Operation: Get Smart

After a few minutes of mostly me relating my liteny of head injury's, there was an uncomfortable pause as Mistress and I sat across the desk from the doctor. I thought, "We need an ice breaker."

Me: "So. Am I an idiot-savant."
Dr: "No."

Me: "Am I an idiot?"
Dr: "No."

Me: "Am I a savant?"
Dr" "No."

Me: "Can I tell people I'm a savant?"
Dr: "Sure. Go ahead."

Me (leaning in my chair to Mistress): "Honey. I'm a savant."
Mistress: "That's nice dear." "Now wipe the drool from your chin."

It didn't go exactly like that but nevertheless, here I am still a highly functioning head injury victim let loose on society. It took quite a while to go through the history of the open head injury, the closed head injury, the lack of effort the medical community put into me afterwards, the lying I did to get out of therapy, the mulitple concussions I've had since. The treatments I recieved for the physical recovery like learning how to walk and talk and tie my shoes. The treatments I got for the cognitive functions, the routines I learned. The coping mechanisms. At many points she cursed under her breath at the lack of effort and resources that were available to me at the time.

It was easy to express the the areas I felt I needed work with. It was a bit more difficult to listen to Mistress express her concerns on my changes. I purposefully did not read her list of things to review before hand, she would ask me. I would agree with most of them. Not all. But the problem with this condition is what is part of the brain injury and what is part of just being a driven guy.

By the end of the session, I realized that I had given her enough verbal cues to conditions past and present that there was no way I could be faking the severity of my symptoms. Like when I told her that for as long as I can remember I haven't been able to smell. Turns out the sniffer nerve is right next to where I had the big hit. I was relating something like smelling things differently and she suddenly stop writing, looked at me, smiled a second, then look back down. Sort of a 'Ah ha' moment. Lots of those.

The doctor explained that many victims of a multiple traumatic head injury such as I have sustained begin to exhibit breakdowns of ability around 20 years and mine will be 21 years ago next month. A good portion after twenty years of tying to cope, simply cannot and regress to a level where they become removed from their family, society or the workforce.

She gave me some 'Ah ha' moments. The almost universal mental response among TBI's to read the same thing over and over again (like I do when writing blog posts for example), how it takes much more mental energy to accomplish the same in a day as a normally functional person and this can make the person feel more tired, worn out or experience signs of slight depression.

In the end she is scheduling me for a test. I forgot the name already. It's basically an all day test to see where I am at and get baselines for future comparison. There are tests for lower functioning people and then people like me that are more high function but still have issues.

If for nothing else, I appreciate all of you who have stuck through these maybe inciteful but probably boring, self expressive posts. Maybe you know someone who has had a head injury like mine or maybe just a traumatic or mild concussion. I am not given to hyperbole but even one concussion can do harm, let alone the damage someone like me has done to himself repeatively.