Even Better

     The bird was hanging upside down from the feeder. He was almost frozen. He was not a happy bird. He was having a bad day-- no, not a bad moment-- a bad day. The weather had been miserably cold for a week. I found him there, removed him, and took him inside to warm him up. I set him free outside and he sang hosannas of gratitude.

     No. That's not how it happened. I saw him there upside down, his feet frozen to a metal part of the underside of the bird feeder. I wasn't sure if he was dead or alive or in torpor or what. After some hesitation, I wrapped him in a yellow towel and took him inside. He made no noise whatsoever. His legs were messed up and at odd angles. If he was dead, it would have been a mercy.

     I warmed him up by the radiator on the off-chance that he could be saved. The kitten came up and inspected him.

     I put the bird still wrapped in the yellow towel in a basket in a tree in the sun. He was not there the next morning. I figured that either he had flown away or that a desperate hungry hawk or something ate him. He was back in the thick of nature however it went.

    The fiction that I had definitely saved the little bird is preferable to what actually happened. We don't like messy endings in general. We don't like to read about little birds that might be dead or might have been eaten by a bigger bird. We want everything as it was before or even better than before.

     But life is not like that. Mother Nature is a real Muther. Nature is cruel and stalking and predatory. Nature does not give one whit about any of our wishes, desires, or dreams. Life happens and death happens. Those who are born do not in any way make up for those who die. Oh perhaps in population statistics but not in any other way.

     Even if the bird flew out of the basket, his life was not the same or even better as it had been before. His legs were injured. Even if they healed up, they were not "good as new." Even if he lived, he certainly was hobbled by his experiences.


sapphoq healing tbi says: Some well-meaning people want us to be like we were before whatever happened to each one of us that left us with damaged brains. They gush at us "Oh isn't it wonderful that the brain rewires itself?" We are beyond their gushing. We know that we are beyond magical yoga retreats and fish oil and stupid talk of brains putting themselves back together again "even better" than before.
     Think before you open your mouth to impart some fake cure or false hope. Chances are, we don't want to hear those lies. Tell us to keep working at those things that we are re-learning. Tell us that each of us has to be in charge of our own rehab. Tell us that our lives are different. Tell us that life is neither fair nor unfair. Life is sacred and nothing is promised to us. 

     No, I am not "better off" than I was before the day that my life changed forever. No, brains do not rewire themselves to be exactly the way they used to be. Yes, I certainly do have a life today. This is not the life that I signed up for but it is mine. I keep striving to work around my deficits. I keep challenging my brain. I keep doing the things that I learned that I must do for myself in order to have some kind of a life. It is easy to sit around and mope because I have brain damage now. It is better to force myself to participate in my life. It is even better to work for what I consider to be worth working for. And having a life-- even if it is a different life now-- is certainly worth working for.  

The Cane

Most of the time, the cane stands by the chair in a corner.  It is there for when I perceive that I need it.  I've come to suspect that I need it more than I am using it.

The cane was suggested to me as an alternative to a disabled parking permit.  I kept falling.  When I fall, I almost always fall to my right side.  I used the cane extensively at first. 

Summer came and with it my first pair of a certain kind of sandals.  Those sandals did wonders for me.  The first pair lasted me five years.  I went cross-country with them by myself for three weeks.  I was still falling with them, but less. 

Time passes.  I got a second pair of those sandals.  I used the cane less.  The dog keeps me upright when we walk together.  I don't fall with her now.

A friend of mine saw me walking one day.  "Where's the cane?" he asked.  He snorted when I informed him that I was walking 'fine' without it.  "What does the doctor say?" he asked.  I growled at him.

I've gone back to using the cane for walking any distance when the dog is home.  It helps.  The cane helps me judge where the ground is.  I am steadier with it than without. 

And I am good with that.

sapphoq healing traumatic brain injury

Compensation

Compensation is a healthy acknowledgement that a certain limitation or weakness does ipso facto exist and therefore we work around that limitation or weakness.  The unfortunate reality of brain damage-- traumatic brain injury in politer society-- is that some things will not get better, improve, or disappear no matter how much of an effort we put into making it so.  Some things do improve.  And some things don't.

We don't like to hear those words.  The trouble with the phrase "permanent damage" is inherent in both the word "permanent" and in the word "damage."  Permanent implies permeance.  In spite of my determination and my best efforts, the double vision in my left eye is permanent.  In spite of my determination and my best efforts, my brain may improve in some areas of functioning however she [I named her Briella: still brilliant, just a bit sideways now is all] will never ever be the same as or similar to my pre-accident brain.



Here are some things that I am sick of hearing in no particular order:

The brain re-wires itself. 
Yes, but not in the same way.  Where we used to have freeways we now have dirt roads and dead ends.  The dead ends are when regenerating dendrites don't find another one to hook up with.  I have a central nervous system tremor as a result of that.

There is nothing wrong with you. 
 I hope you never have to live through anything like this.  Your denial is a luxury that can kill me.  Bunches of professionals have told me exactly "what is wrong" with me.  I have a list of diagnoses now.  Bottom line is that most of the things on the list are a complication of my brain damage.

You had those difficulties before. 
My brain damage made a few of my pre-existing difficulties worse and one pre-existing difficulty easier.  It's easier for me to throw stuff out now because I don't remember where or when I got it or why I wanted it.  Since when did you get a PhD in Neurology or something related?

I know what you mean.  Sometimes I can't ___________ either.
Jealous much?  You really do not know what I mean.  I have these difficulties day after day, every day.  Your "sometimes" is meaningless to me.  Almost nothing is automatic for me now.  Wrap your undamaged brain around that one.

