Saturday, September 2, 2023.

 Saturday, September 2, 2023. 

   Yvette led a driveway yoga class for the first time since my accident. Casey, one of our participants and Jared’s husband, wanted to attend.  It was wonderful. The range of motion of my left arm was limited. However, the full body stretch while lying on my back on the cement was  a revelation.  I need to do that every day to maximize the full range of motion of my shoulder.  

  It also became clear that my spinal curvature has been corrected. I felt it and Yvette saw it.  I had argued the problem in my back resulted from  a problem with my left shoulder. I don’t know what made the greatest change: having all the muscles and bone ripped apart when I crushed the shoulder or the shoulder blade  or the move the acupuncturist did..  While sitting she  pushed the shoulder blade up and did something complementary to the front of my chest.  Because of the shoulder blade raise, I  get Gokhale’s stretch sit.  You raise the shoulder blades and relax the shoulder bones on top. You hold your upper body up with the sit stretch. I’m using it in all sitting contexts now. 

   Damon and Cylin called me yesterday to report on their trip to Princeton to visit with his mom Jean, and step-dad, john..  Damon was surprised to see how frail she looked. She has lost 20 lbs. since April. She wasn’t eating. She was mentally confused.  Neither she nor john were taking their medication.  John wasn’t taking his because he was dependent on her to organize his. She was taking hers because she was confused. She had told both Damon and me if the nerve deadening treatment didn’t relieve her of pain, she would give up.

  Damon met with the head of the medical division of the retirement community. Aids are going to administer their meds from now on.  They collected all their medications. They re going to cll the doctors to check on how the prescriptions shuld be administered before they start giving them to them.  Someone is coming to make sure jean showers every three days. She is too weak to do this on her own. 

   Damon bought her some sushi. She happy ate that. She had stopped eating because she is in constant pain from her constipation supposedly caused by her pain medications. I believe her fraility affects she ability to move her bowel. Nothing is pushing it out.  

  Damon and Cylin learned there was a cocktail hour for the community. Damon and John went. Someone came up to ask him if he was Jean Ross’s son.  The man was head of the community Democratic party and very liberal leaning.. he knew about Jean’s interest in politics. I wonder if he is left enough so for jean. 

  John met a couple where the husband was from London and the wife from Ireland. John is from England. John and he couple sank into enjoyable conversation. Afterward damon and cylin took jean and john out to a Chinese restaurant. Again, jean hungrily scarfed down food. Jean was up for walking back to the car instead of having Damon pull it around to her. When 25 feet from the csr, she fell.  While she was using her beloved roll aider, she probably tripped on some uneven pavement. She hit her head and skinned her knee. Damon took her for medical treatment when they got back to senior living community. They bandaged her wounds. They wanted her to go to the ER. Their policy is that sll head injuries should get further attention. Jean said she felt fine and refused to go. She signed a waiver and went home. I remember severs stories of people with head injuries much younger than jean who felt just fine and when died because of  slow bleed.

   I kept calling this morning until someone answererd. It was possible that jean was doubled over in pain after eating so much food given her constipation problem,. It was also possible that she was dead from the head injury. When I john finally answer she refused to come to the phone because she was napping. She seemed fine.

   I asked Damon why the medical staff at the community wasn’t monitoring people. He said you had to advocate for yourself.  What happens to that lone person who has no close relatives? Who checks on them? He saw my point. 

   I finally got the door to the port for my electric car open.  I had tried the double click with the fob several times. That didn’t work. I opened the hood and tried the emergency orange button. That didn’t work. The plan was to stop at Kia between my appointment with doctor Reed and my appointment with my PT Katie. I was concerned there was a difficult problem. How was I   going to make it home if I couldn’t charge the car?  I was making my peace with taking an Uber to the PT and then home. I tried again. The fob still didn’t work. I opened the hood. I finally had the strength to pull the cord. I heard the click. Ah!!! I plugged the car in to recharge it, because I don’t have a dedicated line, it takes 8 hours to fully charge.