24th September: A standing ovation

Simon's ward had a fire drill this morning and he was evacuated. Quite a performance I think, and this threw out all the therapy sessions. We grabbed a coffee then had lunch together before a meeting with the Doctor. This was a very helpful meeting and Simon was able to ask quite a lot of questions. Most tellingly, "when will I be able to go back to work?". The Doctor was able to recount a story of a previous stroke patient who had been a lawyer and had returned to work part-time after about a year. He said a lot about Simon being so young, that we are in poorly charted territory; most of the research data is based on much older cohorts. Simon was energetic in explaining that he wants to work hard and get home, we talked about the possibility of getting home for an overnighter quite soon.

After this, the occupational therapists helped me to load a wheelchair into my car in readiness for a house inspection tomorrow. Honestly, the weight of the chair was too much for me, I could not get that in and out of the car by myself, so I am going to have to find a technical solution for this. It doesn't help that I am carrying a small injury from last weekend's activities, I've pulled a muscle in the upper left quadrant of my abdomen which gives me a sharp pain from time to time. Gerry will help me get the chair out of the car tomorrow.

Simon has a busy day tomorrow, he has to go in the ambulance to Flinders Hospital for an MRI scan. I will meet him there before going off to see the house at Willunga. Shirley will be on standby at the Rehab to rescue Simon's fish and chips lunch (he was mortified at the thought of missing this).

Managed to knock out the materials for a short-course on negotiations today, then disappointed to find that I have only four students to teach - will have to scale back some of the group activity. Flinders got evacuated again this afternoon due to power outage. Everyone sent home early, hooray! Being serious, not good for anyone who is disabled on the campus. I am becoming acutely aware of these access and egress problems.

Just took a call from Henk who is arriving in Adelaide on Monday. I will grab him from the airport and take him to see Simon. Then he has promised to shout dinner for Shirley and me. I have in mind a beautiful seafront hotel where we often see pods of dolphins, I am wondering about the possibility of Simon joining us and will work on that idea. Henk is also keen to see the Barossa Valley, I will book him a tour on the 'pi** bus' from Adelaide. I once took Frank on one of these, he was legless after the third winery, and there were nine in total!

More advice needed on cats and glucosamine. Does it make them drink more water? Skippy has been very thirsty. I worry about diabetes. If I have to inject the cat everyday I might need to resort to Gail's jacket sleeve tactics!

Today's picture is of Simon with Rachael, Gerry, Margaret and Raina having a picnic in the day room. Now do you see why I could eat Raina?

Love Marian xx