December 27, 1998 - January 2, 1999

December 27, 1998 - January 2, 1999

Sunday, December 27	See the Redbook entry for this date.
Monday, December 28 Don was moved from Santa Rosa Memorial Hospital to Kentfield Rehabilitation Hospital this afternoon. Dr. Remen called me at work about 5:00 PM, saying that the transfer was complete. I wanted to leave immediately and go and be with him, but I didn't know exactly where the hospital was, and the evening, already growing dark, was exceptionally foggy. I conforted myself knowing that Sara and Annie had escorted the ambulance. I believed they would reassure him and stay with him if necessary. Two things happened this day that would later prove crucial. First, Jnani Chapman and Dr. Rachel Remen, probably realizing that they were on shakey legal ground with their prior claim of holding medical power of attorney, executed a second power of attorney form. Despite my vociferous objection to being excluded from this process that last time, I was not informed of the renewed power. I never was. I had to find out later the hard way. Second, I was mistaken in assuming that someone would stay with him that night. No one did. Don did not know where he was, why he was in a different place, and why his bed was surrounded by a mesh "cage." He remembers thinking he had been kidnapped, and that if he could just get to his bike, he could get away. Later that evening, after several failed attempts to hail someone passing in the corridor, he got out of the mesh tenting surrounding his bed, walked to the bathroom, and climbed up onto the toilet. His intent was to escape out the bathroom window. He slipped and fell off, fortunately failing to make good his escape and yet avoiding serious injury. It certainly got the staff's attention. From this episode, he got a reputation at Kentfield for being "impulsive," a behavior pattern typical of right-hemisphere injuries. He was constrained by belts whenever he was in his wheelchair, and he was not left alone in bed without the tent being zippered shut with the tabs of the zippers positioned where he could not reach them. He was not allowed to urinate or defecate without someone watching him. It became the ultimate in isolation without privacy. I should have braved the fog. Having someone to hold onto would have made quite a difference in his emotional state. And as far as the two witnesses to the new power of attorney, I cannot guess what lop-sided reasoning convinced them that what they were doing was legal. He remembers almost nothing of his stay in Santa Rosa, and nothing of that first week in Kentfield except his escape attempt. He was clearly still too drugged or injured to make an informed judgement, and cannot be said to have exercised consent.
Tuesday, December 29
Wednesday, December 30	See the Redbook entry for this date.
Thursday, December 31 I arrived in the evening to spend New Year's Eve with Don. This was the first time I had seen the mesh "tent" that surrounds his bed, and I was horrified. The bid was also rigged with an alarm that would go off, presumably whenever it detected that he had left the bed, but in fact it would go off if he just shifted his weight. That evening, after his other visitors had left, he invited me to climb into the bed with him. This was an oddly intimate thing for him to ask, and I did not understand then his need for human contact. Instead, the information I had gleaned from the web came back to haunt me. Right temporal-parietal injuries could lead to changes in sexual behavior. Is that what I was seeing? Should I be alarmed? Should I mention it to his doctor? He took my hand and brought it to his lips and kissed it, as he had done twice before in Santa Rosa. "It probably tastes like an orange," I said, laughing. Without a word, he began to slowly suck my fingers. Again, I was alarmed, but at the same time, it had a powerful, shocking effect. I realized that he was still an intact human being, and that wholeness includes his sexuality. Awkward though it was, there in the hospital, surrounded by alarms, chatting nurses, dismayed cries from other patients, and the indignity of his own confined bed, he was reestablishing the link between us, reaffirming that he still is who he is.
Friday, January 1 I spend the night at Don's place in Bolinas, in his bed. There were still the remnants of the last day he had spent there: a cold pack for his head, the Friday afternoon Examiner beside his futon, opened (of course) to the comics. I thought it might cheer him to see pictures of his own place, so I took a couple of shots with my electronic camera and showed them to him when I got to Kentfield. He didn't take much interest in them. Shankari and I had talked about his bills the night before, and I brought his phone bill and checkbook with me. After discussing the bill with him, I wrote out the amount and the payee, and then handed the check over to him to sign. His signature was a scrawl, the D and F barely legible. "Well," I said, "I suppose that's good enough for the bank to make out." "It's as good as it ever gets," he said. "I used to sign all the checks for an entire payroll." "All originals? You signed over and over?" "Yeah. It ruined my signature. It's never recovered." He thanked me for bringing in the phone bill. Just paying it made him feel better, like he was in control for a little while. Silently, I thought it a major triumph that he was able to handle the pen, find the correct line on the check, and write anything at all, no matter how scrawled. A week ago, Katherine had put a pen in his hand and he didn't seem to know what to do with it. Clearly, his fine motor skills were coming back. We talked about other financial matters - in particular, what to do about his car payments and credit card bills. I suggested to him that I could probably consilidate some of his credit cards into a single loan at a much more favorable interest rate. He liked that idea, and I said I would look into it. It seemed a good idea to raise the issue with him first, get his permission to proceed, then double-check a week later to make sure he remembered discussing it. Although his ability to separate what was happening today from what had happned the day before was beginning to clear up, he still had considerable difficulty separating today from tomorrow or next week. Put another way, things which he actually experienced seemed to be making it into long-term memory, but things that were merely plans or promises floated in this hazy, perpetual "Now" that was always just about to happen. I didn't want to make any financial plans until this tendency cleared up. I wouldn't feel I truly had his consent otherwise.	See the Redbook entry for this date.
Saturday, January 2	See the Redbook entry for this date.

December 1998 / January 1999

© 2000 Louis Flint Ceci / ceci@best.com