Shelagh’s ALS Blog

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October 18th, 2007

Carers Report 2 12^th Oct

While Shelagh is immobile for the next 4 hours I’ll attempt to write up todays activities.

We started this am with acupuncture at 0830. The process is now less painful ‘cos after my ‘chat’ with the doctor a couple of days ago, with the help of an interpreter, the voltages supplied to the needles is at a bearable level. In fact the doctor (Professor GE Shu-han) and I get on heaps better, so much so that he took me to his Library/Office and there presented me with one of his many publications (63) . He is number two in China and is highly regarded here and over the world for the work he has been doing in acupuncture – moxibustion. We discovered that we were born in the same year and have been practicing our professions for 46 years, his in traditional and western medicine and mine being married to the same woman, so we were equal in life’s experiences. His excitement increased to such an extent that he insisted in autographing his book (in Chinese) for me and also gave me a copy of his ‘Introduction to Celebrated Acupuncturist’ profile(in English).

All that took about 40 minutes so we then went back upstairs to have a much needed coffee.

The next session was at 1020 and involved 20 mins. of massage with Matt (!!! some names are hard to pronounce so we westernise to something close) and today he was a lot more gentle because the previous day’s session left Shelagh a little sore. There is a benifit with this therapy and today Shelagh felt a lot better.

We then rested up to lunch time Lunch today was a take away pizza, ordered in and delivered at a cost the equiv. of $7.00 plus $3.00 delivery. Normally the del. (taxi) charge is about 50 cents – but we were the only ones having a pizza and all the other food came from a different direction. The pizza was a bit of a mystery in respect to the toppings. I did regonise some cheese and some ham and Shelagh thought she saw some shrimps but a couple of other bits we couldn’t put a name to except the thumping great fried egg placed artistically smack bang in the middle. We took a photo.

Then at 1415 we went to physio. which takes half an hour and found that Shelagh’s strength in her left arm and hand is getting better each time, a good sign. The physio’s name is Willy and is young but very good , he is attentive and gentle

Then back to room and await the call to go down, with bed, to the 8^th floor for S/cells injection. The call came at 1640, so we trundled off with the bed, (with Shelagh driving from the front), down to the op. theatre. She went in at 1653 and came out at 1709. The same awareness of the anesthetic been administered and a similar tingling feeling in one leg with the S/cell injection, plus what she described as a mini ‘hot flush’ travelling down from the neck to the toes. Its now 4 hours since then and she has rested, as ordered by the experts, so as to reduce the risk of a bad headache coming on by moving too soon after the treatment.

I did a lot of videoing today for the first time. The acupucture session, the massage session, the physio session the trundle down to the op. Theatre (not allowed inside) and back. Plus some of the inside of the Hosp and some of the views outside through windows.

Shenyang hosts the Olympic Soccer games next year (dont know about the finals though), and they are already gearing up for the event.

The above routine is typical of the days here but for the S/cell treatment which is about every five days, plus of course on other days between sessions we can do a bit of shopping!! We plan to a bit of sight seeing soon as well.

I’ll close by saying a big thank you to all those great messages you have been sending. They are greatly appreciated and we look forward to them very much. Bye for now…………. ..

Entry Filed under: als,Uncategorized