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.

New Year’s Eve…, In the Hospital

Look What I’ve Done to My Family.

I didn’t know the extent of my medications while I was in the hospital, all I did know was that I got a side dish with every meal.  And, since I was not really keeping count I had no idea that the dosage of trazodone at night (for insomnia and impulsiveness) was being increased.  Why I was up at night, why I was roaming around, to me, came from an overwhelming desire to be somewhere else.  I wasn’t comfortable in the hospital room, I wanted to leave.  I thought I told them this, but every day I was still dreaming, still in the hospital and I didn’t know how many different ways to explain my need.  So my body must have reacted in its own way.  It was searching, searching for a way out. 

Of course it could have just been that a body can only rest so much.  With the medications in play I was sleeping way before prime time was over.  This is why by the wee hours of the morning I would get out of bed, sit on my chair and watch whatever was on the television.  I do not know if the man lying beside me in the room watched too.  I remember his eyes were open but what he saw I do not know.  The eyes didn’t follow me per se as I bustled about the room, or passed his bed on my way to the hall.  But they were open, and they were staring.  I tried asking him once what he wanted to watch but when he didn’t answer there was nowhere for me to go with that, so I watched what I wanted, it was after all, my TV.  If he wanted something else he could watch his own.  One time I asked one of those night clerks when they once again caught be in the hall about this but the answer evaded me.  All I remember from that episode was more medicine for me and someone dividing the room in half by pulling the curtain.

Between Christmas and the New Year I know I had a visitor.  Karen came.  She was an old family friend from when I was very young.  Her father and mine served together in Korea and our families shared a lot of memories.  I cannot recollect exactly when she came, but it was during this holiday season. 

I was very happy to have a visitor but very sad to be seen in my condition.  Something else became very obvious to me during this visit.  My ability to communicate was more severely limited than I would have imagined, if I actually spent time thinking about it.  Funny thing though, my ability to interpret data was not.  It became very clear to me from that moment onwards that everyone I interacted with fell into two camps; those who interacted with me in a manner I had experienced before my accident (even if I had trouble talking) and those who stayed back, watched me, and took notes. 

Later I would learn of all those who sent cards, set prayers for me in motion, or mentioned me in their religious services.  These people, coupled with all those who helped me on December 11, 2007, are truly great gifts to the human condition.  But when I was recovering in the hospital my attention became fixed on my immediate surroundings.  And at this time most people I spoke with fell into the second category, those who stayed back, watched me, and took notes.  Since I was very well acquainted with scientific observation I did not like in the least others observing me like white-coated scientists.  Later I would indirectly hear their pronouncements on my condition.  The concept of being continually under observation led to my retreat into a defensive state of mind.  If people treated me like a laboratory animal instead of a human being, it made it difficult for me to relax around them, or, quite frankly, to be friendly.  The differentiation of people based on their mental competencies had come home to roost.  It made me very mad.

 Eventually New Year’s Eve arrived.  My wife and children came.  I was happy to see them but sad that they would have to spend a holiday in a hospital.  While they came to see me, I cried for them.  It was beginning to sink in and I was saddened by what I had done to my family.  I tried to get them to leave before visiting hours were over so they could get home (we lived about an hour and a half away, depending on traffic) but I was told they were spending the night.  Not in the hospital but in a nearby motel. 

New Year’s Eve in a motel watching television with clear memories of Prometheus wishing to be unbound is not the best of all possible worlds, but the fact that they were there amazed me.  But thinking of them, in their situation, only made me stretch harder.  If I was the problem, if I caused their lives to change, inexorably I feared, then I had to escape, to get out and find a way to fix what I had molded, and I would to this, right after a quick nap, copious amounts of medicine may not be the tastiest of courses, but it was the one item you were forced to eat at mealtime. 

For a long, long time, even after I was weaned off of most medications, when I slept I had no dreams.  The trouble was getting to sleep though the discomfort.  But when sleep did come, it came like a blink.  I was asleep, and then I was awake.  On New Year’s Eve, like every night in the hopital I began my sleep early, and as usual, by midnight or thereabouts I was awake again, nervous, and in need…, of something.  All memory of where I was had to be reconstructed.  I did feel again the need, the need to do something, but the odds against me remembering what that need was seemed to be hopeless. 

