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.

Therapy begins

It was lovely to sleep with the extra padding last night. Mum had her first PT session this morning with Owen and she feels great. She did stuff she didn't know she could even do. She stood on a balance board throwing and catching balls, walked with weights on her ankles and climbed a huge step 25 times! She received a lovely foot and leg massage too.

Then the Doctors visited again to explain test results. Blood pressure too high, cholesterol too high and optic nerve damage in left eye (mum wants me to write 'nothing too serious' here) but I have now become the smoking/eating police and she's not impressed.

Next was acupuncture where mum lay around for half an hour with needles sticking or her hands, legs and feet. Then the wait.......

3.00pm.....time for her first stem cell injection. Mum says 'let the miracle begin!' She was feeling very emotional at the start after months of planning and hoping, here she was receiving her precious cells. I taped some of the special event but mum was crying too many tears of joy to talk. Mum says she 'feels great, not superwoman yet, but on her way'. She has been resting this evening so she can venture out with me tomorrow. There is no therapy on weekends so we are hoping to do a spot of sight seeing.

Lottemart

The cement futons lived up to their name and the ambulances pulled up all night. Needless to say there was very little sleep all round. We made friends with Ann and Dennis (from New Zealand) this morning and Ann and I braved the LotteMart. It was huge. We were the freaky foreigners that everyone wanted to come and look at and giggle with their friends (especially if we greeted them with 'nihao'). But it was fun. Everything was so cheap (except the milk at $6 a litre) and I managed to collect everything on mum's comprehensive list including extra padding for her mattress. You can buy ANYTHING at Lottemart from weight benches to live fish for dinner.

Mum underwent a series of tests for the remainder of the day. She was prodded and poked and x-rayed from top to bottom. They were very thorough. The translators make sure we understand everything. The doctors have given mum her therapy schedule (which will consist of physical therapy, acupuncture and electric therapy daily )and her stem cell treatment schedule which starts tomorrow! We can't wait.