Apr 2007

Dear All,

This will be the last entry at the moment.

Alli was admitted into a hospital in Santiago on Monday 2 April 2007 following a visit Monday morning. She suspected she had a blood clot in her left again.

Her suspicions turned out to be correct. Alli was diagnosed with a blood clot affecting her from roughly 8 inches below the knee to about the same above the knee.

As a consequence of a blood clot above the knee, the Doctor insisted on immediate admission to the hospital as there is an increased risk above the knee.

The current situation is that Alli will be in hospital for a minimum of 7 nights, with 7 further days in Santiago for treatment, monitoring and review before she can fly home.

We will be returning to Australia around 16-25 April 2007 as a best guess at the moment.

However, this may be subject to change.

If anyone wants me to pass on any messages please send them to Alli´s email and I will pass on your wishes.

Apart from boredom and the fuss factor of being in hospital, Alli is in good form, no actual pain and is looking forward to getting mobile again. She is getting a bit grumpy over the amount of blood tests, but is quite chirpy.

Before you offer too much sympathy please consider that she has a 42" plasma screen, with full cable TV and better food than I am getting (it is rather gourmet)

:-) Humour aside, she is doing well and the Chilean hospital are really looking after her (I am not kidding about the food or entertain it is pretty modern and well equipped).

If anyone has any queries, contact Alli´s email and I will do my best to get back to you as soon as I can.

Regards

Jason

After an 8 hour (not 5 hours as stated in the Lonely Liar) we made the trip from Bariloche to Valdivia, Chile. It is defined as, "perhaps the most attractive city in Chile".

Chile must have some pretty ugly cities as this place was hardly that inspiring.

True it is not ugly, it sits on a river and there are one or two reasonable buildings (not to mention the elephant and fur seals that reside here), but Chile´s most attractive city?..... To be continued.

We spent 2 days here with not much to do other than reside and eat at a cheap restaurant called Schopdog that had the tackiest memorabilia since Fatty Arbuckles meets similar American diner. However, that is where the criticism ends.... they had awesome beer on tap and more avocado on their chicken burger than you can poke a stick at. This impressed the wife incredibly, and for Chile is a bargain.

Apart from eat and drink here, take pictures of the seals and meander around the City there was not much else to do here......

We decided to get to Santiago as quickly as we could, basically to get to a big city with big city trappings.....

Enough for now, will keep you updated.....

Jason and Alli