Yoga [or ______________ ] will fix it.
No, it will not.  The stiffness that I have is from cerebellar damage.  Look it up.  There is no magic pill.  There is no magic drug.  There is no magic guru.  There is no magic exercise.  There is no magic anything.



But some things have gotten better.  I have learned to tell people to hang on a minute while I am engaged in a task, to rest on demand, to challenge myself, to keep moving, to write in meaningful, grammatical constructions called sentences, to ask my friend "Who is that?"

I have learned to remember to look to the left at a stop sign.  I affixed a brightly colored sticker to the windshield at the spot that I kept neglecting to look at.  Now, remembering to look there is almost automatic.  For the first two years, it was not.

I have learned to curtail my night driving in the name of safety and photophobia.

I have learned to substitute a similar sounding word when I cannot make my mouth say the word that I want to say.  Or when I cannot make my brain retrieve the word that I do want.

I have learned to curse less.  I do not substitute words like "heck" or "darn" for the words that I want to say.  I can stop myself almost all of the time now from cursing.

I have learned to ask for help when I need it.

And I have learned to compensate for the weaknesses that I have due to my brain damage.  A sticker on the windshield is a compensation.  Not driving at night is a compensation.  Word substitution is a compensation.  Stopping myself instead of cursing is a compensation.  Asking for help is a compensation.



Here are a few things that do not work for me:

Modeling "appropriate" behavior and expecting me to catch on does not work.  Unless you point it out to me with words, I will not get what you are doing.  Unless I decide that I want to change something [like my cursing], I will tell you where you can stick your "appropriate" behavior.

Demanding that I do stuff that I cannot do safely does not work.  You can expect me to shovel the snow all that you want to.  Believe me, I want to help you shovel the snow.  I have spinal damage.  I can move snow around with my old beat-up car.  I cannot safely shovel show.  Hire someone to do it.  Get a plow.  Use the snowblower.  Piss on it.  Whatever.  I will not shovel the snow.  I have been advised of my physical limitations.  That I cannot safely shovel the snow should not be a newsflash.  I am not interested in what you think about this.  It's called self-preservation.

Not telling me why you are angry or exasperated with me or with something I am doing does not work.  It's a guarantee that I don't know why you are exasperated with me.  Sometimes I may not even be aware that you are exasperated.  Saying, "I'm sick of this," and ending a friendship and not telling me what you are sick of does not offer me any feedback whatsoever.  Expecting me to be more than civil to you when you run into me in a public place several years later is unreasonable.  I've been through too much to be interested in playing that particular kind of game.  I've lost better friends than you due to the aftermath of my brain damage.  What's one more?

Expecting me to believe in your belief system does not work.  Preaching at me will cause me to tune you out.  Telling me that life is meaningless without your particular flavor of philosophy or "spirituality" just makes me say, "Huh?"  Expounding on the false notion that there is no morality without your particular god will cause laughter and merriment.  And you are going to argue a finer point of theology or recovery or even neurology with me, please construct a logical argument without any cognitive fallacies.  I don't have time to waste on mental masturbation.

And finally, trolling without any real skillz does not work.  If you are a troll, then be an epic troll.  If you can't hang with the 4chan crowd, then don't co-opt the vocabulary.



I have brain damage.  I am not brain dead.  I continue to do brain game type stuff and visual training and physical therapy exercises.  I know who I am and I know what I am.  I keep striving in spite of.  There is no room in my life for the willfully ignorant.  I have learned how to compensate for many of my difficulties.  If you aren't going to help me, then get out of my way.

sapphoq on healing t.b.i.

Sometimes

This is one of this month's digital art pics that I made from two of my photos.  I named it "The Grid" after thinking about information storage and broken synapses. 

Sometimes when I am full of brain fog, I am able to stop what I am doing and take the dog out for a walk in a peaceful place. 

Sometimes when I don't know what to do, I take a line from one of my favorite singers and ask myself, "What would Jimmy Buffett do?"  If I am having a problem that requires clear thought and decision-making, I ask myself, "What would a logical person do?"  And if I don't know what a logical person would do, I call up a logical person and ask them.

Sometimes I force myself to slow down, especially when my wheels are spinning and I am restless.
Sometimes I force myself to speed up, especially when I feel mokus and not wanting to move.

Sometimes blogging helps, sometimes social networking helps, sometimes nothing helps.  When nothing helps, I can sit or stand and hurt for awhile.

Sometimes things happen that are too big for me to forgive.  Not being a churched person, I don't have to offer forgiveness unless it is asked for.  And sometimes I forgive "the part of" the person "that didn't know any better."  Apathy or indifference is preferable to resentments these days.  Forgiveness is not something that can be rushed.  The rush to forgive can lead one into fresh revictimization.

Sometimes I make promises and I don't deliver.  Sometimes people and organizations make promises and they don't deliver either.  I've learned to make less promises.

Sometimes helping people get stuck in traps.  They believe in fictions instead of investigating for themselves.  Or they don't really think that we can improve much at all or have a real life.  That has to be their problem.  My responsibility is to lessen the impact of their false, limiting beliefs on anything that has to do with my life and my wishes and my dreams.

Sometimes people don't want to deal with brain damage or the changes that are wrought in us because of our brain damage.  People get scared off by what they don't understand.  Friends flee.  Potential employers hide behind excuses.  Past employers don't want us back.  I don't waste energy being good enough for anyone else these days.  I have to be good enough for me.

Sometimes people label anger as being "negative" or "bad."  I have not found this to be true.  The truth is quite different.  Muddied anger and rage and resentments can all be liabilities which we allow to dictate our thoughts and behaviors.  There is a clear anger that is a call to action.  What I have found is this: Anger is my truest friend.
 
sapphoq healing tbi