the practical details which Karen helped Eunice with – ones which I am not yet ready to face.

How many friends can you count that would do that?

This is the light of treasure.

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I wish that I had some news today. Eunie stayed up late last night watching movies and went to bed happy. Her colour seems to be improving – she’s less yellow. Her appetite has also improved. These are good signs for her strength which she is going to need in the future. We have not yet heard from the oncologist about our move to Brisbane, but it is only Tuesday afternoon as I write this. My own condition is fragile and I know that I cannot allow this to continue. I know that I will be better able to cope when we are in Brisbane with our friend Val, because she is a strong, take-charge woman and takes no nonsense from me. I will have to toughen up considerably to keep her from beating me up for being a wimp.

After decades of softening myself, sensitising myself, growing absurdly empathetic and always, always, learning that the more I give the more of what I need that I receive, I find myself now suddenly weak and ineffectual in situations where I need to be forceful and decisive.

It is a puzzlement.

Having Trevor and Karen with us this weekend has been a huge blessing. First I’ll show you some of our amusements. The view from the apartment balcony reminds me of home. It’s constantly changing. In the late afternoon the sky is often gaudy with colour:Yes, that is the moon up there. I’m not feeling very chatty and that makes me unhappy, because it is a good diversion to write with the hope of amusing both myself and others. I’m going to start taking a drug tomorrow which I hope will act as a mood elevator and help to allow me to function better. Stay tuned.

I used to fly helicopters. This shot of a Bell Jet Ranger dragging an undecipherable banner below it reminded me of lifting sling loads, something which always made me very nervous:

There is a big cultural art festival on in Cairns now, so the Esplinade is crowded with people.

From our balcony we could see a bizarre parade of exhibits passing down the street. As you can see from the brightness of the lights, it was getting quite dark by the time this crazy fish came swimming along:

We all decided to stay on the balcony to watch the fireworks show. As it turned out, that was not to be. We were somewhere else when the booms began.

Earlier in the day, as Karen, Trevor and I were walking down the street we spotted a bird which none of us had seen before. I got a very nice shot of this Lapwing or Spurwing Plover (Vanellus miles).  I think it qualifies as a fairly crazy looking bird:

I Googled around after Karen found the name of the bird and was quite smug to find not a single image of it that is better than this one. Too bad about the ruffled feathers.

UPDATE: Good buddy Justin friend provided an amusing bit of information about this strange bird:

The Masked Lapwings are not plovers, although for a long time that bird pictured was incorrectly identified as a spurwing plover till …it was moved across to the lapwing family. Most locals still call it a plover, I grew up calling them plovers, but it is indeed the Masked Lapwing.

Thanks for that tidbit, Justin.

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Last night we met with our oncologist, Dr. Paul Eliadis. I suppose that the news could have been worse, but it was certainly bad enough. Eunie almost certainly has a rare type of cancer commonly called Bile Duct Cancer. It is not something that you want to have. Nobody wants to hear the word “serious” coming from a doctor’s lips, but that is how he described it. You can Google it, if you like, but I’m going to avoid doing that and take the doctors’ advice day by day. There was immediate talk of treatment options and the doctor got on the phone with a colleague in Brisbane during our extraordinarily late consultation at nine in the evening (explaining why we missed the fireworks) to get the wheels in motion for our relocation to Brisbane.

As I sat there with Eunie, Trevor and Karen in his office, I felt the planet turning under my feet. How I wish it were me instead of her.