In case you were wondering where I had gone...

I had a bit of a stressful time last week, which I am now going to unload on you - sorry! Instead of being a good story teller and letting the suspense build up, I will tell you right now that I am ok.

Anyway, you might remember me posting about how tired I was because of the sleep 'issues' with Yashar. Well early last week, while we were over visiting my sister in law for Iftar, I was a little shocked when I weighed myself and discovered I was 7 kilos less than my usual weight. I had also been feeling nauseous and getting head aches so decided that I should visit the doctor to make sure it wasn't anything more than just being totally exhausted.

The doctor decided to run quite a few tests, including doing an ultrasound. So there I was, lying down having the ultrasound, and the operator kept holding the ultrasound thing (that's the technical term) in the one spot. She asked 'Do you have back pain?'. Me - 'Sometimes, I guess'. Her - 'ah-ha' - in a tone that said 'well of course you do'. Me - calm on the outside, freaking out on the inside.

I went straight back up to see my doctor to discuss all of the test results. He had a small stack of papers in front of them. Then like a game show host he started flicking them, one by one, to the side...'this test was fine', 'everything is normal with this test' but... ‘the ultrasound showed a sist between your liver and your pancreas. I would like you to go for a further test straight away....etc, etc...yes it is possible that it is cancer, but if it is anything bad we will operate and take it out straight away.’ Ahhhhh! I was trying not to panic, it might be nothing...but the thoughts that were running through my mind.

I won't go on with more details, except to say that we spent the rest of the day at the hospital, getting the scan(I had to drink a bottle of white stuff - more technical terms - over two hours). Sorry about my complete lack of medical knowledge but I think it was an MRI - it looked kind of like this. Anyway my Turkish isn't good enough to understand everything they said, and it seemed like half the time they didn't try to explain it anyway, which left me feeling even more stressed and helpless. I wanted information! At the end of all of this they said 'its nothing bad'. So I am now still exhausted but very relieved!

But moving on to much more exciting things...I am in now in the home country of Ingrid Bergman, where the temperature was 5 degrees when we landed, where there is the highest ratio of unmarried people in any country in the world, home of the dala horse, good design, plenty of herring and meatballs!

Any guesses?