tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-46529548015969049612024-03-13T07:35:26.389-04:00BrainstormedLessons From A Mild Traumatic Brain InjuryNathalie Kellyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05076749085597617788noreply@blogger.comBlogger39125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4652954801596904961.post-14164984096074461222016-07-19T10:25:00.000-04:002016-07-19T10:27:01.072-04:00Where Did I Go?Dear Blog,<br />
<br />
I have not been here in a while.<br />
<br />
When I found out about the party happening over on YouTube, I headed that way towards the crowds.<br />
<br />
Indeed 10,000 people have viewed <a href="https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCw_4ry7pSKgj2onk82R72Tg" target="_blank">my videos</a> in the three months I have been there!<br />
<br />
Because I am committed to making the biggest impact I can make when it comes to educating, inspiring, and connecting the brain injury community, I have made that my new hang out for now.<br />
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I have been busy! I have a new title, The TBI Coach, and a website, <a href="http://www.thetbicoach.com/">www.TheTBICoach.com</a>.<br />
<br />
Please blog reader, come and join me and the gang!<br />
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<a href="https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCw_4ry7pSKgj2onk82R72Tg" target="_blank">The party is over here!</a><br />
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Love,<br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEid6ZSZvDQKiIgV-4bSj99tzP3LH7mSrKrw5yKDI1-IFkX5i8fx3VDsnWXn8g7mdTLKwefy3py-NtfVs9jGQ74FF9TxQ6kWOVVbJM85cgm058x0kW8M9CfldWn1b9sWCGLkbSA-ktc7M4fj/s1600/nathalie12.png" imageanchor="1"><img border="0" height="52" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEid6ZSZvDQKiIgV-4bSj99tzP3LH7mSrKrw5yKDI1-IFkX5i8fx3VDsnWXn8g7mdTLKwefy3py-NtfVs9jGQ74FF9TxQ6kWOVVbJM85cgm058x0kW8M9CfldWn1b9sWCGLkbSA-ktc7M4fj/s200/nathalie12.png" width="200" /></a><br />
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<br />
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<a href="https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCw_4ry7pSKgj2onk82R72Tg" target="_blank">The TBI Coach YouTube Channel</a><br />
<br />Nathalie Kellyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05076749085597617788noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4652954801596904961.post-90705059071496997912015-10-23T16:36:00.005-04:002015-10-23T17:44:03.094-04:00Brain Plasticity in Real LifeIn order to grow new neuro-connections, we have to do the things that are hard. We have to stretch into the uncomfortable places. Our brains want to automatically take the familiar road. But the easy path is not how we grow, either emotionally or biologically. (One of the cool things about experiencing a brain injury is that you really understand experientially that emotions are biology, There is no separation, but that is a different blog post). So let's just say for now, that mentally, emotionally, and physically, we only grow by being challenged.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgZd-18VB4e-GFBw6shksHcEpLUA6MBBQIDetwIgJt4EdDN4iJtHWK2jErqyW6UsBkGyi_HmTGeep8Hd_26IEPJl6NnHnXrSVwBx9QLRNZrJ2HjweLJ0JB8-nqzQlN1B-rackjKUuFnOY7c/s1600/imgres.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="157" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgZd-18VB4e-GFBw6shksHcEpLUA6MBBQIDetwIgJt4EdDN4iJtHWK2jErqyW6UsBkGyi_HmTGeep8Hd_26IEPJl6NnHnXrSVwBx9QLRNZrJ2HjweLJ0JB8-nqzQlN1B-rackjKUuFnOY7c/s200/imgres.jpg" width="200" /></a>In order to grow a new track in the brain, you have to get out of the comfort zone and do the hard stuff. The stuff that feels impossible, makes you irritable, and makes you want to cry. Regrowing brain pathways after a brain injury or stroke is hard, irritable, frustrating work. Do you remember doing the hard math problems in grade school and feeling frustrated with the impossibility of it? Do you remember how eventually, after enough tears, something clicked and you got it? That click is a new neuro-connection being formed. It is a new physical connection in the brain. After that, it was so much easier that it was hard to understand why it seemed so hard moments before. The brain is biology.<br />
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Post-TBI, we have to grow those neurons back, one by one. It is a long, often agonizing, marathon. For me, the hardest Neural Reconstruction Project has been moving my eyes, my head, or tolerating any motion around me.<br />
<br />
I am feeling nostalgic today, remembering a year ago. I was back in the ugly hospital basement at Brain Injury Rehab, desperately pleading for help from the best balance specialist in Vermont. We had spent four years trying everything. We had elevated my seasickness intentionally, every hour, for months, and years, trying to grow a new brain track that would allow for movement. We had gone through countless indignities: taping paper blinders to my glasses, having my friends wheel me around the house in an office chair, wearing blindfolds on busses, having me sit by a road and watch traffic. All of this was in 30-second increments. It was still all I could handle.<br />
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"Walk down the corridor", my PT instructed that day. Scrambled up under the florescent lights, I anxiously obeyed. "Now faster!" I felt so sick. "Now turn your head and walk." I proudly accomplished four slow head turns, and then fell against the wall, beyond dizzy and sick.<br />
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"Are you okay?" she asked. I could not respond. "Let's go lay down", she offered. Internally I rebelled. I was no wimp. I could do this! I could do FIVE head turns! I was not giving up!<br />
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I unglued myself from the wall to keep going, and instead realized that no matter what my brain-as-willpower said, my brain-as-biology said "NO WAY". I leaned on my therapist, unable to walk alone, unable to open my eyes, tolerate any more input, or find any words. She led me by the hand to the familiar old plastic mattress to rest.<br />
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After ten minutes, my brain could settle enough to listen. "How are you feeling?", she asked. "Like my b-b-brain is s-s-scrambled into a million p-p-pieces", I managed to get out the words, anxious to hear her next brilliant creative solution to get me off this Highway to Hell.<br />
<br />
"Nathalie, I don't know what to say to you. I have tried everything with you. Nothing is working. I have nothing left to offer. I am going to discharge you from Rehab."<br />
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The kick in the gut was compassionate and swift. How in hell do I go through life like this?! Unable to move my eyes! I had spent weeks and months sitting or lying in total stillness and darkness, unable to move, and unable to process vision without utter nauseousness. I was a paraplegic who could move. I was a blind person who could see. Perhaps worst of all, I looked normal. No one could understand my loneliness and despair. Paraplegics and blind people got help. I was on my own, not qualifying for any support. I had just spent four years trying to empty a dishwasher with as few eye turns as possible before needing to rest for long periods. How does one embrace a life of this?<br />
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Resistance reared like a wild horse, ready to fight or run. "Run like hell!" yelled my adrenals. "How do you run from yourself?" wondered my logic.<br />
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When life brings what we don't want and there is no way out, there are only the questions:<br />
<br />
<ul>
<li>"How do I embrace this too?"</li>
<li>"How do I find the good in this?"</li>
<li>"How do I accept what is?"</li>
<li>"How do I still remain open to miracles... without counting on them?"</li>
<li>"How can I allow for happiness even if this situation lasts forever?"</li>
</ul>
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<br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhBU5t4vzLUBNIMWc5eLz7JoVbCBhxbW8Kpf1_Zo0CAuRIUb44Ftp8h4DLzkcTyyWrzgLaRKBvp5KguXLID4jkhXInGlHEvtFiyi9oLa9rPLsRngufMEObebHn5tM96lq1KU58rcnrhlREY/s1600/imgres-1.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="150" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhBU5t4vzLUBNIMWc5eLz7JoVbCBhxbW8Kpf1_Zo0CAuRIUb44Ftp8h4DLzkcTyyWrzgLaRKBvp5KguXLID4jkhXInGlHEvtFiyi9oLa9rPLsRngufMEObebHn5tM96lq1KU58rcnrhlREY/s200/imgres-1.jpg" width="200" /></a>Sometimes miracles happen when we are open to the possibility. I did not give up. I have found my Miracle. One year later, I am walking without walking poles. I am riding in a car more comfortably. I am driving short distances. I can even empty the dishwasher and cook, my impossible dream just a few months ago. I have fewer days where I can only sit in dark stillness. The neural pathways are being created even when I was told years ago that was impossible. Never listen to never.<br />
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I am enjoying life again.<br />
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My next dream is to dance.<br />
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<i> Thank you for your comments below.</i><br />
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Nathalie Kellyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05076749085597617788noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4652954801596904961.post-80352837987027610122015-05-31T20:44:00.003-04:002015-06-01T09:43:01.974-04:00I've Been Diagnosed With...<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">One of the stranger challenges of living with a brain injury, that no one talks about, because no one can identify it, is that we become a complete mystery to ourselves. So much is wrong with us, it is like a big tangled web of yarn, one piece indiscernible from the next, with no way to make sense of the mess. Someone without brain issues would be incapable of figuring it out; but we get the added challenge of the thick cognitive fog. </span></div>
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<span class="s1"><br /></span></div>
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<span class="s1">Unable to figure out ourselves, we rely heavily upon our doctors to explain "us" to us. We are thus more susceptible to believing what our doctors say. </span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">Then countless doctors tell us nothing is wrong with us, perhaps because they do not have the tools to see it. They lead us to believe we are crazy or lazy. So we become ashamed of our inabilities; sensing no other option but to hide our heads in the sand for the rest of our lives. </span>Somehow, doctors so often add to our tangled TBI mess of yarn, making us more confused and depressed. This is a big topic in support groups. Painfully familiar, i<span class="s1">t seems we all have the same doctor. </span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><br /></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">I am a mental health professional and an emotionally healthy person. And I am about to make some scary disclosures. For all of us, this story needs to be told. </span></div>
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<span class="s1"><br /></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">I really wanted to know why after four years of working with </span><span class="s1">m</span>y state’s vestibular specialist, I have "the most persistent case of dizziness"she has ever seen, and nothing is helping. Motion can still feel like it shakes my brain into a million pieces and renders me useless. I wanted to know why I now spend my life trying to figure out how to empty a dishwasher with as few heads turns as possible before I have to rest. I wanted to know why I have to sit still for several hours each morning before I can use my eyes, read, ride in a car, or move. Anyone who thinks I want to lay on a couch and watch TV with my life, does not know me. </div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="p1">
I wanted to know why my eye constantly hurts so badly and feels as if the ligaments are being pulled out of place and can not tolerate light. Why does everything appears to bounce? Why did I spend 3 years seriously wishing I were blind because my vision made me so horrified, sick, unable to move, and brain fatigued? </div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">The first neurologist I saw told me “Nothing is wrong with your brain. You just have anxiety problems". That is why you could only name 6 words that start with “F”". (He might be anxious too if that were him.)</span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">After my first four hour neuro-opthamological (brain/vision) exam, the doctor said ""You just need eye drops, your eyes hurt because they are dry." Huh?! He continued, "There is nothing wrong with your eyes.” </span>I asked “It's the brain part of vision where the problems lie, isn't that why I am seeing a <i>neuro</i>-opthamologist?” His reply? “Well, there is nothing we can do about the neuro part.” (I'm confused. Then why did I just waste four traumatizing hours?!) </div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">The second neuro-opthamologist said "You have 20/15 vision. There is nothing wrong with your eyes. I would kill to have your vision". (Honestly, I was ready to kill myself because of my vision.)</span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">The next one said "You should learn to meditate". (I have meditated and practiced yoga for 30 years. I have taught meditation. I can't move and feel like I just spent 5 years on meditation retreat. He was talking to the wrong person.)</span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><br /></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">All of these docs were adding insult to injury. The problem is, that we have brain injuries. We believe our doctors. Without the ability to think critically, we are left more confused than ever. </span></div>
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<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">The fourth out-of-state neuro-opthamologist said “You have a damaged optic nerve, possibly causing the severe eye pain. Oh! This is bad, you see two floors. Nothing we can do about it. You can try prisms, but better get used to it.” ...Slowly getting somewhere. </span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">I thought the problem was Podunk health care in rural Vermont. So I went to a highly recommended Big City neurologist. I was hopeful. I am always hopeful... til I get kicked in the gut again. That visit wielded my favorite line: "Your issues are too significant for someone who show no damage on an MRI." <i>Long pause... </i>"Have you seen a psychiatrist?". </span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">(Everything written about mild TBI says it does not show up on an MRI. How does a neurologist not know that?! I <i>really</i> would like to know the answer to that.) </span></div>
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<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">The amount of ignorance around brain injuries is shocking. Survivors know it is physical, yet we are treated as if it is psychological. Would anyone with a broken bone have to go through this? Many people with TBI finally end up in psychiatric wards. Although much has been discovered in the last few years, my theory is that our doctors were all trained 10, 20, 30, 40 years ago. They still don't get it. </span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">Desperate for help, I followed the recommendation and went to a psychiatrist. I was beginning to think maybe I <i>was</i> crazy. </span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><br /></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">The psychiatrist said "You have the <i>classic</i> traumatic brain injury. Doctors see you sitting in a quiet office for 10 minutes. They don't see it or understand it. That is so classic! You lose your career, you lose your relationship, you cant’ walk or drive, and doctors don’t believe the severity. They think it is a somatoform disorder. It is a part of every TBI story. You are a mental health professional. You could help others understand this. You should write a book.” (I am.)</span></div>
<div class="p1">
___________________</div>
<div class="p2">
<br /></div>
<div class="p2">
<br /></div>
<div class="p2">
My unsinkable persistence has paid off and I finally have a diagnosis. There are names for this! It really is as hard as it feels. <span class="s1"></span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">After a relentless, nearly five-year, nationwide search, I finally found the right doctor. <a href="http://www.optorehab.com/" target="_blank">Dr. Laurie Chaikin</a> specializes in </span>visual rehabilitation after TBI and stroke. She says I have one of the worst, and most complicated vision and vestibular issues she has ever seen. (How did I get so special?) </div>
