Relief

Three things about this picture: celebratory fish and chips, the "you are special today" plate, and Elias back home on board Galactic.

The little fellow put on an impressive bout of healing and got himself discharged on Monday.  For a while there was some back and forth about whether medical advice would smile on the idea of him being discharged to Galactic rather than going to a house somewhere.  The plastic surgeons who were part of the team looking after him seemed in particular not to have come across the idea of a sailboat as family home before, and the images that came to their minds didn't appear to be....salubrious.

However, the paediatrics doctors (bless them) were a saltier bunch, and a few of them even seemed to have dotty uncles who messed around on boats, and they were generally much more at ease with the idea of Elias coming back to the family home.  Which we did, eventually, with joy.

Now, we're all back home, and we're all sick as dogs with the chest virus that has been dogging Elias for so long.  The joys of sharing.

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To close, I want to thank our friends who helped us through the last week by watching Eric, by cooking us dinner, and by offering us places to stay if we weren't going back to Galactic immediately - we even got an offer from as far away as Iluka.  Thank you all.