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.

Sometimes

Sometimes I feel that I hate you.  You have interrupted my career, cost me my livelihood, made for numerous fights about money and the lack thereof now that I can no longer work full-time.  I am tired.


I am tired of being tired, tired of having to explain why it is that I do not understand this or can no longer do that safely.  I am tired of the betrayal.  You robbed me.  Damn you.


I am no saint.  There is never a time when I feel that I love you.  But there are times when I know that I notice the little things more-- the touch of a lover, the song of a bird, flowers blooming, weather shifts, the moon.  I am alive and that sure beats the alternative.


Sometimes I tell myself and others that my brain's name is now Briella-- still brilliant but a bit twisted and sideways.


Sometimes I mourn the old, sometimes I celebrate the new, sometimes I can just be.

sapphoq healing tbi

LAUGHING OUR WAY THROUGH HEALING 12/20/06

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2006/12/061212213922.htm

Science Daily reports what we've known all along: Laughter is contagious.
Researchers have pinpointed the pre-motor cortical region of the brain as the area that responds to laughter [and other things like smiles, cheers, and barfing.]

fMRIs showed greater responses to cheerful stuff like laughter and weaker responses to screaming and barfing. Science Daily wrote that this shows that laughter is more contagious than other "negative" stuff. [sapphoq's note: Thus, laughter is more contagious than barfing or chicken pox?]

sapphoq says: Some of us folks with traumatic brain injuries have a difficult time mirroring the expressions of those around us. Perhaps funny movies would be an easier way to re-learn some of this stuff, even if our sense of humor has been "altered" to something unrecognizable by the professionals.
Professionals often claim that we T.B.I-ers don't "have a sense of humor." That is more their failure to recognize rather than our lack. I spent many hysterical hours in the tbi chat room-- with folks who were like me-- trying to figure out the names of the seven dwarves. None of us did remember all of them and we frequently diverged into other names for the dwarves which were funnier than the originals.
At any rate, those hours in tbi chat were indeed healing for me and the beginning of being able to re-establish communication with others on a meaningful human level for me. We had our own version of the English language going on there called tbi-typese. [One friend remarked during that time that it was difficult for her to understand my e-mails. She didn't know tbi-typese. Re-learning how to spell came for me months later as I participated in various e-groups. She never did pick up on tbi-typese. That was her lack!]

So if any professional helper-person tells you that you, a survivor and thriver of traumatic brain injury, do not have a sense of humor, you have my permission to laugh at them however silently and to be assured that they are seriously wrong about that one.

sapphoq healing tbi