<div class="p1">
<br /></div>
<div class="p2">
Here is the answer to my quest: <span class="s1"></span>(If you have a TBI, these names may be helpful to you) </div>
<div class="p2">
Drum roll please.......</div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><br /></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<br />
<ul>
<li>I have C<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyclotropia" style="font-weight: bold;" target="_blank">yclo-torsion</a>, means my eyes roll around independently on their axis. </li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>I have <b>hyper-deviation</b>, which means when I look left, my left eye moves up and the right moves down.</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>I have <b>reverse hyper-deviation</b>, which means when I look right, the right eye goes up and the left goes down. Going all the way from left to right (to scan a grocery store aisle, empty a dishwasher, or cross the street for example), is really difficult... usually impossible.</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>E<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exotropia" style="font-weight: bold;" target="_blank">xotropia</a>, means that my eyes are pulled apart from each other and are constantly in pain. I see one and a half overlapping images of everything, which is why I could never answer if I see single or double. <b>Conversion</b>, or fusing them together (to make eye contact or read for example), takes a tremendous amount of exhausting work, but is getting easier after years of exercise. My eyes keep scanning and do not ever focus on one spot.</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oscillopsia" target="_blank">Oscillopsia</a> causes everything to appear to bounce. When I walk, there are 2 bouncing floors, one that used to be at my knees and one at my feet.</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>V<a href="http://www.neuropt.org/docs/vsig-physician-fact-sheets/visual-vertigo-motion-sensitivity.pdf?sfvrsn=2" style="font-weight: bold;" target="_blank">isual motion sensitivity</a> means if anything internally or externally around me moves, including my head or eyes, I have no idea where my body is in space. </li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>A<a href="http://www.collegeofsyntonicoptometry.com/library/section02/Pupils_b_TheAlphaOmegaPupil.pdf" style="font-weight: bold;" target="_blank">lpha-omega pupils</a>, mean when the light changes, (like passing trees or columns in the sun) rather than dilating, my pupils get all confused and open/shut/open/shut/open/shut, flickering and making my brain shut down and creating partial seizures. </li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li><b>Central vision</b> allows you to focus and <b><a href="http://www.eyehealthweb.com/peripheral-vision/" target="_blank">peripheral vision</a></b> allows you to understand motion and know where you are in space. With a brain injury, they do not communicate with each other as that pathway is broken. Usually, I have no peripheral vision. (It is a bit like looking through binoculars all the time, and if you have ever done that, you know it is not possible to walk down a street easily with binoculars on. You will be sick in no time.)</li>
</ul>
</div>
<div class="p2">
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">In short, I have two googly eyes. making me completely seasick and exhausted. </span><span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">According to the </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 20px;">Neurosurgeon and PhD researcher, and TED speaker<a href="http://tedmed.com/talks/show?id=299432" target="_blank"> Dr. Uzma Samadani</a>, tracking the motion of the eyes is the best way to </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 20px;">detect concussions and other brain injuries that are invisible to radiologic scans.</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 20px;"> Why was that so complicated?</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;"><b>I can not tell you what a gift it is for an injured brain </b></span><b style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: x-large;">to finally understand itself! </b><br />
<span class="s1"><br /></span>
<span class="s1">Truth is power. Truth sets us free. I am now free of self-doubt, self-criticism, and the anxiety of living with the unknown. Finally, I have something other than quicksand to stand on. </span>I could not stand on falsehoods, but I can stand on Truth. After unraveling enough of the tangled mess of yarn that my brain has become, I can start figuring out how to build a life with what I have left.</div>
<div class="p1">
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If you are dealing with a TBI or any health issue, you need to advocate for yourself. No professional will care about you more than you do. If you can not, ask family, friends, or professionals for help. TBI is primarily a physical problem not a psychological one. If you don't get the answers you need, keep looking!<br />
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Never give up. Never give in. This gift of your life is too precious.<br />
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<i>If you have a TBI, and you have a doctor who gets it, please share their name and location in the comments below, we need to start a nationwide list. Thank you! </i><br />
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<i>Thank you for putting your comments here on the blog page.</i><br />
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Nathalie Kellyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05076749085597617788noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4652954801596904961.post-29974163768521374872015-03-19T15:01:00.001-04:002015-03-19T16:18:16.626-04:00Collecting Gems<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.656; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial; font-size: 13px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">It is so very hard to lose one’s independence at any age. No one ever thinks it will happen to them. Not being able to walk much, drive, or take a bus, I am pretty stuck. I honestly have no idea how to do this. I take it one breath at a time. </span></div>
<b id="docs-internal-guid-56563351-3362-424d-f230-eb672b92e2d5" style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.656; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial; font-size: 13px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Free falling through space on my own, I have been searching for a way to manage this long-term. The system won’t let me in Adult Day Care, I am too young. The swamis won’t let me in an Ashram, I am too disabled. Searching for solutions, I actually did ask both. </span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.656; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial; font-size: 13px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">My next idea is to search for a safe little town with good weather, that has all I need within a short walk. I have just flown to a small town in Central California to see if I could function on my own here. The solo adventure itself is daunting. I pack barrels of courage in my suitcase. </span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.656; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial; font-size: 13px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Day One:</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.656; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial; font-size: 13px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">As expected, three plane rides have shaken me up so badly, that I can barely move or see. My vision has shrunk into a nauseating peep hole and I can’t tolerate moving my eyes at all. The slightest movement of my eyes disorients me and makes me even more seasick than I always am. Information is not traveling from my eyes to my brain. It takes 3 hours to understand my way around my tiny studio. Expanding my world to the patio takes another few hours. </span></div>
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<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.656; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial; font-size: 13px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I have no idea how I will get groceries. Even at home, getting food is always the hardest thing for me. The over-stimulation of supermarkets causes my brain to shut down. Somehow, food always finds me when I really need it; like the Indian saint, Sri Mata Amritanandamayi, who lived blissfully in the woods, and animals and eagles dropped food in her lap when she was hungry. </span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.656; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial; font-size: 13px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Today’s “eagle” takes the form of a friend of a friend, who calls to welcome me to town. “The Farmer’s Market is today, would you like to go?”. She is a occupational therapist, she gets me. I hold on to her arm for dear life in the visual chaos of the crowd, and unexpectedly, I have produce! </span></div>
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<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.656; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial; font-size: 13px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">It is magical the way my needs get met, when I never have any idea how they will. I am no longer living a rational life. I am grateful for the gem of kindness. </span></div>
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<br />
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial; font-size: 13px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Day Two: </span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.656; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial; font-size: 13px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The Farmer’s Market put me over my stimulation threshold, and I can’t wake up. I get up once to take a shower which exhausts me so much, I fall asleep again; once to get dressed, which exhausts me so much, I fall asleep again; once to make coffee, which exhausts me so much, I fall asleep again… so much for caffeine. Finally at 2:30pm, I am awake. </span></div>
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<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.656; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial; font-size: 13px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Today, I will venture beyond my studio... with the goal to find lunch. There is a cafe four blocks from here. Expanding my world beyond my studio will be a big feat... beyond what anyone without a TBI can imagine.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.656; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial; font-size: 13px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Concentrating to get through the mental fog, I talk myself through it out loud. “Pull up walking directions on your phone. Study hard to make sure you have a sense of where you are going. Put on the green tinted glasses that relax your brain. Check directions again. Put on the goofy Vibram toe shoes so you can feel the floor. I forgot the directions. Check directions again. Put on the hip belt full of rocks.”</span></div>
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<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.656; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial; font-size: 13px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The hip belt reminds me of the confusion and alarm on the airport TSA agent’s face two days before. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial; font-size: 13px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“What is this?!” </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial; font-size: 13px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“It is just rocks.” </span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.656; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial; font-size: 13px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“Why are you bringing a fanny pack full of rocks on the plane?!” she accused.</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.656; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial; font-size: 13px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“They remind me where my body is…..I am lost in space and my brain can’t tell..” </span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.656; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial; font-size: 13px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">She didn’t know what to do with that.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.656; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial; font-size: 13px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I only brought one trekking pole on this trip. I need two. I look around the studio. I find a broom stick. I am going out with a trekking pole and ….a broomstick. My life is ridiculous. I am thankful it doesn’t still have the broom on it. That would be an odd picture. But I would do it with dignity.</span></div>
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<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.656; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial; font-size: 13px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I write up a little note, the way I learned in Rehab, </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial; font-size: 13px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“Hi. I have a brain injury and I am lost. Can you please help me get to XYZ address? If you touch my arm firmly, it help me to get oriented to where my body is. Thank you!”.</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial; font-size: 13px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> I make sure it is the page open in my little notebook so I can pull it out (hopefully) when I can’t move, read, or think.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.656; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial; font-size: 13px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Next, I get dressed up. This too, is a compensatory strategy. If I am relying upon strangers to help me, I don’t want to look like a crazy person. I figure it is better to have them confused by me than scared. “Always look your best, when you go out with a rock belt, toe shoes, green glasses, a trekking pole and a broomstick!”. That is my new motto.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.656; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial; font-size: 13px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Finally, I walk out the door for the giant four block excursion. </span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.656; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial; font-size: 13px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I am so curious to see this town, but I have to be really careful not to look around and waste my little visual processing power. I pick a spot straight ahead and focus intently on it. Every half block, I rest, and hug a tree. Trees keep me grounded, they help me make my way through town. I have hugged so many trees in the last four years, I have learned to listen to them and sense their personalities. I love trees. They have become some of my best friends. </span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.656; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial; font-size: 13px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">At the cafe, I find it is crowded and noisy, and I am about to topple over. I can’t stay in this environment. A sweet blonde waitress cuts through the standing room only crowd, and dashes across the room toward me. “Hey sweetie, do you need some help with the menu?”. She puts a firm hand on my arm. I smile, it’s just what I needed: not only a nice person, but one who knew to touch my arm and remind me where my body is… as if she read my note. I thank her for her kindness, and tuck it into my basket of good things from today. </span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.656; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial; font-size: 13px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I collect gems like this as I go along. At the end of the day, I look back and admire my basket of sparkling gorgeous jewels that add beauty to my life. It is the kindness of people that fills my basket on a regular basis. It is what keeps me going. </span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.656; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial; font-size: 13px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Leaving the cafe, hungry, lost and completely disoriented, I get whistled by a truck full of men. My life could not get any more ridiculous. Maybe my “look good when you carry a broomstick” motto has worked too well. Or maybe sleeping endlessly is the best beauty product ever. Apparently, my outer appearance does not at all reflect my fragmented inner state. This is both a blessing and a curse. I decide to appreciate the compliment, and tuck another colorful gem in my basket. </span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.656; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial; font-size: 13px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I find a bakery and buy some bread. Three blocks later, someone tells me that my purse is open and upside down. I had no idea. By now, my vision is incredibly restricted, and I have lost any sense of having a body. </span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.656; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial; font-size: 13px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I wonder how much money I have lost. </span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.656; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial; font-size: 13px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Grateful for this person, and for having bread, I put two more gems in my basket. My favorite sparkling multi-colored gem today, is the sudden realization that I have come so far with accepting a life without control, that I can now laugh at the mistakes that had me crying for three years straight. </span></div>
