Sylvia's Journal

Not much to add to Joe’s narrative. He gave a faithful account of the day. Let me fill in the part between returning from Salem and this morning of the last day of July. A thousand whiplashes is what I am feeling this morning. Some days my body isn’t so prominent in my mind but this morning every movement I make hurts, no sharp pains, but sore sore sore everywhere.

We have so many different dishes in the refrigerator that we could have a daily menu offering many choices. I dined on Diane’s vichyssoise, Carol’s beans and fresh beets from Mary that Sook cooked. Joe had the pesto and pasta and Sita, Steve and Tessa are on another schedule. I don’t know when they eat or sleep. Sita came back with a car load of stuff which is being stuffed into the studio.

Thanks Caty for the zoethout tea and the heads up about the Dutch company. With my frequent flights through Schiphol I have managed to handcarry such items throughout the years.

Thanks for those of you who suggested workplaces for Steve and Jim, all sounds promising and they’ll follow up with you. Steve, being Canadian, has to sort out work permit issues we just realized, but Jim should be OK.

Today Sita and I are going on a road trip to Worcester. I am not looking forward to this, especially since we have to get on the road at rush hour for the Manchester-Turnpike stretch early morning. Thanks Bob Buxbaum for his suggestion of an abdominal binder. It is a very (very) watered down version of the plastic contraception that keeps Joand and Axel steady. It made the road trip to Salem more comfortable and will do the same today to Worcester.

I wll be seeing the orthopedic surgeon and the trauma folks at the surgical center. I hope they will open the cast and explore why I am having these pains in my heel. There is also an X-ray to be made of my right chest to check on the ribs and continuing pains there. Sita is going to get all our X-rays and scans and what not so that we can move our care to local doctors, so this should be the last of our trips to Worcester.

Arne from the flight center came over and helped me fill in the NTSB forms, all 9 pages of them, which included things like where the center of gravity was, what the pressure altitude was and annual inspections of the plane. Another mishap at the flight center (this one only serious for the plane, not the pilot) meant that they are two planes short after an accident-free existence for the longest time. Thanks Arne for helping me through this chore. We also talked about flying again and that I will need another checkride with an instructor before I am let loose again. Of course, I would not want it any other way.

Dear ones, near and far, thanks again for the outpouring of love and support. As you can read from our journal we are absorbing as much as we can for use right now and putting the rest in storage. Joe is sitting down with the girls to begin charting the next few months and moving us from being trauma victims to being a project for our daughters and sons-in-law. Caring, compassion and gushing love is always good but as a project we will need to be managed, a different set of skills, which requires planning, organizing, implementing and of course monitoring progress and evaluating what works and what is not. Thanks Joe for your guidance. I think MSH published a book about this, by the way!