New Year’s came and my family returned bringing extensions with them.  My sister-in-law and her husband had driven up from Philadelphia, and brought dinner.   If anyone else was there I do not know, but dinner was there and I was given permission to eat some of it.  It was at this point in time that I began to realize exactly why I wanted to escape; the food was terrible in the hospital.  I had found a rock on which to base my case, and remember it basically at every meal.

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.

When Can I Go Home?

Christmas was over, and I had settled into a routine of sorts, only I have no idea what that was.  I do have more memories of this week in the hospital but as before, they are disjointed.  I do know I was taken in a group to the exercise area which was down the elevator and through a few turns in a long hallway.  I do not think I could find my way there alone but all I had to do was follow the leader.  So, in a sense we got to play a game to get to the treadmills. 

I had a roommate but he didn’t speak to me.  In fact he never got out of bed.  I was to learn later that his condition could have been mine if not for the grace of God and the helping hands of so many along the way.  I passed him a hundred times a day as I came in and out of our room.  His wife came to visit him every day, and his children, who were teenagers, like mine, came often.  Something about him and his family saddened me and frightened me.  I did not want to…

I was given tests while I was in the hospital, neuropsychological tests, though I did not know what they were at the time.  Now, years later I have gotten the nerve up to read the reports, and I must say that what they observed of my mental abilities is much different from what I was observing and thinking.  For me, everything was so clear.  Every night as I watched on television the cable news networks and listened to the editorial opinions from both the left and right leaning pundits I personally felt that the world’s problems were quite easy to define, and if one boiled down the thousands of different aspects of our human condition, the answers were not hard embrace.  But, like in my neuropsychological tests, I was unable to articulate my point(s) of view let alone to anyone who could act upon my recommendations. 

As much as I wanted to contribute to solving the problems we as a species on the planet earth were exposed to, there was no way to do that from within the confines of a neurologic ward.  I wanted out.  I think I began to ask my wife ‘when’ every time she came to visit and the only answer to this query was ‘soon’. 

            “Soon,” I asked, “when is soon?”
            “When they say you are better,” is as close to an answer that I can remember, though this may have been my interpretation.  Always hard to tell what I remember and what I wanted to hear.
            Perhaps this is why I started being nicer to everyone in the hospital, so they would think I was ‘better’.

When is Christmas…, Really

When exactly is Christmas and how long does it last.  According to some it starts on the day after Thanksgiving and proceeds through Boxing Day.  Of course others believed Christmas marks the beginning of Christmastide, which lasts twelve days and ends with the visit of the Magi.  Either way, crass commercialism or liturgical, in order to appreciate the holiday it helps to be within the three dimensional framework of the here and now.  It matters not if the birth of Christ in our world occurred on September 15 during Sukkot, the Feast of Tabernacles which is a few days after Yom Kippur, or the date reported by others as April 17 to put him into the astrological Aries sign, hence the Lamb of God.  Heck for all we really know he was conceived during a local Beltane Fire Festival which would put his real birthday very close to mine (very early in February).   What matters is we know and associate the concept with something important.

For me, on December 25 2007 concepts were foreign.  Understanding ‘Why was I here’ had given way to ‘how much longer’ and neither really registered enough as I accepted, and waited.  The special holiday approached, I was told of this, and yet I could not leave the hospital.  How can one give of themselves to those they love when the highlight of their day is walking to the physical therapy unit?  Anyone want to walk on a tread mill.  It doesn’t get you where you want to go.

The day materialized, I saw this on T.V.  And my wife and children came.  My sister came too, from Texas.  I remember my sister had come, but needed to be reminded before I wrote this that others had come too, my sister in law and her husband drove up from Philadelphia, and so I guess my gift that year was to let everyone spend Christmas together, in a resort, of sorts.   We got to eat dinner (they had brought carry out) in the common room at the end of the hall. 

