Friday, July 3, 2009

Our application in process...



I am super excited and I recon I'll be totally stress free in no time! Does this make sense? LOL! Who cares, you know what I mean! We are about to launch our application for Permanent Residence! So this involves a lot! We had most of our documents ready: as a matter of fact being a Virgo, ahem, I always have everything organized! Yep! Right, so the documents have been sent to our Agent and the only things outstanding are our (1) Police Clearance from South Africa (although we have not gone back since we arrived here 3 years ago), (2) Australian Federal Police Clearance and lastly our (3) Medicals.

We saw the Doctors on Monday to get the paperwork ready and had gone for our chest x-rays as well. That is to check if we have Tuberculosis. So on Thursday we had to go back to do a blood test (HIV) and a general check up. So it was with my x-ray the doctor questioned the ‘stuff’ in my neck. LOL! Well I replied that I have declared in my form that I have had a neck operation - although I didn’t have to. (It was done more than 5 years ago and one only needs to declare those done within the last 5 years.) Okay so I had to explain why I said I had two disc prosthesis fitted in my neck. I was the first person who had those plastic 'rings; fitted instead of them using part of my hip bone and fuse everything together. (At that time in 2003) Well I could clearly see the surprising look on his face and he said: If you had that done in South Africa and have been pain free till today, it is clearly a miracle. I immediately knew what he meant between the lines. Well, Dr. What'shisname in South Africa the lions and the buffalo don’t roam in the city streets as so many people think! (If you don’t know much about Africa I don’t blame you!) South Africa has highly respected specialists operating in state of the art hospitals... The only thing I could say was, yeah the operation was a huge success. I told him that they prepared me mentally that it might be necessary to take some bone from my hip. The very first thing I could remember when I came to was wriggling my hand down to my hip only to find NO covered wound!

I was told that was the part of any neck operation that would be the most painful afterwards. I was ecstatic! So my dear Readers this wasn't a ‘normal’ fusion but I have two disc prosthesis in my neck, one between C5&C6 and one between C4&C5. An operation done by both a Neurosurgeon and Orthopedic surgeon. So why am I doing this silly post? Well just to let people know South Africa was once a first world country. One day I would tell little by little about that small place on earth. Oh and also about the Game Farm we had alongside the famous Paul Kruger National Park. Back to our application: I have to go see an Orthopedic/Neurosurgeon to get a report. For interesting sake I post a pic of me in hospital and a scan of the famous plastic in my body!

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