Friday, January 6, 2023

 Friday, January 6, 2023   

      I got up shortly before seven today. Not bad when I can stay in bed as long as I like. My right foot had been bothering me. This was a concern since I have a second toe climbing over my first. It threw all my metatarsals out of sync.

    I met with Jana at 9:30. I told her about my decision to stop working with ninth-grade K. There were two cancelations this week. One because he refused to attend. I got no explanation for the second one, but I suspected he had refused again. In our last session, I told him he had to give more instead of waiting for others to do all the work for him. When I asked him where he was when he was writing a paper, he said, "In a chair." When I asked him why he was sitting in the car if he was at home, he replied, "I'm drawing." I know he can do more. He's not a deep thinker. He thinks concretely but not abstractly. While he could describe what a character does, he could not identify character traits.

     Jana repeated a story I told her about Mike when he gave a similar response to K's. Mike was brilliant. However, after being bedridden for a week, riddled with infection, and on high doses of painkillers, he gave a response comparable to K's. A nurse asked him, "Where are you?" Mike struggled to come up with an answer. Then he said, "Here!"  That's what K does. Is his problem cognitive or emotional? I don't know. He should be tested. There may be a mental disability or a low IQ. I suspect his mom has been concerned about him for years and has ignored her concerns. It's like the "wife is the last to know" syndrome. In this case, the mother is the last to know. 

   I had an appointment with Shelly. I talked about feeling shame and a lack of entitlement because of tutoring relationships that didn't work out well. I got in touch with my own feelings of hatred. Most unpleasant, both the feeling and the awareness of my capacity for such feelings. From the evolutionary psychology perspective, I argue that hate must have a positive function. It would have been extinguished from the human psyche if it didn't. It would have had no survival benefits. I imagine hatred to be like that thick black underline I drew in my coloring books. It dramatically highlighted the figure. With a boundary founded in hatred, I felt I had authority. I never thought I had a right or wanted to be in authority. I hated being a classroom teacher. I want to influence, not command. Shelly actually said something about associating authority with the Nazis. I'm sure that's true. I'm both the victim Jew and the victimizer, German. Not all Germans were Nazis or even antisemites, but that association exists.

   I had an appointment with a doctor to get a full body check for signs of skin cancer. I haven't had one ever. Christine, one of my visitors, recommended that I get one yearly. My skin looked good. I didn't spend my youth running around in the sun. I was lucky; I didn't develop a nice-looking tan. I turned yellow. I'd come home from two months at camp, and people would comment I didn't have a tan. I had to remove a watch or show my sock line for people to see anything. Mike had also avoided sun exposure. He had fair skin and had to protect himself from the sun. We sat on the beach, looking like Arabs traversing the desert.

   A tutoring student from forty years ago once said she hated it when people went to the beach and then wrapped themselves in towels. I told her she could pass me by without saying hello if she saw me on the beach. 

   The doctor I saw today was not my primary, Dr. Reed. She's been out for six months. I've tried to make an appointment and have been told she was extending her vacation for another month. She finally permitted the staff to tell her patients that she was having a difficult pregnancy and had been in bed the whole time. She's expecting it in April. I finally made an appointment with another doctor.  

    I was there for more than the skin cancer check. I asked the doctor to give me a prescription for physical therapy at Hawaiian Rehab so I could continue my work with Katie. She agreed.          

      While there, I told her about my chest incident the other day. I felt pressure in my chest. It wasn't an elephant sitting on my chest- more like my thirteen-pound Elsa. I was pretty sure it wasn't a heart attack. I had no other symptoms. I figured my whole nervous system would respond if my heart was under attack. There was nothing. I mentioned it because I am eight-two, and it was weird. The doctor had the same reaction- better safe than sorry. She ordered a cardiogram and a chest X-ray. She also spoke about my taking a stress test.

   I picked up a medication at the Kaiser pharmacy on the same campus. They sent me texts saying something about January 9. I hadn't read it correctly. I thought the medication would be in on the 9th. No, it was there now; it would be canceled on the ninth if I didn't pick it up by then.

    Then I headed to Home Depot. I called them yesterday to find out if they carried the acid stain for the cement I was looking for. I learned they did. Wow! There was no one in the paint department to consult. I found an associate in another aisle and convinced him to page someone. He did. No one came. I wandered the aisles and found the cement paints. I saw large cans of cement stain. From what I saw in the pictures on the internet, the acid stains came in large plastic containers, not cans. I wasn't sure what I was looking at. I planned to call Glidden and ask.

   I came home and napped. I needed a lot of sleep today. Terminating with eighth-grade K was traumatic. Hopefully, it puts a fire under his mom to get a more formal evaluation.