Peter Lalor

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May 17, 2005

Byron in "winter"

On the afternoon of the tenth—the day after I had the session with Ariadne—I had a relatively long seizure. The event of the seizure the day after being told that I was cured only raised more questions within me to keep the ones I already have company. Why do I still have so many other ailments? If I have been healed, why then not completely? Having had such a brief, hurried session, Jennifer has even more questions. As Ariadne is doing a two-hour open gathering this afternoon, we have decided to attend with the idea that experiencing her further may help us to understand her. Tara (who handles our cooking) is coming also. Notwithstanding my questions and doubts, I am praying to Jesus every day. A deal is a deal.

On Wednesday evening Sanjay came over and he and I decided to go and see the movie “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy� in Byron Bay the next day. He and I had both read all the books when we were kids, and Sanjay seems to remember it all quite well. It would be the first time I had been to a theatre since I became ill. The next day he came over and had lunch with us and we drove into Byron—only to find that the show times had changed that day, and—of course—the one we were there for was history. It had been a fairly cold and rainy, which is unusual for winter in Byron as it is usually sunny in winter, but we decided to go to the beach and to climb the overlook that looks west back towards Byron and to Mount Warning and Mount Chincogan above Mullumbimby, our home. I couldn’t recall ever seeing so few surfers in the water and the sets looked so good that I was sorely tempted to return to our land and get our surf gear—never mind that I haven’t been able to surf since becoming ill. Sanjay was rather more restrained and present, no doubt due to his awareness that if and when I passed out he was the one who’d have to try to get me back to land. So we climbed the overlook. And once there we lost all interest in a movie. Along with the handful of surfing humans was a massive pod of surfing dolphins. Every break had dolphins surfing its waves and there were still limitless waves going un-surfed. We watched and enjoyed for as long as we could until I became just too cold. Never mind the fact that almost everyone in town was wearing shorts or skirts and short sleeves; I’m thin and I get cold—even in Byron’s so-called winters.

On Friday Jennifer called Dr. Richard Laherty (which I’ve earlier misspelled as Loddi) to check his progress in preparing the dendritic cell vaccine trial for me. Soon after Ariadne had told us that I needed a PET scan I had felt that he was the doctor with whom to discuss the possibility of getting one, so Jennifer brought that up too when he returned her call toward the end of the day. To the former he said that he had completed preparing the vaccine minutes earlier and that all that was required was that it be checked on Monday. Regarding PET he said that while they did make very pretty and detailed pictures they would not provide additional information. In short, he shot it down. This left Jennifer and I disappointed and myself in particular confused, as I had been sure he was the person to talk to about it. What now?

As my cell vaccine trial injections would start in days Jennifer also attempted to have my radiation postponed so that we could start the cell vaccine trial as much earlier to radiation as possible, as David Hollingworth had suggested. This would also give us a little more time to find out how to get a PET scan. But she was unable to get hold of anyone related to the radiation schedule and so nothing happened.

That day I had been exhausted and quite cranky, and remained so sporadically through the weekend. I was getting up in the morning and having breakfast, and then by ten feeling wrecked and going back to bed. I was having the first outbreak of herpes that I had had since before becoming ill, but I was not yet putting two and two together. My fatigue and erratic temper were making me distrust whether Jesus had in fact done anything to help me during my session with Ariadne. On Sunday morning I got out the instructions for the anti-seizure drug and read the section on side effects. Fatigue was one of them, so I began to wonder if this was the cause. But that evening Jennifer pointed out that the problems could be effects of the herpes—something that I hadn’t had in so long that I had completely forgotten. Actually, I forget lots of things now, but anyway… I realized that Jennifer was probably correct.

Posted by Peter at May 17, 2005 09:16 PM

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