The snow is like fairy floss on the good days, light, silvery and sooooooo quite. The way the sounds are muffled just adds to the increadile story book quiality of Burghausen at Christmas. Nestled on the Austrain border defined by the mighty Salzach river, Burhausen boasts the world longest castle, which towers above the old city; a glorious bustle of bunched up buildings with terraces and rooves poking their crooked elbows out at you at unexpected angles.
Patricia Anne Brennan is in adjusting slowly after her first round of regional chemotherapy at the world renound Medius Kilinikum. Their proceedure consists of a different delivery technique than conventional therapy, where the chemicals to kill the tumor are delivered in a localised way through the arterail veins which suply the pancreas and liver in her case. They are then funneled out via another vien at the shoulder where the blood is cleaned and they remove most of the drug and feed the blood back into the body. This means the pateient recieves all the benfit of the chemo with a limited impact on their wellbeing. PAB did ok, but suffered a great deal of nausea on the first two days. She came 'home' after that. Home is a funny little apartment in the heart of Burghausen. The town has a population of about 18,000. Everything seems alarmingly well organised to me, the streets are cleaned of snow each morning by a small army of snow ploughs in a great array of shapes and sizs the only consistency of which seem to be the weathered little men hunkered over the controls, sucking back a pall mall or two. Cigarettes and alcohol seem absurdly cheap here - luckily for me, so are organic fruit and vegetables, unlike Australia - so I figure what Mum and Dad have spent on airfares has probably already been saved on groceries. RB has come over to an all vegan diet, with the exception of the odd hospital dish mum slips to him, like a three year old to her new puppy under the table and the watchful eye of her stern daughter/mother.
So that's where things are now - one treatment down, unsure how many more to go. Mum will get an infusion every three weeks, with the aim of eradicating the tumor or making it small enought to operate...... I will stay for at least another two infusions....head home mid to late January - I think.
Gotta go meet some Germans.
Tschus
