Comment on May 27th, 2009.
Well, if it means anything, I consider you a friend, and that's based solely on your writing, seeing as I've never met you.
And you're not broken, at least not in the stronger senses of the term. You need mending, but from my vantage point you're way more intact than I could bring myself to hope for just a few months ago.
Comment on May 27th, 2009.
I need mending, but it's up in the air whether I'll get mending or not. That's scary. I can't know. And right now, I am broken, believe me. You'd know if you heard me talk, and saw me type.
And thank you; I consider you as a friend, too.
Comment on May 27th, 2009.
Much as I have always enjoyed your writing, the thing I've valued most about our interactions on Making Light is the personality that informs and illumines it. Your insight and your principles, the essence of Scraps, if you will, seems unchanged to me.
Just a little static on the channel, is all.
I know it's frustrating for you. I have a tiny taste of it every time I struggle with Dutch. But people listen, and wait, because they (we) are gripped by the content.
And I'm glad it was a good day out, by the way.
Comment on May 27th, 2009.
Thank you, very much. I guess that's what people mean when they say my personality is still here. My experience is still shrouded by fog; but increasingly, very slowly, I can catch what I am saying.
Comment on June 2nd, 2009.
I'm delighted it was such a good day for you--we hugely enjoyed having you there and were very glad you made the trip.
Comment on June 16th, 2009.
I've had numerous (my doctors never told me the number but I gather it was more than a few and less than it would take to turn me into a rutabaga) small "stroke-like" events (I'm still trying to wrap my brain around neurology-speak), so I have an unfortunate familiarity with the fog you mention.
The good news is that I'm getting better at tasks I used to do easily. It's taken a long time (almost a year since the initial diagnosis that something bad had been happening for several years). In the process, I've had a lot of days when I've had to actively fight my impatient, "I want to be better NOW!" instincts, and I've had to figure out how to use a lot of different types of mental crutches. For instance, since I can't seem to spell anymore, I've developed a truly symbiotic relationship with my computer's spell-check and dictionary.
I take my ability to use these crutches as a sign that my brain is still capable of learning, though -- and that's been a considerable victory for me. One by one, the crutches are becoming easier to use -- and, after intensive sessions with my family spent trying to figure out who I used to be, I feel like I'm recapturing my confidence in my sense of self.
I hope you get back some of that same pleasure in your remaining abilities and the promise of using them to recover what's currently difficult -- and that this simple rediscovery comes soon.
Comment on June 16th, 2009.
Thank you. I still despair at the idea of not recovering mentally 100%. But since it's been eight months, and my mind is still maybe 50% and recovering very slowly, maybe it's going to be 90% and then stop. Or 80%. Or 70%....
Spelling is weird. I used to be a nearly perfect speller. And I still am, but some words -- usually long ones -- I can't spell initially. But here's the thing: I can tell that I'm misspelling the word. It drives me crazy until I stumble upon (or figure out) the right spelling.
Comment on June 16th, 2009.
If I had to make a list of the things I do that make me crazy, well, I might really go crazy. On the other hand, I have to remind myself that I'm not 21 anymore, and there were a lot of things I could do when I was 21 that I can't do now, and I somehow manage to blame them on just getting older.
Judging by other things I've read on your site in the recent past, if you're just 50% of what you were, you must have been really hot stuff at your best!
I guess that's my way of saying, yeah, to some degree you're different, as am I, but I don't really regret being different (well, except for the spelling thing -- I used to be a good speller, so having to stop in the middle of a thought to figure out the correct spelling of common words really bites). 100% of what you were ignores everything you've learned about the world in the last eight months (I hope you've learned as much as I have about how much you are loved). Personally, I'll take 90% with a permanent sense of how lucky I am to know how lucky I am over the arrogant so-and-so I used to be (which is not to say you ever were one).
BTW, I'm sure your doctors are being both prudent and as aggressive as possible, but my doctors have me taking a medication that's marketed for dementia. It's supposed to work by encouraging synapses that are connected to damaged areas of the brain to route around the damage by creating an ideal environment for the formation of new connections. It's expensive, but I think it's helped a lot in my case.
Comment on June 16th, 2009.
I do have a new, wonderful sense of how I am loved.
Reading me is deceptive. Every sentence, almost, is a vicious struggle; about half of them I just give up, and about half of the remainder is approximate but I go for it because I got to communicate. Talking is really hard. Writing is also hard, but I get to try for (say) a half an hour, instead of one minute.
Comment on June 16th, 2009.
Been there. My mom (who's aging but still healthy as a horse) has been great. Since she vividly remembers my struggles to communicate as an infant, she's been a great source of strength as I've tried to form words (I forget the word I want to say then get stuck on trying to find the word again to the extent that I can't get back into the thought). Since she (and other loved ones) have come to expect this problem, she'll often feed me the word unobtrusively, or ignore times when my mouth can't quite make the sounds come out right.
But practice (and rest when I get tired of the effort) are starting to pay off. Having to accept so much help from someone who's been through this learning process with me as an infant could have been pretty painful if I didn't have such a good relationship with her, though, so I take it as just another reason to count my blessings. Somehow, during my adolescence, I forgot how wonderful a mother she really has been.
Comment on June 16th, 2009.
(I forget the word I want to say then get stuck on trying to find the word again to the extent that I can't get back into the thought)
Yes.
Thankfully Velma is still here, and she can, most of the time, figure out what I'm saying.
My family is wonderful, but they are three thousand miles away.
Comment on June 16th, 2009.
I'm glad Velma can put the words back in your mouth for you -- but sorry (depending on the reasons you're 3,000 miles from your family) that they don't have the opportunity to help keep you on track (I do have family members who, unfortunately, aren't as much help as they would like to be because they are dealing with their own grief over the "broken" issue).
But, despite the above demonstrated tendency to long, rambling sentences, I've got a lot of encouragement to recognize the daily victories and to measure overall improvement.
I also take comfort from my grandfather's experience. He had a stroke in his 70s back in the bad old days before MRIs, CT scans, advanced rehabilitative therapy, etc. By the time he died (of other causes) at the rich old age of 89, the only artifact of his stroke was that he continued to eat with his left (non-dominant) hand and refused to pay bills. According to my grandmother, these were a combination of laziness on his part (he hated to do his hand exercises) and, well, why put yourself through the annoyance of bill-paying when you've got such a classic excuse to have someone else do the dirty work?
Comments can contain some xhtml. Names and emails are appreciated but not required (emails aren't displayed).