Yesterday we made it back to CA

The trip was successful, all in all

Matt weathered the time change, the location change, pretty well

I expect the next few days he will want to just chill out, sleep a lot, hang out with Sheba

I could see how the trip accumulated on him, the hardest moments were those of the last 24 hours of the trip

At the lake he injured his hand, so we’ve been carefully changing the wound dressing daily, covering it up, wrapping it

Wednesday morning, the day we all flew back home, as I rode with Barry to the Richmond Airport at 4 am eastern time, Matt got up from bed

I was hoping he’d just sleep till I returned, but he didn’t

Chad was awake so he hung out with him (yeah, 4:30 am, early!)

While I was gone, maybe 45 minutes, he some how pulled the wound pad out from under the wrap we had it secured with

There was smears of blood all over the comforter

I don’t know how he did that, he must have been in pain, not sure why he did that

If I asked him I am not sure he would be able to tell me why he did that

When I got back, we rewrapped it so he had full dressing for the flight

Chad made us a terrific breakfast and we had a chance to catch up in the morning with he and Jen

We got to the airport with plenty of time cushion and went to the check in counter to ask for a wheelchair

Its not that Matt can’t walk, it really two things: It signals to TSA there is something more going on and also, its a great way for ME to have help

I hadn’t thought about how nice it would be to have someone help ME get him through TSA, I just always, before this, got us both through

Having someone else to manage his luggage, interact with TSA, talk to him, distract him so I have more bandwidth to deal with my own more complicated baggage (I always am traveling with a notebook computer, ipad, extra screen, remarkable…..all the stuff you often have to take out at screening)

During the flight, I did slip him a half of the calming med when I gave him his morning meds, I think that helped

For most of the flight, he was messing with something, like his backpack, the back of the seat, the flight card information, imaginary string he seems to often have in his hand

He didn’t want to watch a movie, I was prepared with an iPad for him

At one point I think he was hallucinating, he was having a conversation with someone

But he never got to that place where I feared, where he might want to get off the plane in the middle of the trip, he never got that ansy

I couldn’t hear most of what he said on the plane; between the background noise, the 3 week old baby that was within a handful of seats from us, my taking out my hearing aids to minimize the noise, his very very soft spoken nature

I tried, I tried really hard to hear him; I put my ear practically on his lips, no go most of the flight

Sometimes when that happens, I make up a language, and then we just talk that way, in our own made up language, that often gets him to laugh

I read my book when I could, completely engrossed with finishing Erik Lawson’s “The Splendid and the Vile”, another WW2 book which is teaching me a lot about that part of our collective history

Always with an eye to watch his hands, to make sure he wasn’t bugging the people sitting immediately in front of us

So today we are back at the Farmhouse, our first full day home after arriving back mid afternoon yesterday

Its good to be home, glad we took the trip, very glad we made it back in 2 pieces

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