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<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.656; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial; font-size: 13px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I have learned trust, to stay in the moment, and look for the good. Where attention goes, energy flows. I place my attention on the gems in my basket at the end of the day. When it rains, look for rainbows. </span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.656; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial; font-size: 13px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Happiness depends upon gratitude for even the smallest beauties of life.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.656; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial; font-size: 13px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">So what if I was walking down the street dropping all my money. I got bread today!</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.656; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial; font-size: 13px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Day 3: </span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.656; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial; font-size: 13px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I intended to visit the Unitarian church service to meet people here. I can’t wake up again. Frustrated and embarrassed, I arrive just in time for free coffee and food. I decide to forgive myself…. it’s a constant practice… over and over…. I go in anyway, and hope the man I was talking to over pasta salad didn’t notice that I picked up my fork by the wrong end… twice. My hand was gooey with salad dressing. But I have food again. I am doing this solo thing!</span></div>
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<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.656; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial; font-size: 13px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I have become one of </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial; font-size: 13px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">those</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial; font-size: 13px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> people: the people who wander into a church for free coffee and food. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial; font-size: 13px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Yep that is me today. This is my new life. </span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.656; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial; font-size: 13px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">And I love myself anyway. </span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.656; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial; font-size: 13px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">TBI living has taught me the biggest life lesson of all: to forgive myself and be compassionate with my struggles. I get so frustrated with myself, but I know that does not help me heal or thrive. I express it, let it go, and choose love and forgiveness constantly. I try to send my brain more love with every screw up. Sometimes it works. </span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.656; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial; font-size: 13px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Having a scrambled brain that can’t get anything right, you have to laugh at your imperfections and find amusement in the absurdity of life. You have no choice. </span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.656; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial; font-size: 13px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">It’s that or jump off a bridge. I choose laughter.</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.656; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial; font-size: 13px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Like most of us, I have been driven by an intense need for perfection and belonging for my whole life. Now, I have become so imperfect that I have finally realized that it is futile to keep striving for perfection. </span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.656; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial; font-size: 13px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I wish I had known that it was futile to try all along. </span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.656; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial; font-size: 13px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I wish I had known it was ok to relax and just be me, warts and all. Not only am I imperfect, but I write about it publicly, because I hope it gives life perspective and sets others free too. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial; font-size: 13px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I am at peace. Limitation has never been so liberating.</span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEikJww70FIRdziMjzzVnb9zFttwh1xobUB-5zMB-VlexG8M5DUw-h5i1ixmZggGcANk6gUndxY-hr086yrXakl7G6MZ9LqNjaa3oS4F6BX6yBPh_4gTP9KJvR8ptv3hA8AGHR_00alpRhE9/s1600/imgres.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEikJww70FIRdziMjzzVnb9zFttwh1xobUB-5zMB-VlexG8M5DUw-h5i1ixmZggGcANk6gUndxY-hr086yrXakl7G6MZ9LqNjaa3oS4F6BX6yBPh_4gTP9KJvR8ptv3hA8AGHR_00alpRhE9/s1600/imgres.jpg" /></a></div>
<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial; font-size: 13px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span>Nathalie Kellyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05076749085597617788noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4652954801596904961.post-62954167002010114282014-06-29T19:12:00.003-04:002014-06-29T19:17:08.420-04:00I'm Celebrating my Forth Re-Birthday and Sharing my Gifts with You!It is four years today that I said goodbye to the life I knew.<br />
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I woke up at dawn, excited about the day, meditated, wrote, gardened, worked, and looked forward to an evening sailing lesson, never suspecting that after this day, my life would never be the same. No one knows when a traumatic brain injury will strike.<br />
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The journey has been intense. Long. Hard. Poignant.<br />
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At first, I thought I would heal this. After all, I was a healer. I had spent my life learning about every kind of healing method I could find. I was meant to heal this and teach others how. I could live with that. It gave me hope, and more importantly, it gave me purpose.<br />
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Four years later, the part of me that believes that has shrunk. It has become a little sliver of hope that occasionally surfaces.... and then crashes even harder with the next bad day. Hope has become an unhelpful roller coaster.<br />
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Now, I focus not so much on changing this (although it is not my nature to ever stop trying or give up), but I am more focused on how to live a full life, in the present moment, even when things are not as we would want them. Because isn't there always something we which was different?<br />
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Honestly, brain injury sucks. It is the hardest, scariest hell anyone can imagine.<br />
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But it doesn't help to be thinking that all day.<br />
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What helps is to find the gifts our challenges bring us. I have searched and searched for four years for the gifts I knew were somewhere in the rubble. I believe there is always a gift, sometimes they take a LONG time to find.<br />
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As my Fourth Birthday present to myself today, I am sharing my gifts.<br />
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Gift Number One: Slowing down.<br />
I am a snail in an SUV world. As a snail, I am closer to the rhythms of nature, and the rhythms of my own body. A snail doesn't experience as many things, but it experiences each moment of life with more depth. It isn't racing off to the next experience.<br />
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Gift Number Two: Being in the present moment.<br />
Having to work hard to be in my body and have it function, keeps me in a timeless place of right here and now. I am no longer multitasking or distracted and my relationships are richer for it. That is pretty cool.<br />
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Gift Number Three: Grace.<br />
What I am finding by being present in the moment, is the gift of divine grace. When we stop approaching life trying to control it with expectations and goals, and just see what each moment brings, doors open. Things happen that could never have been predicted. They often turn out better than I could have thought up myself. The series of surreal events that my life has become would be hard for most people to believe. Life has become a fun adventure since getting out of the driver's seat.<br />
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Gift Number Four: Embracing Uniqueness & Being Self-Referential.<br />
I have difficulty in crowds. I have difficulty reading. I have difficulty with noise or florescent lights. I avoid these things and more, and in doing so have become an island unto myself in the Lake of society. I am learning who I am without outside influences. I am forced to learn to accept being different. The truth is that I have always been "different" and tried to hide that. How many of us suppress our uniqueness and try to fit in? That is a scary thing for most of us. We fear losing love and approval. The truth is, others love us when we are loving ourselves, not when we are trying to be someone else.<br />
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Gift Number Five: Freedom from the Curse of Perfection.<br />
As a life-long perfectionist from a family of perfectionists, I used to equate being lovable with being perfect. Yet perfection is an unattainable goal, and that constant drive takes us out of the present moment where peace and self-acceptance lie. Learning to accept all the parts of ourselves, the ones we like and the ones we don't like is the key to peace and wholeness. I can no longer even try to be perfect. Letting myself off the hook, there is the peace of surrender. I feel whole and complete in my brokenness, perhaps more than I have ever felt in my entire life.<br />
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Gift Number Six: Becoming my own best Cheerleader.<br />
TBI is a LONG road. It isn't a marathon. It is a lifetime of back to back marathons. I won't survive if I am judging myself and beating myself up. I have trained my mind to be kind to myself, the way you would be to a four year old. After all, I am just four years old in a grown up body. I praise my brain all day. It is doing such a good job. On days like today. I can not tolerate light, noise or motion, and am in my room all day wearing dark glasses, I say "Good brain. You are doing so well. You are working so hard. You are doing your very best. I love you so much!" Repeat. Everyday. All day. Forever.<br />
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Gift Number Seven: Learning about love and kindness from people everyday.<br />
I never knew how much a little bit of kindness could help someone in need. I never knew how many beautiful people step forward and rescue others. Wow. This just makes me cry. Y'all are beautiful you know. Thank you so much for the gift of you.<br />
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Happy Re-Birthday to Me!<br />
<br />Nathalie Kellyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05076749085597617788noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4652954801596904961.post-36690825374163040442014-05-17T16:52:00.002-04:002014-05-22T14:26:52.826-04:00Angels Are Everywhere<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The ironic truth about living with a brain injury is that independence means learning to ask for help. I've learned that toughing it out in an airport and trying to get myself to the gate, never yields a good result. So I was waiting for the wheelchair attendant and hugging my mom goodbye at the curb when emotions came pouring out in a torrential river of tears. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I had been living with my parents for five months this winter, and now I was going home. Being surrounded by family is like having a safety net beneath us as we swing on this crazy trapeze of life. </span><span style="color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">With family around, when I had a vision therapy appointment, and </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15.454545021057129px; line-height: 15.681818008422852px; white-space: pre-wrap;">the paratransit vans didn’t show up,</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.15; white-space: pre-wrap;"> I had a ride. When my morning brain-exercise puzzles left me stumped, dad was there to patiently help me figure them out. </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15.454545021057129px; line-height: 15.681818008422852px; white-space: pre-wrap;">When my daily 5pm exhaustion hit, and I was too tired to eat dinner, mom's cooking saved me. </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.15; white-space: pre-wrap;">But now I was leaving the safety net, plunging back out into the world on my own. </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15.454545021057129px; line-height: 15.681818008422852px; white-space: pre-wrap;">TBI has been turned my life into a dangerous high trapeze, and living on my own, I fly without a safety net. </span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I had been a Daughter for five months, now I had to go home to be a Mother. I wasn’t sure how, and I was up all night wondering. So when the mess of tears met me at the curb, I gave myself permission to loose it. I didn’t care who was looking. I left shame behind. This was too big to suppress, too big to care, and I had had too little sleep. I’ve learned that by letting feelings move through me, they do not last. When I let embarrassment stop that process, I am still dealing with the feelings for a long time. It works much better to feel your feelings and it that area, disinhibition (life without filters) is quite helpful. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">When I say I've learned to ask for help, I mean not only from the human world, but from the spiritual world as well. I prayed with all my heart, as I sat waiting, “Please watch over me. I don’t know how to do this and I am scared. Please</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15.454545021057129px; line-height: 15.681818008422852px; white-space: pre-wrap;"> send me help.Send me lots of help. Send me some angels.</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.15; white-space: pre-wrap;">Thank you, thank you, thank you!” </span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhZ8xINZEgDckrRkSJlpgfVPydP4NOuGwX-8rpv0W1uYenOnnNTGm_Wlpt1buFKLPH_xZ8-S9LQ21e8VE8rWy5klNXz7Qi0QXa-11yyNoefg5OD1JZNBdEoDDnixs6zOIfblhKy94P2phr4/s1600/airport_crowd.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhZ8xINZEgDckrRkSJlpgfVPydP4NOuGwX-8rpv0W1uYenOnnNTGm_Wlpt1buFKLPH_xZ8-S9LQ21e8VE8rWy5klNXz7Qi0QXa-11yyNoefg5OD1JZNBdEoDDnixs6zOIfblhKy94P2phr4/s1600/airport_crowd.jpg" height="240" width="320" /></a></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">A moment later, a tiny Filipina woman, arrived with my wheelchair. Her badge told me her name. Angel. I did a double take. She smiled as she helped me with my bags, not at all fazed by my tears. “Crazy day we are having! 