Internet and ill Brother Friend

Internet restored at 4.00pm 19/08. Much better than the forecast 6.00pm 20/08. So now I feel really grateful to Telstra. Tell 'em the worst and they will be so happy when better happens. Telstra is waiving any excess phone data charges and our monthly internet bill. Just money. I want to know what happened? Who stuck a screwdriver into a circuit to see what would happen? The cynic in me thinks it was planned maintenance that was put up as an outage. We've been Telstra cable internet users since the late 1990s and I can never remember such a long outage.

Here is what I wrote off line last night, or is that two night ago and have pasted here. I may not have had internet, but I could still write.

Once we returned from our overseas trip, a high priority was to see our Brother Friend in a large and brand new pubic hospital in Melbourne's eastern suburbs. From what I can understand, he was given intensive chemo and radio therapy which made he feel like he wanted to die, and then some stem cell treatment. His brother was not coping well mentally with the situation and with being his carer, so he flew off to Thailand for a month. The brother with cancer was supposed to make a recovery and then be admitted to a public rehabilitation place. Instead he came good on his own.

We caught the train out to see him a few times and his progress was extraordinarily good and a credit to modern medicine and health care.

In fact, he seemed quite well enough to go home. Except his brother had left him with no keys, no money, no cards, no phone and totally at the mercy of the hospital. Undoubtedly this was deliberate. I try to take a charitable view of the brother going off overseas, but no one else is and all are very critical of him leaving his brother at the mercy of the hospital. There was a back up plan that he could go to another brother's but that brother's wife is in the midst of a cancer scare and has refused to have him, and after much prevarication, the hospital has now kicked our Brother Friend out after a bit of too and from between nurses and doctors.

R travelled by train to see our Brother friend in hospital today and was ambushed by hospital staff, who kicked our Brother Friend out in front of R. I am not blaming the hospital. Brother friend is quite well again, in spite of the terrible experience he has been through and was taking up a public hospital bed needlessly.

So what could R do? He could do no more that offer our spare room. He had to get the train and tram back home, meet me to car swap just before I went back to work after lunch, go back in the car to pick up Brother Friend, whose medication was not ready. R left home to catch the tram and then train at 10.00am and arrived back home in the car with Brother Friend at 6.00pm. And you have to remember that R had a big falling out with both brothers. But that is what R is like. He is such a caring person.

Lest you think I am such a selfish person, tomorrow in my lunch time I have to go to the chemist for a medication that was missing and another friend is visiting when I am come home for lunch, and we will need some lunch so I will have to buy something for lunch for us all, as R is off on volunteer work duties.

While our Brother Friend overseas has called , full of concern and nice, kind, and grateful words there has been no mention of him returning early from his 'mental stress break'.

So after just after a visit by Sister, Bone Doctor and Little Jo for an overnight stay, we now have a house guest for a week. Just as well he is quiet and unobtrusive but it is so unnecessary as he could easily be in his own home with some support, which we and neighbours and friends could have offered. No doubt our expenses will be compensated such our heating being turned way up, medication cost etc but hopefully it will be something generous of spirit and not cash. But cash would do.