Sylvia's Journal

I woke up this morning with shards of vivid dreams. They were complete enough that I was able to recreate at least part of their story. I started my effort to record my post-crash dreams late August. Now, when I read back through my dreams since then I am struck with the clarity of the themes. I highlighted them in yellow. There is much about wanting to move faster than I do; much about going out and coming back and much fear about missing out on things/company and being left behind. Those are the major themes, now standing out in bright yellow. Some of these themes are not new; they go way back; some of them are directly related to our current incapacitated state and recent experiences. There is a theme about Paris which puzzles me. I seem to visit that city a lot in my dreams. Suffice to say that the tension between being out in the world and being at home in our very small world continues to play itself out in my dreams. I want to run but I can’t. I want to be where the others are but they don’t wait and go on without me. By the same account I do seem to be a lot in a wonderful place. In my dreams it might be Paris but in real life it is Lobster Cove of course.

But I am succeeding in participating more in the world. When I filled in my timesheet on Friday for the last two weeks I noticed that I had worked about 50% of the time. I am trying to get back to about 75% by the end of the month. I have delivered one piece of work, participated in a few meetings by phone and trying to get some other things finished early next week. That I deliver so much more slowly than I used to before the crash probably explains the recurrent dreams about being clumsy in getting out of cars, planes and trains and missing connections or company leaving without me. I have always set high (which includes fast) standards for myself and these same standards still rule.

Yesterday Axel and I discovered that we cannot replicate shopping experiences from our pre-crash days. Walking through long isles and standing for long periods of time is hard and uncomfortable. We found this out the hard way when we foolishly decided to drive to IKEA and shop for a particular bookcase for our living room. We had gone there a few years ago and had enjoyed the experience. Not only was it not an enjoyable experience this time, we came back pretty much empty handed as they did not have what we wanted in stock and we had missed out on a glorious sunny and crisp fall day. We should have gone apple picking.

My MSH colleague Elke and her partner Rhonda and their 3-year old Eleanor came to see us and brought a delightful dinner. We were honored that they squeezed in a visit to us as they prepare their departure in a few days for Ethiopia for a month-long stay. They had not seen Axel since he left the ICU at UMMC so the change was of course remarkable. We had lots of catching up to do. After they left I went to bed while Axel stayed up into the wee hours watching the Red Sox game.