March 7, 1999 - March 13, 1999

Sunday, March 7 We spent almost the entire morning lounging in bed. After a breakfast of oatmeal, I showed Don how to play Set, one of the visual perception games Dr. Palequin had recommended. We both did pretty well using just the short deck, which requires you to keep track of only three features on each card. We both found the full deck, with four features to track on each card, much harder. Two friends of Shankari's stopped by while we were in the middle of puzzling this out, so we spent another half an hour explaining the game to them. Don spotted a "set" in twelve cards that I was certain contained no sets at all. Don found the game more challenging than fun, but still worth playing. Shankari's friends left, and as we were saying good-bye to them on the back porch, we noticed what a fine day it was and decided to go for a hike. Before we left, Shankari's cousin Jimmy came by and "took over the watch" as we headed out. Don said Jimmy might rent the room Annie was vacating. We went out to Palomarin and walked nearly to the coast, well past Bass Lake. There is a lake there, just before you take the turn-off to the coast, that seems to hang on the very edge of the world with nothing but a tiny notch in the hills to keep it from pouring into the Pacific. It is a magical spot. Unlike our first hike here, we turned around and headed back to the car well before dark. However, I remembered that it was on that hike more than a year ago, as we walked the sometimes treacherous trail in the gathering dark, that I first felt just how close Don and I were becoming. He told me how much he trusted me, and I felt honored and elated by his honesty and intimacy. We had a delicious but excessive dinner at The Old Swiss House in Olema. Mine was a little too rich, and Don's was a little too much. Then we returned to the house in Bolinas, where I "studied" my Java "homework" while Don worked on his computer. Although I had meant to do so all day, I never did call Brian to find out why Don could not read his e-mail. Against my better judgment, Don talked me into making an early start Monday morning so he could go into the office before his occupational therapy session. I told him I really hated getting up at some God-forsaken hour of the morning. "There are no truly God-forsaken hours," Don said.
Monday, March 8 We got up at 7:30 AM (ick! ick!), stopped by the Bolinas Bakery, and made it into DMK by 9:30. There, Don downloaded all the mail that had accumulated on DMK's mail server for him and forwarded it to his Best Internet account. He also tracked down and mailed the Excel spreadsheet that he used to track the progress of the projects he worked on at DMK. His hope is that he can use it to get a grasp of what he might do when he returns to work. His assessment of when that will be seems much more realistic this month than it was during his first visit last month. I still had to pressure him to leave in order to get to his therapy on time. On the way there, he commented on how easy it still is for him to get confused. The files and folders weren't in the same order that he had left them, and the interface to Netscape Navigator had changed as well. To further disorient him, the mouse was sticking, so when he moved the mouse on the pad, the cursor wouldn't always move on the screen. He relies on that movement to draw his eye and help him focus on the part of the user interface that needs his attention. He didn't realize the mouse was sticking, and got worried that his visual field cut had made the cursor "disappear." He was also getting help from one of his officemates while he was trying to perform the e-mail tasks, and trying to process her instructions and understand the new interface at the same time made him feel "shakey." On the plus side, he did complete two of the tasks he set out to accomplish on this trip to the office. The third, to get a printout of his Netscape bookmarks, slipped his mind. "Maybe it was too many things," I said. "Maybe you should keep a list of what you want to do when you go into the office. Keep it short, stick to it." While Don was at OT, I tried to get ahold of Dr. Doherty's office assistant, Phyllis, but she was out of the office for most of the time I was there, and when she returned, she said she didn't have time to look at the Field Test applet. She did remember the URL, though, and said she'd pass it on to Dr. Doherty. I hope the work I've done on it proves to be generally useful. After OT, it was time for lunch, which we had at the Half Day Cafe again. Don described the tests David, his occupational therapist, had given him that morning. They were very much like the tests Dr. Pelequin had given him when he was a patient at Kentfield, but this time he felt confident that he had done much better. "You are healing," I said. "You will continue to get better." After lunch, we had planned on going directly to Inverness for Don's counseling session with Virginia, but on the way out of the parking lot, Don remembered that he had forgotten to put the overnight bag with his clothes in the car. "Well," I said, "we have plenty of time. We can easily go back to Bolinas and pick it up." "You don't mind?" he said. "Not at all," I said, "though I will take this opportunity to point out that we didn't need to get up at 7:30 this morning. I never pass up a chance to say 'I told you so.'" We stopped by the house, and though I thought we were just going to pick up the bag and go, I soon heard Don playing back the messages on his machine. I took the time to chat with Shankari. She said Jimmy would probably not be moving in, which I said was disappointing, since he seemed such a nice chap and "easy on the eyes." She then told me he was forty-eight years old - my age. I was astonished. Don came down with the overnight bag, then started looking for a box of articles he wanted to sort. He had wanted to bring it along this morning, but then decided against it. "Too many things," he said. Now, he couldn't find the box. "You were in the dining room when you decided to leave it behind," I