Arkashean Q&A Session -- 071

THERRY: What is it you want?

SHEENA: I guess I want to understand it more. What is it that I see when I see that? Is it a higher part of herself, or is it a part of herself that touched Death?

THERRY: Maybe it's a part of each individual who are not bound to the limits of earth. Maybe that part of you and that part of her that is non-physical are interacting. It's not surprising.

SHEENA: Why isn't it surprising?

THERRY: Because if you go up high enough, we're all just one.

SHEENA: She thinks I'm weird, but she likes me.

THERRY: Uh-huh; religious differences.

SHEENA: Is that the part of her that thinks I'm weird?

THERRY: Yea.

SHEENA: And I guess I kinda wish there was a way I could make it better, and there's not, and I certainly can't step out of my professional role too much, although I would like to. When you talk about becoming a friend of the family, that was something I wanted to talk to you about. With private duty, you get to a point where like, your professional role limits you.

THERRY: Yes.

SHEENA: And then you have to decide how to handle that.

THERRY: If you're smart, you won't step out of your professional role, even though they offer, or assume a closer relationship. If you were smart, you would limit it.

SHEENA: So you really can't be their friend.

THERRY: Only within limits, because you can harm them far more. Once you step too far out of your professional role, then you make them vulnerable.

SHEENA: How so?

THERRY: How often have you been hurt by a friend because of an un-thought of word or action, or whatever?

SHEENA: The worst times.

THERRY: Imagine what that would be like if you're stuck in a wheelchair.

SHEENA: So you'd feel more vulnerable.

THERRY: Yes.

SHEENA: What about the pattern in general, though, for people that you work with that's private duty?

THERRY: Same thing.

SHEENA: Because they're dependant on you for care?

THERRY: Yes. The bonding that exists, the transference that exists between parent and child in some degree comes to exist between you and your patients, and if you don't recognize that transference for what it really is, and you allow yourself to step out of your professional role too far, then you can create more harm, and your success in your professional area will begin to suffer. Expectations and demands changes, and therefore, acceptability changes.

SHEENA: Now does that mean because I would be less careful and treat her more like a regular person, that I might hurt her more?

THERRY: Emotionally, yes. And, because you would begin treating her differently, she would assume certain things that she wouldn't normally assume.

SHEENA: Like what, as an example.

THERRY: Well, why were you hurt by your friends?

SHEENA: Well, generally because they say something that hurts my feelings.

THERRY: But why?

SHEENA: That's a good question; let me think about it for a second. I gave them the power to hurt me by giving what they said power.

THERRY: But why?

SHEENA: Because I want to impress them?

THERRY: No.

SHEENA: Because, I don't know. Why?

THERRY: Think about it. Did you not make certain expectations and certain demands that were not there in the relationship before?

SHEENA: Well, I opened up myself about telling them things about me, and then if they--

THERRY: If you look at it a little bit closer, there was a change before that, and it was a change in expectations and demands continuums.

SHEENA: Is that the same thing as saying the change in the level of trust?

THERRY: Yes.

SHEENA: I know I started to trust them more.

THERRY: Not only a change in the level of trust, but in the levels of desire.

SHEENA: Desire, you mean sexual desire?

THERRY: Doesn't have to be sexual.

SHEENA: What other kinds of desire would you define desire as in a friendship?

THERRY: The desire to want them closer; the desire that they should be a confidante; the desire that they should meet some of your needs that normally other people won't meet; the desire to trust them more; the desire to spend more time with them in a different vein than you would with other people.

SHEENA: Your child comes out more with friends.

THERRY: Yes.

SHEENA: Okay, now how could that be harmful to a patient?

THERRY: Well--

SHEENA: Would they not feel as safe?

THERRY: If they turn around and go through that same process, it's pretty difficult not to have your professional duties suffer, and your professional success rate suffer. Plus, you expect and demand things from a friend that you won't from a professional person. So, if for a professional person refuses to give you a backrub, well that's just that professional person, but if a friend refuses, that can hurt. That can create little undercurrents of war, resentments, and therefore your professional ability to serve her suffers, `cause she has to deal with the war first. And because the transference has gone awry, you could end up being useless to her.

SHEENA: I got her some magazines I was going to give her as a professional; you think that's an okay idea?

