We did have a different aide this morning, Faye, and she was terrific. She had a great rapport with David.  She gave him a bath, which he loved.  She helped around the house, and was just generally a very pleasant presence.  Tomorrow she will be back in the morning, along with Jennifer Jones in the afternoon, so it will be a good day!  This morning, I ran to CVS to pick up my prescription, and when I got home, David was sitting at his desk going through files and purging papers.  He asked about the retirement accounts, and I printed up a list and he was very confused, because he didn’t understand why they were increasing, and he couldn’t see what money was going in and going out.  It took a while to figure out what his confusion was, but then I explained that he had a checking account as well, and he said “of course”, and he wanted to look at those statements.  I told him I thought in might be best to wait for the weekend when we can both sit down and spend some time looking at them, that he might find them a little overwhelming, and I really am afraid that he will start obsessing about them the way he does the calendar now.  He also went through some UNIS files and wanted me to email folks about specific questions and people at school, which I did blindly – “Do you know anything about John Doe?  David asked me to ask you”.  Small steps back to that stuff I think is good.

We left at about 1:30 PM for our 3:00 PM appointment at the Hospital for Joint Diseases with Dr. Karp.  I ordered a car through Uber (thanks Gene) and we were picked up downstairs shortly after we got there.  The one problem was, they sent an SUV, which was very difficult for David to get into.  It took a lot of help from me and Patrick the driver.  The trip back was in a normal car, which was much easier!  We got there early, so we went up to the 9th floor for a visit, and it was great to see everyone.  They seemed more excited than David, and there was quite a love-fest!  The elevators at the HJD were very slow, and we found out the reason.  It seems that Sandy and its damage, forced an earlier than anticipated merging of the HJD and The Rusk Institute.  For anyone who visited, most of the building is under construction and that was to make room for Rusk, but now, they are all together.

We went to see Dr Karp, who was nice and serious.  He thinks that David will stay on Coumadin (a rat poison, if you didn’t know that already) for at least a year, but he thinks it will more likely be a lifetime medication because of the stroke and the clotting in the leg.  We have to go and get blood drawn twice a week initially, and hopefully will be able to cut that down to monthly over time.

I bought tickets for “The Mystery of Edwin Drood” for next Thursday, and we had a nice visit from Lynda and then Jon.  The evening was topped off with the delivery of the new wheelchair with one handed driving capabilities.