Sunday, July 10, 2022

 Sunday, July 10, 2022

 

I slept till close to five am after having had a tough time falling asleep when I went to bed. That was scary. I never had trouble falling asleep. Could this be the start of something new? I know many people my age who do have sleep problems. Then I subjected myself to Merzenich’s lovely list of all that can go wrong in the aging brain. Chemical changes can interfere with sleep. I continued to read his book, Soft-Wired, because I was looking for new ways to understand the brain so I could help my students.

  I got up at 5:30 this morning after Scott came to take Elsa for her morning walk. I got dressed. Then I returned to bed; I wanted to do one set of the recommended exercises. The leg raises, followed by slowly lowering them, were hard on my left inner thigh muscle. Katie said to limit the number I do if it bothers me that much.

  When Scott returned with Elsa, I asked him if he could cut my toenails. Yvette was out of town till August. My acupuncturist told me they needed to be cut, and I ordered two pairs of new Crocs. My old Crocs were worn down unevenly, the right shoe much more so than the left. The old pair would interfere with my developing an even gait. Scott said, “Sure. Let me go get my glasses.” The lovely man did a wonderful gentle job clipping them back.

  After I fed Elsa, I got in my old-lady chair to meditate for an hour. I was trying to do at least one hour a day. I prefer playing endless FreeCell even though other activities make me feel better. Why do we do this to ourselves?

 I was reassured that my current aches and pains were temporary and my muscles were adjusting to their new reality. When I posted my entry from July 10, 2021, I read that Dorothy had a similar problem after her THR surgery. She remedied it by using the glute muscles of her surgical leg more. That sounds like what I thought I had to do.

   Elsa and I drove up to Paulette’s to get Kangen water. She knows what will happen when she sees me pick up the blue bottles and my purse. She leaps about excitedly.

    I put my mask on as I got out of the car. There was a stomach virus going through the family. Luke, the disabled, almost five-year-old, who can’t talk or walk, really can’t do anything but twitch, had it. His diarrhea exploded out of his diaper, covering his body, including his feeding tube and the sofa he was lying on. You get the picture. Luke was the last to get it in the family. I wasn’t interested. Ergo, I was masked.

   Paulette and I sat together outside and chatted for about half an hour. Then I had to go home and nap.

  Damon called on his way to his tennis lesson and then on his way home. I had nothing to say about my life. I felt nothing was going on. I write about details in the update, but I don’t have anything to say in conversation. I felt that way about my life.

   I took my second nap between the two phone calls during his tennis lesson. It worked out perfectly. I walked while we talked about his work, his plans for traveling to Vancouver, where a script Cylin and her friend wrote will be in production, and what August was doing over the summer. Cylin and Damon were working on getting into the best shape they could to impress their friends when they went to Mike’s fifth birthday party in Massachusetts, the Berkshires if I remember correctly.

  I spoke to adolescent D’s mother. I described the incident where he couldn’t retrieve the correct pronunciation of the letter name for O. She looked surprised. Yes, he knows the letters in the alphabet. In this case, retrieving the sound of the name and using it to decode a word meant coordinating two parts of his brain. It created a jam in his mind. She asked if there were things he could do. I said yes, but he either forgot or outright refused. It would require her to monitor him. For a parent to get involved, that means putting a strain on the relationship. I had been surprised by how passive she had been up to now. The most she reported doing was giving him gentle reminders to do work or asking for help. She didn’t force him to do anything.  

   I saw her sadness as she contemplated pushing him. There was a story behind her passivity. I recommended the BrainHQ activities which Merzenich wrote about in his book. It was worth a try. The main criterion for any action is that it can do no harm. The app only costs $14 a month. She didn’t ask me to send her the information. The other option was to send him to an educational psychologist like the M & W sisters were seeing. The required evaluation must cost over $1000 now. Her sessions must run over $100. All this expense without knowing for sure if she could help with the situation.

  I had been doing the exercises on BrainHQ both to check them out for Adolescent D and myself. It costs a whopping $14 a month if I pay monthly and $96 a year if I pay annually. The exercises are advertised as helping prevent the aging brain from following its path of slow, inevitable decline. I didn’t do very well. I got exhausted quickly and couldn’t make sense of what I saw. I knew to stop for a while and start up again later. We would see if it helped. I didn’t see it as doing harm except to my ego.

 I watched Long Story Short on Netflix. It’s an interesting concept, but the main character wore on my nerves.