627 wheelchair requests, even my boss is pushing wheelchairs today!” she laughed. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">She zipped me through the whirling, swirling hustle and bustle of the airport that amplifies the whirling and and swirling always in my head, making me completely disoriented and nauseous. I closed my eyes behind my dark glasses and worked to stay calm. Angel unhooked the ropes of the security line and started singing</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15.454545021057129px; line-height: 15.681818008422852px; white-space: pre-wrap;"> “I Did It My Way!” loudly</span><span style="color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. This was getting more surreal. She hollered at a passenger in the security line leaning on a cane. “Hey, you! You come with me. You don't have to wait. I’ll get you past this line.” Then someone with crutches, and then another cane. Belting out in song </span><span style="color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><i>“I've lived a life that's full. I traveled each and every highway, and more, much more than this, I DID IT MY WAY!”</i></span><span style="color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, Angel pushed my wheelchair, with a gaggle of handicapped people following us to the security agent. She was the Pied-Piper of SFO's disabled. What a sight we must have been!</span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhuDpDwgobHiwcVknBeLpdibKXNMcWlaHNoa2uAGRxNuZ-420ksq9q9-8GfG28AIN2b04XbhgHkGMOtJhiM9cbrT_I7SSbQ-VlJ5Lpy4THNZRArvfFHO92CULgnDMDkljGc9wickRkcBmIP/s1600/wheelchair.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhuDpDwgobHiwcVknBeLpdibKXNMcWlaHNoa2uAGRxNuZ-420ksq9q9-8GfG28AIN2b04XbhgHkGMOtJhiM9cbrT_I7SSbQ-VlJ5Lpy4THNZRArvfFHO92CULgnDMDkljGc9wickRkcBmIP/s1600/wheelchair.jpeg" /></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">She delivered me, eyes shut, to he TSA agent, Angel Number Two. “I can do the pat down right in the chair sweetheart. You don’t have to stand up. Does it bother you to lift your legs?” “No.” “Does it bother you to lift your arms?” “No.” “Does it bother you to tilt your head?” “Yes.” “It hurts to tilt your head?” I opened my eyes to look at her. “No, it doesn’t hurt. It makes me more dizzy and disoriented and seasick. I don’t move my eyes or my head.” She looked confused. She had never heard that one. “I have a brain injury” I explained. </span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjBXMejSiEVxr_ibmV-ah55SS8zKipBCdinOVZCxeYxFykTzGHd9E2jZ_8BypnHO30bee7g-BN2P9rVr2IDYUNSG6Ym4l20FTKbo46_7Bwxk-q9mj-Hl9qCtirVpui419G8mwYiqvK4U3xV/s1600/tsa.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjBXMejSiEVxr_ibmV-ah55SS8zKipBCdinOVZCxeYxFykTzGHd9E2jZ_8BypnHO30bee7g-BN2P9rVr2IDYUNSG6Ym4l20FTKbo46_7Bwxk-q9mj-Hl9qCtirVpui419G8mwYiqvK4U3xV/s1600/tsa.jpeg" height="200" width="200" /></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">She got silent and STILL, the way people often do when you say “brain injury”. They are jolted out of their business-as-usual mode. I can hear their minds grow dead quiet to match mine. She started patting down my legs. “You know, I see these young kids come through here everyday, and they are amazing. They have the best attitude. They inspire me….. Now I am going to use the backs of my hands to pat down sensitive areas….. You are just like them. You are going to kick this thing.” She stopped and looked at me. “</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><i>You</i></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> are going to come skipping through this machine next year, yes you are!…. Now let me run my gloves through the scanner." With both of her hands, she </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15.454545021057129px; line-height: 15.681818008422852px; white-space: pre-wrap;">held my hand, lowered her face a few inches from mine, and looked right into my eyes. "</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.15; white-space: pre-wrap;">You are going to beat this! I can just feel it! I just know you are. I believe in you! You are my hero!”.</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The TSA agent of all people, had just pierced my heart. Any composure I had regained was completely lost. The floodgates re-opened and there was no stopping them. </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15.454545021057129px; line-height: 15.681818008422852px; white-space: pre-wrap;">How did a TSA agent become a therapist and cheerleader for every stranger going through her line? Who are these amazing people? </span><br />
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Tears streaming down my cheeks now, I was being wheeled through the airport by the tiny woman with a huge heart singing songs, and yelling out “Magandang araw!” (Beautiful day!) as she passed her co-workers. </span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span>
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">My daily life is surreal. I started laughing at how my prayers were already being answered. The world was full of angels. I never knew it like I do now.</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Angel delivered me to the plane, handing me off to the flight attendant, Angel Number Three. “Do you have any seats closer to the front?” I asked. “I forgot to ask earlier and I don’t tolerate motion well.” The difference between the front and the back of the plane was the difference between a day on the couch recovering or a week on the couch recovering. “Sorry, the flight is full.” My heart sunk. I knew I was buckling myself into Hell. I gulped.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.15; white-space: pre-wrap;">"Can I ask for your help then?" </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15.454545021057129px; line-height: 15.681818008422852px; white-space: pre-wrap;">I continued,</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.15; white-space: pre-wrap;"> "I have a brain injury. If there is any turbulence, my brain does not know where my body is space or which way is up. I will be completely out of my body and disoriented.” </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.15; white-space: pre-wrap;">Now, </span><i style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.15; white-space: pre-wrap;">she</i><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.15; white-space: pre-wrap;"> slipped into that Quiet Still Place and stopped in her tracks. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.15; white-space: pre-wrap;">“I only have a half hour layover and when we arrive, I will not know where my body is or how to move it. I will likely not be able to move or talk. Can you please take me by the arm and get me to the wheelchair and tell the wheelchair attendant that I am connecting to Burlington?”. “I will keep my eye on you,” she promised. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I am so grateful that after almost four years, I am learning this new body. I know the drill. I know what I am capable of and what I am not capable of. I am learning how to ask for help and how to work with the new operating system. </span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span>
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Most of all, I am grateful that I now know I will recover to baseline after the really bad moments, and that makes all the difference between peaceful acceptance and unspeakable terror. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15.454545021057129px; line-height: 15.681818008422852px; white-space: pre-wrap;">Being able to first, understand my body; second, understand what it needed; third, not be embarrassed; fourth, ask for help; fifth, not be an anxiety attack about all of it; that conversation spelled major V-I-C-T-O-R-Y!</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The plane shook and bounced across the country. I must have been gripping the armrest pretty hard because the man next to me said “I get nervous too.” I couldn’t talk to respond. “You have no idea!” I wished I could say. </span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjm-Vt1b8LB-vM9bvqJeVIBlfS8HyPtRhNlosUg8TbD8Z0NR8nwfsGh_dG72qtMZRKyaa-NHh-0768GUpVcLaqFtePy4J20aMOlTMB4NAuij027vRMaVcu3yDOi7bu1lRak3X1WIII2gO7v/s1600/flight.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjm-Vt1b8LB-vM9bvqJeVIBlfS8HyPtRhNlosUg8TbD8Z0NR8nwfsGh_dG72qtMZRKyaa-NHh-0768GUpVcLaqFtePy4J20aMOlTMB4NAuij027vRMaVcu3yDOi7bu1lRak3X1WIII2gO7v/s1600/flight.jpeg" height="149" width="200" /></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I used to get nervous in turbulence, but this was a different kind of fear. This was not anxiety based upon a </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">thought</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> about what might happen. This was the sheer terror of what </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">was </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">happening, like free-falling on a roller coaster you can’t get off of. Like my life depended on it, I stared unblinking at a spot in front of me for my only sense of physical orientation. I didn’t have time to think or care about the plane falling out of the sky anymore, I was too busy surviving each second of this 5 1/2 hour flight. </span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span>
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">This brain injured experience puts me in the present moment all the time. While everyone else is calming reading magazines and watching movies, it takes tremendous focus and concentration, just being in my body. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The flight attendant guided me off the plane as promised, saying “You are going to be just fine!”, before giving me a huge hug. Who gets a hug good-bye from the flight attendant? I did twice this winter.... and an offer to be a free flying companion.</span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi4ZmgjbfTQCsC0PWtJ-ZAIZkz7ZOXLQufW6MqwddYIccrDpJo8AwI_4jZRh3bELiIaiv41wcP_lycGVGP51dFwo46XRvNvxOLeJxEXgCqxt3gizYcONuFmmVrth2IxJ93WZSr-ZA74Tnij/s1600/kindness-480.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi4ZmgjbfTQCsC0PWtJ-ZAIZkz7ZOXLQufW6MqwddYIccrDpJo8AwI_4jZRh3bELiIaiv41wcP_lycGVGP51dFwo46XRvNvxOLeJxEXgCqxt3gizYcONuFmmVrth2IxJ93WZSr-ZA74Tnij/s1600/kindness-480.jpg" height="133" width="200" /></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Everywhere I go, there is an amazing display of kindness from strangers. What makes human beings reach out with so much kindness and compassion to people do not know and will never see again? I am so moved by them. They have blown the ceiling off my reality about what is possible in human kindness. They teach me to be as kind as they are. I want to be the strangers I meet. I want to be like that TSA agent.</span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span>
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">It is this kindness that makes the world so beautiful and lifts us up when we are down. We don’t hear about it on the news, in fact, we don’t hear about it at all. We pay little attention to it. Yet is there any greater purpose to life? </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I am privileged to see a side of humanity that I have never seen before. Never did I think I would be pushed through airports in a wheelchair. That position puts me on the receiving end of random acts of compassion on a regular basis. Back when I was busy racing around on my hamster wheel, priding myself on my independence, I didn’t know this kindness existed; not in the deep profound way I know it now. So I am here to tell you. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.15; white-space: pre-wrap;">Like a Special Ambassador from some foreign place outside of human culture, I am here to report back to you, that people are really beautiful. That life is beautiful, and I am so lucky to be given this vantage point. </span><br />
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span>
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">It comes to all of us when we slow down and find the courage to show vulnerability and our humanness. As Brene Brown says, "Perhaps vulnerability is the truest measure of courage".</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">There is some profound power found in living life in the raw, in not hiding our weaknesses out of shame. It is the place that connects us, human heart to human heart. </span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span>
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The New Safety Net is here.</span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span>
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> It lies in those random members of our human family that show up.</span></div>
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Nathalie Kellyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05076749085597617788noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4652954801596904961.post-12910143018571621152014-02-07T08:42:00.001-05:002014-02-07T08:48:36.326-05:00Living Like a RefugeeI have become a winter refugee.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiz5QjG_NMApy_PebLuXUhgxtruXIbjQ7McemTLzDwwYnh3fCoprDOXy2Lj2QTMqgeQw6qTFbBssIrlNvT5-_AH5ONXLNFQ4nwJv8SOs3wTBX51tbmvOvhmVmlv-fNMfuPSK3nXnu_2f-Zb/s1600/imgres-1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiz5QjG_NMApy_PebLuXUhgxtruXIbjQ7McemTLzDwwYnh3fCoprDOXy2Lj2QTMqgeQw6qTFbBssIrlNvT5-_AH5ONXLNFQ4nwJv8SOs3wTBX51tbmvOvhmVmlv-fNMfuPSK3nXnu_2f-Zb/s1600/imgres-1.jpg" height="149" width="200" /></a>When my TBI first met winter four years ago, the snowfall made my head swirl so badly I could barely walk in my house. Walking outside on the slippery white stuff was completely impossible. My head swirled, my legs stiffened up, my brain unsure of where the ground was. After wall-surfing in the house for a few weeks, with the shades closed getting more dizzy and depressed, I realized I had to get out of here. This stress was not a recipe for healing.<br />
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I have never been a big fan of Vermont winters. I grew up in San Francisco, and living in the snow has always felt like a foreign country to me. Five months of it feels like living on a foreign planet. I have never felt comfortable walking on icy sidewalks. So I am not upset about missing out on the winter magic, that is a blessing. But I am upset about leaving my youngest child for a large chunk of the year. That is a painful, heart-wrenching loss.<br />
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Every year I question it. Can I stay? Am I just being a winter wimp? I feel guilty. Every year I get a few days of snow to re-confirm that I have no choice. What is it about the white stuff? The ground is white, the sky is white, and I start to stutter and stumble like I did four years ago; my son urging me "Mom, you have to go. I will be ok. Just go!".<br />
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This winter, I was determined to test myself and walk a half mile home. I had my trekking poles; I should have been able. Each block got harder and harder. Exhausted, slowing to a snail's pace, and unable to see well, with my visual field narrowing to a pinhole, I refused to give up. Finally only two blocks from my destination, I could go no farther. My brain was so scrambled, I could barely figure out how to call my daughter for help. She found me hugging the street post for dear life, unable to move or figure out where my legs were, and done for the day. "Where are my legs?" was all I could mumble before I fell asleep. I am not just a winter wimp. Every brain injury is different. This is mine.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiejJh-Em786PqUAhBa4q_eJkA1-JK42J_gKB0sjqPMeddQwj0nQUb6e0wlxnH31KcDScDNiAV3BNwA65GUxpVFS88xSXvzshhPc6aZQ5PE-hMczudiReTgJaJUXmQS7fbv-NQ-7KcqVCyr/s1600/imgres.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiejJh-Em786PqUAhBa4q_eJkA1-JK42J_gKB0sjqPMeddQwj0nQUb6e0wlxnH31KcDScDNiAV3BNwA65GUxpVFS88xSXvzshhPc6aZQ5PE-hMczudiReTgJaJUXmQS7fbv-NQ-7KcqVCyr/s1600/imgres.jpg" height="179" width="320" /></a>My theory is that my brain is already working so hard to understand where my body is in space, that winter boots don't offer enough tactile information, while whiteness doesn't offer enough visual information. It is the same in a white room, bathtub, or a bright sidewalk. My broken optic nerve can't translate the visual information to my brain and it is as if I can't see. My brain gets even more strained and every other function just goes to pieces. I do much better in vibrant colors of summer.<br />
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My neuroscientist cousin in France immediately understood it and learned about this in her training, but in this country I am treated like I am making this up because I don't like winter. I would love to see the documentation on this and have been unable to find it. Does anyone have it? If so, please add it to the comments below for everyone to share.<br />