THERRY: Sure.

SHEENA: They're different magazines on disability that I'm pretty sure she's never heard of, all the way from the mainstream to the really radical.

THERRY: That's fine.

SHEENA: I don't know if she'll read `em, but I figured I'd leave them there for a few months, and if she hasn't read them, then I'd take them back.

THERRY: Yea.

SHEENA: But I'm concerned about her because she's not making any plans to like do anything more with her life, and--or even get another kind of caretaker, because her insurance is hassling her again about paying for skilled care, because they're saying that it's custodial now, which it is, essentially, and she doesn't want to do without nurses, and she doesn't want to live with her two elderly family members, a mother and an aunt who drive her nuts, anyway, um--

THERRY: She'll probably end up in a nursing home.

SHEENA: That was the other thing I thought as a possibility. Well, there is another option, and that is for her have someone live in with her, and provide them rent and food, or whatever, and have them take care of her. They'd still need--see, I think that her insurance will pay custodial care to a point, you know, so that person can, you know, if that person's a student or something, maybe it'd be like having a sitter versus a nurse. But those rates are very different, you know, sitters are only four to five dollars an hour, and nurses are ten to fifteen, so it would be a shame if she was in a nursing home, especially because there's so much--I've been reading, I've been educating myself about this whole area too, and it's really been interesting working with her because it's confronted me with my own prejudices about people with disabilities, and assumptions like I really have to be careful not to pity her and not to, um, not to feel that she's helpless, and not--

THERRY: Why doesn't she go to work?

SHEENA: Her, well, part --

THERRY: Oh, she can't move her arms, can she?

SHEENA: No, only her mouth. See, she can work by computer, and some of these magazines I'm giving her, this one thing has what we need are engineers that can really make stuff.

THERRY: They already have that.

SHEENA: I know, but they're not doing enough, and they don't have the funding. They're doing it on their spare time. This one guy who can only move his finger got a masters in counseling from A and M, and a degree from JAB, and he did it all by telephone, but him and a friend of his put together a system that I have a magazine article on that I'm going to give her because it can also be moved by a puff stick, and it turns on anything electronic in the house which is pretty neat; gives you more of a degree of control; TVs computers, radios, air conditioning, lights; all that stuff that she can't do now, um, and it's done by micro-chip, and it's portable, you know, you could put it on your chair and stuff which would help her out a little bit.

Also there's computers now that you could move your eyes, move the beam of light with your eyes and do stuff there, and she is getting better with the mouth stick; she's in a catch-twenty two though. If she gets too independent, insurance won't pay, but she'll never be independent enough to not need any attendance, and she'll never be rich enough to afford this stuff without help, or at least, never, there's a ninety-nine percent chance that she'll want a lot of this stuff is expensive.

THERRY: She can get it through social security.

SHEENA: Ah, she can get some --there's limits to all that sorta stuff, but I did find a program that she might be able to use. I've been talking to a friend of mine in vocational rehab and there are some grants, and there are some funding, but there's not funding that we know of for custodial care for permanent long-term basis; there's just not. People have to have spouses, or they have to hire people, and paying for `em, you know, after a few years isn't--is problem.

THERRY: Yea.

SHEENA: So--

THERRY: She'll probably end up in a nursing home.

SHEENA: Well, I hope not; I had this little fantasy of someone else taking care of her; a family member, or maybe even me, although I don't know if that's ever realistic. But it crossed my mind.

THERRY: That is one of the reasons why you should never allow your relationship to cross professional things.

SHEENA: Why?

THERRY: Because of the guilt factor.

SHEENA: What do you mean?

THERRY: The guilt and martyr complex makes it so that you feel responsible for her.

SHEENA: Well, I don't intellectually feel responsible for her, but then again--if I had never worked in a nursing home, I don't think I would have the feelings I have towards it. Um, yea, there's definitely emotions there; I'm not denying that, and I don't know that that's realistic either. But I did think about what it would be like, and it was interesting thinking about what it would be like. Obviously that's still a fantasy; that's not reality with the problems that that would possibly entail. But it made me, you know, think about how I would deal with some things with a person with a disability and on a daily basis, and the issues that you have to deal with, and it also got me back into thinking about things about sexual issues with them and also ways to make their bodies better.

