Sylvia's Journal

I woke up to a glorious sunrise with brilliant pinks meeting the brilliant oranges and yellows from the trees in an explosion of color. I tried to gather evaporating dreams but they slipped through my fingers like sand. I hung on to some pieces about a community construction event, people sitting together and having a good time after hard work. This is probably another form of advertisement for the event that Diane is organizing at the Manchester Community Center on Sunday and which I will miss, unfortunately.

There was also something darker in the dream but it slipped away. This is fine. I was going to bring all the dark stuff into my EMDR session with Ruth but she just got another grandchild and the session is cancelled. I won’t be seeing her until I get back from Kenya. I’ll put all that stuff in storage for now; a closet that is already pretty full.

Yesterday we went to MGH for a consultation with a doctor who stands on the top of the health care pyramid. The orthopede from Salem hospital called him quadernary care, since tertiary has already slipped into the suburbs (Salem, Beverly, etc.). We got up early to beat the traffic and had a hard time getting out of the house in time. These things remain stressful, especially with our forgetfulness. We had to return once to retrieve a missing piece of paper. I particularly don’t do well with such stress and there were a few tears on the way. But despite the traffic, and there was much, we made it on the dot and saw the doctor for a few minutes and his assistant (intern?) for a few minutes more. He gave us some good news and some bad news. The bad news was that he considered the movement that Axel had seen last week and about which we were so excieted was pretty meaningless. The good news was that the distance that the nerve has to cover as it is reinventing itself is much shorter than we thought; the muscles that govern the extension of his wrist and fingers start fairly high up, close to the injury. He ordered another EMG in 6 weeks. If there is a positive change then the healing is progressing well and nothing needs to be done. If there is no change he will want to do an operation and help the nerve along.

Axel went to OT in his pirate outfit: hat, patch and hook. He was the only patient who showed up in style. You’d think that a Muscularskeletal Center would take full advantage of its name at Haloween (they had a few skeletons up here and there but that is part of their normal decorations). At my PT office things were a bit more playful. My therapist was dressed up as a gypsy with lots of necklaces, bangles and scarves, making for a noisy session. The secretary greeted me with wings on her back; there was a cowboy, a Red Sox player and the most adorable little cat person (3 years old) who came by each treatment room sticking out his candy basket to us patients, lying on our backs, ill prepared for ticking treating. I had no candy to give.

We were both too pooped to go out in town and see the tricker treaters go from house to house. We finished the lobster pie and went to bed early. A trip into Boston, with all the emotions attached, was a bigger deal than we thought.