Saturday, April 17, 2021
The first yoga appointment was with my adolescent D. He did an amazing job today. I used Barnell Loft level D (4th grade) material with him, transcribed as in "I t-r-a-n-s/c-r-i-be th-e t-e-x-t." With the transcription, he's cued on two aspects of decoding: syllable division and which letters represent phonemes. Up to this point, if he made it through a complete paragraph, that was good. Today, he sailed through three passages, and I had time to answer the comprehension question. Amazing progress.
Unfortunately, all his mom noticed was that he was reading faster. I'm looking for increased pattern recognition and a decrease in reversals. Emphasizing increased reading speed is counterproductive. Today, he had only one incident; he reversed the o and r in one word. Of course, he was well-rested. Nonetheless, he was evaluated by the special ed team right before I started working with him as reading on a second-grade level. He was completely dependent on sight words with no decoding skills and an 'information processing problem. Really?? We have made this progress after 12 half-hour sessions. I'm impressed; are you?
I had third-grade A next. We were just slogging through. Poor kid was so turned around that he literally didn't know right from left. Now, I understood why he didn't use the crossbody blending on his own. He used the wrong arm and started on the wrong side of his body. He didn't have a clue. I would have to make sure he used crossbody blending on at least ten words each session, using words he already knew so he didn't have to deal with the added burden of the unknown. Maybe I should do this with my adolescent D too.
I had my appointment with my acupuncturist right after my appointment with A. She had me on my stomach again and worked my back and on the back of my legs. I had a lot of confidence in her. She saw the problem as I did. She saw my leg length difference was caused by my spinal curvature. It may also be affected by the lack of cartilage in my left hip. I never had a doctor acknowledge that my back problem may be a factor. I didn't want those guys messing with me.
My left inner thigh hurt badly from lying on my stomach. I couldn't straighten that leg. The acupuncturist agrees with me that Mike may have torn that inner thigh muscle when he wrenched the leg. Another reason why I didn't want the orthopedic surgeons messing with me. They could only see the lack of cartilage in the left hip joint and nothing else. That was scary.
The acupuncturist asked me if Mike felt guilty about what he did to me. He never projected guilt. I know he was always concerned about hurting me. He was a clutz. That was why we got bigger and bigger beds. He often smacked me as he thrashed around in his sleep. No serious harm came from that, but he was concerned. I never was angry at him for what he did to me. It was clearly his fault, but I knew he would never hurt me deliberately. I did consider the possibility that he had wrenched my leg 'accidentally on purpose." Even considering the latter, I didn't feel angry with him. Instead, it broke my heart that he had such internal conflicts that he would have done this to me. How could I have nothing but compassion for Mike and be furious when some others have done things to me "accidentally on purpose?" I think Mike gave enough conscious evidence of his devotion to me and my well-being. The others did not, or not at a level I considered sufficient.
I had a note from Zoom saying that I couldn't record any more videos. I had to pay something to expand my storage. I texted Tommy, my go-to twenty-two-year-old techie who lives around the block. While I was preparing a more detailed text, he texted me back. I called him. He said he would be right over. He was. He deleted all the old videos from my account. Ah! Now I could start with practice recordings of the video I want to post on YouTube.
I had another serving of Judy's sweet and sour chicken with a salad last night and continued watching Balthazar.
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