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It is a strange life I am living. I rent out my home for the winter, and spread myself among my parents and whoever will adopt me. I keep moving, trying not to overburden anyone. I would like to go home. Enough of living out of a suitcase like a gypsy, waiting for it to be safe to return to my life! And what do I do in the long term? Move? This does not appear to be improving.<br />
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This brain injury has taught me to take care of myself at a whole new level. It has taught me that nothing, nothing, NOTHING, is more important than health... which includes emotional health and happiness. Sometimes that means making courageous and unconventional choices with our lives.<br />
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<br />Nathalie Kellyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05076749085597617788noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4652954801596904961.post-19846475385744060782014-01-27T06:28:00.000-05:002014-01-27T16:27:05.878-05:00Marking TimeIt is New Year's Day. (At least it was when I started writing this, so I had better get it out while it is still January!)<br />
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Every year of my adult life, I have spent the new year refecting upon the growth of the past year and setting intentions for the upcoming year. At least I did that every year until a TBI twisted my head on differently.<br />
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In the chaotic swirl of a brain injured mind, this becomes irrelevant or impossible. Irrelevant because because we have lost a linear sense of time. Time is just now. There is just this eternal moment of NOW. Impossible because when I look back on a year, cutting through the confusing swirl of jumbled memories and making sense or order of them, is like trying to reflect upon the color of a fruit flies eyes while watching a swarm of 500 fruit flies buzz around you. We just can't focus long enough or filter what is important and what isn't.<br />
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My New Year's reflections have been missing in a fog for these last three years. So when I sat down to reflect this year, I got a surprise! In another marker that the fog is lifting, I can actually find a theme to last year. 2013. It was my first year of living independently with a brain injury.<br />
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I don't know what is more exciting, that I survived a year of independence or that I found the clarity to notice.<br />
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2013 truly was a big, scary year, and I made it over this hurdle.<br />
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I was terrified to be on my own. How do you survive, let along thrive if you can't drive, ride a bus or train, look to cross a street, walk more than a mile, and have fog for a brain? I live alone with my son, and my family lives 3000 miles across the country.<br />
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Everyone I know with a brain injury lives with a spouse or family. I have learned that that safety net makes all the difference between thriving and flailing. I can look and feel downright normal when I am tagging along with someone else who can drive.<br />
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By myself, everything feels overwhelming, failures build on each other, I barely leave my house, and struggle with anxiety and depression. Life is simplified to the barest necessities. Getting food is such a challenge, I mostly skip it. You could say it was a failure year because I certainly didn't thrive, or a success year because I survived and am still alive, and I have lost all my TBI weight gain. Maybe the judgement isn't the important part.<br />
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Now I know I <i>can</i> survive on my own even though it is super hard. That information is invaluable,<i> that</i> is the important part. Learning about ourselves and accepting ourselves is the important part, not the judgement. Maybe judgement is over-rated.<br />
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It's funny how at the end of the year or the end of the day, we look back and judge ourselves. How often do we look at all we did not accomplish in our day? How often do we focus on our failures and miss our accomplishments?<br />
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I have learned to count my accomplishments and celebrate every little one. I intentionally focus on what I did do more than what I didn't do, and where I succeeded more than where I failed. Like taking a good photo, life is all about what you focus on. Focus on what lifts your spirits! I am calling 2013 a success.<br />
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P.S. Since I've got my New Year's mojo back, I am also setting an intention for 2014. I hear-by publicly declare that I will have a first draft of my book, "Brainstormed, How I Lost My Mind, and Found My Heart", done by June. It is my story mixed with educational information. It has brain injury, romance, and travel. Think <u>Eat, Pray, Love</u> meets <u>My Stroke of Insight</u>. I have an unbelievable story, the book is coming along, and it is going to be good!<br />
<a href="http://www.brainstormedthebook.com/">http://www.brainstormedthebook.com/</a><br />
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<br />Nathalie Kellyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05076749085597617788noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4652954801596904961.post-21312161223538030922013-11-10T20:47:00.003-05:002013-11-10T22:07:13.848-05:00 Inside those While Vans -Part Two<div class="p1">
Last month, an elderly woman boarded the SSTA van and said to me with a sad sigh, “it is so hard being a shut in”. I looked right at her replying, "I couldn't agree more". <br />
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I hate it. It is absolutely crushing to lose once independence. Of all the losses since my TBI, this is hands down the hardest. Being stuck in the house for months and years is like slowly chocking to death. Humans need each other.<br />
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Startled out of her emotional state, the woman did a double take and stared at me “Oh my gosh. You are half my age. Why am I complaining?” </div>
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<span class="s1">In the conversation that followed, I shared “I have lived more in my first 46 years than most people do in 90. I've already lived a full life." </span>It was a humble sweet moment where two human beings help each other shift from despair over what we don't have, to finding gratitude for what we do have.<br />
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<span class="s1">I really have lived a full life already. I have backpacked through eight European countries, spent six months backpacking through Alaska, stalked grizzly bears, kayaked remote islands in Baja, swam with wild sea lions and dolphins, been thirty feet from a gray whale nursing a newborn, rock climbed Yosemite, helped Youth at Risk across the country transform their lives, created an award winning documentary about said Youth at Risk, zip-lined, birthed two children at home, been a single mother, attended forty births as a doula, and as a hypnotherapist, helped nearly a thousand people live more empowered lives. </span>I intentionally did anything I was afraid of. I wanted to exercise my courage muscles. I was afraid.... and I did it anyway.</div>
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<span class="s1">I was not on the sidelines of life, I was on the playing field. Now I sit on the sidelines... watching the players on the field. I now face a life where I wonder if I will ever feel comfortable walking down a busy street or traveling again. I miss participating: being able to go to parties, be in a crowd, or a concert, drive a car, ride a bus, travel, kayak, hike, most of all, I miss dancing. So if you're sitting on the sidelines of life, please don't wait. Get on the field! You don't know what tomorrow will bring. There is no time to be putting off living one's life and following one's dreams. </span><br />
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<span class="s1">Being able-bodied is a temporary condition. Whether by illness, disability of death, </span>we will all lose our abilities at some point. Don't take tomorrow for granted.<br />
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<span class="s1">You too will want to say the elderly woman on the van that you have lived a full life already. </span><br />
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Nathalie Kellyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05076749085597617788noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4652954801596904961.post-60785820038233742462013-11-01T19:01:00.000-04:002013-11-01T19:01:04.634-04:00The Inside Scoop on Those White Vans<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">Nine months after by brain injury, I discovered Rehab....</span><br />
<span class="s1">where the occupational therapist took away my driving privileges. The experience 90 year olds fear most had now arrived in my life ....40 years early.</span><br />
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<span class="s1">My world had already gotten smaller than a postage stamp, and in that moment, my entire universe collapsed in on itself. I was a single mom in a rural state, trying desperately to hang on to my last remaining role, that of "mother", and now I couldn’t drive?! How was that going to work? That would have been hard enough without a TBI but with one, life became impossible. </span></div>
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<span class="s1">Getting food meant walking a nauseating half mile to the grocery store, with trekking poles in each hand, wearing an empty backpack to carry food home in. I had mapped a path with 3 benches and 2 churches, where I could sleep along the way. The excursion took half the day. Recovering from it took the other half. After the first grocery trek, I learned what could not be transported in a backpack. We had already given up so much. Now we gave up something as basic as eggs. I spent months confused about how to get eggs. I just couldn't figure it out.</span></div>
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<span class="s1">I couldn’t take busses because the shaking disoriented me too much. My world collapsed in on itself so hard, it must have fallen through a worm hole. For on the other side, I found myself in another universe.... the strange foreign universe of Special Services Transportation (SSTA) vans. These are the white vans all over the roads, that you never notice until you start using them. I was saved! </span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjF7jLhObVo2q0RZ5u8dVe9fp383NdIJnLfUQKqLMqP7OHgoqfVLiMvvuV7dj41vmcqSaB6fJ3w7zeITbPYkbzXnsjYu5_vy4mSUO2vwbguRAldKYksFCWbWWgAdmw4nJt2jXyKJyjxOGMA/s1600/imgres.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjF7jLhObVo2q0RZ5u8dVe9fp383NdIJnLfUQKqLMqP7OHgoqfVLiMvvuV7dj41vmcqSaB6fJ3w7zeITbPYkbzXnsjYu5_vy4mSUO2vwbguRAldKYksFCWbWWgAdmw4nJt2jXyKJyjxOGMA/s1600/imgres.jpg" /></a></div>
<span class="s1">My white stallion however, was more like a white nag. </span>I could now get rides, but they wouldn't drive my son. Every time he needed to get somewhere, we had a problem. Our lives became even more overwhelmingly complicated. I was as dizzy and loopy as if I had drunk 3 6-packs, and getting him to his appointments was a puzzle I couldn't solve. After calling a few friends, I would give up and stress out for four days, losing sleep about an upcoming appointment. Somehow, by the grace of the higher powers that watch out for us, it worked. More often than not, someone would call while I was sitting in tears, feeling helpless that he had to be at the orthodontist in an hour. Angels appeared.</div>
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<span class="s1">When I started using the special services transportation vans I hated it. </span><span class="s1">While I was grateful for the ride, </span>I had lost my freedom. Imagine.... to get anywhere, it needs to be scheduled at least one day in advance. The drivers can pick up 15 minutes early or 30 minutes late. You have to pad each errand by 45 minutes on either end. That's 90 minutes extra per errand. If you are like me, and you are used to efficiently lining up three stops in the same area, forget it. One errand at a time or you will have to pad each one with 90 minutes. If they didn't have what you wanted at the store and you need to go to another store, forget it. If you spontaneously realize there is something you need or want to do that day, forget it. You can't. There was and still is, nothing efficient about my new life. </div>
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<span class="s1">I was severely depressed. I didn't know what I was doing there with the elderly and disabled people in wheelchairs who made me feel even more broken and disabled. This was a new world I was immersed in, and I felt out of place, as if there was some big mistake. They didn't know what I was doing there either. The drivers did double takes.... until they got to know me. </span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiC4SukbMrzJoxf99MdVpR3fwwEw5BkQW1i_V_2A7e6CReqaHnX576EDip9gbvE5yYPX8QLMqGTn-Oye7hkkQZPmELAj4fF2JRcDgw42hhF_ntVRRg-QUS9nxfRyc9i-lJczz4qMmDs-CCi/s1600/images.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiC4SukbMrzJoxf99MdVpR3fwwEw5BkQW1i_V_2A7e6CReqaHnX576EDip9gbvE5yYPX8QLMqGTn-Oye7hkkQZPmELAj4fF2JRcDgw42hhF_ntVRRg-QUS9nxfRyc9i-lJczz4qMmDs-CCi/s1600/images.jpg" /></a><span class="s1">Pre-TBI, I loved being of service to others. Now I felt useless. What was I doing stuck here in this van with broken people when I had work to do in the world? It made me nuts, until in an aha moment, </span>Oprah-style, <span class="s1">I realized that this was an opportunity to make a difference with people who needed it the most. The people on these vans had very difficult and very lonely lives. </span><br />
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<span class="s1">This was actually an opportunity I would never have had before in my able-bodied active life full of </span>able-bodied active people. </div>
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I began practicing just Being Love on the van. It became my new ministry. </div>
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Adventures began.</div>
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<span class="s1">I started to talk with people. Amazing conversations like this unfolded. </span></div>
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<span class="s1">Passenger: "I don't know where I am going. I'm scared ." </span></div>
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<span class="s1">Me: "It's ok. The driver knows where you are going. You'll be fine." </span></div>
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<span class="s1">"Driver, where am I going?" </span></div>
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<span class="s1">"The same place we go everyday David. You are going to Adult Daycare." </span></div>
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<span class="s1">"Oh. What do I do there?" </span></div>
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<span class="s1">"The same thing you do everyday David. Here we are."</span></div>
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<span class="s1">Me (delivering a hypnotic suggestion): "David, you are going to have a great day here today."</span></div>
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<span class="s1">David stops, and stares at me for a long minute, "Thank you very much for saying that. Thank you for noticing me." </span><br />
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<span class="s1">M</span>y heart is so deeply pierced, tears fall out. </div>
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I wonder how many people ever see him or talk to him? A simple little connection can make such a huge difference. I used to have to work really hard doing complicated hypnosis techniques to feel like I helped people. It really is simple.</div>
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<span class="s1">One day I was having a lovely conversation with a passenger who had Down's Syndrome, until I realized that he wasn't talking to me. He was just talking. I smiled and stopped my side of the conversation and beamed some love his way. </span></div>
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<span class="s1">As he got off the van at Daycare, he turned back around, walked toward me, and leaned in to kiss me. Before I could recover from my shock, he literally skipped off the van </span>wearing the biggest cutest grin you’ve ever seen, like that was the biggest thrill he had ever had. The driver and I were left completely stunned and laughing all the way home. It made SSTA history. </div>
