After 27 hours in 3 "hairyplanes" (a new word from Bryce), and 10 of the hours in transit, and a VERY good nights rest, family Deutschmann is back at home with an eating Gemma.
When I last wrote, we were waiting to speak to Prof. Dunitz Scheer about not admitting Gemma as an outpatient. We met with her at about 1pm, and she was very happy to discharge Gemma from the hospital. One of the things she told us right at the end, was that she was not totally confident at the beginning that the therapy would be successful for Gemma as the endocrinologist had said Gemma's sugars were too unstable. All the doctors were amazed at how well Gemma had done. We said our sad farewell's to her and Prof. Scheer and Dr. Tauschmann. As we were leaving the secretary brought out a big package for Gemma which one of the patients had left for her. Inside was a doll and teddy bears and a beautiful card written with love from "your Dominique." He had come back in for one night, so we had missed him and Gemma didn't get to see him again.......one day we will have to go to Vienna to visit him. We found Eva to say good bye, and Gemma wanted to show her her doll so we had a long chat on the floor below a set of stairs, with many doctors walking past with a smile. Luckily there are things like facebook to keep in touch with everybody we made friends with. We then said goodbye to all the nurses in the ward. Connie (the nurse who bought Gemma all her stickers and treats) wasn't there, but we left her some chocolates. We spent the rest of the day out with Andrea (the lady we met at Malealea). While we were having lunch, Gemma and Bryce met another boy and ended up sitting at his table with his parents. We went to chat to the parents, and discovered Albert had also been for the feeding therapy months previously. He showed Gemma his scar from his feeding tube. They live in Romania, and often come to Graz for further medical treatment. We spent the rest of day and the next, walking the streets of Graz one last time and seeing things we hadn't before i.e the Glockenspiel. When the clock strikes at certain times of the day, a model lady and man come out of one of the towers and do a little dance. It was getting very cold towards the last few days, so we were beginning to look forward to our SA summer. At 11:30 on Thurs the taxi came to pick us up, Bryce and Gemma waved goodbye to all the lama's, the reindeer, the horsies and then we were off. The long flight from Frankfurt to Johburg was a bit of a nightmare as Bryce was extremely restless, but at least Gemma slept, so her blood sugars were stable after her bed time yoghurt with added maizena. Garrick (Michael's brother), Josh and Daniel were at the airport to meet us. We had a breakfast together, the boys ordered muffins and hot chocolate. Gemma wanted the same. She had a bite of a muffin and two sips of hot chocolate. We then encouraged her to drink her Nutrini milk. We have brought a constant glucose monitor for her, and will be getting a lesson next week on how to insert it etc. It will be very useful to know how much she needs to eat to keep her sugars stable. At the moment for example, we don't know how much of the muffin she needs to eat to keep her sugars stable, and then feel she needs to "top up" with something like yoghurt. The CGM, we feel, will give her more freedom to eat things she enjoys to eat without us worrying. The cousins were all happy to see each other again, and this helped our 4 hour transit to go by very quickly. We received a wonderful welcome in Bloem by Manny, Bapo, Dizee, Jax, Katie and Matty. It was time for Gemma to eat again, and she had no problem in showing off, by eating her favourite (vanilla yoghurt). It is going to take some time to get her to eat different foods, but we will leave her to go at her own pace. We all spent the afternoon at my mom's house, having tea and cake, talking about our trip and showing photo's. I will try and put photo's on the website as soon as possible. Gemma saw a picture of Dr. Tauschmann and wanted to look at it over and over again. It is wonderful to be back home. We will miss Graz, but now Gemma can start leading her normal life at home. We will stay in Bloem for a few days, and then head back to Lesotho next week. We promise to keep updating Gemma's progress, the internet in Lesotho is not very reliable, so we will write when we can.
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