Sylvia's Journal

Every morning when I wake up I lay still for a few minutes trying to hold on to the bits and pieces of my dreams before they scatter away like butterflies. I caught a few of them this morning. I caught the ones that were about walking to some event. I was carrying folding chairs, one of them of the beach chair variety and the other much larger and heavier. The walk was up hill; the chairs were a drag, bouncing in back of me. We never used them. But the thought of having them was comforting. There were also walks after the event, still with the chairs; while other people went to a restaurant to eat or have coffee, we went for walks with our chairs.

The chair has become a symbol for my recovery; it is the safe and warm place in the middle of things. In real life my chair is a recliner which we bought some 20 years ago for Axel’s mom and had kept stored in the attic after she died. We had actually just given it away a month before the accident but it had never been picked up. This is the recliner in which I sat and read some 10 books in 8 weeks (we are crossing the two months milestone today!); It is where I drifted in and out of a narcotic sleep my first week at home; It is where I struggled with my Oxycontin withdrawal symptoms and curled up, miserably; it is where I sit and receive our many visitors and the gifts they bring; it is where I do my exercises for my right foot and ankle, writing the letters of the alphabet, doing heel-toe-heel-toes’s and trying to grab a towel with my toes (so far without success); it is the place from where I manage the calendar and read/write emails, sort the mail, make and answer phone calls, write thank you notes and checks. It is the center of my life.

Axel has not used the big recliner chair much. He has difficulty sitting still and focusing on one thing when there is much going on around us. He has an antique wooden chair with spindles in his office upstairs and he sometimes goes there, but I don’t think that for Axel the symbol of his time at home is a chair. He used to be able to sit for hours and read or sit at his computer. This has now been replaced with a constant level of activity; starting this, then stopping it abruptly; sitting down and within seconds getting up again. His inability to concentrate and finish something it is not a new phenomenon. We used to laugh about it. Now it worries me because the notion of a scattered brain after a plane crash is not funny anymore. The double vision is one manifestation of his concussion, but sometimes I think this inability to sit quietly in a chair is another.

We had two visitors from Newburyport yesterday, Anzie and Leslie. Anzie took Axel to the doctor to check out his puncture wound which has been slow in healing because it got infected. After that we sat by the cove in pleasant fall weather while the rest of the world was coping with 90 degree heat. Axel never joined us as he was trying to retrieve his medical records from Shaugnessy. We think he finally succeeded but it took most of the day.

At the end of the afternoon Ellie and Rick showed up with our meal (we want the recipe!); Gary Gilbert showed up a little later to finish the refrigerator exchange and Rick got literally roped in. The newest refrigerator is upstairs (much to Sita’s dismay as she doesn’t like it and she is very stubborn about it), our 14 year old fridge is in the basement and the old avocado colored one from Axel’s mom has gone with Gary the way all refrigerators eventually go. Fatou can start to bring on her huge African meals again (just kidding); we have the space now.

Andrew and Katie-Blair, reporting for night duty, had a quick dip in the cove and Andrew helped Gary with the final touches of the fridge exchange. We had a lovely dinner and left no leftovers. We were tucked into our beds and did not have to call on our nurses during the night.