If You Don’t Like Crowds

Stay Home.

Well I was home and thankful for that, but now what?  I could walk from room to room on the first floor, and pet the dog, and watch TV.  Two out of three were just like being in the hospital.  But I couldn’t get up the stairs, and now that became my main goal.  But I had to be careful in that regard, very careful.  I could get dizzy very easily and no one was sure yet how I would handle climbing stairs, and to be safe so I wouldn’t try it when no one was around, I was told not to climb.  This is why sitting in my office in front of my computer was out of bounds.  After a few days though someone, not me, remembered to bring the portable downstairs and we set it up on the kitchen table.  Unfortunately, I had forgotten all of my passwords.  So for a while I was definitely limited in this venue, until I could remember where they were all written down which meant someone had to root around upstairs for ‘the list’.  I could read the newspapers online but as mentioned I really couldn’t get into my accounts.  That was okay, I think, because if I could get into them I didn’t really want to as I had no work that needed to be done.  And, like when I was in the hospital I just don't remember much else, especially of the first few days I was home.  It might be because I was mostly sleeping then. 

I do remember some of an event held on my first weekend home.  There was going to be an 80^th birthday party for my wife’s father and it had been planned to be in a restaurant in Philadelphia which is about an hour and a half from our home in New Jersey.  I don’t know exactly when this was planned and so cannot say for sure if the planning spanned time before my accident or was something others had devised when I was not around.  Whatever the planning session encompassed the working version included everyone spending the night in hotel rooms in the city, and then spend more time the next day in downtown Philly.  I think there was a concert scheduled in there somewhere along the line too.  I didn’t know about this, or if I did I had forgotten but, when the topic was raised anew, apparently I let it be known that I wouldn’t be going. 

I just wasn’t comfortable traveling long distances, or eating out in a public place, or heaven forbid, spending the night in a hotel, and definitely didn’t want to be walking about on busy streets.  I am sure I must have looked like a complete egomaniacal bum, but these were the psychological problems I faced.  Of course driving for an hour and a half was out of the question because I just didn’t want to be in a car driving on a highway, especially at night when my vision was at that time dramatically impaired.  Is that psychological, or practical?  After all, I was the victim of the road, and whether I was driving or not, I didn’t want to be in a car.  Now, eating in a restaurant meant showing off my deformities in public, is this psychological or just old fashioned pride?  If one looked like a pile of dung why show off?  And, staying anywhere else but home was just out of the question for me.  The silent struggle to get home from the hospital was still ingrained in my head every waking moment so they would have to pull me forcefully out of my house now.  And then being in a city, any city, was contrary to my desire to hide in a cabin deep in the woods.  You can call that anything you want, but for me it was called necessity. 

I made it clear I wouldn’t go, but begged the wife to, and take the children with her, after all it was her father, their grandfather, and while I wanted to be safe and at home, I really didn’t want to deny anyone else their freedom, especially after they had done so much for me.  Why couldn’t she accept this particular difference of opinion, after all if they went to the big city and spent the night someone would have to stay home with the dog, right?  My wife listened patiently to my concerns and then one upped me and had the whole family descend on our house instead of congregating in Philly. 

 This is when I found out that what I feared was true, I definitely did not like to be in crowded situations (this hasn't abated much yet).  So as the family factions marched in the front door I spent a great deal of time huddled up in the corner of the couch, not being able to move around with so many people about (too dangerous for me) and not being able to hide in the bedroom as all of the extended family continued to move about as they saw fit, in every room of the house. 

The next thing which bothered me was the conversation with more than one person at at time, or lack thereof.  At first, along with the incoming crowd a multitude of queries about my health were launched from several angles at once and…, nothing else.  But eventually, as I gave short terse responses, or responded slowly as I tried to sort through the incoming barrage, and no one had anything else to ask me most moved off to discuss a hundred and one other things with whoever would be standing near enough to be out of speaking range with me.  But one woman (Ethel) who, along with her husband, was part of the oldest duet in the room did sit down next to me and talked, just talked.  Speaking with her quietly in the proverbial corner, one on one, while the action ebbed and flowed but ignored us, was all I needed and I was thankful.  Later that night, when I was sitting in a corner of the table in the kitchen eating dinner with the younger crowd, Jackie came and spent some quality time with me too and I thank both women extensively for their special efforts.  Oh, I did almost forget.  One of the younger set also spent some time talking with me, that was Coby, and so now I often thank him, in my heart, for taking the time to speak with an old man who was very slow on the delivery and full of misplaced words, but not ideas.

As the evening wore on, and dinner was finished, I became more relaxed, but also very tired.  I knew that soon I would have to go to bed, the medicine was directing me to do so, and now I just needed everyone to leave.  So as I made it known, and prepared to leave the room, hoping I could close the bedroom door and lie down, I was told that everyone except me, my wife and our dog would be…, driving down to Philly.  I was happy that everyone was leaving but now, without my knowing it had been decided that my children were leaving too.  Multitasking has not been easy for me since getting out of the hospital, and as on the one hand I had felt happy to have been part of the celebration without having to travel, the idea that people had decided what my children would do without asking me, their father, hit home.  But I couldn’t respond.  My energy level had shrunk down, my resistance fell apart too, and for me while deep down I could only wish for my family to be close by, I had no strength in me to put up a fight that would stop them from leaving.  All I could do was shake hands and say good bye.  Why had no one asked me what I thought?  Welcome to the new world.  This would not be the last time the father would sit on the sideline and just watch.

