"THERE'S SNOW ON THE HILLS" THEY SAID

Breaking through the grey fluffy clouds above Central Otago we got our first peep of the golden sunset. The mighty yellow orb had been frustrated in its attempts to warm the streets of Dunedin for several days, causing temperatures to plummet as the thick, moisture laden clouds direct from the Antarctic gathered above the foothills.
Each of our different cabbies to and from the Oncology Department of the Dunedin City Hospital had a new opinion. “You only get snow when it comes in off the hills,” professed one the night before the big chill set-in.
Our journey, of hundreds of kilometres, had taken us from the North Island’s mild Bay of Plenty to the cold ‘Scottish capital’, Dunedin, at the bottom of the South Island of New Zealand.

The objective of this excursion into the deep and wintery south was two days to get an aluminium frame rigidly secured to my head so that I could be bolted to a bed! Hardly treatment befitting a placid cancer patient, but a useful device in medical circles, no doubt, and as the medics wanted to nuke my solitary brain tumour, I was well pleased with the ‘lock-down’ procedure to keep me perfectly still! But, for the moment, my boyish instincts were understandably more interested in the possibility of snow; that is until the taxi’s radio gabbled “on-shore, 35 knots” which, by the cabby’s wisdom, smacked my school-boy dreams of snowmen a fateful blow.
However, deep inside the thick concrete walls of a bunker in the radiation unit things were looking much more productive. For some slightly obscure reason the timetable meant the radiation treatment would take place in the evening and could run late with any discrepancies.
I wasn’t about to tell this highly qualified team their business, but God and I don’t work in the field of discrepancies; He works the miracles and I very willingly believe and give thanks for the results. Needless to say it only took one prayer to have it running like clockwork!
Each time the team insisted I induce a rigormortice like state, the dozen or so measurements confirmed I was secure and within a millimetre in any direction of the last lock-down. This meant they could turn the $4 million installation around my head and accurately shoot directly into the tumour from any direction.

Within forty minutes we had completed the entire task with 100% certainty (in my mind! Perhaps 98.5% amongst the others) that the single brain tumour had been destroyed. The following day we did some tests and my responsiveness was just as sharp; all clear to check-out.

To see the sun at all was a treat and once again the significance of it setting at the end of an extremely successful trip was not lost on Margaret and I; thank you God for two days full of your mighty blessings! And now this special and significant treat as Divine timing gave us the lingering sight of a beautiful sunset just as we broke through the clouds. Within minutes the shadowy tip of Mt Cook and the mountains in the Aorangi National Park also broke cloud cover as mere specks in the very distance; oh the Glory! Oh the relief of being rid of the tumour!