Aimee starting again: take 2

In early August, the last time I saw Aimee, I was left with an uneasy mix of fear and hope for her. She was on her way to the East coast and a rehab program. That didn’t work out, as she had no support system out east, so she’s back in Portland. Presently she’s living in a shelter for houseless people, trying a new rehab program for people with atypical emotional states (online, 3 hours a day weekdays). She’s planning to detox over the coming week and begin again. Again. I’m all for it. 

Her program urged her to reach out to the people she trusts, let us know what she’s doing, and ask us to be her support. I’m in. 

Ever the artist, she plans to keep an online journal of her experience kicking this addiction and rebuilding her life. She’s exploring platforms, thinking maybe Threads, the spinoff from Instagram, would work. She wants a word platform, not a photograph platform. She's a blindingly honest and very gifted writer (as a few of you know, from reading her book about her summer in Manhattan in 2021). If I've ever known anyone who can pull this off, it's Aimee.

She doesn’t want photographs of herself as she is now, so after I took her out for pizza, I made a photo of her glass while she went to the restroom. 

She and I have some ideas—once she gets this addiction thing behind her—of playing with lights (her), projections (her), and possibly photos and words (me), doing a project together. I’d love to see that come to pass. But first things first.

In other news, Sue’s still testing positive, 18 days now, but I found an excellent article on “Prolonged PCR positivity in elderly patients infected with SARS-CoV-2.” It says, if I’m reading it correctly, that people near 80 often have up to three weeks (or even longer) of testing positive, as a result of “immunosenescence.” The article is about PCR testing, and Sue is of course doing home rapid tests, but the information in the article says the aging immune system can take weeks to throw off the virus, nothing to worry about. Long periods of testing positive are not correlated with adverse outcomes. So that’s good to know. She’s going to reach out to her physician tomorrow to see if there’s anything else she needs to know or check up on, and when we can get together again safely.