What’s a Little Anomia Between Friends?

I Wish I could Tell you What I Feel.

For some reason I liked my new hair style, very short on one side and long and full on the other.  Of course every morning when I washed up the left ear sticking out the way it did, with all of the scar tissue around it, usually set me back a moment.  And then there was the other scar, the one that began just above the temple and seemed to recede towards the back of my head.  I could not follow the entire course of that disfigurement because even though the hair was short it seemed to cover the extent of the scar line.  Of course when I ‘got dressed’ a few other new blemishes peeked out at me.   It took a long while for me to piece it all together and no matter how hard I tried, while in the hospital, I couldn’t do it.

I was in an accident and that was obvious even if I didn’t remember it.  The helicopter ride to the trauma center I also had no recollection of and so it was hard to fathom what had happened.  The number and severity of each lesion was very difficult to keep track of even if, when presented with a spoon and fork, I could not open my mouth wide to eat.  The broken ribs didn’t bother me, until it was time to sit or go to bed, and I couldn’t get comfortable.  Of course the shattered T3 vertebrae probably had something to do with that problem too.  But not being able to yawn and take a deep, deep breath was the recurrent reminder of something amiss.  When asked I could never remember what hurt in any particular order and had to be walked through the visible signs before responding with a status report. 

The one thing which did stand out and gave me real concern had nothing to do with my ‘physical’ ailments it had more to do with the ‘location’ of the accident.  Throughout the year leading up to that terrible scene I distinctly remember a premonition, a portent of things to come.  I had this dream, in my recollection, very often.  In it I was reminded to not drive a particular path at a particular time of day.  It was always the same path and the warning included a defined intersection.  It would come to me in my dreams, or sometimes as I got in my car before driving to work in the morning.  This is how I remember receiving these flashes of information. 

The last remembered incident of the dream was on Thanksgiving morning about two weeks before the fatal day.  I knew the route I would drive the family to visit relatives would take us past the intersection I had been repeatedly warned about.  In the dream that morning I was given the ‘all clear’ indication for our Thanksgiving ride.  But, it also let me know that trouble was not far ahead.  I never spoke with anyone about these dreams.  And now, years later, I have to ask myself if they were premonitions of things to come or reflections of the past while the brain began to reconnect.  Either way, in the hospital I knew of them and the only thing I could do was wonder why I drove on a particular road at a particular time of day.  After all, I had been warned.

 Of course the mental trouble could have been more pharmaceutical in nature.  I know now I was on various medicines in the hospital, though of course I don’t remember much at the time.  These pills were taken with the meals brought to my room.  I am sure the attendants told me what they were for at the time but, if the information went in one ear, well, if it went in the left ear where it probably got stuck in the residual tried blood that I had to clean out every morning. 

Upon transfer from Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital to Johnson Rehabilitation Institute I was on a program that included protonix for GI prophylaxis, metoprolol for hypertension, and trazodone at night for insomnia and impulsiveness.  The insomnia was a big problem so the trazodone was periodically increase (I learned later).  Of course I was on Keppra for seizures twice a day (this one would continue for a long, long time) while other seizure medications were being phased out.  Complaints of left chest soreness got me started on anti-inflammatory agents.  A low sodium diet was used to help with hypertension and Colace and senna were part of the bowel regimen, after all, you don’t want to have a constipated patient on your hands now do you.  I wonder, could my problem with understanding, remembering, being in the present, any of these things be due to the plethora of drugs in my system?  I would like to believe this to be the case, but now, years later, and still unable to remember in the short term arena of life, I know better.

I was admitted to the brain trauma unit (BTU) at Johnson Rehabilitation for a reason and along with the drugs the daily routine included physical, occupational and speech therapy, along with recreational therapy.  I wonder if that was to teach me how to play nice with others?  Whether I got along well with others or not, what I was really bad at was speaking, or better put – Anomia, which is: A problem with word finding.  I had an impaired recall of words with no impairment of comprehension or the capacity to repeat the words.   In other words, the incoming seemed to work, the outgoing was having problems.

I had no idea there was a word for this condition.  It basically hits the nail on the head though.  My mind raced faster than it ever did before searching the universe around me in multiple dimensions I had never experienced before but…, what ever was happening in my stream of consciousness could not find the right road to descend from the heights.  I could not translate thoughts to words.  But then again, who cared, all they showed me at the BTU was pictures of things that I needed to identify.  I knew what they were, why did I have to tell them?  I was too busy trying to figure out how metaphysical relationships themselves existed in the physical world around us.  What a waste of time it was talking about how many words began with the letter ‘A’.

Of course I didn’t know how hard it would be to leave the hospital if I didn’t stop, listen and speak to them on a level that they could understand.