Thursday & Villanelle
Quick update -- and another belated one. I ended that last post on a bummer and haven't been near a working computer in two days, so here's the story. After a pretty rough Tuesday (more pain med switch-ups), Dan was back in action on Wednesday and today. So now the staff at NIH has been filling up his itinerary with physical therapy, occupational therapy, relaxtion therapy, etc.
And if you thought the Super NIH Fork 2600 was an exaggeration, you should see the Inspector Gadget meets The Thirty-Six Dollar Man stuff they gave him yesterday. One neat toy (which must have cost the government $4k to make) is a retractable metal arm with two compressing suction cups on the end. The sort of thing you might find in Sharper Image: a monogrammed golf ball retriever. Anyway, it's pretty fun and I'll get a real picture to prove it.
"Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light."
About seven years ago, Dan and I started trading that quote as an encouraging mantra when we went to audition for things at Witt. The sort of pretentious-slogan/casual-allusion you might expect from two bookish theatre geeks. After years of use, the quote gradually boiled down to a simple "rage, rage" coupled with one of those knuckle-knocking handshakes the kids are into these days. So this was our pre-audition, pre-performance, post-show gesture and over the past two weeks, no matter how awake Dan has or hasn't been, the reflexive knuckle-quotey-thingy has stayed in tact. That's a really random anecdote, but not so random when you go back to the whole Dylan Thomas villanelle.
In other news, Dan's parents have taken to sleeping in their own room at The Lodge instead of building pillow forts in the Day Room at NIH, nightly. Dan's family will be around until next Wednesday at which point Dan will most likely be out of the hospital. The next question (now that the nausea, diet, painkiller questions have been figured out) is: how much physical therapy will Dan need once he's on his feet? The major new affliction has been a weakness in the left (dominant) hand -- which doesn't prevent driving, but does slow down typing. He's been answering some e-mails using his non-dominant right hand and the forefinger of his left. I think we call all agree that Dan's more prolific and erudite with 60% of his digits working than most people are with 100%. But he'll still need some ongoing PT to get lefty back in gear.
Other than that -- I should tell you that tomorrow will most likely be my final post here at DansTumors. Dan's eager to get back to work giving you the whole story, sans drawing. But instead of cheap stick figures, he's got ... New MRI's! Some wild before and after shots of what they did two Mondays ago. If you're lucky and ask real nice, the man might even show you his Terminator 2 surgical staples or something.
-->KM
And if you thought the Super NIH Fork 2600 was an exaggeration, you should see the Inspector Gadget meets The Thirty-Six Dollar Man stuff they gave him yesterday. One neat toy (which must have cost the government $4k to make) is a retractable metal arm with two compressing suction cups on the end. The sort of thing you might find in Sharper Image: a monogrammed golf ball retriever. Anyway, it's pretty fun and I'll get a real picture to prove it.
"Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light."
About seven years ago, Dan and I started trading that quote as an encouraging mantra when we went to audition for things at Witt. The sort of pretentious-slogan/casual-allusion you might expect from two bookish theatre geeks. After years of use, the quote gradually boiled down to a simple "rage, rage" coupled with one of those knuckle-knocking handshakes the kids are into these days. So this was our pre-audition, pre-performance, post-show gesture and over the past two weeks, no matter how awake Dan has or hasn't been, the reflexive knuckle-quotey-thingy has stayed in tact. That's a really random anecdote, but not so random when you go back to the whole Dylan Thomas villanelle.
In other news, Dan's parents have taken to sleeping in their own room at The Lodge instead of building pillow forts in the Day Room at NIH, nightly. Dan's family will be around until next Wednesday at which point Dan will most likely be out of the hospital. The next question (now that the nausea, diet, painkiller questions have been figured out) is: how much physical therapy will Dan need once he's on his feet? The major new affliction has been a weakness in the left (dominant) hand -- which doesn't prevent driving, but does slow down typing. He's been answering some e-mails using his non-dominant right hand and the forefinger of his left. I think we call all agree that Dan's more prolific and erudite with 60% of his digits working than most people are with 100%. But he'll still need some ongoing PT to get lefty back in gear.
Other than that -- I should tell you that tomorrow will most likely be my final post here at DansTumors. Dan's eager to get back to work giving you the whole story, sans drawing. But instead of cheap stick figures, he's got ... New MRI's! Some wild before and after shots of what they did two Mondays ago. If you're lucky and ask real nice, the man might even show you his Terminator 2 surgical staples or something.
-->KM
posted by Dan at 7:24 PM
1 Comments:
the kids want a picture of the metal suction picker-upper thing!
post it, man!
thanks, karl, for keeping us up-to-speed. you've done a noble and admirable job.
Post a Comment
<< Home