I had no problems getting up this morning and walking the dog. Heather keeps saying that I'm stronger in my yoga work every day. However, when I had to go to the bathroom, my left leg was exhausted from all the work from Yvette's massage and the yoga. I signaled to Heather that I was going to need help. She was standing in front of me. No, it wasn't her. Those feet didn't have bunions. I realized it was Crista who had come over to help; Heather was still behind me. That left leg was weak enough that I thought we could use Crista's help as well. Heather assured me she was as strong as an ox; she hauled me to my feet. I had no problems walking to the bathroom and then lowering myself to the floor when I got back.
I had a 9:45 appointment with Katie, my PT. I showered and got out of there quickly. I made it to the Rehab Center in plenty of time. I sat in the car and made some phone calls.
The first call was to a bookstore on Oahu to order the book I need to help me perform my duties as a lector. They only opened at 10. I was going to have to call later.
The second was to my chiropractor. I had asked for a statement of my expenses for the year for tax purposes. I had told them it had to be on their stationery. I got the information on a piece of yellow pad paper with the name of the practice hand-scrawled at the top of the page, naming the office. I don't think the IRS would accept that as a valid statement.
Katie saw that my walk was somewhat compromised because of the strain. She worked on my ankles, and then we went into the exercise room. I lay down on a large, raised mat about the size of a queen-sized bed. We did a little work on my lying down version of the Bikram triangle stance. Katie felt she didn't have a lot to add today other than I had to work on stretching out my calf muscles. I'm not inclined to do that because they are abnormally tight. I feel that something else has to happen before I can get a stretch out of those muscles.
After PT, I went off to the Friendly Place to drop off cargo shorts, belts, and bras. Lisa hid it all behind her desk because the homeless people grab what they can, whether they need it or not. Too bad.
Lisa does a fantastic job. She is often the only person working at the front desk and sometimes the only person in the whole operation. Hope Services has a winner in her. I hope they are not taking her for granted.
I went to Island Naturals afterward. I picked up caramel stevia, two expensive organic Fiji apples, and two bottles of CBD pills. I was expecting the product to be on the shelves. No, they were in a locked case. The bottles were expensive, but other products there are also costly. I pick up two bottles on sale., 25% off a $100 per bottle. I would be better off buying it on the black market. But I won't do that, because I want to make sure that I'm dealing with a reliable company.
When I got home, I made several phone calls. I got two statements from Kaiser Permanente for Mike's medical bills from last year. There was a thousand dollar difference between the costs on one bill versus another. I got bounced from one customer service person to another. The third one said she would try to get a copy of what I was looking at so we could 'be on the same page.'
I showered and dressed. Yikes! A dress I wore a few weeks ago that was loose on me is now tight on me. You mean eating all that chocolate is making a difference? The scale has been going up, but I credited that to gain to muscle mass. Either way, this will not do.
I went to school. When I got to Mrs. D.'s class, the students were working on a letter-writing project, persuading the school principal to install air conditioners in all the classrooms. B, N, and R. were all involved in the writing project and didn't want to work with me. D. was the only one interested.
D.'s problem is behavior. He was in trouble again today. He said he wants to work with me repeatedly. However, he was completely uncooperative. He gave me no information on how he feels. I finally told him that I couldn't help him if he didn't give me any information about what was going on with him. I didn't know what to do. I told him that all I could think of is just sitting there in his presence and praying. I set the timer for ten minutes, closed my eyes, and performed the Hawaiian healing prayer, Ho'oponopono. At that five-minute mark, I asked him if he was feeling more relaxed. He said yes. Well, we were going in the right direction. When the alarm went off, I sent him back into the room. B., N., and R. were ready to work now.
When I met with R., I had her read the phonemically transcribed stories. I was surprised by how poorly she did, given that she was reading books on a mid-first grade level reasonably well. This means she still is having problems with word recognition. I am hoping that working with the transcribed material will train her mind to decode all words. I was planning to have her read four stories, but she was struggling, so with the second one, that I let her off the hook once she completed it.
B. had a score of 70% on the last spelling test. Neither Mrs. D. nor I were expecting him to do well on the spelling pattern from last week. This was amazing. He was quietly proud. Mrs. D. reminded me that he consistently scored 0% on his spelling tests when the school year started.
The words he wrote bore little resemblance to the words on the test. He's been inching up. This week's spelling test is with homonyms. We'll see how he does. I'm not optimistic. We just worked on the first six words. I looked for memory tricks that could help him distinguish between sale and sail.
I worked with N. on comprehension. He brought out a book that was halfway between and graphic novel and a regular print book. Instead of asking him questions about individual sentences, I started asking him questions about the setting and characters in different paragraphs. The answers didn't come quickly, but he caught on with a little help from a friend. This is the direction we will be going in.
Then I went to Mrs. B.'s class to work with I. and D. I started with I., having him read the transcribed Carpenter stories. Because his dislike of the audio file indicated signs of an auditory processing problem, I continued making the sustained phonemic sounds as I wrote the letters. He took over from me, first making the sounds and then writing them as he produced them. Then he wanted to go back to just reading the stories. He read two. While he still struggled, he read his correctly in every case in both stories. As he headed back to the classroom, he turned back unexpectedly to give me a hug. I think I can still count on one hand the number of children who have expressed appreciation for my help without being prompted by a teacher. It marks him as an unusual child.