It made me curious. Massage has also done that though with her; made me curious about uh, about the aspects of touch that we talked about. There's another question I had about that. What was it? I got off course. As my mind goes from one little thread to another in the fabric. Um, so if touch does affect people then on a positive way, then it affects their emotions because another theory of mine was that it helped healing.

THERRY: It does.

SHEENA: It does?

THERRY: But it, it comes as a result of a self-fulfilling prophecy.

SHEENA: How's that? How so?

THERRY: It changes the game that people plays.

SHEENA: The patient themselves?

THERRY: Yes.

SHEENA: If someone else touches them?

THERRY: Yes.

SHEENA: How--what do you mean? I guess I don't understand what you're saying.

THERRY: Well, it focuses their own mind and wants such that they play the game they want to get better, and therefore they work at it.

SHEENA: What if they can't do that?

THERRY: It's like positive voodoo.

SHEENA: I can understand that. Okay, now what if they can't do that, I mean, what if she's going to be paralyzed. Would my touching her still make her feel better if in her mind it feels --I mean, like, as far as being--

THERRY: If you're talking about the state of the physical, no, it won't. If you're talking about emotional, in terms of satisfaction and enjoying life more, yes, it will.

SHEENA: Now, how about the connection between the mind and the body, which I believe is pretty strong.

THERRY: Well, in her case it's supposed to be severed.

SHEENA: Is it really, though? I mean, it seems to me--

THERRY: She feel pain?

SHEENA: Yea, she can feel pain.

THERRY: Then it's not totally severed; only the motor nerves are severed.

SHEENA: Yea, as a matter of fact, she's getting sensation back, um, in her back, half way down, one side, all the way to her hips; the other side, half way down her back. Her breasts and under them have come back, you know, so now she has feeling to here, and her arms to her elbows on both of those. Um, motor, she still can't move more then her shoulders though. But that sensation's coming back, and, while I guess that might be--I'm thinking out loud--a result of autonomic nervous system, but she had some surgery, minor surgery, where they cut some of the ligaments in her feet, and they didn't give her any anesthetic for it `cause they figured she couldn't feel, and her body totally responded to that pain; her legs cramped up, and her arms cramped up, and after that she has spasms for a couple of days and didn't feel very good, and that knot in her muscle is still there; I work on it some every time I give her a massage but um, it's clenched. It's not clenched as tight as it was; it was huge when they first did that. But is that--is that strictly autonomic, or is--okay.

THERRY: It's subconscious level.

SHEENA: But that's the mind and the body, right?

THERRY: Yes.

SHEENA: Now, her emotions, when she's emotionally upset, her body tenses up more and she has a lot more problems with it.

THERRY: Yes.

SHEENA: Now that's a mind-body connection, right?

THERRY: Yes, yes.

SHEENA: And does that indicate what you said that her mind and her body is not totally severed from each other?

THERRY: Yes.

SHEENA: Now are there people that are disabled where their mind and body is totally severed from each other?

THERRY: Yes.

SHEENA: Then how come --how could their body stay alive if that was true?

THERRY: The body has its own mind.

SHEENA: There's a holistic concept, which I tend to agree with, at least right now, that the body and the mind are interconnected and influence each other in health and in illness.

THERRY: That's true.

SHEENA: It is true? Is it also true for someone that's paralyzed?

THERRY: Yes.

SHEENA: Now they just say mind; they don't delineate it. Is it a different level of mind then conscious mind?

THERRY: Yes.

SHEENA: And does touch do anything to help that?

THERRY: Indirectly.

SHEENA: And does that get back to the emotional factors?

THERRY: Yea, Emotion's Interchange.

SHEENA: Because what I was noticing is when she's real restless and I touch her body, well, massage is, the other stuff really wouldn't do it, but if I do massage her, then she'll calm down and I've been noticing with my animals, they really like massage. I gave my cat a massage the other day, and I'm just looking again for patterns, but that cat has not left me alone since then. I mean she, she was at first very schizoid and then she's gotten more affectionate towards me as times gone on, but I mean this cat has just been unreal; she's even risked the dogs to come lay by my feet now and try and get a massage, so I gave her another one. Of course it only reinforced her so now she bugs me more; but she's bugging me more then she ever has for that kind of interaction. And I notice with her muscles, well she was like in kitty heaven, I mean, she just looked like she was ecstatic, and that again got me to think about all this stuff. See, in California there's three courses I'm really interested in taking and they all have--one's therapeutic touch and one's raki, and um, there was another --oh, um, massage, I wanted to get into doing massage, and through working on this patient I was also wondering if it would'a helped some of my other patients because I've never done that with them. Mostly I've never liked them as much, but the guy that was dying that I worked with, um, back in June, I started wondering if any of this stuff would have helped him be more comfortable because he was always in such pain and I saw my cat I wondered if it would have worked at all with him, and then I started thinking about the connections.

