Is this a sign of things to come? There must be something going on here that no one can touch or see or hear. Looks like the boat is getting ready to sail!
We had our usual Wednesday morning meeting with Pádraig and the Speech Therapist. We started with the usual routine. Then, in a very casual way, she said that she had brought some semolina along, and asked Pádraig would he want to try a bit. His answer was, let’s say, neutral. So she took a teaspoon and a tub with some blue stuff. I thought by myself, good job Pádraig probably wasn’t paying too much attention to the colour and consistence of what he was about to enter his mouth. Now the details of what then happened are important.
She put some of this blue stuff (no – not blue face paint:), let’s believe that it was semolina, onto the spoon. She then touched Pádraig’s lower lip with the spoon and said, “Here is some semolina” (She actually said: “Hier, Patrick, ist etwas Griesbrei”, which was good because I doubt that he had ever heard that word in his life before, so even if he did pay attention to the colour of it, it probably didn’t make too much of a difference.) She then asked Pádraig to open his mouth, which he did. She then put the spoon with the semolina into his mouth and asked him to close his mouth and take the semolina off the spoon. She then took the empty spoon out of his mouth. Pádraig kept his mouth closed as if he was tasting the semolina. After a while he swallowed. Then the speech therapist repeated the whole procedure a couple of times.
At the end, the secret of the blue colour was revealed – it was suctioning time to see if any of the blue die had made it into his trachea. It had not. Nada.
Had I not seen this myself and someone had told me about it, I would not have believed what happened this morning. And no one in the room would have. The rest of the day (breathing therapy, occupational therapy, physio therapy, speech valve, sitting out in his wheelchair) would have been great any other day. Today, it was all just secondary.
Imagine. One year. No food in your mouth. No taste. No texture. No food going down your oesophagus. No food going into your stomach (just ‘Sondenkost’, liquid nutrients, through a tube directly into your stomach).
And then, this explosion of taste and texture. Semolina.
Still can’t believe it – it must be a ‘sign of things to come’. And it was not just a dream! There is a defiance here of the laws of probability, physics, chemistry, and medicine here that is typical, not out of character at all. There is no doubt, the boat is floating down the stream towards the sea!
Day 2: Getting Ready for Tonight’s Recording
I believe Dublin’s shops run out of blue face paint tonight! Rock the boat! Set it on fire!
Check out news on the recording project on Facebook and Twitter #AmhránDoPhádraig.
(Thank you to Jen, Caoimhe, and Róisín for the great pictures on the run up to tonight’s recording.)
Hospi-Tales 
This is truly a wonderful day. Who would have thought semolina could be so interesting? Hope all the singers and musicians in the studio tonight had semolina for supper.
There was lots of ‘blue’ around, but it looked more like face paint, Grainne, and one of the tweets said that Dublin shops were sold out of the ‘blue stuff’!
Thanks be to God for blue semolina.
Nothing like it!!!
I grew up on Griesbrei myself in the 60s.Not that it was called that. Thank you very much for this news. Louise.
Is that what you call: the proof is in the pudding? :))
What a progress! Next time it could be something more delicious like Nutella and Padraig would maybe find a way to ask for more?
The speech therapist tried what she wanted to get passed by Pádraig as Nutella, Gisela – he licked it, tasted it, recognised it as ‘something’ like Nutella and was (is:) waiting for the real stuff:)