05/04/12

Hi, everyone (yes, I believe I have added you all in, but did so as BCC's). I have always felt we should have done that from the start to preserve people's privacy, should they have required it. My apologies to any and all of you who would have preferred this method from the start. It's probably not a problem, as you all have at least one thing in common: your wonderful concern for Julie. 

Today was probably a big milestone for Julie. It was not necessarily a medical milestone, but it was certainly an enjoyable, personal one. But I get ahead of myself. For Julie the early hours of the day were frustrating: she decided to forego her shower bath which takes a lot of time in preparation and production, instead opting for a much quicker body wash in her room. This decision was based on getting through the myriad of morning procedures as quickly as possible, as Julie had an important date for late morning. Sadly, as I am sure often happens in hospitals, her time schedules were totally out of whack, and she eventually wasn't free of daily procedures until well after noon. However, eventually Julie was propped up in her mobile chair and wheeled through the ICU to arrive at the doors of the balcony. It was a small entourage that accompanied Julie: Sam, her wonderful, caring nurse, Larissa, her friend ever since they met in Grade 1 at Belgian Gardens School, Naween (a scrabble friend) and me. And there, friends, is the magic word: scrabble! Julie was to have her first game of scrabble since her accident: and what a worthy opponent. I understand Naween has been rated as No. 1, 2 and 3 in Australian scrabble over the years, and believe he came 3rd in one of the international scrabble games in recent years.

Picture the scene: Julie is on the balcony in her hospital bed chair, up high and tilted to approximately a 60% angle. In front of the bed chair, we drag a square table for four. On top of the table, we place a sturdy chair. On the seat of the chair, we place the circular scrabble board, propping it upright against the back of the chair. It seems stable. We check with Julie - can she see the board? Answer is "Yes". We check with Naween: is he okay to play standing up at the side of the table? Answer is "Yes". Countdown begins: Naween draws a tile from the bag, then Larissa draws a tile for Julie: outcome, Julie gets to go first. Val (me) draws 7 tiles for Julie and places them on her rack. Naween draws 7 tiles and places them on his rack. Julie instructs Larissa to play "Fever" at D8, and the game commences. (See photo attached: Larissa marked each square down the side of the board from 1 to 15 down the left side of the board, and each square across the top of the board from A to O. Thus Julie was able to instruct Larissa or me to play a word at, for example D8.) So you could say it was three against one: I drew the tiles for Julie (sometimes very badly), Larissa kept score for Julie and also tile-tracked, which can be so important in the end game, and Julie determined what word was to be played, and where. The one disadvantage to Julie was that she couldn't shuffle her tiles on her rack to look at the combination in different ways to try to find the elusive 7 or 8 letter words.

Most of the really unusual words (Mbira, Atlatls - the blank is an 's' - resilins and copay were played by Naween). Julie challenged all of them. Larissa had the program Zizzyva (spelling anyone?) on Julie's i-pad, and checked all challenges: the four words were acceptable words in International Scrabble. For some time into the game, it looked as if Naween was going to slaughter Julie. Luckily for Julie, he played two words that turned out not to be acceptable, and later in the game Julie played 'ranking's for a score of 98. The final score was 406 for Naween and 393 for Jules. She was delighted to have lost to Naween with just a 12 point difference. For those who don't play scrabble, the isolated 'R' on the edge of the playing area was the only letter left unplayed at the end of the game.

A return match challenge has been issued for tomorrow - Good Friday. This time I will take a photo of the set-up. Sam, Julie's nurse and another nurse who was on the balcony with us, were very impressed with the rotating scrabble board and the grooves to keep the tiles in place. Julie and I have promised to donate a rotating board with grooves to the hospital on my next trip here, as we have a couple of extra ones in Townsville.

The downside to today was that Julie didn't do anywhere near as much physio as she had done in the previous few days with Norm's able assistance. It had been such a busy morning for Julie, and then the scrabble set up, game and dismantling took much of the afternoon.

Norm had purchased a juicer on Wednesday afternoon, and Julie had 600mls of fresh pineapple and orange juice (I had the rest, Norm and it was deliciously refreshing). I meant to buy some ginger to juice pineapple and ginger in the morning (Julie and I both love it), but forgot to get it. Norm had also deboned some flathead, ready for me to cook for Julie's lunch today. Julie's 'starters' were some of the marinated and smoked mushrooms plus one or two green stuffed olives brought to Julie by friends. She had the fish with an Asian style salad with some gourmet seafood sauce added. It was one of those very rare occasions that Norm had left a number of small bones in the fish fillets. I was feeding Julie, and on about 6 or 7 occasions there was a "mmn mmn" noise from her, which indicated she had managed to extricate a bone in her mouth and was holding it between her teeth, waiting for me to pluck it away. Some of you may know that flathead is a very difficult fish to debone, and it is easy to overlook a few of the very small ones. Julie nevertheless enjoyed the fish immensely. She then had a strawberry, raspberry and blueberry salad with Greek natural yoghurt. The yoghurt replaced the usual icecream as it was found to be on the list of ten foods that were high in protein (along with quinoa, almonds, salmon and tuna, if anyone is interested).

PS: I just looked online for definitions: mbira is an African musical instrument, aso known as a 'thumb piano'; atlatl is a throwing device; resilin is an elastic substance of cross linked protein chains found in the cuticles of many insects; and copay is a copayment.

'Night all, sweet dreams to my beautiful daughters and granddaughter - well, to ALL of you!

Val

A PS to last night's update: I forgot to say that when the game finished, we dismantled it and returned tiles and racks to their bag. I mentioned that the scrabble game would be a large part of Julie's update for the day. Naween said "We should have taken a photo of the board to attach to the update." "Dammit, why didn't I think of that", I lamented. Naween replied that he would reconstruct the game on the board. Me: "What? Come off it, you'd need a photographic memory." Well, perhaps he has one, as he reconstructed the game in minutes - and that was without looking at Larissa's diligent recording of each word. (Naween just recorded the scores on his sheet.)

So, thank you Naween: but most particularly, thank you so much for making Julie's day. I can't see an email address above that might be Naween's. Could someone please forward the update and this email to him?

I have added on Fiona Powell's to the list. Fiona, Norm asked me before leaving Brisbane to forward a big "Thank You" for a magnificent supply of cheeses for Julie. As there is just a tiny refrigerator in the ICU to hold all patients' food, Norm left a couple of cheese there and brought the rest back to the unit we have rented. He intends to replenish the cheeses as the ICU stock is eaten.