Text Messages

It's Monday the 24th of January, and My husband and I are stuck at the airport in Auckland. It's the end of our summer holiday in which we've taken Cam (almost 3) and Lucy (3 months) to visit family and friends in the North Island and catch one last rock concert before we turn 30.

Our flight is 4 hours delayed, and while both the kids are behaving beautifully we're all tired and getting frazzeled. It would still a four hour drive home after we get back to Christchurch and there was a long night waiting for us to get to children so young back home and into bed while holding onto some shred of sanity.

My Parents have been very kindly looking after our dog Cole at their farm on the beautiful Maniototo Plain, about 80 km from our home in Palmerston. Knowing it'll be very late when we get home, and not looking forward to getting up and straight back into yet another car for the 2 hour round trip the next day I send a text to my mum. Just a harmless, short message conversation.

ME: Hiya, our plane's been delayed by 3 or 4 hours, so depending on how wild the kids are we might just stay in chch tonight, is Cole cool with you for another night?

MUM: Yes have to take Dad to Dunedin for some tests wednesday so might be able to deliver cole home

ME: Awesome, thanks. What's wrong with Dad?

MUM: Had an upset gut since new year and saw Verne (the family GP) today and he's organised an ultrasound and some lymph tests cause they are up

ME: That's a worry. Glad Verne's onto it though

MUM: Yes Dad has himself burried already
(This message was from my sister Jen on Mum's phone. She was, of course, joking at Dad's dramatics, Dad hasn't been to a doctor for years and being sent straight for tests for a sore stomach was obviously a shock to him. It doesn't seem funny now)

ME: Are they doing bloods or a biopsy?
(I'm in the very early stages of training to become a nurse, and one of my dearest friends is a nurse, who watched her mum die of cancer. So while I in no way claim to be any sort of medical professional, my spidey senses were tingling over the speed at which he was being referred fro further testing on a 'crook guts')

MUM: Not sure, not up on the medical jargon

ME: I'm sure Verne's just doing his job

MUM: Yes, one test is a scan, the other is just looking at his glands

ME: Sweet that should tell them all they need to know :)

and that's it. Mum carrys on with her day, I go and get a coffee and take Cam for yet another ride on the 'helicopter' where you put a dollar in and it bumps around and plays a funny song while your 3 year old reenacts 'Apocalypse Now'.

I hardly give the text conversation another thought.