September 1, 2006
Today I suggested to Gary that he take the LETA bus to and from therapy starting next week, and he said okay and that he would also start taking it home from the office. I’d figured he would react along those lines, but I’d been a little afraid he’d be disappointed I wasn’t going with him to therapy, which would give a pinch to my heart. I had brought the topic up because I am feeling the need to get back to doing some of “my own thing” now. Of course I still help him from about 8am to 9:30 am (or later if a shower is involved) for the morning routine (he starts it at 7 am), and from about 8pm to 10pm for the evening routine, and with other things besides his routine that he needs my help on that come up during the day (and night, though fortunately that has become rare, she says with fingers crossed)). But basically all I am at these therapy sessions is his cheerleader – it’s not like Shepherd, where he was doing a variety of things and I was helping out, enabling him to become more independent; here he has basically just been doing weights. Of course I will go to the sessions when he is doing something “fun” like practicing wheelies, which the therapist said they may do next Wednesday, or if he is learning some other skills, but otherwise, on plain ol’ weight-training days each of those sessions use up three hours of time (counting the transportation, transferring, etc.) that I would now like to use in other ways (most particularly, in writing-related activities, though some of the time will, for the present, have to be spent in organizing the house).
My other decision of the day: to have as a goal to throw/give away half of the stuff Janet and Donna and I sorted the other day. I did manage to throw away half of my T-shirts (the ones with the stains). I guess sixteen T-shirts is enough to hold me (I used to collect them at swim meets and math conferences and so forth). I went through the other piles but didn’t reduce them nearly as much. The effort, however, exhausted my enthusiasm for organizing today ;-)
This evening at dinner Gary mentioned that he’d noticed the calender on his wall at school was still on April. He said he’d noticed that the day of his accident was Good Friday. “You didn’t remember that?” I asked. He said no. He said he wondered if that was why my sister Janet had made a reference to the resurrection in one of her emails. I told him I thought she had gotten the reference from something I said, and I reminded him about what I’d read to him on Easter Sunday. He said he had absolutely no recollection of that. “Read the blog,” I told him with a smile. He asked if he could now, and I said yes, provided he started chronologically.
As we did the stretching routine later tonight, he said he had done a search (I’m not sure if he did it of the blog or of the webpage where everything is in chronological order) and found the Easter reference. He said it made him cry but he still had absolutely no recollection of that day. He then said he noticed I apologized for writing about myself on the blog and said he thought that the best part of the blog was when I wrote about what I was feeling about what was going on, which touched me but made me feel shy.
I asked him what he did remember about those days in ICU. He said he remembered he lived for my visits, that the staff would only let me stay for such a short time and he always looked forward to the next visit and he would keep track of how long it would be before I’d be there again, but that he would get confused about when the next visit after that was and so would always ask me when I was about to leave when the next time was that I could come (I remember that!).
He remembers all the visits made by family and friends during that time. He also remembered laughing when the male nurse threatened him with a visit from Bobby Lowder. :-)
Today I suggested to Gary that he take the LETA bus to and from therapy starting next week, and he said okay and that he would also start taking it home from the office. I’d figured he would react along those lines, but I’d been a little afraid he’d be disappointed I wasn’t going with him to therapy, which would give a pinch to my heart. I had brought the topic up because I am feeling the need to get back to doing some of “my own thing” now. Of course I still help him from about 8am to 9:30 am (or later if a shower is involved) for the morning routine (he starts it at 7 am), and from about 8pm to 10pm for the evening routine, and with other things besides his routine that he needs my help on that come up during the day (and night, though fortunately that has become rare, she says with fingers crossed)). But basically all I am at these therapy sessions is his cheerleader – it’s not like Shepherd, where he was doing a variety of things and I was helping out, enabling him to become more independent; here he has basically just been doing weights. Of course I will go to the sessions when he is doing something “fun” like practicing wheelies, which the therapist said they may do next Wednesday, or if he is learning some other skills, but otherwise, on plain ol’ weight-training days each of those sessions use up three hours of time (counting the transportation, transferring, etc.) that I would now like to use in other ways (most particularly, in writing-related activities, though some of the time will, for the present, have to be spent in organizing the house).
My other decision of the day: to have as a goal to throw/give away half of the stuff Janet and Donna and I sorted the other day. I did manage to throw away half of my T-shirts (the ones with the stains). I guess sixteen T-shirts is enough to hold me (I used to collect them at swim meets and math conferences and so forth). I went through the other piles but didn’t reduce them nearly as much. The effort, however, exhausted my enthusiasm for organizing today ;-)
This evening at dinner Gary mentioned that he’d noticed the calender on his wall at school was still on April. He said he’d noticed that the day of his accident was Good Friday. “You didn’t remember that?” I asked. He said no. He said he wondered if that was why my sister Janet had made a reference to the resurrection in one of her emails. I told him I thought she had gotten the reference from something I said, and I reminded him about what I’d read to him on Easter Sunday. He said he had absolutely no recollection of that. “Read the blog,” I told him with a smile. He asked if he could now, and I said yes, provided he started chronologically.
As we did the stretching routine later tonight, he said he had done a search (I’m not sure if he did it of the blog or of the webpage where everything is in chronological order) and found the Easter reference. He said it made him cry but he still had absolutely no recollection of that day. He then said he noticed I apologized for writing about myself on the blog and said he thought that the best part of the blog was when I wrote about what I was feeling about what was going on, which touched me but made me feel shy.
I asked him what he did remember about those days in ICU. He said he remembered he lived for my visits, that the staff would only let me stay for such a short time and he always looked forward to the next visit and he would keep track of how long it would be before I’d be there again, but that he would get confused about when the next visit after that was and so would always ask me when I was about to leave when the next time was that I could come (I remember that!).
He remembers all the visits made by family and friends during that time. He also remembered laughing when the male nurse threatened him with a visit from Bobby Lowder. :-)
posted by Peg Daniels at 8:19 PM
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