Monday, March 27, 2023

 Monday, March 27, 2023

     I got close to five thousand steps in my morning walk with Elsa. Reaching the intersection on Kukuna is easy.

    The Hawaiian Public schools were closed today for a state holiday to celebrate the birthday of Prince Kuhio. He was the son of a monarch of the Kingdom of Hawaii and would have been next if he hadn't died young. Some private schools are closed, too, but only those with Hawaiian connections. Mama K's crew, Adolescent D and second-grade M were off.

   I asked Mama K if we could get an extra session in today. She agreed. Twin A read a second-grade passage today. She needed help with all the two-syllable words. In our next session, I will focus on decoding skills using this passage before I work on comprehension.

 Twin E finally read the pre-primer passage we worked on for several sessions. She remembered all of the words. Yay! I didn't know if it was a breakthrough in her memory function or if she needed that many repetitions before it stuck. Either way, today was the day we moved on to the next selection, also on the pre-primer level. We'll see how it goes. I continued working on comprehension with K using fourth-grade level material. He did reasonably well. He still has difficulty using the words in the text when he is called upon to infer the answer, but he has the other two down pat.

  I got a text reminding me I had a nine am haircut appointment on Thursday morning. I checked. As I thought, I had a PT appointment with Katie simultaneously. The haircut appointment was hard to come by. I was in desperate need of a cut. I called to cancel my PT. I could miss a week. The receptionist said they had one opening on Tuesday. I saw it put me in conflict with my appointment with my chiropractor. That was out. Could I make it today at 4:30? I had to check.

  I called and texted second-grade M's mom. Yes, we could do it earlier. Now would be good. I worked with her on a third-grade reading passage. Her word recognition was good. She missed a few small words, which didn't interfere with her comprehension. She is still in second grade and was left behind at first because she was so far behind her peers. Now she must be one of the better ones in the class. Despite her good performance, the class dragged. I was exhausted. This is the second time I have felt that way. Something is going on. I feel very heavy-hearted. It could be grief. It certainly feels like that. It could also be something physical. I'll have to see how long it goes on.

  Because M could meet with me at eleven instead of our usual four pm appointment, I could make the four-thirty slot with my PT. Katie worked on my left shoulder, arm, and my neck. I gave myself a tennis ball massage last night. That helped with my arm and my ribs. The problems are connected. Katie and I speculated on a rotator cuff problem. I might have torn something when I 'fell' the other day. Right before we moved to Ohio, I had rotator cuff surgery in 2003. Katie said it might have given out. I expect medical sutures to last forever. After all, our body parts are designed to do that, even if they sometimes fail. We forget our body parts are in a constant state of degeneration and renewal. Sutures don't do that. If I do need another operation, they will do a shoulder replacement. I only recently learned that was a possibility. Katie managed to improve the mobility of my shoulder by the end of the session.

  Mr. Lemus called to tell me he found someone else who might redo our irrigation system. It was breaking down here and there. Every time I get one of those leaks fixed, it costs me a hundred dollars. It must be at least twenty years old. In the long run, it would be cheaper to get the system replaced than to do piecemeal repairs.  

    Mr. Lemus advertised in the church bulletin. That's why I first contacted him. He had good ideas and seemed very professional. Then he fell off the face of the earth. I called him. He said he had personal problems. His landlord was forcing him out of his house. Oh, boy. Finding a place to live here is almost impossible now. There needs to be more houses to accommodate everyone who needs it. Mr. Lemus said he and his family may have to leave the island.

  I called the name he gave me. The guy said he would stop by, but he never did. I saw Mr. Lemus was still advertising in the bulletin and called him again. His housing situation was okay. He was in the middle of building something with someone else. He wouldn't be able to help me until April or later. Today, he called to give me someone else's name who might help me.

  Later in the day, I had Adolescent D. I talked with him about his self-sabotaging behavior and his video assignment. In our last session, when I asked him to think of someone he had a question for, he chose a classmate who cheated a lot. He wanted to know why he did it. I thought it was a peculiar question and wondered why D would ask something like that. It occurred to me that this is what D did: he cheated. Where his classmate cheated to win or get a better grade, D cheated to escape the judgment of others. Even if he did the work, he didn't hand it in. He made sure he always got zeros on everything. Better a zero than a 20%.  

  I sympathize with him. I did something like that with my mom. I could never do anything right, so I stopped trying. Whatever I did, I was going to be criticized. If that was the case, I was going to control it. I would do nothing. All she could attack me for was not trying in the first place. She couldn't say I had done it wrong. She couldn't put down my effort.

  Scientists did an experiment with rats. They put them in a large tank filled with water with an island in the middle. When they got tired, they could swim to the island and rest. The scientists would periodically shock the rats when they climbed on the island. After a while, the rats made no effort to climb it. Instead, they stayed in the water and drowned. It's called learned helplessness. You learn not to make an effort. You're better off not trying in the first place.

  Sadly, there are better strategies for D. I made it clear there was nothing I could do to force him to do any of his work, no less the video he had been assigned. The question was whether he was interested in overcoming his resistance to doing work and taking on new challenges. He said he was. He realized that his behavior was not good for him.  

  I reviewed his small safe zone. It was deemed dangerous if an activity didn't fit into that small, safe space. There was that middle section he had to explore with degrees of safety. By the end of the session, he said he asked me to send him the questions we had worked on together. He would add some more, call his uncle (the person he planned to interview), and make arrangements to do it. At first, he said he would ask the questions over the phone. I reminded him it had to be a video. I recommended doing it over Zoom. His uncle might know a better way to do it.

 I continued to watch New Amsterdam. Now, Max and Helen are in London. The British medical system is shown in the worst light: endless waits for an appointment, random doctors for the same problem, and no personal choice. (My friend in England says she loves the system.) Max steps in and foments a revolution without regard for Helen's approach to dealing with the system. He looks so proud of himself but is undermining any possibility of change. The guy is shown as a jerk. I like the show better when it was all fantasy, Max cruising through the corridors ordering this change and that, participating in treating individual patients in total disregard for his managerial responsibilities. What fun! What nonsense!