Before this day others besides my wife and kids had come too but these visits were at the trauma center and of this time I still have no recollection.  My brother had driven up from Virginia four or five days after the accident and my nephew had flown in from Denver and ridden up with his father.  My best friend when I was young came up from Virginia (I grew up there) too and brought one of his sisters with him.  I thank everyone who came up during these very dark days and hope I was able to entertain.  

I also hear of the friends and neighbors who did so much for my wife and family and it makes me cry.  Cry in thanks and cry because I want so much to be able to repay, in some way, in any way, and yet I feel so frustrated.  I don’t know how.  My in-laws had raced over from Pennsylvania to watch our children as my wife rushed to the hospital.  A family friend stopped in the hospital on his way home on the first night and gave my wife the support she needed.  Later, I was told, he and his family brought the tree that was used for Christmas that year to our house.  My wife’s sister drove up too, to be with her and support her.  The snow came that year, and it was the neighbors who cleared it from our drive.  The list goes on, and all I could do was sit in the hospital and wonder ‘how much longer’.

Those who visited on Christmas day left and I went to bed.  Early evening was my sleeping time and, as had become habit once they let me out of the cage, I would awake around midnight and watch television.  Only on this night of nights I couldn’t just sit and watch, something was missing, something I had to find.  I got out of bed and walked in the hallway searching.  I don’t remember how long I spent walking up and down the corridor but eventually an attendant helped me to the little nook in the hall where reading material was spread out and then told me to wait.  I sat in a chair and while waiting I pulled the magazines to me.  I looked as a studious scientist might as I delved deep into the problems set forth in the articles I read, and then the attendant returned bearing gifts. 

We sat together and ate ice cream at three o’clock in the morning.  Giving a gift to someone you love on Christmas is wonderful.  Giving a gift to someone in need is divine.  Her gift gave me a very warm feeling.  I do wish I remembered the attendant’s name. 

Anniversaries and Arbitration

I am jumping forward again.  When I first started this blog I hoped to move through my time in two hospitals and rehabilitation in some semblance of chronologic order.  But, as with the last posting, this is not happening.  Today again I wish to share events that were most recent.

I had my anniversary on December 11.  It has been three years.  I will always tell everyone that I am happy to be here, but then one can pretty much figure that out, after all, if I was not here I wouldn’t be here.  Three years since the truck ran me over and I was airlifted to the trauma center.  I like to spend this anniversary low key.  My wife and I took the dog for a long walk along the tow path near Frenchtown NJ.  We held hands and strolled along with the dog leading the way.  We visited the bookbinder there to get some estimates on some in need of repair and then we stopped in at the Book Garden, my last book signing was there way back in July.  Then it was home and dinner and holding hands some more as we watched television.  My kind of evening.

Of course we could have gone out for dinner and celebrated, but that falls way outside our budget.  We couldn’t bring ourselves to do that actually, Reality had hit home. 

A few days earlier on December 9 we had sat in on our arbitration hearing.  From day one we had an idea of what the outcome would be, and since outcomes are multi layered, only one layer really counted.  It wasn’t; will they pay?  It was; can they pay?

The lawyer heard from us, and the defendant stayed quiet.  This part of our situation was obvious, the truck ran the red light and I was the one in the hospital.  When the decision was read one hundred percent of the fault was on the truck driver and the company he worked for.  Then the numbers rolled in and included damages, future loss, lost wages, wife’s efforts and lost wages, the list went on and the total to be awarded to our family would have been in excess of 3.5 million dollars.  This was in fact more than we anticipated.  On paper arbitration looks so nice. 

In practice the legal system doesn’t work.  The trucking company did not insure their truck.  Therefore there was no money to be paid by the insurance company.  The driver was very young and had no possessions.  There was no money to be paid by him.  The trucking company was in hoc up to their ears.  They have no money.  They would declare bankruptcy and we would have access to nothing since their current creditors would reap first reward.  Three years have gone by and still I have no work to speak of.  One daughter is in college and a son is on his way.  All of our life savings will go into paying my bills and college tuition.  And then, of course, my wife has to support me as well.  We will have nothing to retire on.

