Sylvia's Journal

After two rainy, foggy and rather dreadful (weather-wise) days the blue sky looks promising and the colors of the leaves are awesome. It will be a nice weekend.

We woke up late after having gone to bed late. We watched and episode of Foyle’s War followed by one from Perry Mason, with Sita and Jim, eating home-made pizza. Afterwards we could not get the Perry Mason tune out of our heads and we all kept humming it. We even marched to our bedroom in step with the tune, Axel in the lead, doing his zombie act, me following with tears (of laughter) streaming down my face. Only the brace was missing from the show. It is sitting, rather mildewed, out in the yard on a lawn chair, waiting for us to figure out what to do with it.

It was a dream-filled night for both of us and we recounted our dreams to each other in the hope of capturing as much as possible. Axel’s dream was rather revealing about what is going on in his arm. He was trying to get together and then re-assemble something that he had lost and that was disassembled. It consisted of tubes and pieces of cloth and there was some connection with the pain that comes from change and turning over; in his dream he almost finished assembling the piece. The dream turned out rather descriptive of the big event of yesterday. Here what happened in his own words, taken by dictation:

“Betty, my occupational therapist was working on redoing my brace. I sat looking at my hand and wondered if I could try to move it and concentrated on doing just that. After a couple of minutes I noticed a few tiny spasms of the muscles in my forearm. Not that the wrist was lifting or anything like that but there was a flicker of activity. I pointed this out to Betty and she asked me to repeat it. She said “omigod, there is some movement there.” Then she had me repeat it again while she closed her eyes (“I will feel your forearm and close my eyes so I won’t be fooling myself, because I want to see movement so badly.”) And when she felt the movement I started to cry and she said, “Axel, we’ve finally done it, there is something there!” She called another therapist over to confirm her observation, and she felt it too: tiny little movement of the muscle. You could see it. We looked at the pictures in the big book on anatomy and she showed me all the extensor muscles that govern the fingers and wrist which are all controlled by the radial nerve.”

He called Sita and me at home and if I had not been taking my hot and cold water footbaths at the time we would have danced in the kitchen. The nerve is coming back!

I had another rich EMDR session in which we explored my going back to work and the fears of not being able to deliver up to my own (high) standards and the difficulty I foresee of falling back in step with the pace of the world out there. It is a pace that is too fast for a recovering broken ankle and many sore muscles. The reflection and insights were triggered by the words ‘in step’ that popped out with images of relentless marching bands and a little child trying to march to the beat but not quite able to do so. That would be me.

We ended another week of busy schedules with our two simultaneous acupuncture sessions. For me these sessions, after the needles are in, are very relaxing. We both felt limber and in high spirits when we emerged an hour and a half later. And that is when I cooked up the idea of making a pizza from scratch (Axel wanted to buy one but I talked him out of it). I have also gotten an early start on the Christmas mustard making. There will be so many more pots to deliver this year. Sita is my apprentice and she made her very own mustard which is so delicious that we are already eating it.