THERRY: Well if he was in physical pain, he wouldn't have wanted the massage.

SHEENA: Well, he was uncomfortable; he wasn't in physical pain--I mean, the guy was dying; you know, he sweated a lot, he had a condom catheter on which he didn't want, but I don't remember what his illness was. I guess he was old. He had had--I guess he had had a bunch of surgeries. I can't even remember now because he died of pneumonia, I mean, you know, he was just old, and it was just do not resuscitate.

THERRY: Yea.

SHEENA: But I remember he was so restless all the time and--

THERRY: Perhaps he was feeling his mortality.

SHEENA: Well, that was part of what was going on. My chain and him, to my knowledge, worked together a pretty lot.

THERRY: Um-hum.

SHEENA: That was already when the other two links of my chain were gone, so I wasn't--I was conscious one day of a lot of stuff going on. The rest of the days I felt a little dizzy, and that's usually, when someone contacts my chain now, I generally feel a little dizzy, um, and that's how I can tell that they're doing that. But, sometimes I don't even notice it at all though, and I think sometimes that's better, because as we've already talked about, my language barrier, sometimes it's better for them to be able get it from a part of me that knows more than I do consciously. But anyway, I started thinking about how he might have felt about it, because he was so restless. And that's what I remember a lot is his restlessness. Just seems like maybe it would have soothed him; maybe it wouldn't; I don't know, you know, at this point they're more theories then anything. I don't have enough facts, and I haven't been able to find a whole lot on it. You know, you find massage books; they tell you how to massage someone. They tell you some of the benefits, but they really don't know a whole lot of what it really does and what it really doesn't do. Raki's that thing that Wendy had and was talking about when you told her that it was okay to have done to her because it was going into the River of Life. Is that okay for me to try to learn? Is it okay for me to get --for people to do it on me? `Cause part of the class might be that; I don't know. But what I started thinking of is that I'd really like to incorporate a lot of this into my practice; I'd really like to--I've always wanted to put alternative and traditional things together.

THERRY: But you have to bear in mind that you must forever be aware of the limitations of prejudice.

SHEENA: What does that statement mean--the limitations of prejudice?

THERRY: Each individual has their own private little prejudices where they set their limits. And, regardless of how great your intention is, you can be received quite negatively.

SHEENA: That's true. I realized that too after I gave her the first massage I started thinking about some of this stuff and I wanted her to listen to a tape and she didn't not want to necessarily; she said she did when I was doing her that night, so the next morning I brought it by `cause I was working both shifts, and then she didn't want to listen to it, and I realized I had to be really careful of pushing myself or my values on her because just because she likes this doesn't mean she wants to get into anything else, try anything else, experiment, any of that ... but, you know, the whole situation was just so bizarre. But what wasn't so funny was that when I was cathing my patient she was doing her best not to cry, and that's another thing, she fights back a lot of tears, and her body, I felt it get really tense after she did that, and that's when I started thinking about that her body must be really still affected by her emotions just like anybody else's is. Um, and I thought, should I acknowledge this or not, and I thought, if I acknowledge this, she's probably gonna just start crying, and I'm not sure that she wanted to, so I decided not to, so I pretended I didn't see it. Is that the better thing to do? I wasn't sure.

THERRY: I don't think there is a better thing to do; you have to play the situation as you find it.

