A day in the life…..
We wake up at about 6:00( we go to bed at 8 every night because we are so exhausted)
We go on the web cam and talk to kids and family( the only way we make it through the day)
Get showered, dressed and search for something to eat ( today we bought eggs which are not refrigerated but sit out in the heat, but we are so hungry we take our chances)
The patients in these hospitals have family members bring their food, the hospital does not provide it.
At 9:30 we make our way to the dreaded elevators and I am serious when I say dreaded. It is quite the production. 1st we wait for about 7 min. till it reaches our floor and then we squeeze in amoungst the crowd. There is no such thing as personnal space here, you are literally on top of the next persons toes. At each floor it usually stops, we are on the 14th we need to get to the 4th. As one person gets off, 3 get on until the buzzer rings, meaning if one more pound gets on, the cable is snapping and we are plumeting to our dealth (no exageration). I tell JC that I must never get on last because if the buzzer rings when I step on I WILL NOT BE HAPPY….. We make it down just in time 9:59 for physio the doctor takes us in right away.
1st JC must do arm exercises, balance exercises ( great and simple but never mentioned to him in Canada), walking up and down stairs which is a challenge usually but with the stem cell injection he can do it without holding on. Lastly he goes on the treadmill like I previously mentioned he does not hold on now.
Now it is off to acupuncture or as we call it the “torture chamber”. He lies down on this hard as a rock bed and waits for these long 1.5 inch needles to pierce through his skin, hitting nerves and then have elecrtic shocks sent through them, sounds very relaxing to me. This lasts for about 20 minutes. We absolutely believe that this helps as we have seen physical results happen for our friends here.
This all takes about 1.5 hours.
Time for lunch, this just seems like a cruel joke now.
Then he gets an IV with the ” chinese medicine ” in it. It is supposed to help with stimulating the stem cells.
Back at it again at 3:30. This time JC does all the exercises again and then over to occupational therapy.
This is where JC has a swallowing collar put on his throat for 30 min. It looks like a neck brace with electrodes sending shocks to his throat muscles. It makes bubbles in his throat. ( hopefully we will be able to show pictures on this blog sometime ).
Now it is 5:00 and he is free to do what ever he wants. What we want to do is have a huge turkey dinner with mashed potatoes and gravy but we go to the grocery store instead.
It is very shocking to me that with so many rows of food the only thing that looks farmiliar is bread and noodles. We did see something really cute lots of huge pretty turtles in a tank, only thing was that this was a grocery store not a pet shop. I tell JC lets make spagetti tonight very excited but can not find any sauce, so toast it is for supper along with our staple food that we have in our room: chips, choclate and pop. Help!!! our bodies can not take any more junk!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
We put a movie in and fall asleep it is 8:00. I dream about the kids, family and home every night.
Some strange things that we have found about life in china is that we haven’t seen a bird, saw 1 cat that was being swished into a plastic bag, hopefully a child was getting a nice new pet, 3 dogs which do not look like our dogs(hard to describe), absolutely no stars and a couple of times a day the outside gets bright but I can not find the sun. People spit everywhere, I mean we have to dodge it all day. Even inside it is everywhere, and for those of you who know my germ phobia, it is just about sending me over the edge. I hope that I am not affending anyone because I do not mean any disrespect, I am just saying that our cultures are very different but each is special. Talk to you tomorrow.
10 comments April 26th, 2007