Our insurance company would have paid my family a lot of money if I had died in the crash. 

With our legal system in play we got nothing.  The state of NJ and Hunterdon County prosecutors in particular spent over a year with a case on their desk which they did nothing with but defer to traffic court (apparently it is not a crime in NJ to run a red light, I know this for a fact because I went in and asked the prosecutor in person) so the company that didn’t carry insurance on its trucks could pay a small fine.  The company owning the truck which ran me over was able to recommenced business immediately; in fact it never stopped business operations at all while I struggled to regain my sense of balance for over a year. 

Today is one of those days (they are few and far between) where I have to wonder if the family would have been better off if there was a different outcome three years ago.

Thoughts on a Movie

Jumping forward for a reflexive perspective

I am jumping forward in time today for several reasons.  One reason is, simply put; In six days it will be three years.  Three years since the truck ran me over and I was airlifted to the trauma center.

Three years is a long time, or a flash in ones eyes as your children grow.  These days I still have some short term memory problems and many times I have to search for words, or replacements, before I can translate my thoughts into speech.  In rehab they gave us different ways to help in this regard many of which centered on ‘making a list’ or ‘writing it down’.   

And so, one of the reasons I am moving forward in time today, besides stating that I have an anniversary coming up, is that I wanted to relay a message while it is still fresh because I was never good at making lists.

Last night my wife, son and I watched the movie ‘Wit’.  The movie was loaned to us by a friend (thank you Caroline).  If you haven’t seen it yet then I warn you, it is sad.  In this movie Emma Thompson isn’t playing Professor Sybill Trelawney (Harry Potter) instead she is Professor Vivian Bearing who is suffering from a stage 4 carcinoma.  The line up for this movie is basically ‘all star’.  It is based on a Pulitzer Prize-winning play by Margaret Edson, and, as mentioned, has Emma Thompson (academy award winning actress) and is directed by academy award winning Mike Nichols.  Not a bad crew and they bring the fine line between life and death home for all to see. 

The take home message of the movie, for me, reminded me very much of my time in the hospital and in rehab.  Without being able to wait for daily visit from my wife, son and daughter, and later when I knew that others were coming, I would have been lost.  No rock, so to speak, to hold on to, nothing that would have lent any sort of sense or reason to my being.  Later while in rehabilitation it was easy to point out those who were not able to move on, to reclaim a semblance of balance in their lives.  It was those who had no family, no one to go home to.  These people had been in and out of therapy as many times as their insurance allowed.  For me, I wanted to go home because when there, I knew, I would be able to sleep in bed with my wife and watch my son and daughter as they moved beyond high school.  I wanted to go home. 

I am better now, to a point, but still unemployed and this brings depression into the mold.  Fortunately I am able to balance that problem because I am so happy to be home and to be alive and to watch my children grow.  Now, if I can ever get more of my first book sold (http://www.comicfictionnoir.com/) or my next three books published, then I could … I have started dreaming again, and to date, these are real dreams. 

Temporal Sequence Went Out the Window

In my memory, for more than a year before my accident I had a recurring dream, or perhaps flash of clairvoyance would be a better descriptor.  It would sometimes come in the early morning hours, and other times it would hit me as I buckled in my seatbelt and started the ignition.  It was always a flash of information, like a text coming in over the wires, and it was, basically, driving instructions. 

I had several different routes by which I could drive to work and the inspirational message always told me which way NOT to go, and then it told me why.  The problem was always with one particular route and the message told me to not use it that particular day because there would be an accident at a certain location on the route, and I would be in it.   

My last version of this dream had occurred to me on Thanksgiving Day in 2007.  The dream told me that it was okay to travel on that road over the Thanksgiving Holiday; the accident was not scheduled for November.  It was a week or so later, in December, that I would have to worry about.  December 11, 2007 was the date of my accident.

In the hospital, as my memory of time and events began to turn back on I know that I was confused.  I did not know why I was in the hospital.  I did not know what had happened to place me there.  I did not know why half my head had been shaved.  But I do remember asking whoever came in with my food or with my medicine or to take my blood pressure, each and every one, “Why am I here?”

