In a post script to my last update, I mentioned the phone call from the nurse telling me she had found Vernon kneeling on the floor after he had moved himself somehow from the bed.  There were no injuries so it seems he had some control of his upper body and did this on purpose, rather than just flinging himself or falling out of bed. This is the phase of recovery that keeps the staff on their toes!

As you can see here, he is reconnecting to the rebellious side of himself.

Another thing you might notice in this video is the trach tube hanging oddly around his neck.  I knew it had been capped and he would have it removed relatively soon, so at first I thought it was just part of this process that it wasn’t attached and that I could see the hole in his neck.  When I asked a nurse though, I realized he’d pulled it out himself and suddenly there were 3 other staff members struggling to get a new one in.  Getting a trach reattached looks like an unpleasant procedure, so I thought he would remember this and keep from decannulating himself right away.  Yes, a new word for me too. It means: planned or accidental removal of a tracheostomy tube. Why not see if you too can drop that word into a conversation today.

But when I arrived home that night, I got another call from the nurse. Oops, he did it again.  He re-decannulated!  So they have had to use restraints on his stronger arm.  The real danger is in his aggitation, he might pull out the new Dialysis Catheter, and that would be very serious. So he is a bit of threat to himself at the moment.

But one thing that the nurse keeps telling me is how STRONG he his. Its quite amazing that he is suddenly coming back in his strength, after all those months of stillness and muscular atrophy.  Many of the staff  that haven’t attended him for awhile tell me they can hardly believe this is the same guy lying so still and quiet in his bed a month ago, only able to communicate with nods and a squeeze of the hand. In some ways, he’s more work for them now, but I can tell they love seeing the progress and find it as exciting as we do.

These font samples are just some random images I pulled off his website.  To my knowledge they are all fonts he designed.  I don’t know the names of them all, though they are in wide circulation and use.

Most of you know that Vernon worked as a Type Designer, and even as he has little memory for so many things at the moment, he seems to understand that this was his job and that it was something he enjoyed doing. Maki and my dad, Hyatt, went up to visit Vernon yesterday afternoon and talked to him about fonts and font he designed.  Maki began by listing different alphabets he knew his dad had made, and Vernon agreed, yes, indeed he had.

Then Maki asked if he had designed some classic fonts like Comic Sans.  “Yes,” Vernon said, he had.

“Helvetica?”   “Yes.”

Then my dad joined in with some of his favorites.  “Gill Sans?”   “Yes.”

Were there any fonts he hadn’t designed?   “No.”

Then, having some fun, they went WAY back.  They asked him about the letters on the Roman Columns.

“Yes, I designed those too. But I didn’t engrave them. Laborers did that.”

Good to know he didn’t do EVERYTHING.