Tuesday, January 4, 2022

 Tuesday, January 4, 2022

 

    Katie strapped my foot with KT tape. She hooked it under my heel and then crossed the straps in front of my shin, making the one coming up on the outside of my left leg tighter than the one on the right. My ankle still hurt, but less. Now, I had to figure out a) how to get it off at night before I went to bed and b) how to put it on in the morning. I knew I had several rolls of tape, but I couldn't find them. I had looked in my drawer with my physical aides before but couldn't find them. I had looked in the 'forever' closet in the hallway and couldn't find them there either. Today I made a more vigorous attack on the drawer. I found it tucked in the very back of the drawer, not just one roll but two. Getting it off was pretty easy . I used my right foot to roll it down and then off. Now, I had the challenge of figuring out how to put it on myself in the morning.

   First, I measured the tape. I folded it in half as Katie did to determine which part went under my foot. On my first try, it was clear I would have to do more. When I put my foot down on the tape, I stood on the paper, covering the sticky part and the exposed tape. I picked the tape up and cut off some of the paper in the center. I could place my heel on the tape without touching the paper. Then I had to get the section of tape lying on the floor to the left of my foot off the floor. I used my grabber. As handy dandy as it is, it is not ideal for picking up pieces of paper. I managed. I got the tape in my hand and pulled it across my shin, freeing it from the rest of the tape. Then I had the other side to do. My job looked a lot like Katie's. An untrained eye wouldn't know the difference. My eye didn't. I can't imagine I did it perfectly.

     I was feeling lonely and somewhat depressed today. My response was to promote more silence, not less. I switched off the radio and just sat with that feeling.

    Yvette called to say Scott couldn't fix the leak in the garden watering system. I called Keep It Green. Steve's voicemail said he wasn't accepting new clients. I'm not a new client, but I last called on him a few years ago. He has never been a quick responder. We'll see.

  I have sessions with Adolescent D. on Mondays, Thursdays, and Saturdays when school is in session. When I signed in yesterday, he was surprised. While the Public schools are back in session, the private schools are off for another week. We rescheduled for today. We started on a new passage. He misread paint as plant. It was the third word in the passage; he couldn't use context clues. I reminded him to start with the vowel ai. When the word family unit isn't secure, as in ain, I always say start with the vowel. I wrote down ai and asked for possible sounds. He said the short e. Ai is sounded like the short e in the word said. Then he gave me the long I sound. I reminded him of the rule," When two vowels go walking, the first does the talking."  

     He was familiar with it. He had heard it from other teachers. I asked him what the first letter was in ai. "I. I'm not stupid." OMG! I was stunned. He is fifteen. Reading letters in English from left to right should be automatic. I tried to talk to him about it. I didn't know what to say. I remained silent. He said I was overthinking it. I assured him I wasn't thinking. He said, "It's no big deal." He even compared it to some walking into a room and going right instead of left. This is classic dyslexia, classic. In his case, I don't know what it is. He was arguing with me that the order of the letters wasn't important. Is this partially a conceptual problem? I can see the letters switching on him. We've come across this problem before in other forms. The letters move from one position to another. This is different.

    The bad news is I don't know yet what the cause is. The good news is it may be an easy fix. Once D understands that the letters in the English language are always read from left to right, no ifs buts or maybes. In ai, the ai always comes before the i. If you say the letters in the word said as 'd-i-a-s, you understand you are saying them backward. You understand that the a still comes before the i, and the i comes after the a.  

    We also worked on sending information to his long-term memory. He can hold information in his short-term auditory memory but cannot either send it to long-term memory or retrieve it from long-term memory. I did one of my famous diagrams showing him 'the path' to long-term memory. He had trouble understanding the concept. I drew an analogy to how a computer worked: you have the screen and the PC's long-term storage. Nowadays, the computer saves everything automatically. In the bad ole days, we had to save a document deliberately. If we didn't, it was lost. He can't use his long-term memory effectively. Determining where the breakdown is is another matter. However bad his auditory recall is, his visual recall is worse. He can't remember something he's seen two minutes before.

  Today, while he was dictating the sentence to me, one letter at a time, I forgot one. It was a name. Then it flashed across my visual imagination. It just appeared. That's how memory works; at least, it still works that way for me.

   Judy told me that a mutual friend of ours who is a medical provider is unvaccinated. She said his elderly parents are also unvaccinated and have had Covid three times without consequence. She mentioned another doctor who goes to our church who is also unvaccinated. "You should see the statistics," she said. There are so many possibilities to be upset about. 1) they're wrong and have been swallowed by a conspiracy theory, 2) they're right, and something truly sinister is going on at a worldwide level. I'm not concerned about myself. I'm old. If there is something seriously wrong with the vaccine, so be it. On the other hand, I worry that my friends will get Covid and die. Where do I start?

   I had one of the dozen bagels Damon, Cylin, and August sent for Christmas. The assumption was they would be here to help us indulge. Eating them daily is not for me. I froze them. I'll eat one every third day. I had to buy cream cheese, lox or smoked salmon, Bermuda onion, and some tomatoes. It was easy to get most of this at Safeway. However, lox. What's that? Where do I find it? I finally tracked 4. oz of smoked salmon for $11.50 in the fish section. I asked Judy where she bought hers. Costco. $10 for a 1lb. That's more like it.  

     

  Musings:

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Been thinking more about the issue of selfishness versus unselfishness.

 

As those who know me know, I believe we only do things for selfish reasons. Denying this fact is one of the most dangerous things we can do to others. 

Being selfish does not mean we don't consider others' needs. We can be the most giving people; we do that for selfish reasons. 

I can hear people saying, "You don't know what it means to sacrifice for others; if you did, you would never talk about action being selfish." Whenever I have to choose between two things I want, I have to sacrifice something. Sacrifice is on a continuum. I have done things for others that I have loved doing, and I have done things that made me uncomfortable and that were downright grueling.

For Mike to become a deacon in the Catholic church, he had to take classes for four years, mimicking the semester system of colleges. Only one problem. I also had to attend. I had no interest in the classes. They were very boring. I had no desire to venture out two nights a week and sit in uncomfortable straight chairs for hours listening to people talk about subjects I had no interest in and interacting with people I had nothing in common with. Only one problem: if I didn't attend, Mike could not become a deacon. Attending those classes was the greatest sacrifice I made in our forty-five years of marriage. I didn't do it just for him. I did it because I wanted this for him. I thought being a deacon would make him happy and fulfilled, and I did what I had to do to make it happen.  

        Sending Mike off to Catholic University for six years while I remained in Princeton was not a sacrifice of that order. Finding a full-time job to have insurance was not a sacrifice of that order. When he was studying at Catholic, we spoke every night, and he came home every weekend. He was so happy in his life as a scholar. His happiness made me happy. I wanted him to be happy. Notice I said I. I wanted to live with someone happy with his own life instead of unfulfilled. It was completely selfish of me to want a happy husband. 

I think of sacrifice as on a continuum. There is something I give up; in exchange, I get something. Since Mike was more relaxed and joyful while in school than he had been at work, the plus side was more significant than the minus. I was looking at both immediate and long-term benefits. The plus of the long-term benefit carried me through when sitting through those classes. There were no short-term benefits.