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Hope to you
this Advent, Peace for Christmas 2017 & a positive 2018
“Arrunga” Uniting
334 Kissing Point Road,
ERMINGTON NSW 2115;
(02) 9807 4942
cnridings@gmail.com
How are you? Welcome to my soap opera
Episode 78
May this Advent and Christmas fill you
and those about you with peace.
My
previous chapter was much truncated and I had to cancel my slow mail activities
due to my move from Ryde, several falls including bruising my left shoulder
which put my left hand and arm onto very light duties, several visits to
hospital, and my continuing “dedication” to my kidney dialysis still keeping me
from running amok on the streets. My epistles are briefer. You won’t want to
know all the medical details.
You
will be pleased to know that my home peritoneal dialysis performed four times every
day before meals and bed for 2 solid years, ceased towards the end of January
when I had a fistula inserted into my right arm ready to convert over to
haemodialysis which required my attendance at Royal North Shore Hospital thrice
every week stating early in February where this arm was pinned down and things
(this is where I look away) inserted to circulate my blood for 4 hours by very
capable specialist nurses who cackled with laughter at the noises I made when 2
local anaesthetics were injected. I really am a sensitive new age guy.
I
began to find this year that there were far far less events I could attend. My
GP advised against my driving which meant that only when kind friends could
chauffeur me was I able to go. Very isolating. My haemodialysis sessions were
on Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday afternoons. I would be picked up at Arrunga
by Patient Transport anytime between 11.30am to 2.30pm to go to RNSH and be returned
home anytime between 7.30 – 10pm. Being a kidney patient tends to eat up the
day. My son Andrew went shopping with me for an iPad to use with my left hand
during dialysis while the right one had to be kept perfectly still to keep the
“things” from popping out and sending the machines into alarm mode. This helped
me communicate sanely with my former world during dialysis.
The
fistula took a while to mature from a sensitive thin line to a steady reliable
one and some surgical adjustments were made. Daughter Joanna flew down for
Brisbane to Sydney and called in briefly to look over my new home which, of
course, was wheelchair friendly. I recommended a choir familiar to our Care
& Share group to also perform at Arrunga which was well received.
In
May, Andrew left Brisbane for Melbourne
to begin work as a Research Assistant at the Royal Melbourne Institute of
Technology which thrilled us immensely. Because my GP retired me from driving,
I needed to dispose of my 2001 Toyota Echo hatchback NVJ201 I’d had for about 9
years. It was unsaleable due to much electronic development since that time so
it was given to a youth charity in June so it could be dismantled with the
parts sold. I am now spared from trying to squeeze onto those conveyor belts
known as roads which swarm with a plague of vehicles probably looking for a
space to park. The bus service is rarer here than at Ryde so venturing out from
Arrunga on my own is something I hope to master.
I
managed to squeeze a time between specialist appointments to return to my
dentist who saw a molar in my right lower jaw that, like my little car, needed
removing. Andrew flew up from Melbourne for the first weekend in July to help
me celebrate my 78th birthday. Pity I can’t spin at 78rpm. I had two
bouts of the dreaded URTI during June and August which banished me like a leper
into solitary confinement unless I was wearing a mask. So nice to feel wanted.
Let us spray.
Andrew
was kind to come up to accompany me to Knox Grammar School where our NSW/ACT
Uniting Church Synod celebrated the ministry of jubilarians and I was one of
those marking 50 years of ordination. For those who came in late, I was one of
three Methodist ministers ordained by the WA Conference on Sunday, 15th
October 1967 in Wesley Church, Perth, WA. At my local Uniting Church, we called
our new minister, aged 30, ordained about 50 years after me. Now our ministers
are younger than my children, and have no history of those three unpronounceable
denominations who united in 1977.
I’ve
managed to be taken to our Church History executive but as I cannot get to my
Faith & Unity committee meetings in Sydney, I have retired from this
committee. I also feel I’ve passed my use by date there. I am disappointed that
other churches in NSW aren’t as inclusive as our Uniting Church. There is still
denominational red tape about the ordination of women and celebrating Holy
Communion together, and I found more collaboration when I was on HACC where
both church and community agencies had none of those handbrakes.
During
the year, the ABC TV ran a segment on Barossa Deutsch and showed, to my
surprise, a photograph of the foundry in Eudunda with my great-grandfather,
Johannes Gottlieb (Big John) Wiesner standing with his men, left hand on hip,
on a platform. No one else yet has seen that particular program. Did you?
This
will have to do for now. What has your year been like?
Shalom
!!!
Christopher N Ridings
