{Karlton Bontrager}

Many of you know already that Choy-Lang is interested in touchless healing. Ever since we arrived, she has spent hours focusing the palms of her hands on areas where Karlton’s body required the most healing energy. When he needed other kinds of care, the medical staff would also hover around him. More often than I liked, dear old dad ended up on the outside, becoming almost a distant observer.

Yesterday, in contrast, was my day. Suddenly I figured prominently in Karlton’s thoughts. It was “Dad” this and “my Dad” that. And I loved it. One time Karlton wrote, “My dad & i have work to do tonight.” Another time, when Kevin, the RN, was on break and Kate, another RN, was in to relieve him, Karlton wrote, “kate, if kevin is okay can my dad & i leave immediately for the day?” And so many times he asked me to take him home. One time when he asked Choy-Lang to take him home, she asked which home he meant (that is, did he mean Queenstown? Los Angeles? Encinitas?). “His,” he said, pointing to me.

[Note that Karlton uses few capitals and little punctuation when he write. My renditions of his sentences attempt to reproduce his use of capitals and punctuation.]

Several things were noteworthy about Karlton’s writing today. Because he is usually in a reclining position when he writes, we hold a clipboard of paper in the air in front of him, and he has to write by pressing against the clipboard, almost uphill, as it were. In the past, he has had strength to press hard enough only to write with a felt-tipped marker. Today, in contrast, he asked for the ball-point pen in my pocket, and he was able to use it for nearly all the writing he did.

As he writes, the letters get more cramped and become less legible as his hand gets to the bottom of the page. Those words, naturally, are the hardest for us to decipher. Yet if we change the sheet and ask him to write the word again, he is not able to do so. It’s as if he has only one chance to get his thoughts down.

Yesterday was different, however. The incident began when he said something that sounded almost like, “Chicago.” I couldn’t understand, so he wrote, “dad what i was failing to try to say to you was (undecipherable).” I changed the sheet on the clipboard, and then he wrote, “chikaku ni swatte onegai shimasu ka?” using ABC letters to write in Japanese, “Please sit near me.”

Later, when I was reading email messages to him, he interrupted me and indicated that he wanted to write. This time he wrote, “the words you missed were napp, napping ZZZZZ”. I’m not sure what this meant, but he was clearly showing us his ability to make explanations, restating the same idea in different ways. And on another occasion he used an abbreviation: “b/4” for “before”. I think this shows real flexibility in his thinking. That is, rather than having to express thoughts as they come to him, he is able to analyze his thoughts and choose among various ways to express them.

The High Dependecy Unit (HDU) is a three-bed ward. Yesterday one patient went home, and another moved on to the rehabilitation hospital. Knowing that Karlton would be the only patient left in the HDU, the nurse in charge worked to get him moved to another room. He ended up in an isolation room, not because he’s needs to be isolated, but to allow the nurses to observe him easily from a central location. So he’s got new digs, and we’re in the process of getting the walls decorated with the cards and photos so many of you have sent.

Kevin, the day nurse yesterday, hadn’t seen Karlton in about a week. He noticed that Karlton has lost a lot of weight. Choy-Lang, too, notices when she massages his back that he’s got little meat on his bones. It’s no wonder then that he eats so ravenously. The kitchen is sending up double portions of everything, and he licks the plates clean. It doesn’t matter to him that everything is pureed and thickened to the same, boring consistency.

Yesterday he interrupted his eating only to motion that he wanted to get out of the chair and back into bed. Over and over again, he resisted sitting up. Even when he was in bed and the head was propped up high, he had to be cajoled to stay that way for a mere 10 minutes. Yet he thinks he’s ready to go home. The very thought of a 14-hour flight from Aukland to Los Angeles seems at this point to be an overwhelming obstacle, not to mention getting him to the airport, to Aukland, and beyond Los Angeles to Rhode Island where we can care for him. We still have a long way to go.