August 18, 2006

Gary received a big box from Norma and a package of DVDs from Donne and Phyllis, both pertaining to the Alaska cruise. Norma very cleverly divided the contents she sent into thirteen smaller numbered packages (she says number fourteen will be sent soon) – I’m assuming the numbers correspond to which day of the trip they were from. Gary has opened the first four packages so far, which contained postcards, a flashing magnetic pin depicting the flag of Canada (Donne’s idea for an item of memorabilia – I could have guessed that ;-)), a sampler of “Alaska wild teas,” a DVD “postcard” of Mendenhall glacier, and a T-shirt from Skagway, Alaska, where the family took a scenic train ride.

Mom G’s anniversary card also arrived – it had been forwarded from Shepherd. Thanks for the nice card, Mom G!

This morning the guy who put up our garage doors came back and added a glass sunburst design to the top row of the main door. Looks nice! He also showed us how the door could be electronically raised and lowered, except that for the moment we’d have to run an extension cord from the house because there is no power in the garage yet. Later in the day, when Gary and I returned from today’s outing, we found that the garage people had made a short ramp of concrete up to the side entrance of the garage. Entry that way will still be nontrivial, Gary says, but doable.

Our big adventure for the day was a visit to Gary’s primary physician. Or should I say, the big adventure was in doing a transfer from his wheelchair onto that oh-so-narrow examination table. The table was a couple inches higher than the chair, and of course Gary has practiced transfers onto higher surfaces, but they’ve always been onto things with back supports or onto wide exercise mats, and so this made me a bit nervous – though rare, he has fallen backwards after a transfer. There was also the possibility that he’d fall forward, although that too doesn’t happen all that often (but it would only take one miss at my catching him to make a, shall we say, unimpressive transfer). The doctor asked if we wanted her to help and took Gary’s arm, but Gary told her that holding his arm would impede him and that she could just stand in front of us, that we were trained to do such transfers. Meanwhile, I’m thinking, “Oh, God, don’t let him go splat on the floor.” Since it was an upward transfer, and most especially because it was onto an unfamiliar surface, he asked for and I gave him the maximum form of support, putting my hands under his sitting bones from a position behind him (with one knee on the exam table and the other leg on the floor). He did lose his balance, going too far forward during the transfer (or at landing – I didn’t stop to analyze it that closely ;-)), but I had already reacted by bringing an arm up to encircle his chest and hold him on the table. The doctor noted as she and I then helped Gary lie on his side on the table that he would have done better to marry a bigger and more muscular woman – I have a feeling that comment was related to the transfer. (“But then it wouldn’t have been me,” I protested.)

The doctor checked Gary’s flap. She thought it was looking great – I agree it is so much improved from a couple weeks ago. She also checked out the incision from his spine stabilization surgery, and then she and I turned him onto his back while keeping him on the table (obviously there wasn’t room for him to roll into the position) so she could do the usual poking and prodding of the abdomen.

Then it was time for the transfer back to the chair. She said something like, “Not that I don’t think you did great on your own, but I think I’ll call in a nurse to help.” Gary told her there was no need, that this was the easy direction, downhill. She looked at him then at the chair, which I had positioned, then said, “I don’t see how you’re going to do this.” I said, “Wait (and see).”

Gary scooted a bit on the table so he was positioned properly (sideways to the wheelchair), I put his foot on the footplate rather than him take the time to do it, then we did the transfer, this time me giving the next step down of support, just holding his hips from behind. The transfer went beautifully, and the doctor smiled and said, “Amazing. Shepherd really has something going, don’t they?” She noted that Gary was going to get even stronger and better at everything he did, and told us she had a patient who had been paraplegic for about fifty years and he could do “everything.” She finished the exam by saying she thought we were really on top of things, which was nice to hear. (Oh, and I forgot to mention she started off the appointment by talking about the intersection where Gary’s accident occurred, saying that she’d always thought it was so dangerous and just hated crossing there. She said there really ought to be a light there, and Gary said he hoped to work with others to get one there. She said she hated that he had to be the one to be “the poster boy” for it, but maybe this would be just the thing to finally get a light put in.)

After returning Gary home, I took off for something I’ve been looking forward to for a long time: writers group meeting! There was lots of banter and nonsense, and, oh, yes, a little talk of writing (depending on current output of the members, the meetings could be a *lot* of talk of the writing and a little of the – no, there is always lots of banter and nonsense ;-)). The biggest news was one of our members just sent off her fabulous fantasy novel to a big publisher; she is trying to “come down” from that and get back to work on the second book of her trilogy-to-be. (Come to think of it, I was always a bag of nerves after I sent off a paper to a journal; I wonder how common that is.) Over the summer, another member finished his final version of a novel he’s written, so I get to look at that starting next week. And our other member has several novels in various stages of completion.

As for me, they thought I shouldn’t think about turning the blog into a book for at least several months, that I should get some distance from it. Which means, of course, they think I should go back to working on the mystery novel I had been writing before the accident. So now I have some inertia to overcome – when I last left the story I had declared the first rough draft done and had been within a couple of weeks of letting Gary see it (this being just days before the accident), but I still considered it quite a mess; the worst problem being the characters not quite “jelled,” a relatively minor problem being scenes needing to be majorly filled in.

Now, if I could just find a pen in this house . . . ;-)



Here on the blog I inserted a picture of why I am having difficulty with this task.


(Okay, I cheated. This was the family room before the math volunteers made their best guess at where this stuff belonged and neatly arranged it in the various rooms. Doesn’t mean I know where they put the pens, though ;-)Maybe this would be a good time to start in on my newly arrived Remington Steele Season 4 and 5 DVDs. Just for the inspiration, of course.)