Monday, June 29
Got up at 7am and some of the campers were already up. Ye gad. Ann and Eleanor were the last ones to get up. Went to breakfast at 8:30am (*reminder* breakfast at Friendship is at 8am), but Eleanor and I didn't get there until about 8:45am b/c of her neb (nebulizer) treatment. It's 2pm and rest hour is actually ... restful!!!! People are actually sleeping; people are sitting around just asking questions (Marie, of course, is driving us nuts). We're having special interest during rest hour (bad idea),but the baking is being done in the cabin common room. (insert drawing of south and north dorms here)
I'm super sleepy.
This am when changing Eleanor we got a fabulous surprise of a large (softball-sized ... *commence gagging*) BM, super hard, and super compact. It was horrifying. And guess who was the lucky person to remove it from where it was conveniently lodged/stuck/etc. ... yep, the only one who can competently do personal cares in my cabin ... yep ... me. I had to wrench it out and away. I think I'm scarred. (Haha not really, but the drama is certainly fun.) Luckily Sam J. did a lot of the wiping.
Breakfast was oatmeal (brown sugar, raisins), apple sauce, and baked egg with cheese on top (*ick*). I skipped theeggs. But the oatmeal was fine (later in the day I hot horrible stomach aches and was reminded once again why I should not eat oatmeal, no matter how tasty). I also skipped the apple sauce. Did have a multigrain bagel, though, which was super tasty with peanut butter and banana. Wish they had honey.
I like helping Eleanor (personal cares, eating, etc.) - she's cranky sometimes,it's difficult to understand her, and she makes me smell like nicotine,but she's so funny sometimes - especially when she fell asleep at the zoo today while we were walkingaround! She slept going there, while there, and on the way home, and still wanted to take a nap when we got back! I slept there and on the way back, as well. We saw the apes and monkeys, with Eleanor calling herself a (male) orangutan and me in turns a spider monkey or a golden tamarin. She would point and say "That's me!" and then point at another and say "That's you!" and crack up laughing every time. I love when she laughs! There was ababy giraffe, as well. Sadly, no hippos, but there were bison, lions, a zonked tiger, beautiful snow leapars (I think ... small and white with dark spotting patterns), and a gorgeous puma. They (the campers) also liked the zebras. The Como Zoo was so much fun!
When we got back there were grilled cheese (some even on multi-grain/rye, all thick-sliced), tomato soup, and carrots and watermelon. I passed on the soup but gorgedon everything else, especially the watermelon. After lunch I was goign to take Eleanor to have a smoke (she is fixated on "when can i smoke" and organizing her schedule around when her next smoke is "and then what") on her electric NPROs that are acting up right now unfortunately - they're supposed to help you stop smoking, but they are straight nicotine, just without the tar, etc. - so really they just keep you addicted (*begin the negative comments on my negative comment* haha).
Anyway, La began having a horrifyingly biolent behavior at Katie, grabbing and ripping out chunks of hair (Katie now has a bald spot near her temple), as well as scratching,jabbing, and probably biting. Everyone rushed to help Katie, and shen Katie was extricated, La lunged at Lexie (apparently scratching her in the eye). Most of the staff worked to get any remaining campers out of the dining room (luckily most had left, but there were still quite a few). Eleanor and I quickly exited out front and had a smoke. Lexie came out after a while holding a hand over her left eye, and Amy the HMA ran in witha blanket. You could still hear La's super high-pitched spealing and screaming. El and I went back up the hill (thank goodness she's the only one who utilizes a wheelchair in our cabin b/c that hill sure takes it out of you!), and she told me, "I don't like that fighting girl," meaning La. Oh, I forgot - they tried to team La, but it failed and she ended up making her wai to the floor where she continued to act out, lunging at people and grabbing hold, pulling and biting and screaming, even with five staff working to get her to be still and calm down. Katie tried to do the team, too, even after she was hurt and "got away."
El and I got back up the hill, Katie was (and still is) in bed cryinga nd resting, Ann and Krystel and Inge were playing with homemade play-doh (special interest arts and crafts), and many campers were asleep/sitting around.
