Hospital day

Exhausting day. Got a classmate to drive me to Nazareth for my "regular" checkup which I missed for 3 months. You can't believe the sheer inefficiency of local people here in hiring a car and getting a public carpark to open on time for the car to come out. First we got tricked into believing the carpark was open 24 hours (had to pay a huge fee), only to find out this morning at 6am that the carpark only opens at 7am. At 7am we couldn't get the car out of the carpark because the lady at the toll/barrier came to work only at 7.20am, smoking and drinking her coffee, sauntering slowly. A living nightmare for efficient, customer-service world of Asians.

Anyway we managed to get to Nazareth ... 2 hours late for my appointment. On the way, we stopped at my "secret forest" to see the annual spectacular flowering of wild anemones. Today it was still too early in Spring but many blooms have already emerged albeit small short. They lack the intense colours that they assume later in Spring.

At the hospital, Sr. Marie-Therese was as usual super-efficient. Got my papers all in order and got the lab to prepare for my tests. But with the crowd this morning (our own Fr. Pedro Tome and another priest of the Patriarcate were also there) and because we were late, I only managed to get my blood tested. The ultra-sound will have to wait for next week ... which means another nightmare of hiring a car, get through the carpark .... The superior of the hospital - a John of God friar (fatebene fratelli) also came to see me and invited us for a drink in the moanstery after the tests but I declined. Instead we went to the Annunciation Basilica to say mass, then stayed for lunch at our friary before visiting the Synagogue Church and Mensa Christi Church (see photo), and then spending the rest of the afternoon at the Carmelite nuns' monastery to talk to some of the nuns. It rained cats and dogs there in Nazareth. It was very cold.

Got home at 8.30pm utterly exhausted and sick - dizziness, nausea, chest-pains. Realised I forgot to take my heart pills this morning because I needed to fast for the test.