I had a disaster the other day, but I need to give you some information first about my family and its history of caring.
Old Mate and the two boys can nearly eat everything, smell anything and endure quite a bit of pain without much reaction. That last one is particularly pertinent to being around me for most of their lives.
Old Mate, in another life, used to work for Blue Care before she retired to being a kept woman for what feels like decades. She was (as her clients would continually tell me) such a caring, wonderful person. Nothing bothered her. She was patient and always went the extra yard, no matter what.
My standard reply to the clients and their families was that she used up all her care at work. By the time she got home, there was no care left at all.
If we were crook, we’d get: “Toughen up, princes. You will be right!”
So, a few weeks ago, I was doing pre-footy tipping at Sea FM and borrowed a set of headphones. I had them on, then took them off because they reeked of some disgusting smell. I put that down to someone in there not washing their hair – and, I must say, I did carry on about it.
Now, I have had a lump on the back of my neck the size of half a golf ball for about a decade. Every doctor and skin specialist said to just leave it (yes, I know, it is probably just left over from when they chopped my other head off). Anyway, the other day, I was on the phone, rubbing my neck, and suddenly the smell from the headphones was back – but way worse.
It turned out that the cyst had decided to vacate my neck, and it was spewing out all sorts of gross stuff (that makes sense after living inside me for a decade).
I called out to ‘the caring nurse’ who decided it needed squeezing. But the smell was so bad that she was dry retching as she did it.
I was getting a running commentary about how bad it was – in between noise that sounded like there was a harp seal behind me doing the operation.
The headphone puzzle was solved. It wasn’t someone’s hair, it was me.
I finally found my beloved’s threshold … and I now know what her kryptonite is.
Ashley Robinson is Mets Caloundra CEO, chairman of Thunder Netball and a lifetime Sunshine Coast resident.
