Suddenly the World Keeps Turning (and So Does This Room)

It's been about two years since a small car (a red hatchback, so I've been told) crossed over into my lane on a bridge over the Monongehela River. 

I am one lucky person. I am lucky because I am still spinning around the sun like all the other living people on the Earth.  I buy toothpaste and pay the electric bill. I have been able to return to work. I go for coffee and eat pretzels. I've started swimming again.

Yes, it's been about two years since the collision, and SUDDENLY IT HIT ME today that one of the greatest things about this whole "still spinning around on the planet" experience is that I get to say hello to my favorite season again very soon. This week, the ice and snow started melting, and I swear I noticed the muddy smell of last year's decayed leaves in the air.

The trouble is: the world is still turning, but I'm not always fully present to it, because while the equinox approaches and the days get longer, I still have to contend with attacks of vertigo and problems knowing where I am in relation to the sky and the ground.  In other words:  The world is turning, but sometimes so do this chair and desk.

One of the common problems for people with head injury is ongoing attacks of vertigo, as well as impairment in proprioception (knowing the position of one's body in relation to oneself and the world). 

When proprioceptive sensing is confused, your brain spends much of the day like this:

• Look, there's the crosswalk signal, and it's okay to cross. (Wait, are my feet on the ground?  Am I vertical)? 
• I see that the tulips are early this year-- I think I'll bend down and smell them. (Whoa, am I falling or am I upright)?
• Ring, ring-- Hi, Dora--I haven't seen you in a while--sure I can meet you for coffee after work. (Wait, am I walking in a straight line or am I going to collide with that building)? 

Most of the time, the brain has these conversations under the radar of consciousness. But with brain injury, the cognitive processing centers really struggle to understand the body's position, several thousand times per day. In my case, I go about my life, folding laundry, reading e-mails, avoiding the talkative mailman, comparing the pros and cons of firm vs. silken tofu, then -- BAM -- I need to drop and take a nap, sometimes for several hours.

For those of us in long-term recovery from head injury, naps are a necessity. This is because our "fuel gauge" hits empty sooner than most. The gauge may be nearly full after a solid night of sleep. But here is our fuel gauge by lunch time, after a few hours of constant recalculating position and trying to keep our balance, over and over again:

I am learning to adjust to the fact that the seasons change, and the world turns, and while the room sometimes turns too, there is the day-to-day tedium to manage. There are times I bask in the tedium, just because I am grateful that I can. The enormity and complexity of it all--the Earth, the sky, the daily trifles, and the fact that life goes on--These things can still leave me feeling ungrounded. But at other times, like when I'm writing blogs, life sweeps me right off my feet. That's why I should probably get up slowly from this chair I'm in.

Suddenly I Don't Know Where I Am

YOWZA!

Two weeks ago, I was driving in the city where I live and had a spell of amnesia.  Nothing looked familiar.  I had no idea where I was, how I got there, or where I was going.

Let’s say this was unsettling, and not in the same way that finding ants crawling in your Big Mac is unsettling.   It was terrifying, like how it would be if A Nightmare on Elm Street was real, except… What the hell is Elm Street and do I live there or on Sycamore?

My cell phone battery had died, so I couldn’t even call for help.  And anyway, how do you tell people to rescue you when you don’t know where they should go?  (“Hi… can you come and get me?  I’m in my car.  On a street.  I see some pine trees.  Oh and there’s a German Shepherd”).   Yeah, I was S.O.L. until I got my bearings, which probably was only a few minutes, but nonetheless, the experience “drove home” the fact that I’ve still got some cognitive challenges.

Interestingly, though, my brain still grasps abstraction and allegory quite well.  After I got home from being lost, I cried, recharged my cell phone, took some deep breaths, and then SUDDENLY IT HIT ME:  Major life upheavals of any kind are a bit like amnesia while driving.  You think you know where you’re going, then—BAM!—a close family member dies, or you lose the job you’ve held for 15 years, or your house burns down and you lose all your childhood photos and your Freddie Kruger DVDs.  Suddenly, your five-year career plan, or your hope for love everafter, or your expectation that you’ll take care of your health once the kids leave the nest,  gets overshadowed by the realization that there is no guarantee that your destination will even be there someday down the road.

I cannot say for sure if and when I’ll regain my previous (may I add excellent) ability to remember names, dates, stories, and places.  I don’t know if and when I’ll stop having crying jags in the middle of social gatherings because suddenly I cannot recognize people’s faces.  All I can do is wait, summon my inner resources, and take notice of the details around me and the progress I’ve made.  Today, I stayed awake for 12 hours without needing a nap, when just two months ago I could only manage six hours.  I no longer have double vision, like I did before;  in fact, I can see that on the carpet are two ants crawling toward a piece of Dorito…

How is it that ants can find a crumb 20 yards away?  That would be like me sensing food all the way in Kansas and driving there from Ohio.