June 19, 2006

Today critique group friend Jamie came to visit me again (okay, she had to take her family to the airport but I’m sure the primary reason she came to Atlanta was to visit me ;-)). She visited with Gary for a short time, and then I “played hooky.” We weren’t sure how to spend the time – a tech had suggested we go see the human body exhibition at the Civic Center, but Jamie hadn’t look utterly thrilled at the suggestion (it wasn’t how I wanted to spend the time, either, though I’d be interested in seeing it with Gary when he is at the point in his rehab that he can take such a trip). I wasn’t really up for anything involving a lot of movement, particularly seeing that I am still recovering from the lack of sleep the night of the dog fight as well as from ponging when I should gave been pinging the other day with the Gruenhage clan. We decided to go to the Blockbuster that was a couple of blocks from Shepherd and rent a DVD.

I wandered through the stacks and worried that this was going to be a very short visit. I couldn’t find anything I wanted to watch. So what would we do? I’m not much of a conversationalist. (The vast majority of the time I’ve spent with Jamie has involved critiquing her fabulous 1200 page novel, which is in its last revision before being sent to publishers, and I haven’t been doing my homework of reading this version and critiquing it, so we couldn’t talk about that. My mystery story isn’t anywhere near the point where I want to talk about it to her, so that was out. She reads my blog, so there wasn’t any current news to give her. I was at a loss.)

She came over from where she’d been perusing DVDs and asked if I still had any RS DVDs here. I had almost suggested that earlier but had held off, figuring she’d agree just to be polite, even though I knew she’d been a fan of the show.

But since she’d brought it up . . . :-)

So we went to my hotel room and watched an episode. After that she asked if I wanted to watch another one (“Unless you need to get back to Gary?” she asked. “Nah,” I replied, selecting the next episode. Gary? Who is Gary?). After that episode it was lunchtime and she was too hungry to watch a third episode ;-) so we decided to go to a Thai restaurant in the same shopping complex as the Blockbuster was.

We first stopped at Shepherd to pick up my lunch, as I’d left it in Gary’s room (I finally remembered I was married to a guy named Gary). Gary was there, so I asked him what he’d done with his PT this morning – this was his first day back at rehab, and I had felt a little torn about missing out on that. He said the PT had first wanted to see if he could do a depression weight shift, the kind where he lifts himself straight up by pushing down on the wheels of his chair with his arms. He’d practiced it over the weekend, and we knew he could stay up on his arms for a minute (which he couldn’t do before the flap surgery, so this was a result of the weight training), and in putting my hand under him it had felt to me that he had his weight off the chair, but I hadn’t been absolutely sure if he was getting his butt high enough off the chair that it would count as a weight shift. So he showed her what he could do and she said he was doing it perfectly – and that she was impressed! She had then got out the transfer board, and he had been excited – this is what he’d been hoping to learn for so long. They practiced the kind of transfer we’re hoping he can do when he gets home. It is not the sliding transfer, which he won’t be able to do for maybe a year because of the flap surgery, but a transfer of little “hops,” starting by picking his body up with his arms like in the depression weight shift and then hopping it over a bit to the side, and then repeating that until he’s transferred over to other surface. With the PT’s help, he practiced “hopping” along the board from his chair to the exercise platform, then from the platform back to the chair. He needed a lot of help from the PT to do this, however, because it involves a lot of balance. Remember, he has no abdominal muscles to help him, so right now, because he doesn’t have the balancing technique down (which relies mainly upon head placement), it would be very easy for him to fall forward or backward off the transfer board (I haven’t measured it, but at a guess I’d say the transfer board is about 2 feet long and maybe a foot wide).

After that he had practiced rolling from back to side, and then from back to side to getting up into a sitting position. You might remember he was doing this before the flap surgery. He said he could do the rolling easily, which was good to hear because, if you recall, the very last day before his flap surgery he had been having trouble with it.

For getting into a sitting position once he had rolled onto his side, he still needed a lot of help from the PT. You may recall this involves both a lot of technique (placement of arms and also of head) and a lot of balance.

After his lunch he was supposed to meet with the Recreational Therapist. She had said they were going to do table tennis, but when they got to the rec room, it turned out there was another group of patients in there playing a scheduled game of jeopardy. So they went back to his room and she ran him through a series of situational questions, which he said was good. (The one he remembered off the top of his head was, “What would you do if you were in a movie theater and they told you you couldn’t have your wheelchair in the aisle?”)

He said he didn’t mind if I went off with Jamie for a while longer (no, I don’t intend to remain attached to him by an umbilical cord for all the future – but these days it is still a little hard to let him out of my sight. I remember at one of the counseling classes some people complained about their family members smothering them, trying to do too much for them. I didn’t think that was me because my intention is only to do what he asks me to do (and he wouldn’t ask me to do something he should be doing for himself, as he’s not that type) or to do stuff that should be done but he is not aware of and can’t do for himself and the hospital staff don’t seem to do (like lotioning his dry-skinned feet) or to get him things that will make his hospital stay more tolerable (like DVD players) or more pleasurable (like decent food when he finds the hospital stuff unappetizing, or ice cream treats). But I later asked Gary if he felt the way the others had said they did, just to be sure. He said no, he felt cared for. And then he said more mushy stuff ;-)).

So Jamie and I slipped off to Thai Basil. She had cashew chicken, I think it was, and I ate my rice. The guy who I suspect is the owner and who was our waiter came over at some point to fill Jamie’s water glass (I had even brought my own water in, because I can’t drink ice water) and he asked what kind of rice it was (basmati). He seemed friendly about it, whereas I had been worried he would at least be disapproving of my bringing food into his restaurant. I resisted the urge to go into a big explanation of how different rices affected my guts differently and I hadn’t wanted to take a chance on whatever rice he might serve here. Come to think of it, that was probably good I didn’t launch into such a detailed description of the relevant circumstances – he probably would have found that even more insulting :-).

