1 result for (book:wth AND heading:"part two chapter 14 august 17 1984" AND stemmed:jane)
8/16 (50%)
Georgia
ashamed
surmount
panic
starving
(Georgia called at about 11:30 this morning. Jane asked me to come down to 330 early, so I did. I was working on Chapter 9 — just starting it — of Dreams. Just as I was opening the garage door, I met a woman who had pulled into the driveway, who has a tumor and wanted to see Jane. She’d written us several times and I stopped answering after a while.
[... 1 paragraph ...]
(Jane wasn’t nearly as much in poor shape as she’d been the other day when I was called down to 330 earlier in the morning. I massaged her left leg especially before lunch; it helped.
[... 1 paragraph ...]
(Strange, I said to Jane when finally I got back to 330. Maybe the whole insurance mess will be reopened in more confusion. I should have known that the calm of the last few months was deceptive. Our bill has run up again to around $55,000 — and here insurance hasn’t been sending me any checks. My idea that the hospital might be billing them quarterly or something like that must have been wishful thinking. I’m going to forget the whole business if at all possible.
(Once again Jane ate very little for lunch, although Georgia had said she did okay for breakfast. She’s still starving, essentially. Jane and Georgia talked and smoked while I was down to billing. Jane said she’d have a session later, then changed her mind as I got ready to do mail. Her voice was very shaky, not very distinct, rather high-pitched and with little inflection. Eyes open and closed.)
[... 4 paragraphs ...]
(All right,” Jane said.
(3:36 p.m. The “ashamed” bit was new to me. “That’s probably why I had the session,” Jane said. She said she’d felt ashamed of the panic at times, and agreed with me that if the shame was used to possibly suppress the panic, it — the panic — would last longer.
[... 1 paragraph ...]
(It’s events like this that make me despair, for once again I see Jane going along in the same old way, and wonder what, if anything, has been learned out of all of this. How can one say much has been learned, I wondered, if my wife is at death’s door, and is currently starving herself? Each challenge we have to meet and surmount is at a lower level, and simply to break it or surmount it leaves one only back at the next level from which the fall took place. There’s never a surge up a few rungs on the ladder, from which we can look back in triumph.
(As I massaged Jane’s left leg, she made so much noise — moaning — that Georgia came in. I explained the benefits, and showed her what I was doing. Georgia understood. After the session I massaged all of Jane’s limbs — and once again achieved excellent results. Jane had more motions in her legs and feet especially. And in spite of those good results, once again I wondered: What did you have to do to even get back to the perch from which you’d recently fallen?)
