Day 157: Surgeryland recovery Red Bange (with new earrings!)

Last night I had my second solid night's sleep since January, so I woke with energy and ready to try to get back into my morning walk routine. Although it was cold and drizzly, it was good to get out in the fresh air and do a tentative and truncated walk around Sydney park with Robbie and Molly.  Molly seemed to be trying to take extra care of me, torn between jumping in the car to accompany me home, or following Rob to continue the walk. We pushed her to do the latter, but she wouldn't continue on until she watched me drive away.

Lovely Sabine and Amanda Gouws,
May 2013

I came home to find these fabulous new red earrings sent from Germany by my dear colleague Sabine Lang. Sabine is based at the Washington University in Seattle, though spends time each year in Berlin. I enjoyed visiting Sabine at her campus back in 2005, and hosting her at UNSW a few years ago. Sabine does great work on gender and politics in Europe, including most recently an important paper on gender and the refugee crisis - I missed it at the recent Lausanne conference, but heard that it was fabulous. I'm looking forward to welcoming her back to Sydney in 2018, hopefully at the same time as Fiona, and we can plot some fun adventures -both physical and intellectual - together.
My new earrings match my red dinosaur design bangle just perfectly!

Today I've pretty much worked through the anger phase - it helped sending Dave the letter yesterday - and moving on to getting my head around next steps. My mood was helped along by two lovely visitors - the first was Bretty (Day 17) our wonderful friend who is a potter, who arrived with a white orchid sitting in one of his blue pots, along with a bowl which is of a new design for him - both very beautiful. This afternoon while everyone else was out, Pete Crogan (Day 55) came to visit. Pete's such a core part of our family and my history and is such a wise and intelligent person (just like all Capricorns, you might say!). It was so great to sit and have a long one-on-one chat with him, something I haven't had the chance to do for ages.

I'm also loving my new puzzle from Deb of Park Ave, NYC in spring time. It's bright happy colours are great to work with, and it's a constant reminder that Rob and I will be making a short trip across to the Big Apple in December, which is something to look forward to.

I've had so many supportive messages today; feeling your outrage on my behalf is very comforting. As Nat and I were discussing yesterday, calling out bad practice in the medical profession is really hard - they are so protective of each other and there really is no way to evaluate them as say we lecturers are at University, or the way we rate our teachers, Uber drivers, hotels, and everything else these days. I so wish there was a way I could publicly and easily warn other people off Dr Dave, especially as I note he's just opened a third clinic, when he patently cannot handle his case load as it is!