Sunday night was a bit of a trial for me. Nat did not make his nightly call, so I called the House instead. The staff person was kind of quiet and not only difficult to hear, but he just didn’t have a lot to say about Nat’s day. There was nothing outwardly wrong with what he did or did not tell me. I heard about Nat’s mood that afternoon, and where they went for fun (they went apple-picking). But I did not feel satisfied. The thing is, I don’t even know what to ask, I only know I’ve heard it when I hear it. I mean, when a House staff person gives me a certain feeling about Nat, based on a few things they tell me about his day — that’s when I know I have heard enough. <\/p>\n
I asked to speak to Nat. He was the worst, most spacey I have ever heard him: completely out of it, unable to answer most of my questions, dragging out the word “ye-es,” even when it didn’t make sense to answer “yes.” I got that downward tugging in my face, and my mind raced quickly but came up blank. “Give the phone back to —, Nat” I said, again and again, wanting to speak once more to the House guy. Nat could not do it. Or would not? He just kept saying nothing, or “ye-es.” It was horrible. Finally I said, “Nat, I’m going to hang up. Goodbye, Darling. Nat, hang up!” He would not even hang up. It was a terrible feeling, hanging up anyway. <\/p>\n
I then called the House back. I asked them to check on him, to tell me how he seemed. But the staff person thought Nat was fine. Maybe tired. I got off the phone. I was not satisfied. I was starting to get angry, which is where my Nat-worry usually goes. <\/p>\n
I called again. I asked them to check on him again and call me back. Then, apparently, the nurse came in just then to do a weekly check on everyone. I asked for her to check on him. Then I had Ned call them back. Call number four from us. The nurse told Ned she thought Nat was fine, just a little tired from the apple-picking.<\/p>\n
I wrote a fiery email to the House Manager, which I did not send. Instead, I emailed him briefly, merely asking him to call me when he had the chance. Very restrained for me. I didn’t talk to him until today, which was a good thing, because by now I was much calmer and could separate out what it was I needed from them. The Manager was very good at figuring out what needed to be done about Sunday night (from the staff perspective) and also reassured me about a number of things. Also Nat was himself again by Monday (although he’d had one of his rare outbursts that morning, about a pair of shorts with a broken button, under the bed. the House Manager checked under his bed, but there was nothing. But when I heard about the outburst, I went upstairs to check under his bed here, and sure enough there were a pair of shorts under there. No broken button, but I’ll figure out what was wrong with them.). <\/p>\n
I am learning that my instincts are pretty good but my impulses get me in trouble. I feel that Nat is well-cared-for there at the House, my gut and my brain tell me so, but sometimes I trip over my wildfire temper. Anyway, Nat is worth the fall.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Sunday night was a bit of a trial for me. Nat did not make his nightly call, so I called the House instead. The staff person was kind of quiet and not only difficult to hear, but he just didn’t have a lot to say about Nat’s day. There was nothing outwardly wrong with what […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-109","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pSTth-1L","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/109","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=109"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/109\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=109"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=109"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=109"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}