SHEENA: I mean, with most people I encourage them to let it out, but I also remembered, someone told me that some days she's real depressed and she spends a lot of time crying. She's never done that in front of me; she usually does that with this one nurse that she also had in the hospital when she was first hurt, and um, I figured, good, as long as she did it with someone, `cause she doesn't seem to express a whole lot of negative emotions and I'm sure they're there, and she's not getting counseling, and I'm sure she's having a lot of issues dealing with the fact that she's not beginning to walk. I mean this is only her second year like this, and it usually takes two years for them to adjust to all this stuff, and for their body to get to the point where it's going to get, and then it usually plateaus out, so she's still not totally at that point yet, but I would think that since her denial was so strong in the beginning; she came home, you know, thinking she was going to walk, or at least that's what Upjohn told me; I don't, you know, that's the best I could do `cause I haven't talked to her about it. But it seems to me like sometimes that she could use counseling and she refuses to get it, and that's one thing where I really wish I knew more, because I think there are times, even that time, where I could have been more affective. As a nurse I noticed that when you're with people a lot, even if they won't go to a counselor and get counseling, they'll talk to you because I guess you've built up trust with them.

THERRY: Yes. You have to bear in mind that both her and her so-called divorced aunt can only do the best they think they know how.

SHEENA: Well that's true. Oh yea, I know that; I mean, it was just ludicrous. See, the other thing that happened that week was that someone's not doing her colostomy right, or wasn't, and she refused to take the nurses that do it to the rehab place to have them watch a film and talk to her manager, you know, case manager, which she should have done but I asked her about it and she said no, that she wasn't going to do it unless they still couldn't do it well. It ended up that the aunt came in and interfered because she hadn't gone to the bathroom the way she was suppose to through the colostomy. The aunt gave her a suppository, and a half hour later a soapsuds enema because a suppository hadn't worked. Well, a suppository will not work on her for a day. The patient told the aunt that, the aunt would not listen to that, so she ended up giving her a soapsuds enema; still didn't work for the same damn reason, then she went ahead and gave her two ducolax tablets, so this woman had all this stuff in her, and she shit out of her colostomy for four days; she exploded all over the colostomy so that it got everywhere, which really freaks this woman out because this woman is pretty meticulous about her care, and it also makes her feel like a baby, and here she was totally uncontrolled. That was the weekend, it was right after that week that my chain came through pretty good, and that was the first full-body massage I gave her. I had asked it to and it did.

She's like the matriarch of the family and she's probably there for people in certain ways, and you know, it's her house that they go to for dinner and stuff, and a lot of people call her for problems. The thing is, I haven't figured out why because the woman, I mean, this one guy called him up, the husband of this woman that's getting the divorce, and said he was going to kill himself, and she said, well, I mean before like taking the time to help her, help him, she says," well, don't make a mess when you do it." I mean, that's appropriate if the guy's playing this long game, but this was, you know, the first thing she said out of her mouth, and she just responded like off the top of her head saying all this stuff to him like," If you're going to do this then don't come to me with help", and na, na, na, na, na, and just, I don't know, it just seemed like that would have been appropriate maybe for later but she didn't, she didn't really listen to him very much, and she's very opinionated, and she'll just start talking about something and just say these things that are hurtful to people some times. I mean, she'll just--someone will come to her with a problem or be in pain and she'll just say," well, I never liked that guy anyway. He was a total idiot!" if someone's like talking about their lover that they just lost, and they really feel bad about it, she'll just like go on, and yet people still come to her. Why would people still come to her?

THERRY: Obviously they're involved in the game of some kind, and they like the rewards.

SHEENA: Hmm, I guess, it's just --

THERRY: Remember, there is always somebody for everybody.

SHEENA: Yep, I guess there is. I mentioned to my patient that I thought the bread thing was kind of funny, and she said, " Oh, well, Aunt So and So, we're just used to her, and, uh, we just let her go in one ear and out the other", and I said," well, you know, sometimes she really appears to bother you more than other times. And uh, I said," it must be a bummer to be real vulnerable to someone, and then, you know, have `em act in some of the ways she acts, and she said, yea, it was, but most of the time she just ignored her, but I know that that's not true because I see the aunt really get on this woman's case, and I see this woman get really upset a lot, and just not acknowledge it. Although she's --

THERRY: She can't acknowledge it.

SHEENA: `Cause she's vulnerable to her for her care.

THERRY: Yea.

SHEENA: So it's a real power issue.

THERRY: Yea.

SHEENA: Which must be a real bummer. I spent all last week thinking about that, the power issues of it all.

