Three Things ... or more.
1. It's SNOWING!!!!
Friday it'll be in the 60s, but still... Meanwhile, though you can clearly see the grass, students have their snow boards out and are on the hills on campus (this photo looks deceptively flat, due to the angle of the webcam).
2. Prior to the testing, the department chair at the hospital stopped in to make a point of telling me that they have a special protocol for high-functioning folks and that they aren't just interested in how well one functions, but how much effort it takes for one to get there. Apparently that bit didn't translate into the final report. I have a telephone feedback session (something they offer rather than having you drive long distances for what will strictly be a verbal conversation) Friday afternoon. We'll see if there's more to be discerned.
Here's my thought: unless I'm dealing with someone who understands what my personal cognitive universe was like before I hit my head, I am unlikely to find anyone connecting with the fact that there's a loss that causes me stress -- sometimes profound stress. Oddly, my PCP saw it without my mentioning it. I suspect she'll have a similar sigh response. The good news is that I'm already employing all of the "tips" the summary suggested.
In the meantime, I think I've come up with a way of describing my experience of the loss in a way that anyone can relate to: Imagine a home you love. You've lived there many year, maybe all of your life. You know which floorboards creak, how the light falls in the dining room in September, where every stick of furniture is, which rugs have fringe that's worn. You know the length and breadth of every room and could water the plants in the dark.
Now imagine you are walking from the kitchen to the living room and where there is usually a telephone table, there's just blankness: no wall, no floor, no color, no lack of color, no smell, no sound, no taste. You know something belongs there. You can't imagine what it is. You can feel the fact of it but nothing available through your thinking or senses can tell you what it is. It's embarrassing, potentially, and highly disconcerting.
Continuing on, you get to the bottom of the stairs, having forgotten that your mission was to go to the living room. You decide that you want to go upstair and grab a picture of the downstairs hallway so that you can remember what should be in the blank spot. Simple enough because you have photo albums full of before and after shots of rennovation projects and lots of images from family gatherings. The only problem is that you realize that you have no idea how to get up a flight of steps. You know that you've done it gazillions of times, often while reading, talking on a phone, or simply day-dreaming. It's not a process to which you generally have to devote any conscious thought at all. Yet, here you stand, in your most intimate home, without a clue.
Furthermore, as you stand there, puzzling, you realize that you cannot conceptualize the floor plan of your house. You used to be able to hold in your head, all at once, the original floor plan, the current floor plan, the future dream floor plan -- all of the images and pieces at once. Right now you aren't sure that there is anything more to the house than what you can see from where you stand.
If you transpose the home idea to be your normal thought processes, memory function, and problem-solving mechanisms, you'll have a pretty good sense of what it feels like when I bump up against a place of altered cognitive function. And I'm here to tell you, knowing that my IQ is way above 140 does not provide comfort. It's not even flattering. It's merely a piece of information like that I wear a size 8 1/2 shoe (usually). So, we'll see what the phone feedback session holds...
3. TB
Hiking at just above 4,000 feet on Mt. Washington, Gus takes the job of "marking our trail". (First week of October, 2008)
Nose in action!
Oh, nobility, thy name is Dog... (the human in the photo is not I)
Trub LOVES trains!
(I'm not kidding.)
Gus, not so much... Though he DID enjoy the fact that the Hot Chocolate Lady brought him dog cookies. He was able to rouse himself from his nested seclusion long enough "to be polite", as he would've said. Mostly, though, he stayed buried in my mom's down vest, sitting on my stepdad's lap (this train ride was from when my folks came up earlier this month).
:)
-Dot
Copyright 2008 All rights reserved. Feel free to believe your dogs are more appealing. They aren't, but feel free to believe that they are. :)
Friday it'll be in the 60s, but still... Meanwhile, though you can clearly see the grass, students have their snow boards out and are on the hills on campus (this photo looks deceptively flat, due to the angle of the webcam).
2. Prior to the testing, the department chair at the hospital stopped in to make a point of telling me that they have a special protocol for high-functioning folks and that they aren't just interested in how well one functions, but how much effort it takes for one to get there. Apparently that bit didn't translate into the final report. I have a telephone feedback session (something they offer rather than having you drive long distances for what will strictly be a verbal conversation) Friday afternoon. We'll see if there's more to be discerned.
Here's my thought: unless I'm dealing with someone who understands what my personal cognitive universe was like before I hit my head, I am unlikely to find anyone connecting with the fact that there's a loss that causes me stress -- sometimes profound stress. Oddly, my PCP saw it without my mentioning it. I suspect she'll have a similar sigh response. The good news is that I'm already employing all of the "tips" the summary suggested.
In the meantime, I think I've come up with a way of describing my experience of the loss in a way that anyone can relate to: Imagine a home you love. You've lived there many year, maybe all of your life. You know which floorboards creak, how the light falls in the dining room in September, where every stick of furniture is, which rugs have fringe that's worn. You know the length and breadth of every room and could water the plants in the dark.
Now imagine you are walking from the kitchen to the living room and where there is usually a telephone table, there's just blankness: no wall, no floor, no color, no lack of color, no smell, no sound, no taste. You know something belongs there. You can't imagine what it is. You can feel the fact of it but nothing available through your thinking or senses can tell you what it is. It's embarrassing, potentially, and highly disconcerting.
Continuing on, you get to the bottom of the stairs, having forgotten that your mission was to go to the living room. You decide that you want to go upstair and grab a picture of the downstairs hallway so that you can remember what should be in the blank spot. Simple enough because you have photo albums full of before and after shots of rennovation projects and lots of images from family gatherings. The only problem is that you realize that you have no idea how to get up a flight of steps. You know that you've done it gazillions of times, often while reading, talking on a phone, or simply day-dreaming. It's not a process to which you generally have to devote any conscious thought at all. Yet, here you stand, in your most intimate home, without a clue.
Furthermore, as you stand there, puzzling, you realize that you cannot conceptualize the floor plan of your house. You used to be able to hold in your head, all at once, the original floor plan, the current floor plan, the future dream floor plan -- all of the images and pieces at once. Right now you aren't sure that there is anything more to the house than what you can see from where you stand.
If you transpose the home idea to be your normal thought processes, memory function, and problem-solving mechanisms, you'll have a pretty good sense of what it feels like when I bump up against a place of altered cognitive function. And I'm here to tell you, knowing that my IQ is way above 140 does not provide comfort. It's not even flattering. It's merely a piece of information like that I wear a size 8 1/2 shoe (usually). So, we'll see what the phone feedback session holds...
3. TB
Hiking at just above 4,000 feet on Mt. Washington, Gus takes the job of "marking our trail". (First week of October, 2008)
Nose in action!
Oh, nobility, thy name is Dog... (the human in the photo is not I)
Trub LOVES trains!
(I'm not kidding.)
Gus, not so much... Though he DID enjoy the fact that the Hot Chocolate Lady brought him dog cookies. He was able to rouse himself from his nested seclusion long enough "to be polite", as he would've said. Mostly, though, he stayed buried in my mom's down vest, sitting on my stepdad's lap (this train ride was from when my folks came up earlier this month).
:)
-Dot
Copyright 2008 All rights reserved. Feel free to believe your dogs are more appealing. They aren't, but feel free to believe that they are. :)