Old Dog, New Tricks ........

I've been off the grid for a little over 4 months now and no one's noticed. I'm gonna chalk that up to the pandemic. No one notices anything anymore except how far apart they are from others and whether those people are wearing masks. But I have to be honest here - I didn't have any impact on things outside of my immediate family circle anyway. Except for staging those Events for the DHS of course, and I haven't heard from them since last year.

I went in to RWJ in New Brunswick for the jaw surgery on Monday, July 26th. I don't remember anything from the time I was hooked up until I woke up in the ICU the next morning with a tracheotomy tube in my neck and a feeding tube in my stomach. I spent the next 3 days there under observation before being moved to a room. The nurses were constantly coming by to feed me through one tube or make sure I was able to still breathe through the other. I have a very vivid memory of gasping for air and almost dying before a nurse removed the inner camula part of the trach tube to clean it, but I may be blowing that out of proportion. I was allowed visitors, which was good for me, but I had to write everything down since I wasn't able to speak.

On Wednesday, August 11th, I was transferred by ambulance to a rehab facility down near Princeton. Just my luck, I got there just as they went into lockdown because several staff members tested positive. I spent my Birthday with a few family members on opposite sides of a hallway window. The days were long - broken up by tube feedings every 6 hours, trach cleanings 3 times a day, and several types of therapy to be able to move around on my own. There was also a speech therapist who spent a few sessions with me, and I was able to utter a few syllables but still relied heavily on a clip board and paper to communicate. I had several off-site doctor follow ups in New Brunswick that my ex-wife and/or daughter picked me up for and one long day in the Emergency Room - unnecessarily in my opinion - when a nurse thought that my lip looked swollen. Again, my ex-wife was in my room when this came up and drove me down rather than have me wait hours for an ambulance to transport me. 

A little over a month later - Monday, September 20th - I was discharged. It would've been a week earlier, but they couldn't get a commitment for at-home care by a visiting nurse service due to the demand during the virus crisis. Once that was done, my ex and her husband took me in while I continued my recovery. For the next few weeks, I had visits from a physical therapist, an occupational therapist, a speech therapist, and a nurse. The therapists' visits only lasted about a month, but the nurse has been coming weekly. She checks my vitals and makes sure my trach tube is clean and my airway isn't clogged. 

I've learned how to remove the inner part of the trach by myself and have been doing that religiously every day. I also do the tube feedings on my own - every 3 hours from 9 AM to 9 PM. I'm still on a lot of different meds for a lot of different reasons and these can only be taken through the feeding tube. My anti-reject ones are in liquid form so I have to measure those out carefully, but the others are not. These I have to crush, and we picked up a handy little, inexpensive gadget to do that at Walgreen's. 

October brought some more changes. Friday the 15th I was back at RWJ for some more surgery - this time to remove some of the scar tissue from my tongue. It was a same-day kind of thing, and I was back at my ex's by the evening. Tuesday the 26th, I went in for a Swallow Test and failed miserably. The only time I managed to get something down it went into the wrong pipe. I had a follow up with my doctor on November 2nd and he set me up for a speech/swallow evaluation on the 4th. That went better than expected and I agreed to a series of weekly sessions that would, hopefully, get me back to at least being able to ingest soft foods like yogurt, soups, ice cream, etc. 

During all of this, I was steadily getting my strength back and was driving myself around to wherever I needed to be. I also was stopping back at my place as often as possible - on my own - to pick up my mail and bring back some clothes and stuff that I had accumulated over my time away. The first time I did this, I checked to see if anyone had been there but I couldn't tell. All I knew was that the Flasher that I'd hidden in a flour canister in the kitchen was still there. I left it.

I've been getting better with verbal communicating and, although I still carried around the clipboard, I tried speaking with whomever I was dealing with. Sometimes I found myself getting frustrated but I knew that if I spoke more slowly I could make it work. Sometimes it did. I did however still have a problem with phone calls and had to rely on my ex to make them for me. For instance, she helped to make my 8:30 appointment yesterday for a haircut. 

I was early and my barber was working on another customer but I enjoyed watching his process. My turn came up about 15 minutes passed my appointment time but I didn't mind. There really is something fascinating watching a master craftsman ply his trade. While I was in the chair another customer came in - a man about my age or maybe a little older. When the barber saw him, he told Alexa to switch the music to a station that played the oldies. I smiled at that, and the other guy commented that things sure had changed since he was young. The barber made some comments to the effect that we could never have predicted those changes and they got into a discussion. I stayed out of it - just listening, nodding at times, and smiling.

I've been thinking a lot about that conversation. Yes, there have been changes but some of them were predicted and most of them - as I see it - are just the natural progression of things. It's how we keep going, how we keep getting better at what we need to do. I admit that there are things I'd rather not change and I try to juggle both the old and the new. For example, I prefer a real book over a Kindle but I do have one and I know how to use it. I know some people who refuse to accept changes and they are being slowly left behind. I don't want that to happen to me. There are so many things I want to do and see. I may be old but I'm adaptable. 

After all, I believe you can teach an old dog new tricks.