THERRY: Karma's pretty accurate.

SHEENA: Yea, that may be true.

THERRY: It's not always nice, but it's always accurate.

SHEENA: Well, I don't think that's the greatest reason to add pain to somebody else just because it's their Karma to be in that situation.

THERRY: That didn't make any sense, because if you translate what you just said, it comes out with, just because somebody's supposed to have pain in order to grow that doesn't mean you have to give it the pain so they can grow.

SHEENA: What can a person learn from that experience? What--

THERRY: Well, let's play a separate game. Let's say that you needed to learn that you shouldn't put your hand in hot fire, and we just stood by and decided to let you put your hand in hot fire. How many times do you think you'd do it?

SHEENA: Probably once, then I wouldn't do it again.

THERRY: Then perhaps that's what you learn. Perhaps, if you're insensitive to certain people's dilemmas, perhaps once you experience those dilemmas yourself, your sensitivity increases.

SHEENA: Yea, I guess I could see that. I don't know, it just seems like being in that chair is bad enough without having to go through some of the other things.

THERRY: Karma's pretty accurate.

SHEENA: Which brings me to another point. When someone's disabled it seems to me like a lot people stick them in the role of patient all the time.

THERRY: Yes.

SHEENA: And not really acknowledge the other aspects of their life.

THERRY: Yes.

SHEENA: That's an accurate pattern.

THERRY: Well, not always, but yes.

SHEENA: And, is it just the caretakers, or is it everybody? I mean, not everybody, but a lot of the immediate people they interact with on a daily basis.

THERRY: Well, there's only a certain number of ways they can interact with them. Indifference is one; very insensitive is another; to treat them as normal people is seldom done, but that is a possibility; and to be a caretaker.

SHEENA: Is it possible for me to treat her as a normal person while I'm being her caretaker, and not so much as a patient? That's what I try to do, but I'm not sure it's--

THERRY: There's a possibility there, but there's also the danger of allowing yourself to go too far outside of the bounds of your clinical care.

SHEENA: Like we talked about earlier just a few minutes ago?

THERRY: Yes.

SHEENA: Because I wondered if it was just me, I mean, obviously I had to treat her as a patient, and I'm trying to treat her more like a person, I mean, I tried to treat her like a person from the first minute I saw in the sense that I try to give her total control out of everything we do because I figure I'm there to be her body, like a body dog, and ah, so you know, if there's a decision, I want her to make it, and I encourage her to do that.

THERRY: I think in some way that's nice because it gives her a, at least an illusion of being in control of a part of her life, so in some way that's okay, but obviously that too can be taken too far.

SHEENA: Well--

THERRY: She would not always be the one to know when her body needs certain care.

SHEENA: Well, that's true. Well in that way I stay in my professional role, but if she wants a certain color makeup, or certain jewelry, or what color, what clothes she's going to wear, or where and when she wants to be cathed within, you know, the limits; I mean, she's real careful of her body.

THERRY: Yea, I agree in those areas.

SHEENA: But there are so many people who don't; I mean it amazed me to think about the people who go in and start doing things because they assume that, it's like, just because she's crippled, she's not there upstairs.

THERRY: Yep.

SHEENA: And sexuality is another thing. You know--

THERRY: That's a dangerous area.

SHEENA: Well, it's dangerous for me as a professional, and obviously--

THERRY: It's also dangerous for the relationship because of prejudices.

SHEENA: Yea, I'm not saying I would do anything about it, but I have thought about how people do treat them as non-sexual beings just because they're crippled.

THERRY: Yea, but that's a part of the insensitivity of it.

SHEENA: That's true. Can women --I know they can't feel on the outside. Do you know if they can feel inside their vagina? She can feel cramps which is a contraction of her uterus. She can't feel, she can feel when her bladder's full but only if she does Kagle exercises which is moving the vaginal wall, so obviously she can move the vaginal wall. Would that mean she can feel inside like towards her cervix and uterus, and in her vaginal vault?

THERRY: There's no guarantee.

SHEENA: I didn't want to ask her that, but I am curious about it. I asked a friend of mine who works in rehab to try to find that out for me. Also we talked about sex once for like an hour or so, and she was saying that the spinal cord place where she was in said they could have sex. I was in a class ten years ago that said they couldn't because when they orgasm their body freaks out and it would spasm and their muscles lock, and for that reason it's not good at all for them to have intercourse with any sort of spinal cord injuries. Do you know which one is more accurate of that information?

