Friday, August 26, 2022

 Friday, August 26, 2022  

 

  I tried the stretch the acupuncturist gave me for my pirus formis. I couldn’t make it work. It required getting my leg into an undoable position. Instead of resting my left calf on my right thigh while lying on my back, I wrapped the left leg around the right leg, the eagle pose. I felt like I got a good stretch in my glutes doing this as I lay in bed before getting up. I also pulled my inner thigh muscle. Did I do more damage to myself? Fortunately, that problem cleared up later in the day. As I lay in bed, I applied the acupuncture pen to my calf and ankle. I felt the impact on my glute. They seem to be connected.

  I thought about Mike a lot today and was filled with joyful love, laughter, and affection. I think about him more as his memory becomes thinner with distance.

     I had a session with 2nd grade homeschooled L. I started on the first Carpenter story at the end of the last session. She knew some of the words in the story, cat and the. The first word in the story is there. I could get her to see the was in, the word with two more letters. One look at the word, and she leaped out of her seat and walked away, saying, “It’s such a long word.” Today, I started the session by telling her that if she did what I asked her to do and one other thing if she couldn’t remember what the word was, it was my fault, not hers. It was my job to figure out how to help her. If she couldn’t do it, it was on me. It calmed her down immediately. The second thing she had to do was not easy: control her fear. I couldn’t do that for her.

      I had her identify the letters as part of working with the word there. She didn’t know the name for t and called the letter e. She was so overwhelmed that she tried to get me to drop the activity and work on singing the alphabet song. She said she didn’t think she could remember it because it had been a while since she had sung it. I had been seeing many children with memory problems. I have never seen this before. Was it coincidental that they were showing up at my door, or was there a more significant problem out there?

   I led L through a BrainManagementSkills exercise. When I asked her if she could see the word there in her mind, she said no. I had her remember her blanket. She ‘saw’ the image in the correct spot, in the front of her forehead. I had her write the word there on her blanket in her imagination. She could do that. Then I made a sound and had her tell me where in her brain she held the memory of the sound. She pointed to her forehead again. Not good. That part is suitable for visual recall, not auditory. Then she pointed to her ear. With some effort, I could get her to use a part of her brain in the general vicinity of the auditory parts of the brain. I wasn’t confident it would hold, but it was a start. I showed her how to link the auditory and visual information, the sound of the word name T, with the visual image of the letter, press the save button (her nose), and send it down to long-term memory via the hippocampal formation. I didn’t think it had been effective for her. We’ll see.

  I got my steps in today when I wasn’t sleeping. I needed a lot of sleep because it was a grief day. At least I didn’t spend the day fighting off tears about the less satisfying relationships in my life. My grief was over missing Mike and all I shared with him.

    During my before-dinner walk, I saw a fantastic rainbow, the full arc. Clearly, there was a pot of gold at one end. I sent pictures to everyone.

    Yvette came up and ironed while I watched my evening show, Another Self. I was still enjoying it. I read that it is considered slow-moving. There are moments of silence. Wonderful, as far as I’m concerned. Action, action, action are not for me. I loved having Yvette up here doing her own thing, parallel play with a few cross-over comments. I hope she does all her ironing up here. She has tons to do. She irons the sheets she uses with her massage clients.