Where the hell did I park the car?

Posted on October 29, 2014 by peterwick

I can only imagine how it might have been to have a brain injury during a time when remote car keys didn’t exist. Sheesh. That reminds me. I should replace the battery in my remote so maybe it can have its range back… Somebody email me a reminder, huh?

I can laugh about it now but I wonder if I’d be laughing if I didn’t have a coat when it was a nice 45ºF in the afternoon but now it’s windy and 20ºF at 9 pm… And no, this would not have been a good time to hear someone say “Eh, I do that all the time.” An addendum to this would be when someone blithely says it’s the start of Alzheimer’s disease. Maybe in some ways this is similar to dementia but I already beat myself up with jokes about losing my mind.

This reminds me of those first couple of weeks after I finally started using the calendar book my speech pathologist suggested I get. I would set it down somewhere and it was if it was immediately transported to Omaha. It took a long time to settle on a designated place to keep things so that I could find them when I had to go out. I guess I have to start texting myself my car’s location before I walk away or use a phone app for this.

If I can remember to do it that is.

Posted in Random Observations | Tagged , | Leave a comment

I’m fortunate my TBI is considered mild.

Posted on October 28, 2014 by peterwick

Really. In the grand scheme of things it could have been so much worse. Before I get too far into this post I should say that there are so many different things to say about that. I realized as I was preparing this post that it was getting close to the 5 figure mark in the word count so I’ll get this very brief message out to broach this subject. For a more educated source of information I suggest you visit a resource like Brainline.org or another such source.

Brainline.org’s take on the matter of traumatic brain injuries that fall into the mild category.

I must say this right here. I am incredibly lucky. Yes. In fact I should say that again. I’m incredibly lucky.

I felt awful this summer. I could waste all sorts of e-ink being dramatic about it (and yes, I did but I’ve already deleted it so you don’t have to be afraid to read further) but I’ve never felt that way before. Unlike the bodily harm I thought I’d be able to adjust to, I could not be convinced the problems due to my brain injury would ever improve. And as all the painful stuff came together like a beef stew in a slow cooker I got further and further into a deep and anxious depression. I won’t go into it all here because the damage inventory is tiresome to read. Even for myself and that’s in spite of how it can get me riled up over what I would think was the injustice of it all. So how is it that I can say 5 months down the road that I believe I’m further along on the road to recovery than I ever thought I’d be?  I think that answer starts with the finding that my TBI is mild. Oh sure, I have some problems that are going to take a lot longer to resolve. Don’t get me wrong though. Even with a mild brain injury life is different and harder now.

ETA: Okay, those last few sentences get confusing but I’ll leave them be, if only to illustrate how I get into muddled thinking even when I’m trying to summarize. I should probably say that my mild TBI is receding and those are welcome sensations. There is a lot more work to do and I hope to continue on a positive trajectory.

Posted in Serious Posts on Brain Injury | Tagged , , , | 4 Comments

The draw of anger

Posted on October 27, 2014 by peterwick

Sometimes I just have to get the hell away from the computer. I suppose this would happen to me even before the crash though. I’ve been working on some posts that require some research and it’s getting to me. Too much reading of other people’s accounts of life with a brain injury gets me puffed up with anger. It also scares the hell out of me.

I enjoy music and singing it really helped me speak well again but I have to make my own playlists. I listen to a particular Josh Turner album, Long Black Train – his first, a lot. My voice is in the bass range and I can sing all his songs and I like several of his. However, there is a song I have to avoid at all costs. The 4th track, entitled I Had One One Time, is too close sometimes. The statistics on the way families break down after a person suffers a TBI are appalling. In part it looks like a survey of alcoholics and victims of addiction. In other ways they parallel mental illness data. It’s just a country song but still, beware of listening if you’re not in a good mood.

Posted in Random Observations | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

Believe me, I know how you feel.

Posted on October 26, 2014 by peterwick

No. They probably don’t.  They may or may not insist they do but unless they already have a TBI of their own, they don’t.

However, annoying as it can be to hear someone say this, they probably do mean well for you. One mistake I was making in the early weeks and months after my crash was telling people, no insisting, that they actually didn’t know how I was feeling. I didn’t realize that I was pushing people away when I’d do that. Heck, I didn’t understand much of anything I was doing, much less remembering any of it unless it was something I texted or typed (Swyped) on my phone. (My eyesight was messed up by the crash and reading was impossible unless I could hold the screen at a certain angle so books and my laptop were on the bench. I was living through my phone. Got pretty good at Swyping though.)

The people who understood the most were the therapists I began working with. More so than the doctors. Yes, the docs would examine me and determine what was needed but it was the therapists spending much more time with me one-on-one that got through to me best. Even though they may not have had a TBI, they at least let me know, patiently, that they were used to clients with my problems and could take whatever I happened to dish out on a given day.

It took me all summer to come to better terms with myself and how my emotions were much more volatile or more relevantly, friable since the accident. And in the early days when I needed people the most I was not helping myself by getting frustrated when people would say they understood how I felt. Unfortunately I do not know how to remedy this for the TBI patient. All I can really do here is add my voice in with the millions of others asking loved ones and friends to not give up on them. I know I didn’t always make it easy for the people around me.