Now it's about 3pm and everyone is at archery. Katie got up briefly and went to archery, but was told to come back and rest. It's time to introduce Eleanor: very overweight, very swollen lowerlegs/ankles/feet (Ted's Hose), no teeth (brush her gums with a sponge on the end of a q-tip stick with tooth paste on it), enormous tongue (reminds me of the tongue of the dog that won the "ugliest dog in the world" competition), arms uplled up perpendicular to the floor against her chest with little range of motion (unless given by another individual), left hand in shape of when someone signals to call, right hand a fist but with index finger mobile enough to grab and hold onto her cigaretts (of course), two cups of coffee a day (excellent negotiation skills), great sense of humor, very helpful with her personal care instructiosn (well, only brushing her gums), coughs flem a lot but nothing comes out, total assist in every way, yells as if in pain but most of the time (so far) is joking (but can't really tell so super careful), corn rows coming super loose with grey hairs, blows air out mouth so lips flap and flutter (watch out when she's eating or you'll get splattered!), loves to eat food together (ex. grilled cheese and tomato-soup and apple sauce in one bite), loves sleeping propped so on left side, totally zipped up in a cocoon like a caterpillar, likes to have collar over her nose (pulled up), has hilarious phrases ("Fix my feet!" "I want a smoke" "But I want to smoke!" "When can I smoke?" "Is it fixed?" "Is is charged/charging?" "Where's Eric?!" "But I want it now!" "It's not working! - followed by puffing of lips, etc.), has neb treatments 4 times a day, sleeps whenever she can, no bladder control but will warn you when she's peeing when you're changing her. She's yelling right now from her room where she's taking nap. Be back alter. We're doing cookout tonight. This should be interesting.
Addendum as of today (7/2):
The cookout was actually a lot of fun. Eleanor didn't like going down the paved trail into the woods down to the campsite, but when we got there she had fun kinda. We had cheeseburgers, chips, orange slices, and peanutbutter s'mores. It was a lot of fun. Everyone was afraid of La and she sat by herself at her own picnic table, but Marie parked herself at that table and asked questions incessantly, of course. I helped Eleanor eat, and she loved it. I crunched up her s'more and soaked it in a little bit of milk and she ate it up! It's interesting, every time we eat, all the campers gulp down their food (despite the "Deb - slowly - slowly, Deb - slowly!") and then want to roam around and/or leave right that instant. But they're really good about following directions to stay seated/come back/help out - which is a nice change from running after them whether or not your have eaten, much less finished eating. So after eating, everyone wanted to go back up. We made it back up and we helped Eleanor shower, which was not that much fun - the shower chair has these arms that help when the person is in the chair but are really inconvenient for getting people into and out of the chair. It was a good shower for her, though. I forget what happened later, but everyone was in bed and asleep by about 9:30pm, which was absolutely incredible! I even got to bed by about 11pm, I think! It was absolutely incredible!
Okay, I'm going to call Gramma Becky right now. More in a bit.
Talk wif Gramma was great - I def miss the family back at home!!!! Here are some pix that I need to post before I forget. They're from the entire time so far. I'll try to remember to say where they're from, etc. The captions will be above the photos, and I'll try to stay consistent!
This is the view of Clearwater Lake from the Fishbowl at Camp Friendship:
This is a picture of Adam (plaid shorts, CIT) and Nick (camper, uses a wheelchair but can walk very unsteadily, fascinated by boats/water/motor/etc., loves Adam, loves noises esp. the type of noises that are kinda similar to the Paul Pena's throat singing in Genghis Blues - incredible film - you have to see it! I discovered Nick liked the sounds when I was trying to imitate the boat motor to make Nick smile - he has the best smile!)
Here's a picture of the giant squirrel at Rachel's house. It was ridiculous. And absolutely hilarious!
And here is Eleanor, my favorite camper of the week!!!! She has a great smile!
And here is a picture of Eleanor and myself all dressed to impress for the Camp Dance that was last night (Wednesday, July 1st).
Okay, I'm going to stop for now and write up some more things. Kylee is trying to make her way over to Caribou coffee, and I'm probably not going to be able to post for another week or so, but I'll do my best to squeeze in some more! So sorry I haven't been more consistent with the blogging!
Love to you all!
~ Mei
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