THERRY: Depends on the people. Depends on what they're already used to.

SHEENA: She seems to think that she could fuck. She wants to get married again, and she plays some of the games to do that, but I wonder, ah, I wonder if she'll be able to do that; if anyone would find her wife material.

THERRY: I would suggest that you stay totally away from that area; stay clinical.

SHEENA: Yea, I wasn't planning not to. These were just things I've been curious about, not things I would actually act upon.

THERRY: Yea.

SHEENA: I mean, I've thought about them, but I haven't thought about them for reality. I've just thought about them to think about them.

THERRY: Yea.

SHEENA: Well, but she had someone she was dating and he left her and married someone else after she got hurt. Some other guy she was good friends with stayed and took care of her, but then he went and let too. She hasn't seen him in months, so apparently it freaked him out too much.

THERRY: Yea, not necessarily because of the attraction aspects, as much as the recognition of the absolute burden.

SHEENA: And that's what I was thinking when I thought about having a person like that live with me. I mean, just to think about how that would be, you know, to be someone's caretaker like that.

THERRY: Yea.

SHEENA: It is an absolute burden.

THERRY: Yep.

SHEENA: Anyway, I guess that's what I've been thinking about a lot, people with disabilities. It would be nice if I could find a way to help them I guess feel at least a little better, which is why I started thinking about massage and touch and different things like that. Had some other questions--ah, war, that was--internal wars. I was thinking, I was really irritated? No, I was at war with my father --

THERRY: What's new?

SHEENA: Inside my own self. What's new?

THERRY: Yea.

SHEENA: You mean that I'm at war with him?

THERRY: Yea; as long as I've known you, you've been at war with him internally.

SHEENA: Well, I think that went away a lot, or at least I had the illusion that it went away.

THERRY: Okay.

SHEENA: to a good degree. And after my last visit to Miami, it's been back, and I know why it was back, but I really figured out why last night and today. Because um, I've been mad at him, and I've been saying things to Wayne like I don't have any use for him because he's such an asshole, and now I realize what an asshole he is which is partially true.

THERRY: Aren't you being a little hard on him?

SHEENA: Yes, inside I was saying, I am being hard on him; that's not understand, forgive, and love, and yet I was having a very hard time understand, forgive, and love.

THERRY: So why are you being so hard on him?

SHEENA: I think because I was mad because he's pulling out his economic support because now that I'm going to California, he's doing what I consider a power play by going back on his word, and with my education he hasn't done that before; he's said he'd pay for something, and he's paid for it, and he didn't give me too much hassle about it. Now he's saying, you know, if I go out there I'm going to have to make this much money and work approximately this many hours to do that, or I'm not going to make it on my own, and if I go to Miami, or even go to Gainesville, he had said previously that he'd pay all of my expenses. Now I didn't confront him on it this last time so I don't know if that's changed or not, but I'm assuming that that still stood, that if I stayed in Florida he said, I think he did even allude to that, but he didn't outright say he'd still pay for all my expenses when I went to Florida, but he did allude to it.

THERRY: Aren't you being the spoiled brat right now?

SHEENA: Yes. I thought about that today. See, last night they gave me, they sent my a present which was a real surprise because it's Hanukah, and I got my glasses which I had been saving for and they had paid for when I was in Miami, and that was real nice, and I didn't expect anything else. So UPS comes last night, and there was this little basket, and it was, you know, just one of these gift baskets of bath stuff, but it was really nice because usually that is very unlike my parents. They usually do not go out of their way to inconvenience themselves at all, and to even get a present was an inconvenience. Usually they give me money and I go get my own thing, or whatever, or sometimes they go with me, but generally they've just given me money because it's been easier for them, so that they actually got a gift and got it to UPS is pretty amazing. Of course I'm assuming they took the time to do that and didn't have someone else do it. But even so --

THERRY: Even so--

SHEENA: The thought was there.

THERRY: Exactly.

SHEENA: And it was really nice. And then I realized that I was being a spoiled brat because just because they weren't giving me what I want, was saying they didn't really love me, and they didn't support me, and they've never supported me