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I'm turning lemons into lemonade.</div>
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Nathalie Kellyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05076749085597617788noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4652954801596904961.post-410139207933903472013-09-22T01:39:00.001-04:002013-09-22T12:49:19.518-04:00Peace, Wholeness, and Dignity<div dir="ltr" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhnJzOB7rbLoqPHN42x7M518LrlU2AUwpFvIlcU2gLloTLatxz4XI9XYRcpAJub1_hy5TuwuNrqny_TQMTbIV0dpChmqk69Mu-28Pk5dFotOXXd2GDmrdEAEX6LvbTAPeEc9DG_urqM47CT/s1600/parent.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="184" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhnJzOB7rbLoqPHN42x7M518LrlU2AUwpFvIlcU2gLloTLatxz4XI9XYRcpAJub1_hy5TuwuNrqny_TQMTbIV0dpChmqk69Mu-28Pk5dFotOXXd2GDmrdEAEX6LvbTAPeEc9DG_urqM47CT/s200/parent.jpeg" width="200" /></a><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="line-height: 16.363636016845703px;">After missing nearly every school function for the three years since my brain injury, this year, </span><span style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.15; white-space: pre-wrap;">I went to Parent Night, determined not to miss out on my child’s life any longer. I hired my neighbor to drive me there and pick me up, the expense adding to my fire and determination to be there, meet the other parents, and get involved.</span></span></div>
<b id="docs-internal-guid-67469cee-43d9-12ba-d067-c6532827a5f7" style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></span></b>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The room was abuzz with parents talking, and a hundred conversations going on at once. The overstimulation and noise was a recipe for instant brain scramble and more than I could handle. I left the room, doubting my decision to come, and waited down the hallway. Feeling more than a bit foolish and anti-social every time someone walked by and told me the parents’ meeting was down the hall. “Yeah, thanks.” </span></span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.15; white-space: pre-wrap;">How long could I pretend to admire four student paintings for? Apparently 30 long minutes.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></span></b>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Finally, the noise dimmed down, the meeting was beginning. This was the cue I had been waiting for, and I walked in, </span></span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 15.454545021057129px; line-height: 15.454545021057129px; white-space: pre-wrap;">wearing huge dark glasses and balancing with my trekking poles</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.15; white-space: pre-wrap;">. The only entrance was in the front of the room, there was no hiding. The entire faculty and 150 parents watched me enter. The emotional stress of all those eyes staring at me, and all the psychic stress of all those thoughts coming at me were enough to put my brain into complete overload. The circuits went down. I was completely lost and frozen. I had no idea where my body was or where the floor was, I stepped into mid-air and my foot fell through it, like stepping down a stair that wasn’t there. I stumbled and then froze awkwardly, unsure where my body was. I had no idea how to move. Time froze with me in that eternal moment. I always sense time freeze when the shock of my injured brain dawns on people. This time it seemed multiplied by the numbers of people watching me. </span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></span></b>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhBeKBVvqCCaYNizTcFm1vTz3UdXfdaYIzzHdpaAI5FIKR6FGqGll29gwFkMbfIK7G8XBDUErSxhQTdF9FLLR3LkgVQJ_BIm-EVBRraDLFsdSvPdHTy5vK6wldKMZw0WoaYi4qvlcZjkR7z/s1600/parent+m.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="149" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhBeKBVvqCCaYNizTcFm1vTz3UdXfdaYIzzHdpaAI5FIKR6FGqGll29gwFkMbfIK7G8XBDUErSxhQTdF9FLLR3LkgVQJ_BIm-EVBRraDLFsdSvPdHTy5vK6wldKMZw0WoaYi4qvlcZjkR7z/s200/parent+m.jpeg" width="200" /></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">In that eternal moment I could see through every person there. I looked at the crowd and saw that the room was equally divided. One third of the crowd was absolutely terrified by me, and at a loss for words. It was a look I had grown accustomed to. I represent the vulnerability we all have to brain injury and that horrifies people... me included. One third of the crowd was in judgement and disdain, wanting nothing to do with a weirdo like me. The remaining third were full of kindness and compassion and were ready to jump to help. The kind faculty saved the awkward moment, dashing towards me offering assistance and bringing chairs. It took three teachers to get me to a chair four feet from me while the entire parent body stared. This wasn’t the kind of “being a presence at my son’s school” I had in mind. </span></span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></span></b>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">I should have been embarrassed and mortified. I should have wanted to run and hide. Here’s the amazing part: I didn’t. I would not have minded if that frozen moment actually did last forever, because in that moment of eternity I realized that I was at peace with me. No one else in the room might be, but I was. This was the moment I realized I had finally learned to accept this new me. There was peace in my being and a joy in noticing that not only had I learned to accept the new me, it was a deeper acceptance than I may have ever felt. </span></span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 15.454545021057129px; line-height: 15.454545021057129px; white-space: pre-wrap;">I felt whole. I could have stood in that moment forever.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></span></b>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjpbIHBT2kmOPnaeoStMJrUSHXmUqESne0gE5HP8U5dt1qgKUkUVY5mwlhQ-v0AF7ywq-odqqYVeHnVoqIkX4TTtCPH7KgjulOH6pLQzLhJRFOjGPBhhx8fsgIaEgBpgsdPtYcMykc4ZQe7/s1600/stillness.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="139" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjpbIHBT2kmOPnaeoStMJrUSHXmUqESne0gE5HP8U5dt1qgKUkUVY5mwlhQ-v0AF7ywq-odqqYVeHnVoqIkX4TTtCPH7KgjulOH6pLQzLhJRFOjGPBhhx8fsgIaEgBpgsdPtYcMykc4ZQe7/s200/stillness.jpeg" width="200" /></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">You see, the old me would have been concerned tonight about not knowing anyone, dressing right, looking right, saying the right thing, and needing to fit in. The new me does not have the mental energy or ability to have those concerns. I am concentrating on how to walk and how to see. That keeps me in the present moment, and in the eternal moment of NOW, there is no energy to waste on such silliness. The new me knows that I am different, I can’t fit in even if I want to. There isn’t even any point to trying to be like everyone else. I am free from that human plague: the deep </span></span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 15.454545021057129px; line-height: 15.454545021057129px; white-space: pre-wrap;">desire to fit in</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.15; white-space: pre-wrap;">. Not that I don't have the desire, I just don't have the ability, so I can't waste energy on it.</span></div>
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<b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></span></b><br />
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.15; white-space: pre-wrap;">Later that night, in the math classroom, a geometry problem was posted on the board. The math teacher called on me to read it out loud. Of all the parents, he called on me. I sat there for a minute, trying to make sense of the bouncing hieroglyphics on the whiteboard. Florescent lights, bright white, and my visual </span><span style="font-size: 15.454545021057129px; line-height: 15.454545021057129px; white-space: pre-wrap;">processing</span><span style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.15; white-space: pre-wrap;"> don't get along anymore. The harder I tried, the more my brain couldn't translate the squiggly lines into any meaning. Long silence. “Um, I can’t read”. </span></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiRNfisjmvcPaXRKyz50jYw3gI9N1LzDZGdvn4SdBiUv1PC4NpEjEnXevSV1QPYySeA1eV6M-6LomJor3Lz95tGdiT81oSEbjR9DyT7CBpaRdd0m7WSd-x8laFnMI0NwRSSFhD-v-a83G0j/s1600/math.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="132" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiRNfisjmvcPaXRKyz50jYw3gI9N1LzDZGdvn4SdBiUv1PC4NpEjEnXevSV1QPYySeA1eV6M-6LomJor3Lz95tGdiT81oSEbjR9DyT7CBpaRdd0m7WSd-x8laFnMI0NwRSSFhD-v-a83G0j/s200/math.jpeg" width="200" /></a></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">He had called on the wrong mom. Trying to hide his discomfort, he kindly read the problem for me, and then asked how I would proceed. I had no idea what he was talking about. My brain was not processing information right now. Another long silence. “Sorry, I don’t understand numbers either.” </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">I had just admitted to the parents of my child’s classmates in this highly academic school, that I am an adult who not only couldn't figure out where my body was a moment ago, but who often can not read or understand basic numbers. Great. What’s a girl to do? Run and hide and never go out in the world again? Or hold your head high. Sometimes I run and hide. Going out takes courage. Always I chose dignity. I’ve had lots of opportunity to practice dignity in the last few years. </span><br />
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline;">I have learned to carry myself with dignity in the most undignified moments. I have learned that dignity comes from deciding that loving yourself is more important than caring what other people think. I have let go of the curse of perfectionism, and embraced that being human means that you are an ever-evolving being and that you are </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 15px; font-style: italic; vertical-align: baseline;">not supposed</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline;"> to be a perfect finished product. We are never done evolving. And we are all imperfect, despite the image we portray to the world. Maybe our imperfections are lovable too.</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">I am moving forward, out of the house and into the world with dignity. Because dignity comes from the inside regardless of our incompetencies. Dignity is an inside job. It comes from a decision to learn to love and accept ourselves just the way we are, warts and all. If I can do it, so can you. Hold your head high. You are good enough, just the way you are, and that knowledge will make you whole.</span></span></div>
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Nathalie Kellyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05076749085597617788noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4652954801596904961.post-57849157924930043422013-09-02T15:28:00.001-04:002013-09-02T15:28:43.606-04:00I'm Three!<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">This summer I passed my third anniversary. When you acquire a Traumatic Brain Injury, you also acquire a new unforgettable date. Added to your annual markers of time (birthday, anniversary, and Christmas) is your TBI anniversary. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Survivors honor that significant date with a strange mix of melancholy, and reverence. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15.454545021057129px; font-style: italic; line-height: 15.454545021057129px; white-space: pre-wrap;">This is the date that we learned that no matter how smart, or witty, or hard we try, we do not control life. That illusion of control is forever shattered, and deep humility takes its place.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.15; white-space: pre-wrap;">It is more like a “death date” than a birth date. We all have the day we will die, that we pass every year and we don’t even know it. Having a TBI, we actually know our death date. On that date the person we knew as “me” died, and a complete stranger with the capacities of a newborn showed up in its place. We became a newborn baby all over again. Dependent and incapable, a stranger to ourselves and to our families. Like any newborn, it takes years to get to know this new person. We obsessively observe ourselves the same way we once observed our newborn babies for clues to who this person is.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Among my brain injured friends, I have seen process unfold like the stages of grief. The first year: sheer terror and confusion interspersed with a heaping dose of denial. “I don’t have a brain injury!” The second year: more terror, and depression and despair as the un-ending reality begins to become apparent. “I have a brain injury and it’s not going away.” The third year: beginning acceptance and rebuilding a life with what you’ve got left. “This is my life. Now what??”. Now I understand all that I can't do, so what </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><i>can</i></span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> I do? </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Past my three year mark now, I am improving enough to start seeing a world beyond TBI. I can see myself re-joining the world one baby toe at a time. I can now imagine a future worth living and am grateful for my constant intense focus of the last three years "just keep your body alive and don't let the depression drown you". Not easy for someone as seemingly drunk, disoriented, and visually impaired as I am. I have kept my body alive long enough to see the light. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15.454545021057129px; line-height: 15.454545021057129px; white-space: pre-wrap;">I feel like a toddler, nervous and excited to be off to pre-school and to see what the future holds.</span></div>
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Nathalie Kellyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05076749085597617788noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4652954801596904961.post-33334045155367349132013-06-26T07:59:00.001-04:002013-06-26T08:31:38.414-04:00Recipe for Disaster<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“I am terrified of cooking now”, I told a friend last year. “Why? You are a great cook!”. "I am not afraid of people judging my cooking, I am afraid of the act of cooking." The positive side is that by avoiding cooking, I have avoided serving Alpo to dinner guests like a friend with a brain injury once did.</span></div>
<b id="docs-internal-guid-4c077314-803a-0365-8acf-bd6028fc6a34" style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I used to be a good cook, and cooked dinner for my family every night for 20 years. I was a foodie. I grew up in a french house where food and meals are the center of life. My mom had a french restaurant in San Francisco and I was waiting tables by the age of 14, and prep cook by 16. I have every restaurant job there is from dishwasher to sommelier. Post-brain injury, I never cook. Cooking creates a state of high anxiety that always ends in exhaustion and irritability. </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15.454545021057129px; line-height: 15.454545021057129px; white-space: pre-wrap;">I wasn’t sure why cooking was so terrifying until Vision Therapy showed me where I was having difficulties. I has taken almost three years to break it down. Finally I understand! </span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">First, cooking requires decision making and planning. What will you make? That is an </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>executive function skill</b></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> of anticipating and planning for a future moment. My mind goes completely blank and I don’t know where to look for an answer. I know it’s in there somewhere! But how do you get there from here?? I dunno. The neuro-connections are missing.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Second, </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">my eyes don’t </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>converge </b></span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">at a distance of the kitchen counter or closer</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. When I look down at the cutting board, it takes a lot of work to not see double, and that constant strain exhausts my brain, eventually rendering it into jello. </span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Combine that with my </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>hand-eye coordination</b></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> being off an inch or two, and skewed </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>depth perception</b></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, and you have a great risk of sliced finger for dinner. Cutting the actual vegetable not myself requires tremendous </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>focus</b></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> and </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>concentration</b></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Next mix in a lack of </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>fine motor skills</b></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. My right hand feels like a club and is very clumsy, so spillage happens, and a dash of spice becomes ¼ bottle of spice, not to mention what lands on the floor.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Now add a touch of </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>multi-tasking</b></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, because that what cooking requires. You are always chopping vegetables when water is boiling or chicken is cooking. Multi-tasking with a TBI is like juggling way too many balls in the air. It doesn’t end well. </span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Now throw in a large serving of not being able to move your eyes without complete </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>dizziness</b></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> and </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>disorientation</b></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, and mix with the least amount of spinning around between sink, stove, and refrigerator necessary. Which if you have never noticed, is a LOT! Now you are completely </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>drunk</b></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. (Remember don’t slice your finger.)</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Now toss in a pinch of your kids trying to talk to you while you do all this, and try not to scream or cry. ....They know better now.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Finally top it off with </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>memory</b></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> issues and you will forget all about that pot on the stove. “Everything Brulee” is your new specialty unless you have bungee corded yourself to the stove, like you learned in Occupational Therapy. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></div>
