Wednesday, December 17, 2008

A case of the blahs

No snow yet. Watching the local news it seems like it is happening everywhere but in Seattle.

Either I am getting a sinus infection from rooming with a smoker, or I am catching the bug that is going around. On top of being stoned in general from all the pain killers my head feels like it is underwater from the sniffles. It was almost eleven before I had my bandages changed and I got out of bed.

On top of his smoking and his leaving his walker in my way, my new roommate does not close the bathroom door when he goes to the bathroom, nor does he wash his hands. If I don't tell him to do it he forgets. I am too young to babysit someone twice my age. I'm sorry if he's an "old timer" as one of the nurses said, but come on! I implore my friends if I ever get that old please shoot me in the back of the head. Having been here this past year I can move getting old to the top of my list of fears. A list of my "Top 5 Fears" would look like this:
  1. Being homeless
  2. Prison
  3. Getting old
  4. Bees
  5. tie Terrorism/Nuclear War
It was a pretty mellow day in therapy. It was Brigit's last day. She gave me a hug and hopefully we will keep in touch. She and Jonna are going to be working at the same place near South Lake Union. Sounds like a pretty sweet place but I am either too young or too poor to go there.

So I worked with Arthur again on stretching and standing. Arthur is very talkative, friendly and "out and proud." The time flew by as we talked about living on Capitol Hill and Seattle in general. We also talked about our relationships with our families. He is four years older than me so other than sexual orientation we have a lot in common. He told me how his father, his whole family maybe, disowned him when he came out, but now that his parents are in their 70s they are reaching out. Though I'm not gay, I had a similar story. I told him how, through disinterest on my father's part, I had not seen him since 1985. The last time I spoke to him was 1991, and it didn't go well. Recently I found out that my father died in 1999. No one ever told me. I don't know if anyone ever tried. I think he is buried in Olympia in a joint plot with some woman I never heard of. So my advice to Arthur, or anyone, is if the door is open, you better go in because someday it will really be closed forever.

Anyway. I stood in the parallel bars once for about two minutes. My legs were fine but my shoulders gave out. The left leg felt really stable, but I still can't get my left heal down. I stood in the standing frame for a little over seven minutes. We worked for a total of 50 minutes. I wish we could just work off the clock until we've exhausted everything I can do, but they are very short handed and even though it was 4:00 p.m., Arthur still had a few patients to see.

Right now I am watching Judge Judy and contemplating nuking some left over Chinese. More later, maybe.

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