The most uneventful trip to Chicago yet, it couldn’t get much better. We didn’t have to be at Rush till 10:00 am so we missed the heavy traffic inbound. We were out of there by 1:30 pm, so it wasn’t too bad coming home either. Actually, I could just end the post here but that’s no fun.

Not wanting to just sit for the two hours between blood work and infusion, so we escaped! Well, actually, we asked our Clinical Trial nurse if we could go and she said “I don’t know, I’ll ask” She proceeded to ask four people and got mixed answers from them all, so we decided to choose the answer that was what we wanted to do, leave. Down the road we went to the local Costco to do some shopping and mostly to kill time. I was hoping to find some different frozen sandwiches than what we see in Champaign, but no luck. We made it back to Rush in plenty of time to still have to wait before being called back for infusion. The only hiccup today was her infusion machine, it would malfunction about every 3-4 minutes. The nurse thought she should move her computer to our pod so she didn’t have to keep running in all the time.

For the past two weeks, all of Suzanne’s calories have been acquired by mouth, not her feeding tube. A challenge at best, she is determined to teach her throat to swallow faster, more volume, and more solid type food. It’s going to be a long and slow process but she makes a little progress each week. At this point, anything she puts in her mouth still has to have a liquid-type flow for her to swallow it. If you dump it on the kitchen counter and it sits there, it’s too thick for her to eat.

Finding regular foods that can be emulsified into a liquid form is her current challenge. Every morning she wakes up and says “I think I’m going to make . . . . . . today and see how it goes” Sausage, eggs & bacon; green bean casserole with tuna; and meatloaf, potatoes & gravy are just a few of the combinations that she has been successful at creating a smoothie out of.

The big problem is calories, as calories are king in her world. When you and I look at food we see the weight being added on; when she looks at food, she counts calories and tries to find ways to add them. She needs to maintain 1500 to 1800 calories a day and that has turned out to be a bigger challenge now that she’s not using her feeding tube.

Jesus said to them, “I am the bread of life; whoever comes to me shall not hunger, and whoever believes in me shall never thirst.

John 6:35

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