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Nathalie Kellyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05076749085597617788noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4652954801596904961.post-3649086123041638232013-05-26T02:30:00.000-04:002013-05-26T11:59:20.306-04:00The Race Against the Bras <div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.15; white-space: pre-wrap;">The Race Against the Bras officially ended today. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial;"><span style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.15; white-space: pre-wrap;">It started one post-TBI day when I looked at the aging bras in my drawer and wondered how in the world I was ever going to buy a new one. Malls are not possible. Even armed with dark glasses and earplugs, stepping into any store sends me into instant sensory overload. Fluorescent lights, inability to filter visual details, music, people moving, and the hundred decisions required, make for a near-lethal combination. Every color and every word on a package and every item jumps at me with equal intensity. I have no filter to tune out the millions of visual details and just find what I want. My visual field narrows to a peep hole, my dizziness grows, the floor disappears, I have no idea where my body is, and I am </span><span style="font-size: 15.454545021057129px; line-height: 15.454545021057129px; white-space: pre-wrap;">nauseous</span><span style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.15; white-space: pre-wrap;">. </span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial;"><span style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.15; white-space: pre-wrap;">The anxiety escalates despite deep breathing and positive self-talk and ten minutes into it, I am having a total meltdown and needing to dash outside, purchase completed or not. My internal time bomb is ticking when I step into a store, and I know I have limited time before I explode. Every woman knows you just can’t buy a bra in ten minutes. You have to try on twenty to fit one that fits. There was no way I could do this.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.15; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.15; white-space: pre-wrap;">There was only one solution. I had to get better before all my bras wore out. The race against the bras began. I was going to win this thing. </span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhlV48ONFb2S8KeUuPBPc32z_iXnYXWLSjx_-KJOHs51LRBPt9ASnTywc-lg_nKRQLvHXKOvz_Vn07BZtc2jR-QlyMFIMYbCdwq4PQ2JEyiJ_ex6040Bqn4Li0RftDc903k4zRYd6Bo75Di/s1600/images.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhlV48ONFb2S8KeUuPBPc32z_iXnYXWLSjx_-KJOHs51LRBPt9ASnTywc-lg_nKRQLvHXKOvz_Vn07BZtc2jR-QlyMFIMYbCdwq4PQ2JEyiJ_ex6040Bqn4Li0RftDc903k4zRYd6Bo75Di/s1600/images.jpeg" /></a></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.15; white-space: pre-wrap;">Nearly three years later, I have gotten good at paring my life down to the bare necessities and doing without. I am down to two bras: the one with the wires poking out of the seams and into my ribs, and the crazy leopard skin one that doesn’t fit that I bought as a spoof five years ago. It’s really time.... and I still can’t go into a store for more than ten minutes. Does that mean I’ve lost the race?</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Compensatory strategies to the rescue! Instead of going to the Department Store or TJ Max I went to the high end boutique, grabbed the nearest saleslady and ask for help. Wow, no music, no florescent lights, and efficiency. I am out of there in no time... at three times the price. Such is the price of victory. Brain injury is expensive in ways I never dreamed.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.15; white-space: pre-wrap;">I am not better in the way I thought I would be, but I am better in finding my way. Since I made up the race, I get to make up the winner. I could say I lost or I could say I won. They are both true. Life is all in the attitude right? You get to chose if you are a winner or a loser. Do you beat yourself up for being a loser or do acknowledge the ways you are winning? </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15.454545021057129px; line-height: 15.454545021057129px; white-space: pre-wrap;">What story do you want to spin? I recommend the one that makes you feel better.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Today, one more mountain has been conquered. </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15.454545021057129px; white-space: pre-wrap;"> I won the race against the bras.</span>Nathalie Kellyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05076749085597617788noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4652954801596904961.post-78051181261010407322013-05-08T20:25:00.002-04:002013-05-12T00:48:23.232-04:00An Education from A Brain Injured Veteran I just watched <a href="http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-18560_162-57582869/invisible-wounds-of-war/">60 Minutes</a> great report on brain injuries among veterans, and was particularly struck my one line. The veteran is discussing the challenges of having his brain injury be completely invisible to others. "I would rather be a single leg amputee than a brain injury survivor." "Really?!" asks the reporter incredulously.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiQjbtzlcdk2OUUkiJePkLv6_tw-NbskB2z6eQcj11eiDfaOwBIJGqG8DVFraNmZgwBxFaGMt9IBS-Ilfdn6WTJpj_l04IWBO0kQL2a-D7HHpLrwVbVRH0ABUw7wYfpBtR8SgbY6BV7Iojt/s1600/images.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiQjbtzlcdk2OUUkiJePkLv6_tw-NbskB2z6eQcj11eiDfaOwBIJGqG8DVFraNmZgwBxFaGMt9IBS-Ilfdn6WTJpj_l04IWBO0kQL2a-D7HHpLrwVbVRH0ABUw7wYfpBtR8SgbY6BV7Iojt/s1600/images.jpeg" /></a>"Really?!" I want to ask that reporter. How could that possibly be so incredulous... Unless you have no clue about what it is to live with a brain injury. The comment spotlighted the mass belief, that "if you can't see it, it can't be so bad". While losing a leg is undeniably horrifying and traumatic, if given the choice of that or a TBI, I would make the same choice as the veteran. I'll bet any TBI survivor would say the same. Sure I couldn't dance with an amputated leg, but I can't dance with a TBI either! Nor can I easily walk down a sidewalk, drive a car, remember what I did this morning, cook a meal, read a book, understand a bank statement, ride a bus, be in a crowd, sleep, go to a party or buy groceries.<br />
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What people seem to not understand is that brain injury is different from any other injury because it changes not just the content of who we are, but the context. It changes the very things we identify as our personality and our sense of self. It changes the container that we are, and in doing so, it changes every aspect of life as we have known it. Over and over I hear brain injury survivors say "I don't feel like me anymore. I feel like someone else is living my life and I miss ME." We don't get to continue our lives as "us with an issue", we are no longer "us".<br />
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Is there really anyone who would prefer to have a working leg than a working brain? It reminds me of a woman I know with a brain injury who broke her leg. She was amazed at how much attention she received because she had a cast on her leg. To her, given what she had lived through, this was no big deal. The leg would heal in a matter of months. Her brain had been injured for a decade. Every day was an act of courage to get up and try her best to function and no one noticed. Brain injury might be invisible on the outside, but it is never invisible from the inside.<br />
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I am curious, what surprises you more, the veteran's statement or the reporter's surprise?Nathalie Kellyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05076749085597617788noreply@blogger.com10tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4652954801596904961.post-40976986712660263832013-03-06T19:23:00.004-05:002013-03-06T19:23:40.444-05:00Raising Brain Injury AwarenessMarch is Brain Injury Awareness Month.<br />
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Why do YOU need to know about Brain Injury? Because the doctors that you and your loved ones go to don't. That's right. They don't. Brain injury is a slippery little fish to catch and there are no medical cures, so medicine has paid little attention.<br />
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When I acquired a brain injury, my doctor of 13 years looked alarmed. "You don't look good, go home and rest," was all I heard. I could do nothing else, so rest I did. After months of rest, I could still barely open my eyes or walk. Now my doctor said "You have Post Concussive Syndrom, it is a Mild brain injury". End of conversation.<br />
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I thought "mild" meant no big deal, I'll be better in another week. "Mild" brain injury simply means you were not unconscious for over an hour. It has nothing to do with the severity of the symptoms. It is a HUGE misnomer. I think my doctor thought Mild meant mild too.<br />
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The neurologist looked at me and didn't get it either. "You are just anxious, that's why you can only think of 5 things that start with "f" in one minute." What??!! This guy had no idea how messed up I was. End of conversation.<br />
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No resources, no help, no advice, no referrals, no rehab. Brain injury survivors are sent out on their own to figure it out....and they can't.<br />
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I have spent three years in search of medical professionals who understand. So I can tell you, they are few and far between. A second neurologist was at least honest, "If I can't operate on it, there isn't anything I can do, so I don't know much about brain injury. I have nothing to offer you." End of conversation.<br />
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My story is typical among brain injury survivors. I hear it more often than not. Doctors don't understand it. After all, we "look normal". You can't see it. What makes this fish more slippery is the survivor may not think they have a brain injury either. The brain is the instrument that assesses our well-being, and the assessment tool is broken. Even though we can't do simple things, we often think we are fine. It takes months or years for the survivor to understand their own limitations. That IS one of the symptoms.<br />
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I don't expect doctors to be super heroes and know everything about eveything. But it sure would be helpful if they knew enough to say "The are resources. There is Rehab <i>right here</i> in our hospital. There are support groups. You are not alone. There is help. Here is a brochure."<br />
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YOU may be the one to determine whether someone you love has a brain injury. Do not rely on your doctor to know. You are the best advocate for your family members. That is why we have Brain Injury Awareness Month.<br />
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<a href="http://www.brainline.org/content/multimedia.php?id=7966">Become aware here.</a><br />
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<br />Nathalie Kellyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05076749085597617788noreply@blogger.com10tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4652954801596904961.post-25162109373728923572013-01-20T21:04:00.000-05:002013-01-20T21:18:07.999-05:00There is Magic on this Battleground of Life<b id="internal-source-marker_0.45278616971336305" style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Stepping out of the house and into the world alone has become like stepping onto a battleground. It requires intense focus and preparation. I know where most of the mines are now. I have learned to map out my path the day before. I have the address already mapped out on my phone. I have called to get thorough directions down to knowing which side of the street I should come out of the subway station on. I have my backup driver on alert in case I need a rescue. I leave an hour early. I put on my psychic grounding and protection, my dark glasses, my white and red tipped trekking poles. I am going out. </span><br /><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><br /><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I am in San Francisco living with my parents for the winter. The quest? To find better medical help than I have found in Vermont, if it exists. My first stop? San Francisco’s TBI support group. I have found the survivors to be the best resources of information and helpful doctors. So, last week, I made my first post-TBI solo trip downtown in a big city. Getting there terrified me.</span><br /><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><br /><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">It is eight stops on the subway, followed by a two block walk and then reverse it to come home. Sounds easy right? On the subway, I pull my hair down like closing window shades, blocking out as much light and movement as possible. The winning game on this battleground is to minimize stimulation. The subway is rocking, shaking my head into total disorientation, lulling me into sleep, after a few stops I realize I am in danger. I stagger off the train and rest on the platform. </span><br /><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><br /><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">It is important for me to continually elevate my symptoms a little and let them come back down to baseline. It re-teaches my brain how to find my body. It is even more important that I don’t overdo it. When I overdo it, I can’t come back. I am trapped in an absolutely terrifying experience of being a consciousness without a body, completely incapable of getting back into my body, and unable to operate it. No moving, no communicating, no clue about how to come back. A moment of this is horrifying, and it has gone on and on, taking days to return to baseline. How can I begin to describe the sheer terror of being alone and unable to find your body? My desire has been to learn to enjoy it like one would enjoy a roller coaster, only I’ve never loved roller coasters and I have never succeeded in experiencing anything less than a panic attack. From the outside no one knows. I can’t communicate or move, and people think I am calm. What an illusion. </span><br /><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><br /><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">These moments are triggered by things as simple as movement, either of my eyes or a vehicle I am in, flickering shadows and light, passing scenery, a stimulating environment like a restaurant, mall or grocery store, that I never thought twice about before. Determined to reach my goal, I am now risking that alone, on a subway, in the city. People have other things to do beside taxi me for the rest of my life. </span><br /><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><br /><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Being rattled on this train now, I realize the possibility of me getting too disoriented to move, endlessly riding this subway until the end of the line, going back and forth for hours, only getting more and more shaken and disoriented with each stop. The danger is real, and on this battleground I need to be hypervigilant. Resting in the subway station for ten minutes, going two more stops, getting off again. I keep my eyes closed and don’t look at anything. Finally I make it to my destination downtown. A fifteen minute has taken forty-five. I made it. I am feeling proud. I am drunk and delirious from the motion and need to rest. </span><br /><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><br /><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The homeless men gathered on the floor of Montgomery St. station are hollering “hey pretty lady come and sit with us.” When I pass by they get more aggressive. “Hey blind lady, blind baby, you over there, you going skiing? I wanna ski witchu!” I can’t rest here. There are multiple exits and I am grateful I have written down which side of the street to exit the station at. Precision is important. I can’t afford the stimulation of Market St. with this already overstimulated brain. I need the shortest route to brainrest.