Sylvia's Journal

Today’s date cannot be typed in like all the other days without thinking about New York. It’s a loaded date, forever associated with doom and gloom against the background of a radiant blue fall sky. Today at Lobster Cove it is a dreary, overcast and humid day which may explain why every muscle aches. In the afternoon Sita and Jim will drive us into Boston to visit Joan and Morsi for dinner. We will be in a high rise. Funny I picked this day of all days.

Yesterday I graduated to walking with one crutch, with doctor’s orders to proceed to full weight bearing on my big black moon boot. The physical therapist predicts I will be off crutches very soon. She worked on desensitizing my right foot by alternating hot and cold footbaths. I am to do this daily. The feeling has started to come back in my right heel; very slowly just a few millimeters but I notice the difference. My right toes are still tingling and the sole of my foot is still without feeling. I slept last night without the cardboard box under the sheets to see whether my right foot could handle the constant stimulation of sheets and blankets. I think I’ll put it back in its box tonight. It gives a whole new meaning to ‘thinking out of the box.’ For now I prefer thinking ‘inside the box’ and shielding the poor thing from all this stimulation.

I spent yesterday morning reading all the news I could find on the internet about a small single engine plane that went down at Mansfield airport south of Boston with four men. The pilot and co-pilot died; the two people in the back survived and are now in the ICU of two of Boston’s hospitals. I wrote each a long letter. These two men have just embarked on this long journey that we know so well now. We thought about their friends and family being alerted, the anxiety and crying, the pain, the bills, etc. I wrote each about Caringbridge and offered my support. But their journey will be very different. I cannot begin to imagine what it is like to survive when you know others died. I am thinking about them a lot.

Axel and I each visited our physical therapists and worked on recovery and extending our reach. We also had our weekly massages, expertly delivered by Abigail Axelrod who spends so much time with us that she is practically part of the family. Sita also lined up for a massage, badly needed after her strenuous 3 days of working in New York.

A good chunk of my day yesterday was spent on administration, sorting out bills and co-payments, studying the BCBS website and lining up a new dentist. I am also responding to emails from work and preparing myself for my first very modest assignment which is a ‘pre-mortem’ of a proposal we submitted to the Gates Foundation to strengthen senior health leadership in several East African countries. My increased energy and mobility combine to have something close to normal life visible on the not-too-distant horizon.

Our meal was brought by Carolyn Britt from Quaker Meeting who had cooked us a delicious vegetarian pasta dish and brought us some tomatoes from her garden; Katy-Blair had stopped by earlier to give us a batch of mussels left over from her Italian feast over the weekend. All this combined into a wonderful meal. After dinner Axel and Sita went to drop off a book at a friend’s house while I tried for the first time to put away dishes and clean up. For this I had to put my boot on and use my one crutch. It took forever but I managed OK accompanied by Tom Ashbrook chatting with Garisson Keilor on the radio.