D. from Mrs. B.'s class was next. He has problems calling out incorrect words when reading that may or may not have any relationship to the word on the page. Thinking that his problem is related strictly to reading, I decided to start him on the phonemically transcribed texts. He was making mistakes on the very first story, the one I. is still struggling with. No, no, no. He can read a fair amount of third-grade text fluently. This made no sense. I had him name the letters in words before saying them. He did well until he misnamed one of the letters. He knows his letters. Does he have a word retrieval problem? I asked him if he sometimes said the wrong word in other situations. He said yes. Later, Mrs. B. told me he would misname numbers.
I asked him which side of his brain was delivering this incorrect information. He pointed to the left side of his head. For quite a while, I have been asking him to identify or describe the sensations in his brain. (Yes, there are sensations in the brain. Not in the neurological tissue but in the blood vessels. Whatever part of the brain is in use receives the most blood.) I asked him if the sounds of the words came up in a straight line or a divergent path as they traveled from the back of the head, in long-term memory, to the front in working-memory. I showed him the different paths I was familiar with, clockwise going inwards and going outward, counterclockwise going to the center from the outer ring, and from the center out, or zig-zag. He pointed to his head on the left side and drew a zig-zag line with his finger. Oh, boy.
I had worked with him on auditory processing problems before, but this had never come up. In the past, I would beat myself up when I missed something like this. But I have come to think that everything happens in its own time. Just because I know of a possible solution does not mean this is a good time to apply it. Sometimes I have to wait until the student signals readiness to me.
I asked him to sit with the movement. He did and changed the trajectory of the line. Once it hit his forehead, it continued to move around his head in a clockwise direction, using the right-hand rule to determine the direction. We were dealing with a full-on spin. As I learned from Barbara Brenan, I told him to release the spin away from the top of his head down through his body, so it exited his body at the lowest point. He sat with it until the spinning stopped on its own and then went back to the room.
I learned later that he had been having problems naming numerals correctly but was showing improvement. When D. told me he had problems naming things in other contests, I thought he might be having problems naming actual objects, like saying table for chair or table for tree. Now, I suspect he just has issues naming abstract symbols, like letters and numbers, which are abstract symbols. I'll have to investigate this more.
Then I went across the atrium to Mrs. L's class to work with her D. Mrs. L. said he had been very good in the morning but had lost again in the afternoon. I asked him why. He said it was because he was hot. As it wound up, the whole third grade was working on the same writing piece, convincing the school principal that the classrooms should all be air-conditioned. I suspect it wasn't that he was hot. It is winter here, so much as he felt he couldn't do the work and was squirming with discomfort. Mrs. L. is reporting him acting out in situations that he finds frustrating.
As he had previously complained about math being so hard, causing him to act out, I turned my attention to that. The class was working on multiplication. Mrs. L. said he could correctly represent the multiplication problems when drawing circles with the rest of the group, but he had no memory for the facts.
Nonetheless, I started with determining if he knew the difference between addition and multiplication. When I wrote a multiplication problem 2x3=, he said the answer was 5—a problem. I asked him to use counters to illustrate 2 +3=. He used many more counters than he needed. I didn't know what was going on. Then, oh. He used the extra counters to make a plus sign. A little too literal.
I then worked with him so he used the counters to model 2+3= versus 2 x 3=, 2 +4 = versus 2 x4 =, and finally 2 + 5= versus 2 x 5 =. As we went along, I asked him if he thought he understood it a little better or a lot better. He was saying a little until the end, when he finally said a lot. I will review it the next time I work with him to see how much he understood and/or retained.
When I spoke to the teacher after class, I told her I thought his adequate performance in the math class because he was probably doing monkey-see-monkey-do rather than understanding it. We have yet to see if my work with him will make a difference.
I then went over to speak to Mrs. D. and Mrs. B. about their respective D.s. Mrs. D. said her D. came back into the room a completely different child after being with me. He had left making weird noises and unwilling to do the work at hand. He came back in and, on his own initiative, sat down and did his work correctly and neatly. We all thought, "Wow!" My offer was to sit with him 10 minutes a day doing this prayer. At least, I think it is called a prayer. The words of the Ho'oponopono are simply, "I'm sorry. Forgive me. Thank you. I love you," while thinking of the person.
Judy had an old friend visiting from when she lived in Oahu. Donna had moved to Syracuse to be with her large Italian family. We all went out for dinner at a local Indian restaurant. Adam, Jazzy, and the kids were supposed to join us, but Leon was sick again. He's been out of school for a week now. He has some sort of flu. He sleeps a lot. Periodically, he's up and running around when he feels better. All the activity raises his fever, and he's back down for the count. While we were at the restaurant, Adam called in, asking for Judy to pick up take out for them. As we were leaving the restaurant, we checked out the open-air jewelry store. They have some beautiful stones. I would have bought one if I ever wore any jewelry.
I went home and watched some more of Schitt's Creek. Love it! I managed to avoid chocolate for the night. Of course, I did eat the almond poppy seed muffin that Yvette left for me. As I recall, they're a pretty good way to pack on the pounds. Probably not a very good substitute for my chocolate intake.
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