{Karlton Bontrager}

Monday started out fairly slowly around the ward. Karlton did not have a physiotherapy session; his usual PT is on vacation for the week, and the replacement had not yet set a schedule with Karlton. However, he is expected to have physiotherapy for the rest of the week.

At lunch time, Karlton informed me that he had requested macaroni and cheese for both lunch and dinner. That is the only hospital food that he likes, he said. Unfortunately for him, lunch did not turn out to be what he requested.

Karlton had an afternoon acupuncture apointment, where he tried out his new Mandarin phrase (‘Give me money’) on the assistants. While he was having his foot massaged, I noticed that he had fallen asleep and continued to nap for at least 10 minutes. One of the assistants mentioned that his movement on the left side was much better, which was encouraging.

After the appointment, we stopped for a sandwich. Karlton tried to drink some juice as well, but he found that it was not viscous enough and tended to make him cough. Before returning to ISIS, Karlton wanted to stop at a shop and pick out a rugby jersey. He enjoyed chatting with the salesman about rugby, and he eventually found something that he wanted to purchase.

Back at the ward, Karlton was greeted with dinner–again not macaroni and cheese. He ate a good portion of it nonetheless, saying that it wasn’t so bad after all.

To end the day, he asked if I would help him type some emails. He dictated a phrase at a time to me. Just to give him a hard time, I decided to fill in silly lines while I was waiting for him to gather his next thoughts. For example, after being told to write “My family has turned out…” I added “to be a pack of racoons.” … and so on. I enjoyed giving him a bit of a hard time after some of the attitude he has given us all!