Visit Saverio on his website:  http://www.comicfictionnoir.com/ or on his social satire blog: http://comicfictionnoir.blogspot.com/

How do You Know When You are Home?

One Memory Stands Out.

Three years and two months after the fact how much can one remember if you don’t keep a journal, or at least a blog?   I know my memory of events is questionable but I thought I had anchored down a few salient items I had modicums of recollection of and would use these to form the basis of these TBI entries.  Not the case.  Or rather, many of my remembrances are either mixed up, or melded together. 

I wanted to write about coming home so I went through some of what I was going to say with my wife.  And I had it all wrong.  I remember a ‘ride’ home from the hospital and this was my first exposure to sitting in the middle of the back seat firmly harnessed in, shoulder strap and everything.  I would ride in this position in cars for many, many months to come.  I also remember on this particular trip that Renee, a very good friend of the family, had come along with my wife and sat beside her in the front seat.  But, this was not my ‘coming home’ so to say.  Rather it was just a ‘visit’ home before I was released from the hospital.  I had forgotten, plain and simple.  It must have been the weekend between Christmas and New Years Eve.  Now that my wife and I were discussing this visit a tiny drop of what went on that day returned to me.  My neighbor had come over and as we watched football together he tried to convince me that I was a Dallas Cowboys fan.  Nice try.

From there I don’t remember the actual return trip on January 3.  I do know that before releasing me I had to take the ‘test’ so that they would have a base line on my recovery efforts.  Results from that evaluation (this they did not mention to me) revealed receptive and expressive language deficits, diminished performance at all levels of verbal memory, and perseverations / disinhibition consistent with frontal and temporal lobe dysfunction due to… TBI.  For some reason, to keep trying is good when you are problem solving at work, but bad when you are taking a neuropsychological evaluation.

   I did get home, as mentioned I sat in the middle of the back seat, and this time (I stood corrected) no one sat in the front with my wife.  It was mid week and my children were at school, and after school activities so I didn’t see them when we returned.  I don’t remember anything of this part of the day really.  I was told my in-laws came to the house to visit, as they had many, many times while I was in hospital as they took care of my teenagers.  I may have been sleeping in the afternoon, as this has become a wonderful habit that haunts me to this day, so if they did visit it must have been short.  I was also told that the dog, which I make fun of in my social commentary blog (http://comicfictionnoir.blogspot.com/), came and quietly sat by my feet, for hours.  I have other interesting stories to tell of her parental approach to me upon returning from the hospital, but these I will save for another day.  I also know that my ability to adjust to temperature is very limited and so the small space heaters we have in our house are always now set close to where I sit, and this temperature regulation disability is brought out in one of the episodes involving the dog.  Our dog is definitely canine, and beautiful, and smart.

There is a story here that I can tell now, as it involves the dog, the wife, and whatever people see at the end of the tunnel.  First the dog.  Of course I was told this part of the story because I have no recollection of it.  When I was in ICU, pictures of my family and the dog were placed near my bed.  The nurses / attendants would come in and talk to me even when no one else was around.  They would show me the pictures and ask me to tell them who the different people were.  When my wife came in they called her Maple.  She asked them why they called her by that name and was told; “He told us your name when we asked who the woman in the picture was.”

Of course my wife’s name is not Maple, that is the dog’s name, and it is not Mary, which was the next name I came up with when re-interrogated.   Eventually I got it right, but this leads to the second half of this story.  This part of the story I used to tell to people when they asked me of my experiences in the hospital, but when I told it the conversation immediately changed and so my feeling is that no one wanted to hear it.  It goes like this; when asked about what I remembered most from my stay in hospital I told them that I remember someone sitting next to me every night.  I remember not so much from seeing this person, ‘the angel’, but rather from feeling her presence.  This person became my rock upon which I clung, the only thing I wanted to cling to, and in so doing she helped me back to this side of the precipice.  I waited for her visit every day.  As time passed a face did align itself with the vision and the face looked very familiar.  It was the face of love.

There is one thing I do remember from my first day home and it involved my wife.  I knew then and I know now that my looks, while never really ‘superior’ had taken a dive to the side of the spectrum upon which horror films are based.  When looking in the mirror on the effects the accident had on my face all I could think about was Mary Shelley’s picture of Prometheus, unbound.  And yet that night when we crawled into bed together my wife made love with me.  How we actually managed that one is hard to imagine, or describe.  I had no strength to allow for me to get on top, and it hurt too much for anyone to climb onto my chest, lying on my side was not pleasant either but somehow we did manage.  And, lying side by side as we whispered to each other I felt alive and thankful to the woman of my dreams.