Our Birthday Bear Group have celebrated another birthday. We went to Baan Thai Restaurant, Springwood. The food is good, the price is normal and the service only just okay.
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| (L to R) Bob, Bill, George, Paul, Birthday Bear, Helen, Chris, Mary, Ann and I'm behind the camera. |
Our group was complete this time because Bob and Chris were in town on a break from their nomadic travels. Bob had to have back surgery but as you can see he is making a good recovery.
It was Paul's 79th birthday. We were all so happy for him to have seen this birthday arrive. Paul was diagnosed with mesothelioma (malignant cancer caused by exposure to asbestos) in 2010. There is no cure and the average survival rate is twelve months. As you can see, Paul has survived for five years and he is the longest surviving patient in Queensland. He is such a stoic fighter and will not give in to this dreadful illness. He has had surgery, many, many chemo treatments and radiotherapy as well as a new trial treatment. He has been in hospital many times and he suffers a lot of pain. It has been a long hard road for both him and his wife Helen.Because Paul can't do very much he enjoys doing jigsaw puzzles and stamp collecting. So Birthday Bear thought it would be nice to give Paul a hand at organising stamps. Luckily, Bear borrowed some stamp albums and equipment to bring along to dinner and surprise Paul.
For any new readers not familiar with our Birthday Bear Tradition click here.
