The Asher Update

« Chattering, July 25, 6 PM | Main | Spinal Unit, July 30, 9 AM »

July 27, 2005

Perspectives, July 27, 11 AM

i am back in atlanta. i got here about 8 last night just in time to see asher for his bath. he had already gone to sleep, but had woken up while they were bathing him. he was pretty upset and angry. nothing seemed to calm him down much until his bath was over and he was able to go back to sleep.

gloria said, according to one of his therapists that she spoke to earlier in the day, asher was not very cooperative during his therapy sessions, nor did he want to eat much. i know that, based on the way he had been the day before, that he was probably exhausted and that, i'm sure, contributed to his overall attitude problems throughout the day. the fact that he is depressed is also a signficant factor.

i know that there are going to be good days and bad days. that is just part of it. the problem with bad days here is that there are only so many days allowed by insurance for therapy, so, if asher is uncooperative he basically loses that day in terms of the over all effectiveness of his different therapies.

i had planned to try and move furniture out of our house on saturday, because it looks like, based on continued damage that is occurring to our house (cracking plaster, etc) there probably won't be any rooms that don't need some type of repair done. also, there is just not enough room to put all of our furniture into the 2 rooms we are using now. quite frankly, i just ran out of gas yesterday and didn't see any way i could come back to atlanta and then make it back to chattanooga for a saturday moving day and still be able to function emotionally and physically. so, i have canceled all plans for trying to move our furniture for now. later, i will probably care a lot more about our possessions, but at this point they really don't seem all that important.

last night, after gloria, hadrienne and i left the hospital and went back to the apartment we got into a discussion about my updates and the tone. some comments were made that they seemed awfully cheerful, and weren't necessarily accurate with that regard, especially with regard to their not being a reflecition of how they are feeling/coping with the circumstances we are all in. so, i want to comment briefly on that, and at the same time am not exactly sure how to put it.

i guess i will start off by saying that even though i have truly been able to give thanks through so much of what has taken place over these last 2 months, it doesn't mean that i am always cheerful in the process. like right now. i don't feel very cheerful, in fact, i feel like i am sleep walking i am so tired. after our family discussion last night, i would have to say that probably sums up how gloria and hadrienne are feeling. this is the hardest thing any of us have ever gone through in our entire lives and it keeps staying really hard.

we all try and imagine what it is going to be like when asher comes home from Shepherd around the first of september. a completely different reality is going to begin to sink in at that point. that is also complicated by the fact that we probably won't have a house to move into (at least not our own) by then.

as you might imagine, there are many fears both in what the future holds for us in terms of where we will stay, but also just in being able to manage asher's care once we return home. today, we have been attending classes that are intended both as educations as well as preparation for when we bring asher home and his complete care is turned over to us. for the present, all his bodily functions will need to be taken care of by us. i knew they would be significant before we took the classes, but after just taking the morning sessions, the reality of their complexity is now really beginning to sink in.

yet, sitting here writing, as overwhelmed as i am feeling today, which goes double or triple for gloria and hadrienne, i keep thinking about something that happened yesterday when i was still in chattanooga. it happened when i went to pick up some of asher's things from the police dept that they had collected after his fall, like his camera. the detective i met with was the detective who had been on the scene after asher's fall in order to conduct an investigation surrounding the circumstances that led to this accident. when he asked me how asher was doing and i told him, he then expressed how glad he was, because when he came to the emergency room the night of asher's fall, in order to follow up with us and to check on asher's condition, he said the doctor he talked with had not presented a very hopeful outlooked for asher's survival at the time.

even though the doctors did not come out and say those exact words to us just before they finally let us see asher before taking him up to ICU, those concerns came through to us, just the same. looking at what we are faced with in the next weeks and months as we try and get our house put back together, and we also learn to care for asher in the ways that he is going to need us to, because his continued survival will depend on us in many ways, as overwhelming as it all seems, it is still very different from where we first started out with asher, literally, teetering between life and death.

bless you all abundantly for continuing to hang with us. we all continue to be very thankful for you.

letting another strong dose of reality sink in,

andy mendonsa

| By Andy Mendonsa | 11:29 AM

Trackback Pings

TrackBack URL for this entry:
http://chattablogs.com/mt/mt-tb.cgi/24025

Listed below are links to weblogs that reference Perspectives, July 27, 11 AM:

Comments

Posted by: grace at July 27, 2005 05:14 PM

Posted by: Catherine at July 27, 2005 05:48 PM

Posted by: Terry Danzig at July 28, 2005 06:12 PM

Posted by: elizabeth miller at July 28, 2005 08:37 PM

Posted by: Daphne at July 28, 2005 09:43 PM

Posted by: Lisa at July 29, 2005 07:06 AM

Email "Perspectives, July 27, 11 AM" to a Friend