{"id":251,"date":"2014-10-11T17:03:14","date_gmt":"2014-10-11T21:03:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/pisarro.org\/aboutnick\/?p=251"},"modified":"2014-10-16T16:39:29","modified_gmt":"2014-10-16T20:39:29","slug":"recovery-weeks-9-and-10","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/pisarro.org\/aboutnick\/?p=251","title":{"rendered":"Recovery, Weeks 9 and 10"},"content":{"rendered":"

Week 9<\/strong><\/p>\n

Weight gain is still not happening for Nick. I have encouraged him to eat more small meals rather than fewer large ones, but he says\u00a0that eating all meals requires enormous effort \u00a0because of his lack of saliva, and the process exhausts him. Hopefully this problem will\u00a0work itself out soon.<\/p>\n

I have been concerned about Nick\u2019s voice. It seems to me that\u00a0he more he uses it, the weaker it\u00a0becomes. Yesterday he spoke with his ENT doctor, Dr. H, who said\u00a0that Nick\u2019s\u00a0voice was within the range of normal considering what he has gone through. Nonetheless, I will continue to discourage him from talking when I can.<\/p>\n

We are preparing to leave for our trip to Sarasota this coming\u00a0week, and we are both so looking forward to it! Sunshine, warmth, \u00a0relaxation, great company, and great food, here we come!<\/p>\n

Week 10<\/strong><\/p>\n

Ah, Sarasota. We thank my brother Joe and sister-in-law Linda for hosting us and helping Nick with his recovery. Rather than giving a day-by-day account, I\u2019m going to share the\u00a0experiences we enjoyed, and one we didn’t.<\/p>\n

\u2022\u00a0You can still get into any restaurant you like \u00a0at any time you like at this time of year \u00a0because the snowbirds haven\u2019t arrived yet. At Carrabba\u2019s<\/em>, I\u00a0\u00a0enjoyed a chicken entree while Nick tried valiantly to eat as much of his meal as he could. Salute!<\/em> is a restaurant whose owners are vintners in\u00a0Italy. Linda had heard of their\u00a0restaurant from people she had recently met in New York, and we decided to give it\u00a0a try. The meal there was like eating in Italy. I nibbled on my brother’s antipasti of meats and cheeses, and \u00a0enjoyed \u00a0pasta with mushroom sauce.\u00a0 Nick had grilled calamari, which is vastly different from the breaded and fried version. \u00a0We shared cannoli for dessert. At Bonefish Grill<\/em> I enjoyed fabulous ahi tuna while thinking of my friend Flo, whose husband\u00a0catches ahi in the Pacific. Nick tried a pecan crusted trout\u00a0filet,\u00a0but had trouble swallowing it. And at Columbia Restaurant<\/em> he had to skip his favorite salad and dessert (key lime pie), but the substitute dessert he found, a crema pudding, worked well for him.<\/p>\n

\u2022 On most nights we enjoyed delicious meals prepared at home my my sister-in-law, Linda.<\/p>\n

\u2022\u00a0Nick had a vanilla shake (one cup of whole milk and one cup of vanilla ice cream) \u00a0for breakfast almost every day.<\/p>\n

\u2022\u00a0Because of the unusually rainy weather, we only took one dip in the pool. We didn’t have the time or the weather for\u00a0the beach.<\/p>\n

\u2022 We were able to get together with our long-time friends Eric and Mafalda for lunch at the Ringling Museum of Art<\/em>. The beautiful art \u00a0there got me in the mood for Italy! We lunched in the museum restaurant.<\/p>\n

\u2022 We\u00a0met with \u00a0a delightful second cousin of Nick\u2019s on his mother’s side named Barbara Stolfi Maggio, who \u00a0has recently relocated from New Jersey to Sarasota with her husband.\u00a0I found Barbara on Facebook, and \u00a0she and I have been communicating by e-mail \u00a0ever since. While we were with her and her husband Jim, we called Nick\u2019s Aunt Margaret, who was back in Connecticut.\u00a0Aunt Margaret\u00a0remembered Barbara’s parents as well as the neighborhood\u00a0in Brooklyn where they all used to live. Barbara and Aunt Margaret\u00a0\u00a0really enjoyed reconnecting! Barbara has written a book about her father, a referee, called Third Man in the Ring<\/em>, which she hopes will be made into a movie.<\/p>\n

\u2022 Linda, Nick and I\u00a0had our annual shopping trip to the Ellenton Mall a few towns away, where Nick and I outfitted ourselves for \u00a0our upcoming trip to Italy.<\/p>\n

\u2022 Joe, Linda, Nick and I\u00a0visited\u00a0Peter and Mary Greci and their son Ivo. Peter lived with my mom\u2019s family for six years as a child and then moved with his parents to my dad\u2019s street, all before my parents \u00a0met each other.\u00a0Peter showed us photos from his childhood that included many \u00a0of my Mom’s family members\u00a0in their youth. We all enjoyed the walk down Memory Lane.<\/p>\n

I mentioned that there was one negative experience during\u00a0our trip. Each evening, I accompanied Linda and her two miniature Schnauzers on their walk.\u00a0As we were walking on Saturday night, a woman opened her front door and a\u00a0big beige dog, perhaps a boxer, ran out of the house, across the street, and onto the sidewalk, where she attacked \u00a0Linda\u2019s \u00a0male dog! \u00a0There was a lot of \u00a0barking and shouting! Linda was wrapped in the leashes as I screamed for help and picked up \u00a0Linda\u2019s female dog. The owner of\u00a0the big beige dog ran over with a leash and pulled her dog away from us.<\/p>\n

We weren’t able to examine Linda\u2019s dog\u00a0until we got home. At that time we discovered that his underside had a wound. The next day at the vet\u2019s, he required anesthesia, antibiotics, and ten\u00a0staples! The vet said the wound was a lot deeper than we had thought. We were required to report the attack to the authorities, who came \u00a0to get our statements. Linda\u2019s dog will recover, but we shuddered to think that the big beige dog could hurt another dog or perhaps a human.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ll end the account of our trip with the news that Nick gained two pounds while we were in Sarasota! It will be great if eating comes easier to him before our trip to Italy later this month.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Week 9 Weight gain is still not happening for Nick. I have encouraged him to eat more small meals rather than fewer large ones<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-251","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-nicks-progress"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/pisarro.org\/aboutnick\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/251","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/pisarro.org\/aboutnick\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/pisarro.org\/aboutnick\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/pisarro.org\/aboutnick\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/pisarro.org\/aboutnick\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=251"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"http:\/\/pisarro.org\/aboutnick\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/251\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":260,"href":"http:\/\/pisarro.org\/aboutnick\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/251\/revisions\/260"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/pisarro.org\/aboutnick\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=251"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/pisarro.org\/aboutnick\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=251"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/pisarro.org\/aboutnick\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=251"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}