After I almost died as a result of losing consciousness suddenly and landing head-first on the concrete of the Smart and Final parking lot—the attending physician told Lydia he didn't expect me to last through the night—I was in the hospital over a month. I recorded no memories of most of that period, although I was interactive much of that time. If I did not have evidence that I was interactive during that time (I took a brief video a week before I regained awareness), I might not believe that I really was interactive during that time, because I have absolutely no memories at all of that period, and no sense of the passage of time. When I did regain consciousness on 9-27-20, I thought it was the morning of 8-31-20, the day after I fell.
Since that day, I have struggled mightily to return to the status quo ante. For most of the time, I was concerned that I would never return to full brain function. At this point, I believe that I will, as least as far as capacity to reason and think critically are concerned. I, however, suspect that I will never be the same person that I was before the accident again.
When she senses my difficulty in coping with my many physiological problems, Lydia eventually resorts to saying, "Well, at least you survived." My immediate thought has been, "Did I?"
I'm going to write about the events of the period after I returned home from the hospital on my other blog, but here I want to talk about where I am now regarding my brain's condition.
Several months ago, I reached a condition where I felt that I had finally gotten my head above water. Up till then, I really was unaware of the passage of time. I was constantly in the moment, not looking forward or backward. Looking back, the whole of 2023 seems to have passed in a month, and I can't really place anything that happened correctly on my internal timeline. Then, one day, that fog lifted and I felt that I was finally firing on all cylinders.
For the next month or two, I went through a period of constant changes in brain function. For a few days I would be fine, able to write, my memory working well, Then for a few days I found I could not remember names. Then, a few days where I could remember names, but I couldn't write to save my life. I struggled with a short text message. Then, I couldn't remember words; they just wouldn't be there, and I would be stalled in the middle of a sentence. Then I'd be fine for a few days.
At this point, I should discuss my physical issues. My sense of smell slowly disappeared a few years back, and now I can't even smell skunk scent. After the accident, my speaking voice was a mere buzz that I couldn't really modulate, and I could only sing a few notes, an octave at best. As far as doctors have been able to determine, there is no physical damage to account for these losses.
Returning to the time when I came out of that fog I mentioned, My voice did show marked improvement. During the period when my brain function kept changing, one of the changes was that at one point, my voice appeared to be returning to normal, especially the singing voice. At this point, my singing voice has nearly disappeared, but I can modulate my speaking voice to a certain extent. When I'm reading to Lydia, I can change my voice somewhat to indicate different characters, which I could not do at all for a long time.
November 7, 2022, I had my second lens implant procedure. The anesthesia did not go well, and in fact was ineffective. I was completely awake during the procedure, and felt what was going on in my eye. It took all I had in me to take that without moving, thus facing down terror as I never had before.
Yay for me and all that, but immediately afterwards I started taking on weight in my belly area at an alarming rate. No one seemed to be concerned about that, no matter what I said, until I reached 240 pounds, 60 pounds over normal. Then my doctor noticed. Her assumption was more or less that I had been eating badly, but really, my food intake at worst would account for a 10-pound gain under normal circumstances. And for much of that time, I was on a strict diet. I did manage to halt the gain, but not more than that.
My doctor then put me on Monjaro, a new drug that should address my weight problem with time. Right now I am at 234, which is a decent loss from my peak weight, but I have a long way to go.
Let me sum up the way I see my brain condition. Imagine my brain is a land mass, with the various brain functions, at least those concerned with memory, reasoning, and motor functions, little towns spread out over that land mass. By my judgment, each one of these little towns has checked in, and each is capable of proper function.
The problem now seems to be the highways connecting these towns to each other and to my consciousness. My remaining brain injury seems to be along these highways. This would seem to explain my erratic brain function. What I believe is happening now is that my brain has Caltrans out re-routing all these highways around the damaged synapses. Thus, when I reach for a word and it isn't there, the word is stalled in front of a "Road Closed" sign, waiting for the Caltrans workers to open up a lane.
Now, let's go to a different analogy. The memory section of my brain is a big desktop PC with a bunch of hard drives. This PC has recently been upgraded from Windows 7 to Windows 11, which has for some reason known only to Microsoft thrown a number of these hard drives offline. My brain has been working nonstop to bring these drives back online, and when one of these drives containing long-term memory comes back online, every memory on the disk is dumped into my short-term memory, making these now ancient memories fresh in my mind, which distorts my brain's timeline badly until my brain can put these memories back into their proper place. This process is extremely disruptive, and cripplingly tiring.
The bottom line is this: while what I am going through is very good, indicating that my brain has reached the final stages of healing, it is also giving me a terribly bumpy ride, one that I cannot consciously control. My only choice is to buckle up and submit to the ride, wherever it leads. From one day to the next, I never know what situation I am going to have to deal with. One moment I am deeply depressed and hardly able to stand up, the next moment I am highly motivated and full of hope.
One thing that never changes, however, is the sense of a pressing need to communicate, to tell someone what I am going through. Unfortunately, I have no one who is willing to sit and listen to me talk about it. And I mean no one. Not even Lydia. Not that I blame her. I can be very tough to take in my highly unstable condition.
The easiest, and probably the most constructive, way to handle this is simply to be patient and wait passively for things to straighten out, But I can't do that. We have so much on our plates now, she needs be to be productive, to do my share of things. I am thus left to keep my thoughts to myself, and struggle to be as productive as I can manage under the conditions. Which is not very productive at all. Which is terribly frustrating and enervating.
Most of the time I feel as if I were caught in a crashing ocean wave which is tossing me around violently and pulling me out to sea. While my best course is to let the wave have its way with me, waiting until it is done to swim back to shore, what I have to do is to struggle impotently against the wave, which never really seems to work.
I realize that I have now thrown out a badly mixed metaphor, but there it is. On one level, I must submit to what is happening to me, and on another I must struggle constantly against it.
This is why I cannot remain the same person I have been. I must change fundamentally, because things are not working. The old Hell House motto is Adapt or Die, and that is pretty much the choice that faces me. I have no intention of dying, so I must adapt. But it's hard to adapt to conditions that are constantly changing. I can only hope and pray that my brain finishes its healing process soon, so I know what I have to work with going forward.
Let me give an example of what I am talking about. For a long time, my goal for our retirement years was to get back to musical performance, as a singer. But that goal at this point seems unattainable now. Perhaps my voice talents will come back to me, but if they don't I need a new set of goals. But I can't do that until I know what remains possible for me to attain. At this point, I have no idea what that may be.