said. "You should start looking there." He went into the dining room, but instead of bringing out the box of articles, he came out holding a large mug of tea. "Where do you think you're going with that?" I said. "I don't want tea spilling all over my car." "I'll hold it in my crotch," he said. Somewhat impatiently, I allowed the mug to come along. And the box of articles. I was beginning to feel like he was taking advantage of my good nature, or that I was being too much of a push-over. Why does he have to keep piling one task on top of another? We proceeded to Inverness for Don's counseling session with Virginia. We were silent most of the way, partly because I was in a cross mood. Virginia's home is up a narrow, winding road above the Olema Valley. The rain was ferocious and the wind had picked up. The final stretch up her driveway was so rough that my Caravan scraped bottom several times. Virginia was startled when we knocked on her door. We were nearly an hour early. She was just about to go into town to pick up her son. Rather than inviting us in, though, she had us wait outside on the porch in the rain. Then she came out and insisted we go back down into town and wait there until it was time for the appointment. I was puzzled by this behavior, especially considering the weather and the difficulty of the road, but Viginia seemed genuinely distressed by the notion of our waiting in her house while she was gone. We went back out into the pounding rain and got back into the car. "Are all your friends crazy?" I asked Don. He smiled, but didn't answer. We drove into Pt. Reyes Station to pass the time in a local coffeehouse. The one we picked had a Mexican motif, and its tin roof amplified the sound of the storm until it sounded like a hurricane. I went to the bathroom, and when I got back, Don was heading for the phone. He seemed to be avoiding my gaze, which I thought a little odd. A little while later, he asked me for my car keys. When he returned from the car, he was very upset. He couldn't find his wallet. He had called the Half Day Cafe where we'd had lunch and they hadn't found it. He had searched my car and still not found it. "It's not like I haven't ever left my wallet somewhere before," he said, "but it's one more thing that makes me feel incompetent. I feel like there's this chaos all around me and any minute I might fall into it." I tried to reassure him and held his hand, but he was badly shaken. After a few minutes, he said, "I know where it is. It's in my bedroom. I took it with me into the house to make a phone call. I was going to order some supplements and use the credit card to pay for them. That's where it is. It's in my bedroom." "Too many things at once," I said. "Plus, I was being a jerk about the tea." "No, you weren't," he said, but I couldn't help but think about what he had said earlier that morning, about too much input from too many sources. That's why it's important for people not to interrupt him while he's trying to figure something out, and not to offer him too many clues or directions at once. The session with Virginia went well, and she tested his visual field cut with a simple exercise. She said she noticed that his ability to see movement improved as the exercise progressed. She showed me how to do it and said it should help the nerves "start firing again." It's something Don can do himself if there's no one there to do it with him. We went back to Bolinas one more time to pick up the wallet - which was, indeed, just where Don remembered putting it - and then went on to Jnani's house. I was just going to drop Don off, but I was feeling a little stressed out, so I went in with him. It is a surprisingly small studio apartment, the shelves filled with books, knick-knacks, icons, and totems. It is difficult for me to imagine one person living in such a cramped space, let alone two - and for the next two days, three. Maha made us a nice dinner, and while it was cooking, Jnani called to say she was leaving work late. "It's just me and the boys here," Maha said, then explained that "the boys" meant Don and me. A few moments later, Jnani called again to say she wasn't coming directly home after all, but going to a client's. Almost immediately after hanging up, she called a third time to have Maha look up some information for her. The dinner was vegan but filling and much kinder on my stomach than the rich fare at the Old Swiss House. When I left, Don and Maha were busy planning their transportation needs to and from the meeting with Gurudev on Tuesday and to and from Don's various therapies on Wednesday. It bothers me that so much of his time is spent revising his schedule and arranging transportation. I remember the conversation Jnani and I had at Kentfield, when I first volunteered to be Don's "Monday man." I wish the rest of his schedule were as reliable and orderly as his Mondays seem to be.	Don at His Desk
Tuesday, March 9
Wednesday, March 10
Thursday, March 11
Friday, March 12
Saturday, March 13 I arrived around 4:00 in the afternoon, having taken the day off from Glyphic in order to attend to rental business in Sacramento. Taking the day off has tremendously improved my spirits, as did attending the first Baylands FrontRunner brunch this morning. I discussed domestic partnership with DJ at the brunch. Although it is only a half-measure, it would make a few things easier. However, in past conversations, Don has been at best luke-warm about it. It was great spending time with Don this afternoon, instead of arriving after nightfall. I think we've finally figured out how to use Outlook to download mail. We specified the steps and Don went through them twice, following his notes. Since it's working, I will pass on installing the Outlook Express update Silvain gave me. Don can return the CD-ROM when he goes in to work next Friday. That evening, I read Don the first third of Dylan Thomas's Under Milk Wood, one of my all-time favorite plays. I read the dream sequence at the beginning, and the early morning section, up to Polly Garter's line, "Ain't life a terrible thing, thank God." Amen.