Ten-Finger Exercises

Thank you all

Bill took his diary of weight, blood pressure and blood sugar in to the doctor's office today as requested on the top page of the diary. The doctor had the day off. So Bill was late to work for no reason. He made a copy and left it, but had to then go ten miles back past our house to head on down. So that is still up in the air, so to speak. I hope we will be soon too, but we have to drive to Spokane this weekend with a passenger. Too bad we can't fly. We'd have to rent a car and everything, and pay tie-down fees. Not worth all that perhaps.

The assessment questions you commented on worked quite well for me today. I went back to the house where Martha had answered social worker questions with her eyes closed. Today, in addition to her husband, brother and son, her twin sister had arrived. She had asked for some CDs, which I brought with me; Martha was asleep.

I sat down and got them talking about the decision to stop treatment. The twin had issues with it: it had happened too soon without testing to see if the previous chemo had helped. As they talked, it became clear that the patient is too ill to talk about this subject much already. They are already making decisions for her. The son can't stand her to be going through this. (Husband was out of the room for awhile.) Son said that even though his mom had said yes to another chemo, they knew she wasn't getting better and they didn't want to put her through any more. (They evidently took the decision away from her, or led her toward it.) The twin, who hadn't been there, understandably had trouble with that.

Having reached the conclusion that Martha probably wouldn't be able to answer those spiritual assessment questions, I asked her family to take a shot at it. They all agreed that she wasn't religious, except the evangelical brother who'd been evangelizing her successfully according to him. They all also agreed that she was spritual. They described it by saying how much she did for others with no consideration for doing good deeds, just responding to needs.

By then her husband had joined us, and he concurred. The three men talked about what might happen after death, and what they thought Martha thought. The twin left the room.

Anyway, I had reworded the forgiveness question to read unfinished business: people to say thank you to, or I love you, or I fogive you, etc. I trolled it through the water but didn't get any nibbles until later. Outside, the husband said that the siblings should have visited this summer while Martha was still able to enjoy them, and now they're feeling guilty.

The trees are getting bolder every day. Some of them are even yelling “Fall is here!” The birches, with their leaves like skinny feather boas, are losing color to the wind. Their long, ropey branches of seeds point which way they’re blowing. The willows are a lighter, brighter yellow at the tops of each mournful branch, like bleach blonds too long in the summer sun. By next week the gutters will be bumper high in garments shed by nearly naked trees.

I don't know why but I'm paying much more attention to the trees this fall, the particular shapes and colors, not of their leaves but of the trees themselves, and how they look as they shed. The ginkgo is my favorite. It loses all its leaves the same day. If I could train my maples and lindens, it would make raking so much easier.