Syncopated Rhythm

 "Are you getting into a daily rhythm?" our friend Lisa asked recently.

his barber needs a few lessons

"Yes," I replied. "Well, it's a sort of a syncopated rhythm.

Which pretty much sums up how our lives are structured these days. On weekdays, I rise at 6 am, eat my dreaded oatmeal, read the paper online, prepare Mr.'s pills, and head up to work. I put in a couple of hours, then come down, get him up, breakfasted and toileted (that was a verb I never used in the beforetimes), and head back up to put in a few more hours before lunch and/or PT/OT.

Serena (his nurse), Meghann (his PT guru), and Cynthia (his OT extraordinare) come throughout the week at various times. They are all most excellent, and I hang out nearby while they put him through his paces. 

Sometimes I'm needed to assist or find a bit of paraphernalia that Mr. can use during his exercises. The other day, a toy car came to the rescue when he was working on his hand movements at the kitchen table. And Meghann covets a board I was using for my jigsaw puzzles (a piece of the kitchen table from my childhood). It has a smooth but not overly-polished surface, so limbs can glide gently across it.

I'm learning a lot about post-stroke recovery. Like not all movement is good movement. (Involuntary twitches don't count.) Movements have to be purposeful and correct, otherwise, you risk training them improperly, and certain muscles will take over for the slacker muscles that aren't doing their job.

And guess what? The muscles aren't weak at all, they just aren't talking to the brain. That's what PT and OT work on, finding new channels to a damaged noggin. 

So, that's where we are. Progress is being made, but patience and perseverance continue to be the goals here.

The wheelchair ramp is coming in the next few weeks, which will give us a little freedom to roam about the neighborhood. We won't be doing much in the car until he masters standing and transferring, but that's for another day.

One day at a time, please.

The Color of Noise

 "I got you a sound machine to help you sleep," I told Mr. Ginley the other day.

attribution below

"Did it come from Miami?" he asked. And chuckled quietly in the endearing manner he's adopted in the aftertimes.

"No, I'm pretty sure it came from China."

And so the other night, we plugged in the new white noise machine from Amazon to see what we could hear. There are 40 sounds, and white noise is just one of them. There's pink noise and brown noise and combinations of all the colors of noise, plus many other sounds besides.

The first night, I turned on a crackling fire. That one was a hit, right off the bat. Bam, out like a light.

The following morning, he drowsily requested another selection. I found train sounds, and soon he was drifting back to sleep.

We weren't so lucky that night, however. I was certain that the sound of crickets would be a soothing way to lull him to sleep. I even set the stage for him, asking him to imagine summertime with the windows open and fireflies and suchlike. 

Apparently, somewhere in the soliloquy, the crickets were joined by a stream, and that brought associations that could only be understood in Mr. Ginley's imagination. He was awake until the crickets cease cricking.

So insects came off the list.

"Running water is always soothing," I ventured the following night. Let's try the rainy noise. And if doesn't work, please let me know and I'll try something else or I'll at least turn off the machine."

Checking in the next morning, I learned that the dripping of the rain reminded him of the time he and his Dad tried to fix the roof with the wrong nails. Not so restful. 

We tried a little soft music next, but this time, I turned the sound down low. And last night, we tried one of the color noises, I don't remember which one.

"I fell asleep when it ended," he said both times. 

So, here we are. Although he did, indeed, fall asleep eventually, he was staring into the dark for an hour before drifting off to dreamland, which does not feel like a success.

What's left in the Top 40 noise list? We have several different options, including fans, thunderstorms, waves, wind, frogs, and piano tunes.

And birds.

I'll be sure and ask him if he's seen the Alfred Hitchcock movie before I try that one.

Photo attribution: NASA/GRC/Paul Riedel, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

In Search of Fortitude

The other day, Mr. Ginley looked at me with the soulful look that has intensified since the beforetimes and asked, "Do you think I'm a burden to you?"

I wanna be her (Fortezza, aka Fortitude)*

It was a gut punch.

"No," I replied. "You're not a burden, but your body is a real pain in the ass to both of us."

Mr. tells me I'm an angel, but I sure don't feel like one. Every day is like finals week in school and I'm missing some of the most important answers.

How many times have I been told to be careful because I could hurt my back? Guess who hurt her back?

Stroky McStrokerson (again, his moniker, lest you think I'm a total beast) has assured me I'm doing a fine job. But here I am, juggling my day job, seeing to his needs, observing his PT and OT sessions, and trying not to feel like I'm neglecting any of these while trying to squeeze out a little me time.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not looking for sympathy here, y'all have been very supportive, and I appreciate that more than I can say. I would have been hard pressed to get through this without the help of family and friends who've stepped up.

And yet...

What I need is to restore something inside myself that's gone AWOL since this whole terrible odyssey began. I was never much for organized religion, but I did have my own quirky spiritual beliefs, a sense that somehow, all would be right with the universe. But I'm having trouble recapturing that.

I think about my Mom, Grandma, and the other caregivers I've known. I'm sure they had moments when they questioned their own beliefs, but they seemed so together. Maybe it was just a brave face they wore around others. Or maybe they truly did have some measure of faith that let them accept, keep calm, and carry on.

On the bright side, there is progress with Mr. Ginley. He's slowly regaining the movement of his left side, and he's getting some amazing instruction from the PT and OT folks, who are impressed with his desire to get better. 

I think my job is to stay laser focused on this, that there's much hope for recovery. 

Faith and hope. Virtues.

Me being me, I just had to look up the seven virtues. Turns out, there are several sets of virtues, but the Christian ones are:

• Faith
• Hope
• Love/Charity
• Prudence
• Justice
• Fortitude
• Temperance 

Well, at least I'm not drinking every night. That's something, right?

P.S. Where's "patience" on this list? How many times did Mom say it was a virtue? 

*Photo attribution: Sandro Botticelli, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons