02/26/08, 2:56pm…

February 26th, 2:56pm: The volunteers report Windchill is good spirits this afternoon, I think the quiet between shifts and the fact that during the day there’s generally only one or two people there quietly talking versus the number of people in the evening is helpful to his well-being. We’ve both talked to some folks today who are worried that Windchill is dying. The good and the bad of a running dialogue like this is you experience frustrations, sadness and fear at pretty close to the same time I am feeling it so you get my sadness at a point normally I’d be having a cigar and reasoning things through I guess. The reason I was both corrected, and then corrected what I had posted was that his condition is still serious and he’s not out of the woods. People assume because they see the picture of him up that he’s ‘all better.’ What they don’t see is the 23 hours that he’s down, being rolled over every six hours and being held up so that he can drink from the water we hold for him, or eat the grain out of the bucket. BUT his lungs are clear, his system is functioning and he eats and drinks steadily. While the state of his body and the fact that he’s alive pretty much defies normal explanation -  he is in stable condition (no pun intended). He does not need to immediately move to the U. I’m sorry if my own sadness overshadowed his current status. I guess what I’ve discovered is that his depression – his ups and downs – have a profound effect on my own feelings. Awhile back I thought I had better ‘walls’ in place for this – I guess his spirit is contagious and I’m not as distanced from those ups and downs as I thought. You also got a dose of my anger and frustration at how he got to this physical state of being and my feeling disappointed that he’s a “0″ on a scale that measures his body but not really his spirit. Hopefully I haven’t short-changed him on the spirit department, that amazing willpower is what’s helping him stomp on the odds against him.