I categorically pay our homeowners association dues three days late every month out of principal. It has nothing to do with not having the money - I simply don't like giving it to them. Just yesterday I got a bill from them with the handwritten letters "past due" on it. I opened it up to discover that because of all of the things that have been happening over the past two and a half weeks I had forgotten to pay them entirely. This caused me to pause and consider what other things I may have neglected over this time period.
As it turns out those other things were my (now expired) driver's license, and the registration and inspection on my car.
These things would have been a big deal before any of this started. I would have dutifully waited in line at the DMV and that other place where we have to get our registrations renewed, and it all would have been done in a timely fashion. This morning I didn't care about any of them.
If you've had the pleasure of meeting our dog, you will know first hand that Ruth Ann is a licker. Some dogs bark, she licks. She loves her people, and so she finds a way to lick you even in unexpected and inopportune moments like when you're trying to put on your shoes. Normally, this is a little thing, a minor annoyance sometimes, but largely unnoticed in the grand scheme of the day. Today Emily was saying (still in mindreader-speak) that she was thinking about how nice it was to see Ruth Ann two Sundays ago, and to just feel her licking her hand. To her that was a big thing.
So, here we have a question of perspective. The things that used to seem important appear that they are not so important, and the little things have begun to matter. Inches seem like miles, and the slow pace of recovery feels like it will take forever. Today the doctors suggested that it may be time to begin thinking about moving Emily to a long term acute care facility where she can begin more intensive rehab while still being closely monitored while she is weaned off of the ventilator. She is no longer in need of the critical care that the ICU provides, which seems to mean that the doctors feel she is at least stable. No word yet on the particulars, but it looks like the plan will be to move her within a week.
Emily is looking forward to this because it means several things. First it's a change of scenery as this facility is at Durham Regional Hospital rather than at the Duke University Hospital proper. It also means that she has gotten to a point that the doctors are looking ahead to recovery. Moving from one hospital to another might seem like a small change, but it's a big deal to us. We are learning to measure progress differently these days, and this seems like progress.
