Russ arrived safely back to the UK earlier this evening and is now safely tucked up in intensive care at the London Bridge Hospital.

One positive step in the right direction completed.

Dani and the girls have joined him there this evening.

Visiting times at the hospital are very flexible and are 1000-2200.  I have been advised that space is a little limited and that there is not much room for waiting if there are already visitors in Russ’s room.

As most of you know I made a calendar for visiting in Toulon.  It might be a good idea to keep to the same system?  If you want to have access to the calender to see when might be a good time/day to visit, please email me; melissa.leach@iagoft.com   I will then send you an email to invite you and then you can annotate yourself in as and when then ‘bobs your uncle’…or your daddy as in Russ’s case!

Russ, a beautiful evening to welcome you back to London.  The sun is shining for you and your beautiful family today. xxxx

I lived with Dani and Russ for a whole brilliant year back in 1998.  At this time I was an ‘International’ Air Hostess(!).  Russ and Dani invented various nick names for me such as;
Valerie (Singleton) – as I was the only single sister!
Spartacus – as I was often requested to earn my keep by performing slave type activities such as cleaning the skirting boards, etc!
I also had another nick name which I won’t mention to you very polite lovely peeps.
Dani, Russ and I used to have nightly competitions to see who could come home the most drunk and the latest…. Russ invariably won.  We have carried this forward to 2013. (Although Russ you have a little bit of catching up to do these last few weeks).
Sometimes I would come home exhausted after flying home overnight from the U.S or Caribbean. I used to bore Russ that the reason I needed to sleep so much after an inbound long haul flight was due to having walked my way across the Atlantic when I should have been asleep and in addition because of the effects of the cabin air pressure on the body.

Air pressure has effects on the human body.  If you take a bottle of water onto a flight, you will notice within an hour of air travel it is swollen and ‘puffy’.  The same happens to our bodies. Any
air we have internally tries to escape to equalize with the changing air pressure of the cabin.  Our ears pop and we often ‘trump’ a little more.  The air that can’t escape increases in volume and makes us swell. In addition the air on board is usually pressurized to 8,000ft.  This is the same air that you might find 8,000ft up a mountain, i.e. a little less oxygen which causes us to breath faster and has a tiring effect on the body.  This is why air travel makes us feel jet lagged.

All of the above will have been taken into consideration to allow Russ and his ventilated lungs to fly home.

Today Russ will be flying to North Holt (an RAF airfield close to LHR) whilst Dani has to suffer ‘coach’ on BA MRS-LHR.  Dani will make a brief ‘tech stop’ at W4 to pick up the girls so that the 3 of them can welcome Russ back to the UK on arrival at London Bridge Hospital.

Russ, I hope you have a safe, comfortable flight home.  Welcome back to London. xxxx

P.S I have arranged for my old crew to bring you back (James jumped at the chance of earning a day off payment):

Its 1st August, the sun is shining and all arrangements are in place to transfer Russ home 🙂

The travel insurance medical assist team have been great and have confirmed the timetable as follows:

Lear jet with medics and equipment will land at Toulon airport at 11.45am. There will be a road ambulance waiting air side which will transport the medics to St. Anne’s Hospital with an ETA of 12.15pm.

Myself and Russ will then meet with the medics, Dr Jonathan Warwick (the Company’s Chief Medical Director apparently) and ITU nurse Tina Kauhanen.

They will then leave with Russ at 1pm, straight back to Toulon airport and transfer him directly from the road ambulance to the plane. The plane will then take off at 1415 and land at RAF Northolt at 1515 (UK time). There will be a road ambulance waiting at Northolt which will then transfer Russ, with the medics, to London Bridge Hospital with an ETA of 1615.

There is not room on the plane for me so I’m following on a commercial flight from Marseilles, due to land at LHR at about 1800. The insurers have arranged for a taxi to pick me up and take me straight to London Bridge Hospital (sweeping Lily and Amber up en route) so that we should arrive about 1930 by which time Russ will hopefully be fully settled in.

So, that’s our plans for the day. What’s everyone else up to, eh…..?!!

Oh yes, by the way, we managed to sort Russ’s mad hair too. Christophe, one of our favourite nurses, bought his clippers in and hey presto…..(see photo below).

Love from Toulon xxxx