They were all polite, and, to a degree, sympathetic in their response, “You got hurt.  How do you feel?”

I also know that I must have asked my wife the same question on each of her daily visits and finally the answer registered; “You were in an accident,” she told me.

“Thank you for clearing that up,” or some other similar response must have been my reaction, but that answer spawned new questions like, ‘what type of accident,’ and ‘where are my keys,’ which led to ‘I want my keys so I can go home,’ which led to the nurse allowing me to sit in my chair and watch TV at three o’clock in the morning as she watched me chew some pills she had just given me, along with the ice cream.

After one or two more sessions with my wife the story expanded.  It was not just an accident, it was a car accident.
           
“Where?” I had to ask.

Even in the hospital, even without having more than a modicum of synaptic functions in play I was amazed at her response.  It was at the exact location my long term recurring dream had told me to avoid. 

I had never told anyone of this particular dream before but now I, as a TBI survivor, saw a connection.  I know I tried to tell everyone about my dreams, but no matter how I relayed what I had experienced dream-wise for so long, those that listened nodded their heads and then asked, “How do you feel?”
           
Months later, in cognitive rehabilitation sessions, various aspects of the brain function were discussed especially how the brain responds to trauma.  It shuts down.  The three dimensional reality that is put together by the interaction and growth of the nodes in the cortex, disappears.  Then slowly, as one section of the brain after another is turned back on, the 3D basis of reality is woven back together.  Where do people go, you may ask, when they meditate?  They pass through their constructed 3D realm and fly off to wherever a dream or thought might take them.

That is an amazing trip for those skilled in the art, but the questions I had after discussing this reconstructive process were quite simple in cotext, but unanswerable in todays understanding of the system.  Did I dream that same recurrent dream in my coma, or during the restructuring process?  Or was it, as I first imagined, a running warning light that flashed at me throughout the year before my trauma?  Of course I do not know.  I do know that I have not had a similar flash dream since learning I was in an accident, but then again I also know that I did not have any memory of dreams of any sort for quite a while after my release from the hospital.  I was heavily medicated at the time but if it was the drugs causing this lack of dreaming when I was out of the hospital, how could I of had them while inside the hospital?

I liked to ride on my mini-stool.

I had a room mate, not one that I chose of course but he talked a lot and we took classes together.  Some classes were down at the end of the hall.  Everyone walked, but me, I wrote my scooter.  It really wasn’t a scooter it was more of a stool with wheels on it.  I don’t know where it came from but I do remember I could ride it from my room to the hallway and then all the way to the classroom.  A nurse stopped me once and asked, “Why don’t you walk?”

Why walk?  I wondered, when you can ride!

I am not sure when classes started or stopped and what went on in the classes also doesn’t register.  All I know is that we met as a group and everyone sat in some chairs, in a circle of sorts.  There was an instructor of course who led the group discussions.  Sitting in the circle listening to the others in the group finally brought home the realization that this was not physical therapy.  Why was I there?  And why did I have a scar across the left side of my head?  It was plain to see, they had shaved the hair off of that side of my head.  Not everyone had shaved heads like me, but everyone did have difficulty putting sentences together, and this apparently was my problem too.  No matter what I thought on the inside, I couldn’t put it all into words.  

My wife came that day.  She came every day, but I don’t remember that.  She arrived at the ICU when I was being wheeled out of the operating room.  The first person she saw, I was told, was the priest.  She spent the night, and the next and two more after that before she finally left the hospital for a rest.  I was told that I awoke from the coma after a day or so and with tubes sticking in everywhere, mouth included, I spoke to her and others who came to visit.  I do not have any memory of this.  Later I was to learn about TBI and how the brain shuts down for a while when survival mode kicks in, and then slowly reengages.  For me, memory has been the slowest to reengage completely.

The first time I remember seeing her I was very happy.  And I know the first question I asked was, “when can I go home?”  She smiled, and like someone who has heard the question before, she patted me on the arm and said, “When you are better”.   There was so much more I wanted to ask, but it was time for my medicine. 

