A Dinner Date - A Happy Doctor

I just returned from my "dinner date" with my girl. It was awesome! She had the pureed green vegetable with mashed potato & gravy, and a lovely steak, or was it chicken ... or maybe turkey? Once the blender finishes with it, it's kind of hard to tell.

She did just fine with the chewing, what little was required, and swallowing. She held her drink in her left hand and drank by herself. Eventually, I expect she will be feeding herself, left handed. But one step at a time.

Steve was with me and filmed some of the dinner. (Do you still say "filmed" when there isn't film anymore??) All in all, it was easily as memorable as our 50th anniversary dinner a few weeks ago. It ended a little differently, but that's OK. She ate about a quarter of a substantial portion, became fascinated with the TV in the background, and fell asleep. It was beautiful.

During dinner, we were pleased to see the indefatigable Dr. Heide, who dropped in to check up on her. He was absolutely delighted to see her eating. "This is wonderful to see" he said as he began his standard tests:

"What is your name?" (no answer).

"Can you wiggle your toes?" (Maybe a little movement).

But then he held up her right hand and held his other hand in front of hers and began wiggling his fingers for her to copy. He saw movement there, voluntary movement. It wasn't much but it was something. His response was "This is humongous, I'm liking what I'm seeing. Wow!"

Well, who needs strolling violinists with dinner when you can have a table guest like that?

Dr. Heide did say the the big thing we'll have to be careful of now is seeing that she gets sufficient calories. Healing takes a lot of energy and she will now have to get that by mouth. We think the limited intake this evening is due to the fact that she has not had food by mouth for a full week, so we'll be watching that calorie count.

So all she did today was pass a swallowing test, get her feeding tube removed, do more PT, including standing, and have a lovely dinner with a handsome guy who smiled a lot :-)

Go girl!!