Posts by andrew llewellyn
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On a far more trivial note... this week I lost my treasured replica of The One Ring.
It must have slipped off my finger. Possibly in the Botanic Gardens.
Should anyone come across it, you may as well let me know as the invisibility & middle earth domination features have never worked.
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I actually work for a company where people are required to (occasionally) look at porn
Heh - same, I worked at Internal Affairs when the film censors were just starting to consider how to handle online porn. Early 90s I think.
Some of the techies had the time of their lives tracking down some requests from the curious censors.
No wussy releases or permission slips for them :)
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Ha ha! Sunday Star Times pay their columnists to surf porn? Reminds me of a Dilbert cartoon.
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Perhaps the name reminds you of Hank Quinlan, Orson Welles' corrupt Police captain in Touch of Evil.
Woo - great spotting!
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Being able to wake up and discover it was a bad dream would be the preferable option,
God yes. The reality is that you wake up from a good dream & reality crashes in.
Our daughter's 15, one of her friends & netball team mates has just been diagnosed with aggressive leukaemia. It's just not fair.
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We lost Sue at the end of March. When I say “we”, I mean pretty much everyone who ever knew her: family, friends, family of friends & friends of family.
It is easy to see symbolism in the circumstances surrounding someone’s passing, we lost Sue the day the drought broke, the day a glorious Summer that she wasn’t able to enjoy, effectively ended. As her body was taken from her house to the hearse, a tui hopped about no more than a metre away from the gurney, trilling a farewell song.
Her faithful border terrier was with her when she died, the dog knew something was up & ran to Sue’s husband for comfort, or perhaps to comfort.
Sue was diagnosed with Crohns disease, when she was in her 20s, after her first (but not last) emergency dash to hospital suffering from dehydration & starvation. She was kept alive in the intervening decades by periodic doses of steroids, and assorted experimental treatments, all of which came with side effects, and risk. Risk that would never go away.
Two years ago Sue had, and beat, breast cancer. She received 6 monthly scans & all seemed well.
At Christmas this year Sue was diagnosed with pneumonia, her immune system was shot from years of Crohns & its treatments. A week or so into the new year the diagnosis was changed alarmingly, if she ever had pneumonia, the doctors weren’t concerned anymore, Sue was now suffering from lung, liver and bone cancer. And possibly kidney cancer too, they never really made that clear. The next few weeks resembled nothing so much as a nightmare episode of House, as ailments were discovered & announced.
It was the sheer array of foes lined against her that had us worried. She’d been close to death before, and pulled through, but this time we were rattled. Her doctor spoke of treatment & long term remission though. We were slightly reassured.
Sue had some trouble breathing & was hospitalised. Her white cell count was way down & there was insufficient oxygen in her blood & she was to receive some massive transfusions in order to build her strength so that she could face chemo therapy.
She contracted an infection from the blood & we feared we would lose her that night.
Then she staged a remarkable recovery, was kept in for several days under observation, before being allowed home with oxygen supplies, painkillers & a walking frame.
Oh, and the blood problem was caused by bone marrow cancer. If anyone deserved a lucky break it was Sue, but it wasn’t to be.
She was in constant pain & nausea throughout all of this. She waxed for a few weeks, then waned…
Sue had two or three chemo treatments, before she was deemed too weak for any more. A scan confirmed what we already suspected: the drugs didn’t work, they just made it worse. But there was an alternative treatment. Did I mention side effects? Well, let’s not.
Throughout all of this, Sue’s husband & her mother tag teamed caring for her, with some help from the rest of us. Her mother said she really wished it was her suffering & not Sue, but Sue told her she’d not wish it upon anyone.
Later, she admitted that yes, she’d quite like it if someone else had it now. She’d had enough. She was scared she was dying, and fearful of not seeing her sons grow up.
The next chemo session was cancelled too. And it is likely that that was the last straw, psychologically. Sue declined that week, and although we all displayed hope, and we & she were working on building her strength for the next dose, deep down we knew that there would be no more recovery, neither remarkable nor mundane.
I saw her last on the Thursday, she sat up in bed, ate a little of a blueberry muffin I’d brought & told me about her week. She was slightly delirious by now, something we hoped was caused by an anti anxiety drug she’d begun taking.
On the Saturday, we got crushing news – there would definitely be no recovery, the end game was beginning. I confess I was knocked off my feet & spent the afternoon feeling nauseous & crying. The heavens opened & it poured down.
And yet still, we thought we had weeks with her. As it turns out we had less than 12 hours.
I got the call around 1.15am Sunday morning, she’d passed peacefully in bed at home, surrounded by her family. She’d been up & about that day (to some extent) and speaking with her sister in law minutes before.
It seems some “event” took her, a clot, or something. It was quick & painless & in some ways maybe, was the best way.
I arrived at her place 10am, just in time to see her being zipped up by the undertakers & removed. My brother Richard had flown from Auckland early in the morning & beat me by couple of hours. The next week up until the funeral was awful. Horrendous, but preparations kept us all busy, and the family huddled for comfort.
The send off itself was magnificent. But now there is a Sue sized hole in everyone’s lives that will never go away, but will surely become easier to negotiate around as time passes.
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Knew I'd seen this somewhere... direct link to Hilary's memory
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Paul, my brain and I have to apologise for having read that as 'every girlfriend'...
Same. Getting my heasd around "Every girlfriend I used..."
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Her interpretation rhymed with Dough crates.
How do we know that's not how HE pronounced it anyway?
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I give up. WHo are you?