Birthday and recovery

Odette:

All glammed up for dinner and decided to read my B`day emails...dumb move!  Got all emotional and howled all my make-up off so still no nice photos of me I expect.

The Holiday Inn was very extravagant and the buffet dinner was so lavish. Yet another cake appeared, so of course it was only polite to sample that too!  I left literally groaning and bursting out of Laurinda's pants which DID fit me before we left lol.  It was so warm inside the hotel that it was easy to forget the sub zero temperature outside until it was time to leave and find a taxi home.  Unfortunately, the front doors of the hospital were locked when we arrived and we had to make our way around to the side door...quite a hike on a very full tummy and feeling absolutely frozen for the first time ever!  Well, the others walked, but guess who was running?  Me!!  I was running!!  Laurinda said to her friend Pam "My Mother has MS and she's leaving us for dead".

haha.  Another triumph in a  list of so many.

I was woken very early by the Vampire Nurse who took lots of blood to repeat all the tests (ECG too) that were done when I arrived.  Results should be in this afternoon.  They will be good, no, they will be great!

Laurinda is quite the social butterfly ( Oh I wonder where she got that from?) and has headed out for the day with a group of other carers.  They have ventured downtown (I always have to laugh when I say Downtown Quingdao, its as far from downtown as you can possibly imagine) again, yet more tattoos for some, shopping and sight-seeing for others.  I am hoping she doesn't return with any piercings or suspensions (for those who, like me til a couple of days ago, don't know, she described them to me in detail the other day....hooks inserted into the skin so you can literally hang!) Some people hang from the Himalayas and other amazing places.  Adrenalin is a very powerful thing, but not for me thanks.  I'm hoping her smallish and actually very pretty tattoo will suffice.  There's always hang gliding after all.

So, after a hot shower (yay!! hot water again!!) I am enjoying a few hours of rest and reflection between therapies.

What a journey.  What an adventure.  And I got to share it all with my beautiful daughter.  A lucky and happy lady indeed!

Thank you Universe.