week wrap-up

I find myself with no real events to blog about. Plodding along seems to sum up things lately. Sort of uninspired, pretty broke, restless, almost-warm-out-but-not-quite-yet, blah.

Work is interesting in that people are vanishing as if there are trap doors in the floor. Senior people, those who have been here for years, just disappear in the middle of the day. Our president sends a vague voicemail as explanation. Today, though, I felt the first glimmers of re-inspiration at work. This week I've not seen many patients but have focused on program development, and I'm finally making some progress. I've put a note at my desk that reads "Do not confuse efforts with results." I think I saw that on a high school friend's facebook page and it stuck. So I'm trying to concentrate on my goals there and just get it done. I also spoke at Lesley the last couple weeks to graduating students and made some good connections. I've learned the beauty of delegation and have some volunteers doing a lot of time-consuming research for me. I also applied for a dance fellowship for a week in June. It's with a master dancer who does some amazing work at Tewksbury Hospital. I'm interested in exploring more about the body in hospice... what is its role in emotional/spiritual healing at the end of life? The body is sort of dismissed when it's dying, but how does it hold or express our stories and wisdom? Perhaps this fellowship will be a good way for me to explore all of that, and also will help the inspiration well.

Two hospice stories. I saw a 10 year old girl yesterday for bereavement. She explained to me that it is Lincoln's 200th birthday and they are changing all the pennies to silver (I doubt the veracity of this). She told me I should save all the copper pennies I have because their value is going up. "By the time you are 30 you can live in a mansion!" I laughed and said I'm past 30 and she looked thoughtful. "Well, by the time you are 40, then." We were talking about old people and I asked her how long she wanted to live. She ideally has 190 years to go...

We had a 10 year old boy on hospice who had brain cancer for half of his life. He had a girl running the Boston Marathon in his name and he was super excited about this. He started his terminal decline a couple days before the marathon and was non-responsive near the end. Unknown to the family keeping vigil at home, his runner crossed the finish line at 3:08 p.m. on Marathon Day. He died at 3:10 p.m. After you work in hospice a while you know those things are not coincidences.

This weekend I have no real plans. I do need to alter my wedding dress at some point before October. I also have a project I'm doing for baby Niko that I want to finish before I head out there in a couple weeks. And the inevitable, impossible weekend attempt to keep my house from looking like a bomb exploded in it.