Gearing up to going back in

My father feels ill. Well, duh. On Saturday he had chemo, but what is really making him feel shitty is the operation he had on Thursday to sort out his stent. It's basically like having a big piece of metal stuck up your pancreas. So I can sympathise.

The doctors didn't give him enough drugs right after the surgery, so my mother was ringing all and sundry to try to get him some decent, morphine-based medication. In the meanwhile, they were supposed to fly out of Houston yesterday and do a stopover in Geneva. However, my father was not feeling well enough at the time, so they stayed and extra day and have scrapped the stop-over. They will be in Israel this afternoon. I should probably return my grandmother's call. But it's freakishly restful being out here doing nothing.

I am going back into the eye of the storm on Friday. Speaking to my brother, I got the impression that my father does not want him in Israel. I worry that I am wedging myself in where I am not needed or wanted, and wonder how far I should go with what I want without becoming a truly selfish being. When speaking to my father on the phone yesterday, I mentioned that I wanted to talk to him, when I saw him, about the dates for my future comings and goings. He sighed. It's too much effort for him to talk about booking flights, so how can I expect him to talk about anything of substance, which we will have to be discussing at some point. Note to self. Bring a notebook and pen, in case he has enough energy. If it's not too macabre, I might take my video camera.

In the meanwhile, I have had a steady stream of visitors and visits. I am still lining them up for before I go, but I will be back about a week on Friday, so let me know if you would like to meet up.

Just a small, really selfish rant, before I go to M&S to buy more shirts for my dad: Why is it that all the good jobs come up when I can't apply for them. I have had to ban myself from looking at the job pages, because it's too depressing that I can't do any of them. "starting now", "starting next week", "starting 28th October". Gah! I will just have to be amazingly productive all on my own, with nothing that needs to be done longterm, or in direct contact with other people. Now would be a really good time to start that novel...