Other Places

Duck caught in my camera’s eye as I was walking to work. He used to come down every day to my gate for just a few minutes. The walk was hard for him, but I knew he did it to keep himself going. Taken May 8, 2006.

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"Thanks,” he said as he reached out to me with both hands. “I’m confused today.”

“Yes, you are, but it’s ok.” I held his hands.

What else was I going to say.

Normally he focuses himself on G. G solves his problems. He’s comfortable dealing with G. He talks with G. Their sense of humor meshes well, and G is infinitely adaptable. I often feel as if I am just along to be wallpaper, and so I was surprised at Duck’s response to me yesterday.

This last week we have been visiting Duck after our dinner and before his. I was worried about his eating. Two of the meals when we visited, he barely ate a third of the food. He kept saying that he wanted less food, yet there are some things he refuses to eat. His veggies, for instance. Other days, he scrapes his plate clean of it’s double portions.

He’s not a small man, and always he has had a weight problem. He likes to eat. He loves a desert or two. He was very successful working a TOP’s program, and he is always focused on the amount he is eating. They based the amount of food he gets on his size and what he doesn’t eat. There’s always hope with the veggies.

Usually around four thirty, we find him at the dinner table. Yesterday we found him in his room instead. We know they will make sure he makes it to his meals, or his table mate, Alice, of the stroke and red electric chair, will make sure he goes to the dining room, so we weren’t worried. Today he was refusing to go.

“I’m having my dinner brought to me here,” he said very strongly as he climbed into his wheel chair.

“You always eat in the dining room,” I replied.

“I changed it. From now on I am eating in my room.”

“Nope, you always eat in the dining room.”

“I changed it today,” he insisted. “Today.”

I too have a damaged brain, but I can stop the cycle where he cannot. “Let’s go ask your nurse what she thinks,” I commented as we entered the hall with G trailing behind.

“On no Mr. Duck, you eat in the dining room,” she told him.

And after a brief converstation on the topic of socialization and Duck eating in the dining room, I handed Duck off to my dear G and stayed a moment to chat with the nurse. She too has been feeling down about her weight. She too works very long hours. I told her about Weight Watchers online not telling her that I often get stuck right around 200 pounds. She didn’t need to hear that reality.

“Duck had been here earlier,” Alice told G when he got to the table. He’d decided to go back to his room to watch TV instead of listen to the guitar player whose tunes filled the room. The previous day, we found him again in his room complaining he had nothing to wear but his pajamas. G showed him his closet.

“There’s way too many clothes in there,” he told G.

“They want us to keep two weeks of clothing there for you,” G answered.

I popped up with, “You are supposed to put on clean clothes every day,” knowing my words were flying off into the air totally unheard, flapping like bits of fabric on mountain prayer wheels….clean, clean, clean.

But he forgets. He forgets more and more every day, until there will be one day when he forgets us. We know this will happen. Perhaps sometime this year he will fade away into other places. Then we will slow down our visits. Perhaps.

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Duck: Sad. Confused. Doubly sad because he knew he was confused.
Me: Warm, dry, and pleased with my house cleaning. Went through all the old floppies and Zip Discs yesterday and put them on the Myrtle the External Hard drive…I didn’t name it. It surprisingly took only a short amount of time. Still meditating and doing small bits of yoga here and there during my day. No Aleve or Tylenol yesterday; stiff and uncomfortable today. I will not be here tomorrow. It’s playoff time for the Charger’s and I am due at work at 0800.
G: “I’m doin’ good,” he tells me. I’ll take that and run with it. He’s working hard on getting my template image at Blogspot to fill the image lines. Two days ago, it would. Today it shrank itself over to the left, but after 45 minutes of playing with my template, he made the image fill the outline by changing the layout.
Weather: 58 for the high. 42 for the low. The skies opened and the heaven’s fell. Even the bedroom carpet got wet. We are toasty in the computer room.
WW: The bot sent me the one name of the three names they have that is currently “me.” You bet I have rapidly reestablished myself at WW Online and asked them to delete the other two me’s. WW is one stop problem solving for me right now. Thinner means lower BP, better ability to breathe, walk, and less pain on the stretched tendon’s and damaged soft tissues in my right hip. Maybe I hurt more because I fell/slid down the stairs Christmas Day.
Weather: Three days of incoming rain, at times pouring and other times very windy. Here near the beach, all we will get is wet. Rain will still be falling during the Charger’s game tomorrow. Getting to and from the tunnel will be wet, getting to and from the stadium will be wetter.
Other places I can be found: Blogspot as Day Tripper.