Posted in If I Hear That Again... | Tagged , , | 5 Comments

Got an email today. Like several others I received this summer, it told me that someone on Strava has stolen my top ranking on some bike or run segment. Oh well. It was bound to happen. And by the way, what does ‘CR’ mean? Course record? Anyway, I was able to read it and not have an outsized and ridiculous reaction.

Stravaloss
You can read about it here – if, like me, you’re interested in the data.

That certainly wasn’t the case this past summer.

I have a bit better outlook now that it’s October. It took me a long time to accept the whole thing and not just joke or whine about it. Or cry*. I erased all my PBs (Personal Bests) in Garmin and Trainer Road as part of this rebuilding process. I just don’t want to be reminded. I plan on rebuilding as much as I can but hopefully I’ll be reasonable about it.

* You’re going to see some comments and stuff in this blog that are going to sound ridiculous. A 50 year old guy crying about something so trivial as Strava? I told ya, brain injuries really mess with your mind, or at least mine did. Yeah, it’s embarrassing. I haven’t figured out how to erase all the Strava stuff. Maybe remove all the activities and start over?

Posted on October 25, 2014 by peterwick | 2 Comments

We’re lucky enough to have Keegan the Wonder Dog.

Posted on October 23, 2014 by peterwick

I know that we are fortunate to have such a remarkable little dog, especially one that we adopted knowing nothing about him at all. He was truly a mess so I really got lucky in convincing my wife to accept this total fixer-upper of a dog. Once we got him cleaned up and sorted medically we couldn’t believe we’d wound up with such a cute dog. We’ve heard many people say he’s so nice to us because he knows we rescued him. Ummm, okay.  I don’t know if that’s true but it sure fits. Having him around this summer has been beneficial to say the least. I’ve always told folks he’s a magic dog with several stories ready to be told when people ask “How so?” This summer he’s written another entry in his list of palmarès

Keegan knows how to get his needs met. He gives us lessons every day.

Keegan knows how to get his needs met. He says I need to improve my tummy rubbing technique and that I can practice on him pretty much any time I’d like.

He really can fly if he wants to. Look at that concentration.

He really can fly if he wants to. Just look at that concentration!

This furry little doofus has been with us through so many challenges here in New Jersey. I could post (and probably will) many pictures here to honor him but these will do for now.

I would urge anyone recovering from a traumatic brain injury (TBI) to spend time with a dog or cat – but only if that pet has the right temperament. Dogs, cats and other pets can be wonderful companions in the recovery process but they don’t work for everyone. There are many reasons for that and what I would then say is to do what you can to maintain your support network that much more. I would also urge friends and family of the TBI patient to spend that much more time with them once they are transitioned to outpatient status. Even if no one visits you in the hospital or rehab facility the staff and patients provide some activity to distract you. Once I got home I really felt the isolation and without Keegan it would have been much worse.

As an integral part of my domestic support team he kept me company and gave me reason to get going enough to be able to just walk him. For a 15 pound dog who doesn’t pull on the leash he was still very difficult to walk and I needed help. I must say that while he was a handful in the early days he had a peculiar effect on one of the problems I had this summer. I had a tough time processing sensory input and formulating my replies, stuff that could be lumped together as aphasia. The hesitancy drove me nuts and when I finally would get the words out I’d often say the wrong words. Let’s just say that people had to be very patient with me.

I soon realized I didn’t have those problems when I would baby-talk Keegan. All the silly things I would say over and over to him through the years were like a song I knew by heart. I suppose it was pretty funny to hear me speaking those goofy things so easily to him when I was struggling to have a conversation with a human. I should have had all my conversations with Keegan on my lap and just say everything to him instead of the person(s). My baby-talk voice might have gotten old though.

Posted in Serious Posts on Brain Injury | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

Ads?

Posted on October 21, 2014 by peterwick

Edited to add: I decided to pay the small fee for the simpler domain name. It also gives me greater flexibility in futzing around with the site. Best of all, there shouldn’t be any ads popping up on you.

————————

By the way, I haven’t paid anything to WordPress upon starting this blog. One of the ways it supports itself and provides a free blogging platform is by selling ad space on free blogs. At this time Nine of All Trades is a free blog. What I’d like to know is whether the ads you’re seeing are too intrusive. I suppose they might be so I’m taking an informal poll to consider if it is worth paying for.

I don’t seem to be seeing any ads when I look at the blog myself but that might be because I’m the contributor and admin.

Posted in Random Observations | Leave a comment

What I Would Like to Do Here

Posted on October 21, 2014 by peterwick

In my opening post I wrote about my accident and began to open up the discussion of getting over what happened to me. That’s what I’m doing here and I hope I can keep it focused on what I want to do here, which is to bring out issues relevant to the recovery from a brain injury. Of any kind. That is the main reason for this effort, at least in the Serious Notes on Brain Injury category I set up. Continue reading →

Posted in Serious Posts on Brain Injury | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment