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.

T.B.I AND DEAD PEOPLE 3/23/07

I like mornings alright. It's something inside of me really. Something that resents change. Those between times where I shake myself from infested sleep, where the boundaries are blurred. Tapping into power. It is not something inside of me. It is I who doesn't care for the murky undefined borderlands of between.

The dog is instantly awake. She is my startling opposite. Frizzly energy to my melancholy. She explodes with happiness. My dog celebrates mornings for both of us. We are a community intertwined in Destiny herself, my dog and I. Without her, my fear would have rendered me sterile. Taken me down and drowned me in the onslaught of my atypical neurology.

It is my fear that chokes me. I will not be remembered. I will not have made enough of a difference. That is my fear. My dog knows this. She pushes me on and out into the sunlight. Blinking with pain and photophobia, I shield my eyes, always glad to return to the safety of home and dim lighting.

Home is where I hang my hat, hang the dog leash, stash my protein breakfast bars of power and frozen colored ices. Those bars of power are the breakfasts of champions.

Mrs. Eugenia Simpson gyrates onto the stage, clickety-clack, screaming for notice. It is a curse, this 99th percentile memory which survived through my broken brain. It is a curse, this second sight, third eye, and fourth dimension. "Eugenia," I address her, "I don't care what you think about my breakfast. I didn't know you thought about me after all of these years. You are dead you know. D-E-A-D dead." She throws my eighth grade health book at me. It opens to the how to eat correctly and what to eat when triangle. I laugh. She keeps dancing.

Some wise fool once defined nirvana as a day without dead people and traumatic brain injury. The ghosts keep floating through me as more memories filter in, like sunlight stinging my eyes. Rebuilding neurons and synapses yield dead ends of central nervous system tremor. Permanent. Another mark of progress. I have been marked beyond skin and sinew.

Community is the who around me, the us, dead people and all. I have neglected so much in my artificial quest for wholeness. I have forgotten the Other. The Other whose land we have stolen. I am also the Other. The interior landscapes of my brain has also been stolen, twisted beyond recognition, and left in a dumpster.

I am a second generation American. Briella is my second generation brain. Brilliant but sideways. Doing the two-step to Eugenia's celebratory dance. My dog nudges me. She dances and sings to me, "It's okay to let go of the gilded lily. It is not yours to pay. Come play with me in the wilderness." Somehow I think that didn't translate so well. I sigh and pick up the dog leash. We step out into the wilderness together.

sapphoq healing t.b.i.