Day 5, Thursday, January 20/11

Up early this morning as we had scheduled another 6 min walk test. Third try was successful, I need free flow oxygen and a walker.  This makes perfect sense to me as I have no problem walking on my tread mill or pushing a shopping cart, it seems my hands/arms need to rest on something.

At 11:00 we had a consultation with Yieu Vuong, Pharmacy Consultant.  I understood she was suppose to go over my medical coverage, both my private insurance and what is suppose to be available to me from my home province.   However, all she did was hand me over a list of drugs that were paid for by the province of PEI for another patient. ( I was to learn later at home, by the provincial pharmacy, that the other patient had to have been on the old age pension or welfare, in order for the government to pay) The province will cover the immune suppressive drugs and I will have to take care of the rest, thank god we still have blue cross.

After lunch, we met up with Melissa, who is a fellow Islander and just received her new lungs in November.  Just two months after her surgery and she is so full of life and has tons of energy. It was great to see how wonderful she is doing, and so uplifting to watch and listen to her.  She gave Alan and I such an incredible incentive to keep on going with this journey.

At 1:00pm we moved on to another consultation. This time with Social Worker extraordinaire, Ursula Dignard.  What a great person she is. We just sat around and discussed everything from our finances to family support in preparation for transplant to how to find an apartment in Toronto. Time just flew by., and before I knew it the day was done.

This evening we had a meeting with a brother-in-law of a friend of mine.  Hudson is a superintendent  of  an apartment building just up the street from our hotel. His building had just one bedroom and we were looking for two or three. We discussed things that we should watch out for with apartments in Toronto and what areas that we should try to stay away from. 

Hudson wanted to show us the botanical gardens just one block from our hotel.  Because of the exertion from the walk, I wasn't able to enjoy the gardens and so someday  I will return.  With the walk back, the cold and the fumes from the city traffic I got  overwhelmed and I barely made it back.  Considering I just found out this morning that I need a walker to help me to walk distances, I guess I should have known better.  Poor Hudson, I think I scared the life out of him. We made another date with Hudson to go out for supper Saturday night.  Another lesson I did learn today was that if the city traffic fumes can get to me in the middle of January,  just imagine what it will do to me in the summertime. NOTE: Look for an apartment outside the downtown area !! hahaha.