I've missed our little spot in cyberspace! Since my post in May 2010 I've been uber-busy trying to advocate for myself regarding my brain injury.
What does that mean? Lots of hours on the internet, looking for evaluation and treatment while I got connected to our Alabama Head Injury Foundation (great folks, who work hard and who do so much more than the folks out there taking a salary while doing nothing for disabled citizens).
I've learned a lot in my trek toward understanding and accommodating my most recent cognitive anomalies...
My friend and former pastor Steve Sjogren (author of The Day I Died) likes to put it this way--"you're going to be a turtle for the rest of your life, not a rabbit". http://www.dayidied.com/
Steve's deadly surgical injuries left him with cognitive ( YOU try an hour and fifteen minutes without proper oxygen to your brain!), mobility and internal damage that have slowed him down from his former 120-hours-a-week passion to serve others.
So, at a turtle's pace I've roamed the cyber-landscape of Traumatic Brain Injury and found some good news and some not so good. Posting blogs had to be put on hold for another season of my life while I investigated and moved forward with my own health needs.
I'm gradually learning to be OK with some of the losses-- yes, I admit I don't like the gaps in short-term memory or some of the frustrating personality changes I've encountered. [laughing as I type this].
Look, I'm a mom of six kids! I used to be able to multi-task the equivalent of 8-10 things at once...I could actually manage up to 3 conversations at a time, while using both hands and feet to cook and clean in the kitchen.
Now I can't even manage to untangle audio cords or sort socks without a total meltdown. I can't handle the visual and kinesthetic complexity of it--I just can't get through it. Is that an aspie meltdown or a TBI meltdown? It doesn't really matter...
However, one great personality change is that I laugh at so many of my mistakes now. As an autistic/asperger's individual, I used to feel embarrassment about my facial recognition difficulties. Something about the brain-injury has freed me from distress over such small social infractions.
I've always been better at recognizing people's faces and their associated names when they're in the right setting-- church friends at church, music friends at Symphony concerts, etc.
Going out in public, say Wal-Mart, used to be stressful; now it's simple because I choose to smile at everybody I see! That way if I ought to recognize someone they'll say 'hi' and begin a conversation with me. If I don't know them, they just smile back--folks smile at me all the time now. It's really nice!
Admittedly, there are some positive outcomes from this post-injury journey I'm on. But, the down side is most visible in my quality-of-life. My TBI forced me to lay down part-time employment at my local university. Thus, the bottom dropped out of our income base during a lousy economic period. (Read this as, "government funding is down, limiting services to the low-income families in my state").
Bottom line, the brain injury has done this for me-- I've been shell-shocked into a new type of Zen in my ability to live with the deficits of a neurologically diverse brain. Granted, much of the time I can't separate what is autism and what is TBI. It just doesn't matter--this is all I've got and I'm workin' with it.
What's really important is how I choose to respond and live with all of this. I'm committed to enjoying the life I have, the autie and non-autie people I love and improving the life I can provide for my family members.
I'm just doing that at a slower pace, but I'll get to the finish line in my own time, thank you!
