45 Hospital

1 December 2016

We spent three and a quarter hours here today. We are too small to see in the photo even though I waved at the helicopter. Most of the time I spent sitting in a wheelchair playing solitaire on my phone. I won quite a few games but didn't break any records. The wheelchair was because it had a post to hang my I.V. bag of food on for my 11:00 am tube feeding. The waiting room was large and quite full. It created quite a sensation when I suddenly sprang up from my wheelchair (when the feed bag had emptied) I am sure that many of the surprised patients were muttering to their partners "Look, he can walk, he can walk, a miracle." I hope it gave them new faith in the healing powers of the hospital!

OK, back to the start. We arrived at the Lab as requested at 10:00am and I was boosted to the front of the line at the Lab for my blood letting since the Doc would want the results a.s.a.p. for his 11:00 am appointment with me. Then we proceeded to the waiting room.

At about 1:00pm my name was called and we proceeded to the treatment room. We met with the radiation oncologist and he was very attentive to some of the unusual symptoms I had experienced that morning and he spent some time peering down my throat. He pronounced my blood work OK and handed us over to the Speech pathologist. She was extremely helpful and described the barium X-Ray video we would be doing next Tuesday. She also had me drink some soda to get a rough idea of how my swallowing was proceeding. We were quite surprised that I seemed to have little difficulty despite the fact that I hadn't swallowed for over a week. Considering the long wait to see the clinicians, they were very efficient and we were out of the hospital by 1:30pm.

So, we are moving forward but the important test is the one next Tuesday. I have permission to do a little practice swallowing as training for Tuesday's Olympic event!