Sylvia's Journal

Tessa arrived home just in time for dinner which consisted of a perfect winter soup (potatoes, garbanzos, spinach and garlic) that Axel had made for us. She arrived about twelve hours after she left her home in Canada. After having driven that stretch of the Mass Pike and its extension back and forth a few times, she doesn’t think much about driving it in between snow storms. We are grateful that she made it home safely. After our snow storm adventure last week, so close to home, we hate to think of making a trip that actually does take about 10 hours under the best of conditions.

Axel immediately showed Tessa his no-longer-limp wrist and patted his chest as if he needed to show her that the plastic cast was off. Show off! But we are of course intensely happy about all that progress. Now we are waiting for the fingers to move. He is getting a new contraption from his occupational therapist. It will have dials and stuff. I can’t wait to see it.

Monday was cold and, as a workday, even more intense than the previous intense workday, despite a wonderful and long overdue massage from Abi. Its effect got lost quickly: three telephone meetings and a doctor’s visit. Somewhere in there was also a PT appointment but I forgot it as I lost track of time preparing for my trip to New York. At the time I was asked to go to New York it seemed a good idea and sufficiently far away that I could handle the preparations. But now that it is nearby, the preparations loom are obscuring the entirely view. I don’t know the people and I am still guessing a bit about what they want frome me. Yet they expect a presentation. In between the telephone meetings and health-related appointments there was not enough quiet time to think through what I should be presenting. It will have to be done today and tonight, in my hotel room in New York City.

I went to see the nurse practitioner about my continuing shoulder pains and the various nascent and full fledged tendoniteses or bursitis across the length of my body’s right side. She prescribed anti-inflammatory pills and referred me to a shoulder orthopedist, adding yet another appointment to the already full appointment book. He will probably order the MRI that I never had. It was cancelled in the hospital the morning that I moved my right arm for the first time and thereby indicated that my rotator cuff was not damaged. The physical therapist believes that I have a rotator cuff tendinitis and predicts a slow healing process. But I have not seen much progress after three months of physical therapy. I need to know what really happened to/in my shoulder.

The missing of my PT appointment hit me hard. Partially because I also missed last Thursday – because of the storm – and I will miss the next two days because of my trip to New York. But it hit me even harder because it was an indication of my not being able to hold as many balls in the air as I used to. This was one more instance of forgetfulness that I have a hard time accepting. I could kick myself. Axel is better at accepting these things than I am. He reminded me that it was only the first time that I missed an appointment. But I am less lenient on myself. I cried when I went to sleep because I could not stop my brain from finding other things, however small, that I had forgotten to do. Axel held me and ordered me to sleep. He usually doesn’t go to sleep as early as I do but last night he did and I was utterly grateful for his presence. Somewhere in a corner of my brain the thought emerged that he could have been killed back in July, and that he would not have been there last night for me and that it would have been my fault. It was one of those ugly ‘could have-would have-should have’ thoughts. But I hit that one back like a whack-a-mole.