Blog at http://drpeg2003.blogspot.com/

June 1, 2006 (7:44pm)

Gary was able to prone five hours last (Weds.) night! This is good not only for the healing of the bedsore, but also for when we go home – if he can prone, he can go longer without having to set an alarm and turn himself during the night. (If he can’t prone, he will have to turn himself every two to six hours, depending on skin responses, whereas if he can prone, he can stay in that position up to eight hours.)He said he thought the position was getting more comfortable, and I sure hope that continues.

Gary's breathing has significantly improved since those beginning days. At the start of his breathing therapy with his spirometer apparatus while in Birminham, he could only get up to 750 ml of "inspired volume." He told me today he is up to 1750. He asked "the breathing nurse" what his goal should be. She said someone his size should go for 1500 to 2500. He told her he would aim for the high side.

Also on the spirometer is a separate chamber that has a float valve that raises to "good,” “better,” or “best," when he inhales. He is supposed to inhale slowly and try to get that valve to hold steady at the "better" or "best." He consistently gets it to stay at the "better" level.

Non sequitur. Gary got an email from someone today (and just to note, because he must still lay flat, not to mention on his side, he finds it essentially impossible to use the laptop as of yet), who mentioned I have gone a bit self-conscious in my blog/emails. True, and that may still pop up, though I keep telling myself there's no one holding a gun to your heads making you read this.

This person wrote "If logorrhoea helps her, that's good." I had to look up "logorrhoea," a sinking feeling in my stomach.

From dictionary.com:

Main Entry: logorrhea
Variant: or chiefly British logorrhoea
/"log-&-'rE-&, "läg-/
Function: noun
: pathologically excessive and often incoherent
talkativeness or wordiness that is characteristic
especially of the manic phase of manic-depressive
disorders —logorrheic or chiefly British
logorrhoeic /-'rE-ik/ adjective

I later found out that the British use of the word doesn’t suggest pathology, just loquaciousness (and the email author is British, and I do want to emphasize that the person said many nice things in the email), but at the time I didn’t know that and the use of the word fed into my fears. Excessively detailed, incoherent – that was what I was afraid my blog entries were (along with “boring” in parts). That was why I had warned people that it had become diary-like (stream of consciousness). Because of its form/flaws I have been surprised, and pleased (odd as that might sound under the circumstances), that some people have suggested I turn the blog into a small book, that it might help others in similar situations. After we go home, after things get more settled, I will have to think about that. I know that in its present form it is not like my fiction pieces, which I slave over, but polishing it too carefully might not be wise in this case – though I’m sure editing will be a necessity – people don’t need to hear quite so often about my “noise problem.” ;-)

I read the email and then the definition to Gary. He misheard "excessive" as "obsessive," and said that it was indeed true that I was obsessive, obsessive when it came to getting him recovered and back to independence and that that was great.

Typical Gary, finding something good in my neuroses ;-)

I organized his room a bit – it had become quite cluttered. When I thought I’d finished, Gary said, “Hide the chocolate.” The bars were sitting on top of the chest of drawers, now clearly visible, and it didn’t seem like him to worry that the nurses would take any. “In case anyone else brings some,” he clarified. Evidently he wouldn’t turn more down ;-)

(The above paragraph is an example of incoherence in writing since it has nothing logically to do with what came before or what comes after.)

We had a nice visit with the Browns in the afternoon. They brought up some lovely, fresh-from-the-garden, blooms-still-on, organic zukes from the Transues! (Oddly, I have grown Oriental eating squash family members like mo qua and luffas and pickling melons in abundance, but have never had any success with zukes.) The Browns hadn’t seen the ’79 picture of me and Gary, and since we’d just received a print of it from the Rogers, I showed them that. I told them that Janet Rogers had included a note that said that they must not have known who I was at the time, because the only name on the picture was Gary’s!

Earlier in the day when we’d read the card from Janet Rogers, we’d laughed that it was like a Remington Steele moment: “Gary Gruenhage and unidentified woman.” (Probably only the Steelewatchers will get the reference.) Gary had then recalled our first meeting (I haven’t told him I’ve put the whole saga on the blog). He said he remembered me coming into his office with all my notebooks, and when he’d opened them, there were all the things he’d intended to cover in his course. He couldn’t remember exactly what he said (and evidently I was still in a daze at the time because I can’t remember either ;-)), but it was something like, “We’ll work it out.” (I don’t remember not being allowed to present a lot of theorems, so he must have added material.) He said he hadn’t wanted to discourage a student from taking the class because there were so few of us. The previous year the same course – which he’d been scheduled to teach – hadn’t made. He said that at the time he wasn’t well-known by the graduate students, and they would wait until someone like Ben Fitzpatrick was teaching it and sign up for it then.

Things might have been very different for us both if I hadn’t gotten in that class.

And for no good reason I will end this entry now. :-)