"He.. he .. I .. uh, I've to go for a few tests by today, he said.. Like, like, the ECG and other tests," Aunt Ana replied, waving a considerable stack of forms in our direction.

She went on to explain further about procedures and schedules and my mum pressed on relentlessly, question after question.

I started to block out the stuttering staccato of Aunt Ana's voice. I was distracted by her grim face and her quivering lower lip.

Her eyes were glistening and red from unshed tears and yet.. And yet, she answered all my mum's questions with complete detachment.

Anyone else watching would never have guessed that this tiny woman of 33kg was talking about her cancer treatment. Heck, anyone watching would never have guessed that Aunt Ana had cancer.

For someone so small, I would have to say, she has nerves of steel. Any other person would have howled at the unfairness of it all. Instead, she kept repeating, over and over, "My children... I need to prepare them for this. They need to be strong."

As my mum rapidly ran out of questions to ask, Aunt Ana went to queue at the cashier's to book all her pre-surgical tests. I gave my mum a look of annoyance.

'Can't she tell how hard this is for Aunt Ana without her making all that fuss about it?'

There's just something about the C word that puts my mum's usually absent sense of compassion into overdrive. She becomes overly concerned and try her hardest to help when sometimes, I think, the best is to leave them alone for awhile to come to terms with it before butting in with a misconstrued sense of compassion.

It's hard to feel happy about turning older when you know somebody out there somewhere is having life miserable.

Everyday, I pray that Aunt Ana will be strong and ride this through.

We're only given obstacles we can overcome.

I did get my long-overdue MRI results last week.

And it's not exactly good news.

But hey!

The doc said it was mild! (: And I'm in no urgent need for operation, I've not lost control over my bowel movements (scary thought there!) and I seem to be able to live with the pain. I think.

But yes, as usual, it's the operation or live with painkillers ultimatum.

And to bring us to that final decision, I've to go through months of physiotherapy.

My therapist being the "optimist" that he is (yes, he did say I could go climbing), predicts that it will take 3 months or so of therapy to heal.

And then goes on to say that some cases, the disc never heals at all!

And some cases, it has been known to have gotten worse with therapy!

Terribly optimistic guy, my therapist.

And after (as usual) some weird contortionist poses, he put me on King Arthur's orthopaedic marvel again and somehow, it made a slight improvement in my posture (?) . I couldn't tell shit, of course, other than the fact that his butt massages were still causing my right ass to throb.

It's actually funny, see, they need to compare the pain between the right and left.

When he put his fingers on the right side of my butt, I was positively screaming with pain. Eh , I don't scream.. but it's more like a sharp intake of breath, you get me?

And then on the left side, I was squirming with uh.. I dunno what to call it.

Like, how would you react if somebody groped your ass?

Yeah, that. I had to try so hard to keep from bolting from the bed and slapping the innocent therapist.

Through gritted teeth, I grunted, "Unhh, nno. No pain." In a bid to get him to move from the area quick as possible.

And I guess he realised that my flinches were not pain related and quickly get down to business of doing god-knows-what to my right leg.

Anyway. Long story short, here's a summary of what happened in my medical life these past 4 weeks;

a ) I get an open date appointment (meaning, can come anytime I want, no urgency) and permission to go climbing.

b ) I go climbing

c ) I return for an appointment (because we had to see if climbing affects it, which, unfortunately, it did)

d ) I get moved to appointments every fortnight.

e ) I get my mri results and my diagnosis

f ) I get to go for therapy every week because 2 weeks is too long. . (??)

The constant progression from open date, to fortnight, to weekly . I guess, we're not gaining any ground. M0re like losing ground.

Anyway, yeah. 3 months of this shit and we should be done.

(yeah, like, that's exactly what they told me about me knee before deciding, a year of therapies later, that surgery would fix it "once and for all")

I'm trying to be optimistic, can you tell?

Anyway. Finally met up with the Ain after months!

I feel recharged.

And and and meeting up with Bec et al. after 6 months !

I'l finally starting to feel complete.