Milestone

I was in recovery from my addictions for many years before the car accident that rendered my brain brilliant but a bit sideways.  It is once again September and thus time for the obligatory post.  I am now thirty two years out from my addiction to drugs including but not limited to the drug alcohol.  I am slightly less than one third of that time away from the day I got my t.b.i.  I have maintained my weight loss for about a year and a half.

I made the sign.  I did not create the font.  The font came in my legal copy of a digital editing program.  I don't care if you download this tag or what you do with it.  Just don't hotlink.  Con respecto, muchas gracias.  sapphoq healing tbi

So yeah.  Happy Birthday to me!

Working on my Visual Perception Problems

My traumatic brain injury left me with some rather outstanding perception problems.  Because I have diagnosed permanent double vision in one eye, I have been treated to the sight of folks with two heads, four arms, and two torsos which extend into one set of hips and two legs casually jogging in my neighborhood.  Because I have been diagnosed with ocular-motor dysfunction and a visual accommodation disorder, objects and people appear as having ghost lines around them, especially when fatigued and my brain is too tired to block those ghost lines.  (And let's not forget the photophobia which is responsible for me limiting my driving at night to "only local and only when not tired."  And my fatigue from dealing with all of this which led me recently to switch to an e-reader which is set to make reading easier for me).  


I know that first paragraph sounds like I am whining.  But really, I am not whining.  I want to tell you about Google Sketch-Up®.  Sketch-Up® is a three-d modeling program that is available at http://sketchup.google.com/download/ as freeware.  [If someone is a professional and wants more bells and whistles, they can buy a professional version from Trimble].  I like three dimensional stuffs and I also like animation.  I've been endeavoring for some time to use DAS®, Bryce®, Blender®, and Hexagon II® and I've had no success to speak of.  [Those four programs were all available as free legal downloads a couple of months ago from their company's website.  I believe the special offer may have ended.  At any rate, I got in on it the very last day].  Those programs were too hard for me to learn at the present time.  One night I happened upon Sketch-Up® and promptly downloaded the free version.  

In short order, I found that I was able to produce rectangles, circles and 3d text.  [If you want to see a few of the things I've made, google "warehouse lovemakesafamily" to find some examples that I've uploaded to Google Warehouse®].  After watching a few free tutorial videos,  I went on to make several skyboxes, some other shapes, and a box with a chaffeured lid.  As I continue to work with my digital camera and computer art, building in Second Life®, and Google Sketch-Up® I've noted some improvement in the way that my eyes work together when I practice  my vision therapy exercises.  This improvement I must still label as "subjective" since it has yet to be confirmed by my t.b.i. eye doc. 

Sorry to the dedicated optimists who want me to say that my vision problems are totally abated, cured, or not permanent after all.  It simply ain't so.  I have to deal with my situation as it is and not engage in dreams of being "almost or exactly 100%" of who I was before my accident.  I am very fortunate to be alive.  I would have been better off-- certainly financially and in some other ways as well-- had the motor vehicle accident not happened.  But things are what they are.  I continue to deal with Briella [my still brilliant brain, just a bit sideways] on a daily basis.  When I think back to how far I've come from the early days of sleeping twenty-two hours every twenty-four, relearning on the computer how to write a complete and organized sentence, playing Tetris® because other T.B.I.ers told me it would "help" with my eye-hand coordination, and myriad discussions about the names of the seven dwarves, I smile broadly and say to myself, "Yup I done good.  Now I gotta keep striving."

sapphoq healing t.b.i.

Things About TBI-ers that Aren't True

Here is a short list of five things that are commonly assumed about people with Traumatic Brain Injuries which I have found to be inaccurate:


1).  "They don't have a sense of humor."

Actually, we do.  We have to in order to be able to survive dealing with N-typs [neuro-typicals: folks who do not have any diagnosed neurology].

We no longer 'get' why you think something is funny.  We certainly do laugh.  Just because we no longer get your jokes and you don't get ours, it does not follow that we have lost our sense of humor.

You simply haven't lived until you've spent several hours in a t.b.i. chat room attempting to remember the names of the seven dwarfs.



2).  "Any major progress to be had / Any major improvement...will occur during the first six to twelve months after the injury."

Ain't necessarily so.  Substantial improvement happens as we work for it throughout our lives.  It is highly unfortunate that the cut-off for cognitive rehab is six months.



3).  "T.B.I.-ers curse a lot."

Yes, although those of us who choose to do so can learn to keep that under control.  Hint: Don't nag us.  If you want us to do something like control our cursing, you are going to have to explain the benefits involved in inhibiting our dis-inhibitions.



4).  "T.B.I.-ers have an increased risk of dementias later in life."

That depends.  Commonality does not imply causality.  The antecedent is not necessarily the cause of, a cause of, or related to a future event.



5).  "T.B.I.-ers are notoriously self-centered."

At first, extreme self-centeredness is a requirement.  It is a survival mechanism which will recede as recovery progresses.



6).  "The brain can rewire itself."

Just not exactly the way it was before.  We used to have supersonic highways up there.  Now we have dirt roads, crossroads, and dead ends.  (The neurons that re-grow and don't manage to hook up to any other neurons are responsible for my central nervous system fine tremor).



7).  "They will be impressed if we spout off all of the big names of folks working in brainology."

Uh no.  We've probably met them, had coffee with them, met their families, attended seminars and conferences with them, served on boards with them.  We don't have the energy to be impressed by name-dropping.  And we don't have the time or the desire to stroke the false egos of folks who seem to demand that sort of thing.


sapphoq healing t.b.i.