Day +71: Clinic on a Wednesday

A change is as good as a holiday, so they say. Today, we had a change of routine. Today, being a Wednesday, we went to the hospital for our Clinic.

Last Thursday, Dr Trahair asked us to move our Clinic day this week to Wednesday, as he was going to be running a Clinic away from Sydney on Thursday. Given we had a week's notice, there was no problem accommodating the change of date, so we booked it in with the ward and booked Sean's usual treatments with the nurses.

At weigh in today, Sean's weight was down by 150g. Not pleasing at all. Our food struggle was taking its toll. When I raised this with Dr Trahair, he said that it was common amongst transplant patients to have little to no appetite while still having cyclosporin. Dr Trahair hoped the situation would improve itself soon enough, as he was hopeful that we should be able to start weaning Sean from the cyclosporin after Day +100.

July 5 cannot come soon enough right about now.

Surprisingly, today, we received an early mark from the hospital. Dr Trahair was almost on time for our 9.30am appointment, and as a result, we were able to leave the hospital by 11.30am.

Sean slept for a bit on the way home, and it was nice to be able to get home to feed Sean at a reasonable hour after Clinic. I wonder if we will continue to get early marks from Dr Trahair?!

I spent the rest of the afternoon cooking a mountain of food. I wanted to cook more food for Lissy and Dave, and I had plenty of chuck steak, so last night, before going to bed, I cut up the meat and a whole lot of carrots and celery and mushrooms and put the lot into the crock pot, ready for slow cooking all day today. When we got home, the house was filled with the awesome aroma of beef and red wine casserole.

I also set about making a huge pot of spicy lentil soup. I had vegetables that needed to be eaten, so in they all went to the soup. A couple of weeks ago, our neighbour Rita had given us a couple of chokos, and into the soup went these as well. These were my "secret ingredients" - by the time the soup was done, the choko pieces were nice and soft and sweet. Yum!!!

As an accompaniment to the beef and red wine casserole, I made a mountain of garlic mashed potato. It was the best garlic mash I'd made to date, since my recent discovery of the secret behind a great mashed potato - hot milk. I had always used cold milk to make mashed potato, but since I tried hot milk, I would never go back to cold milk. The hot milk made the mash really creamy and fluffy, without having to use a lot of butter.

Jonathan certainly loved the casserole and garlic mash. We both enjoyed a sizeable portion, which warmed us up on this cold and wet night.

Even I was impressed by the number of boxes of food I'd created today. Lissy and Dave would be receiving 4 boxes of casserole and mash, 4 boxes of lentil soup and 2 boxes of chicken and sweet corn soup that I'd made last night. That should tie them over for a little while. I texted Penny to see if she'd like some casserole and lentil soup as well, and she happily accepted, swinging by for a chat before heading home with enough meals to last to at least the end of the week.

Sean and I will play delivery driver tomorrow to take the food to Lissy and Dave. This should give me some space back in the fridge, which at the moment is filled to the brim with takeaway containers of good homely food.