Joe called, and I became one of those obnoxious people who not only talks on their cell phone in public but talks on the phone instead of to their companion – but Jamie said she didn’t mind. There were some questions about house furnishings (window coverings, bathroom cabinets) that I had spaced out on and forgotten to answer by email; the window coverings take three weeks to be delivered, so had to be picked out now. Joe had also called earlier in the day to let us know, among other things, where he was in the process of getting bids for a garage.

After lunch, Jamie had to get back to Auburn. She will be picking up her family at the airport later on in the month and will come before the flight to visit with me again. I’ll have to pick out the best of the remaining RS episodes for us to watch ;-) I’d suggest we watch Pierce Brosnan’s “The Matador,” which Gary and I really enjoyed when it came out around Christmas time (and is not what you would probably expect a PB movie to be like – it is a black comedy where he plays a degenerate assassin who is having a nervous breakdown and befriends a straight-arrow struggling businessman), but that DVD doesn’t come out until July 4th.

No, really, Jamie, we can do something else ;-)

When I got back to Gary’s the OT was working with him. She had upped his weights on his exercises and told him she could see he’d put on muscle and asked if I’d noticed. I told her I had already commented on the cuts he’d developed on his forearms. We’re not talking Ahnald yet, but we’re close ;-)

After the OT left he called his mom to see how she was doing from the flight and with the broken arm. She’s doing fine, she says. She asked if they’d tired him out when they’d all been there, but Gary assured her that they’d lifted his spirits, that it’d been fun.

The PT brought Gary’s new chair – which was the latest chair they’d brought but they’d put a different back on it. So we’ll see tomorrow how that one works.

Gary got some mail – his math department mail, and a card from Al Wehrly, who had Carlos Borges as his Ph.D. advisor around the same time Gary did.

The nurse came in and took out Gary’s foley, so he’ll be back to doing I.C.s (bladder program) starting tonight. The nurses will take care of it tonight, but tomorrow (Tuesday) morning his primary nurse will run through the process with him again, and he’ll start doing it to himself. At noontime she’ll go through it with me, and then some of the time I’ll practice on him instead of him doing it to himself. This is just a precaution – in case he is ever to sick to do it for himself, I’ll know how to do it.

When I left I went down to the public gym – the person who was supposed to show me the ropes last Thursday but had gotten sick had never called back. She was there, and we set something up for Tuesday 4 pm.

When I returned to Shepherd in the evening we had some business of Gary’s to attend to. An email from Krystyna Kuperberg reminded him he hadn’t told the people at the Prague conference that he wouldn’t be attending and giving a talk there in August, so he dictated an email to me telling them that. Krystyna had offered to help Gary put his talk up on a computer, and then someone at the conference could help with the delivery of the talk, but Gary decided not to do that, though he so appreciates the offer. There doesn’t seem to be the time he needs to do justice to a talk. He is going to be kept quite busy with the rehab then the day program here (which is as intense as the rehab, only we’ll live together off hospital grounds in an apartment) until July 28th if all goes according to plan, and when he gets back home he feels there won’t be enough time before the conference to properly prepare a talk while trying to adjust to his new living circumstances.

Back at the motel, I had another restful night. Yea.

I will finish this entry by including something my sister-in-law Dolores sent me in an email, on the chance it will amuse you as much as it did me:

HELL EXPLAINED BY CHEMISTRY STUDENT

The following is an actual question given on a University of Washington
chemistry mid-term.

The answer by one student was so "profound" that the professor shared it
with colleagues, via the Internet, which is, of course, why we now have
the pleasure of enjoying it as well :

Bonus Question: Is Hell exothermic (gives off heat) or endothermic, (absorbs heat)?
Most of the students wrote proofs of their beliefs using Boyle's Law
(gas cools when it expands and heats when it is compressed) or some variant.
One student, however, wrote the following:

First, we need to know how the mass of Hell is changing in time. So we
need to know the rate at which souls are moving into Hell and the
rate at which they are leaving. I think that we can safely assume that once a soul
gets to Hell, it will not leave. Therefore, no souls are leaving. As for how
many souls are entering Hell, let's look at the different religions that
exist in the world today. Most of these religions state that if you are not a
member of their religion, you will go to Hell. Since there is more than one of
these religions and since people do not belong to more than one
religion,we can project that all souls go to Hell. With birth and death rates as
they are, we can expect the number of souls in Hell to increase
exponentially.
Now, we look at the rate of change of the volume in Hell because Boyle's
Law states that in order for the temperature and pressure in Hell to stay
the same, the volume of Hell has to expand proportionately as souls are added.

This gives two possibilities:

1. If Hell is expanding at a slower rate than the rate at which souls
enter Hell, then the temperature and pressure in Hell will increase until all
Hell breaks loose.
2. If Hell is expanding at a rate faster than the increase of souls in
Hell, then the temperature and pressure will drop until Hell freezes over.

So which is it?
If we accept the postulate given to me by Teresa during my Freshman year
that, "It will be a cold day in Hell before I sleep with you," and take
into account the fact that I slept with her last night, then number two must
be true, and thus I am sure that Hell is exothermic and has already frozen
over. The corollary of this theory is that since Hell has frozen over, it
follows that it is not accepting any more souls and is therefore,
extinct......leaving only Heaven, thereby proving the existence of a
divine being which explains why, last night, Teresa kept shouting "Oh my God."

THIS STUDENT RECEIVED THE ONLY "A"