When I awoke she was gone, and I think I was upset.  I do not think my roommate liked my attitude, and so we had a discussion.  I must have told him a thing or two he didn’t agree with.  The next thing I remember was I had changed rooms.  I had a new roommate.  This one would be hard to talk to, he didn’t speak.

Then I woke up, I think.

What happened after the ‘incident of the dirty bed’ I don’t really know because, well, because I cannot remember.  What does register in my next recollection of the recovery hospital was that my bed was no longer a cage.  Of course this led to my wondering if ever I was so constrained.  Now I was free and that was all that mattered.  Free to climb in, and out of my bed whenever I wanted.  And this made me wonder, if the cage was real, why.  Was I bad, was I in prison, was I ever going to get out. 

What also made me wonder was why one half of my head was shaved while the hair on the other side was much longer than I remembered it being.  I did try to comb it all the way over but it just wasn’t long enough for that.

The room also appeared brighter than I remembered it being, and perhaps it was because this recollection occurred during daylight hours, or the curtains had been drawn.  Whatever the reason, I got out of bed and slowly walked into the bathroom, looked in the mirror and saw the shaved head.  It didn’t bother me too much, just, like everything else I saw around me, it made me think.  Then I put it aside and managed to open my mouth just wide enough to allow the toothbrush in and when I had finished brushing teeeth, washing my face, and attempting to comb, I came out of the bathroom and found an attendant waiting for me.  She carried a tray with food and drink and a small cup filled with pills.  She was nice, and spoke with me as if it wasn’t our first meeting, but she didn’t bother telling me her name, and then she waited for me to finish all of the medicine before leaving.  I sat in a chair beside the bed with the tray of food in front of me, watched someone on TV, and ate in silence.

Why did I shave the hair off one side of my head, and why couldn’t I open my mouth all the way?  I thought about those two things while I waited for someone.  Who I awaited I do not know, but I had a feeling they would come, so I sat, and waited some more, and that was all I remember from that episode in my life.

First Memory was Like a Dream

They told me the comma lasted just a day or so, but I have no recollection of the first ten days in ICU.  Later they moved me to a recovery type hospital and this is where the first memory comes from (I think).  Only was it a memory or was it a dream?  And boy do I have a lot of dream sequences that may or may not have been reality floating around.  I do wish I could figure that one out.  But I will start with the hospital, or the prison, or the torture chamber sequence and this of course all depends on interpretation because this one I do think was real.

It was very late at night and I was in bed.  Only the bed had a mesh of sorts all around it running up high above me and seemed to be closed at the top.  Like a cage.  Dreaming right?  I tried to call for help but my mouth was barely able to open so all I could do was whisper.  Now nothing seemed to hurt and so I was, at first, just curious.  What type of dream was I in.  I tried to touch the netting that seemed to be soft, but solid.  Problem was, my hands appeared to be tied down so I couldn't reach out.  This made me try again to call out for help, but like before I couldn't manage anything above a whisper, and now my jaw started to hurt a bit.

I tried to look around but my neck was very stiff so I could only turn my head a bit from side to side.  On the far side of the netting I noted a curtain that appeared to cut the room in half and hence it closed me in beyond the cage itself.  On the far wall beyond the foot of the bed was a television and it was turned on but there was no sound.  If there was sound I do not remember or could not hear.  I don't remember what was being broadcast either, I only know that it added a dim light to the room. 

My feet moved a bit, they did not seem to be, like the arms, tied down.  But like trying to turn my neck there was pain.  I remember laying in this bed for a while, but how long that was I cannot even guess, days, weeks, or seconds, time itself didn't register.  But I do know that I had to relieve my bowels and this began to cause me alarm. Was I in a dream or did I really have to go?   I couldn't get up, I couldn't call for help and I couldn't really see beyond the curtain.  I tried to free my arms, over and over again but to no avail and eventually, this I remember very clearly, I relieved myself.  Then to applaud my own efforts I sprouted urine too.

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