</span><br /><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><br /><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Upstairs on Market Street, a group of very well-dressed businessmen exit a building in front of me. It has been years since this Vermont girl has seen anyone dressed like that and it catches my eye. My eye follows to the name of the building, “The Palace Hotel”. Perfect! I am going to rest in the lobby. Only this isn’t just any hotel. San Francisco’s oldest luxury hotel provides such a contrast to the hollering homeless men a moment ago. Inside these doors everyone is elegantly dressed and coiffed, and classical music is being played on a grand piano. </span><br /><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><br /><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I have stepped into the most beautiful crystal palace I have ever seen. Happy for any place to sit and rest my brain, I have been gifted with the most delightful spot. The room is filled with palm trees, beautiful music, and glorious light pouring in from an art deco stained glass domed ceiling. So often I have noticed that it is the beauty of my senses that slowly gently return me to my body when I am disoriented. I couldn't imagine more beauty than this. After a short rest, I move on toward the support group that is about to begin.</span><br /><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><br /><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">A large loudly croaking frog greets me as I entered the Center for Assisted Living. In my TBI daze, it takes me awhile to realize that I was triggering it by my standing there. The frog’s job was to alert the blind receptionist that I was there, and that it did. The receptionist introduced me to a woman in a motorized wheelchair who led me down the hall to the TBI support group. We passed a big homemade poster on an office door that read “Thank you MediCal for getting me back on my feet so I could come to work here”. Sweet. I had never been in a place like this. The Executive Director, also blind, had a guide dog at work. I was inspired. </span><br /><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><br /><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The support group struck my new brain like a bunch of cartoon caricatures. A plaid flannel wearing Vermonter who looked just like Santa Claus facilitated. With a big fluffy white beard and a belly that really did shake like a bowl full of jelly, he had defied all odds, surviving an aneurysm twelve years earlier. The aneurysm left him incontinent and unable to swallow, speak or stand, he had relearned it all and was still in rehab. Flirting with him was a vivacious Parisian woman. She had slipped on a wet manhole cover on the street in the rain and laying in the road, was hit by a car. She spent five years in daily rehab and now had no heat in her home and went outside in winter to get warm. They talked of Dom Perignon, caviar, escargot and as long as they both ate the garlicy escargot, sex after the group. I kid you not. The young Filipino man who had a wife and two young kids at home had survived a stroke was as quiet as the Greek man who had been hit by a drunk driver was ready for a party.... until he fell asleep. It was the usual cast of TBI characters, with San Francisco’s international flair. You couldn’t make this up. </span><br /><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><br /><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">We talked about our stories, our recoveries, our challenges, and every TBI survivor’s favorite: compensatory strategies. Fascinatingly in common, we all have vacillated from the onset to this day, between thinking a)we had no brain injury and had nothing was wrong with us, b)we were emotional or just crazy and making this up, or c)being absolutely horrified and scared to death that something was seriously wrong. Even as Santa was being fed from a feeding tube and having his diapers changed, he thought nothing was wrong with him and didn’t understand why others were making a big deal. He swore he could walk until he fell off the rehab parallel bars so many times they stopped taking him there. Brain injury messes with one’s ability to assess oneself. The measuring stick is the exact part that is broken. TBI professionals call “lack of self awareness”. I prefer to call it helpful ignorant bliss, a perfect coping mechanism. Who could live in option C all the time and stay sane? The LSD trip-like reality of suddenly being trapped forever in a mind and body that no longer feels like yours with no escape calls for a brilliant strategy from nature like “lack of self awareness”.</span><br /><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><br /><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Unfortunately none of them had much to offer in terms of the help I was looking for. None of them had my visual processing issues, my disorientation and dizziness, my overstimulation issues. They drove or took buses without a problem. When the florescent lights were making me intolerably jittery, tired, and unable to focus, I asked if we could turn them off and was told that was “a first”. I left feeling even more alone, a freak among freaks, stumbling through life looking for help. But now I knew where I was headed... back to my new favorite hotel lobby a few blocks away for a rest. I was exhausted!</span><br /><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><br /><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">In the luxurious lobby surrounded by the world’s most elegant business people, I took a nap. All the men in designer suits, all the women in gorgeous dresses and heels, me with my blue jeans, dark glasses, and white and red trekking poles, sleeping in a chair. Preparing myself for the final stage of the battle, getting home. I called for a pick up at the other end of the subway. I didn’t think I would make the walk home.</span><br /><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><br /><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Feeling so good about myself and my accomplishment so far, my hypervigilance waned. I was thinking about the characters I had met. I forgot to pull the curtains of my hair closed. I forgot to close my eyes. I suddenly realized I was getting disoriented and needed to get off the train. “Next stop, I am getting off.” It was too late. I fell asleep. Vaguely aware that a few more stops had gone by. Fighting against the lull of sleep, like I was Dorothy in the poppy field, fighting for my life now. “Come on. Stay with it. You can do this. Focus. You can’t go away. Don’t go there. Get off the train immediately. This is serious. Focus. Get off the train. Come on. Come on. Focus.” Again, I passed out and woke up a few stops later. Terrified that I might really ride this brain shaking contraption into deeper and deeper dysfunction. “Gotta get off. Come on. You can do this!” </span><br /><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><br /><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I stumbled off the train, barely able to walk, shuffling my feet, and collapsed on the nearest bench. I am aware that a look like the broken lady and that people are staring. I am beyond caring. If only they knew how hard I was working to just ride on a subway. I close my eyes and rest. Grateful that I thought to call for a ride. I was beyond being able to pick up a phone and talk now. Feeling like a baby with shaken baby syndrome, what is it about movement that is so hard? My mother helped me into the house, and into bed, where I collapsed for the rest of the day.</span><br /><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><br /><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">My daily life has become so surreal. So full of challenge and yet so full of magic. Everyday is an adventure that I have no idea how it will turn out, I go with the flow with no ability to control life. The juxtaposition of these two vastly different worlds on this day feels surreal. The old me would have loved visiting this luxury hotel, but would never feel a part of it. The old me would have never had an opportunity to associate with the disabled on such intimate terms. I certainly would never have felt a part of that either. Yet here I was, enjoying them both, and equally at home in both worlds. Feeling like I belonged in both equally. How was this possible after spending 2 ½ isolated years feeling like I don’t belong in society anymore? </span><br /><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><br /><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Somewhere in there, something shifted. I am more at home with me. It doesn’t matter where I am or who I am with. I am home. I am no longer plagued with the ceaseless voices that argue my insufficiencies, and the ego that feels so separate from the group, any group. I am whole and my mind is whole. It is no longer divided into all the parts that argue with each other and judge each other. The constant judging and bickering in my head is gone. No longer do I constantly work at choosing better thoughts. No longer is “thought”, “observer of thought”, “judger of thought”, and “manipulator of thought” all happening at once all the time. That is just too much multi-tasking for this new brain. In it’s place is a slow, quiet unified voice. I am pure presence and I belong.</span></b><br />
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<b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: Arial;"><span style="font-size: 15px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><br /><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><br /><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><br /><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><br /><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><br /><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><br /><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><br /><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><br /><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><br /><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><br /><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><br /><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><br /><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><br /><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><br /><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>Nathalie Kellyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05076749085597617788noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4652954801596904961.post-16903413882457506702013-01-10T03:34:00.000-05:002013-01-10T11:43:06.252-05:00In a mere 48 hours, I am better. <b id="internal-source-marker_0.4088566405698657" style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">In a mere 48 hours, I am better. </span><br /><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><br /><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I am so delighted and astounded, I could sit with that sentence for days. </span><br /><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><br /><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I just caught my first flu since my TBI (There’s one blessing of being isolated and avoiding crowded overstimulating places!) and once again, this TBI first (much like the post-child firsts or post-divorce firsts) shows me how much life has changed.</span><br /><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span><br /><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">In the early TBI months I didn’t know what was wrong with me. My only reference for the headache, dizziness, exhaustion, fuzzy thinking I was feeling was having the flu. My only reference for what to </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: italic; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">do</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> was to go to bed and rest for a few days until I felt better. Only I rested and rested and rested. Months went by and I never felt better. Now I am counting years, </span></b><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">like the slow growth of a redwood tree, and I am </span></b><b id="internal-source-marker_0.4088566405698657" style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">seeing a little improvement.</span></b><br />
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><br /><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">So to be over it in 48 hours? Shouting hallelujah!!! I am stunned and amazed. I used to be confused that I wasn’t over the TBI symptoms each day. I have gotten used to the fact that they improve at a SNAIL’S pace. Now I am just as confused to be over the flu so quickly. Have I forgotten that the body really does heal itself? Or am I am just always confused? I am confused about that too. </span><br /><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><br /><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">A virus used to feel hard and debilitating and no longer does. I </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: italic; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">love </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">these markers in life that show us that we indeed have grown in some way. I find a thrill in the moments of discovery that something that used to be a challenge, no longer is. When you are running a marathon, a 5K becomes </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: italic; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">nothing</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. It is true, what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. It is also true, if you want your issues to disappear, take on a bigger problem. </span><br /><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><br /><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">In a mere 48 hours, I am better. </span><br /><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><br /><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Wow.</span></b>Nathalie Kellyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05076749085597617788noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4652954801596904961.post-18610062154974011592012-10-12T19:52:00.000-04:002012-10-12T19:52:07.636-04:00The Club I Never Wanted to be a Part of<br />
<b id="internal-source-marker_0.9768548759166151" style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The annual Vermont Brain Injury Association Conference was this week. What was once a conference I was absolutely terrified to attend (because it was a club I fiercely resisted calling myself a member of) has now become something of a very sweet family gathering for me. This conference is vastly different from any other professional conference I have attended, largely because of the deep humility of the people there. </span></b><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj_-Dl0HGXkOBiPvNamoExwM29SYHkueejK3-KGQ1Du3kdNRyuYNPB_J4HaC-wIpunpvHxGvCqpgl2sc4GCj4n-Gy4NmnW12xeEbghjTCq08CuCeow6KmCYPh2Lzj1xlMUW3Yzbgh6hKSuB/s1600/humble.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; display: inline !important; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj_-Dl0HGXkOBiPvNamoExwM29SYHkueejK3-KGQ1Du3kdNRyuYNPB_J4HaC-wIpunpvHxGvCqpgl2sc4GCj4n-Gy4NmnW12xeEbghjTCq08CuCeow6KmCYPh2Lzj1xlMUW3Yzbgh6hKSuB/s200/humble.jpeg" width="200" /></a><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">There are no large egos walking around, trying to impress each other with their fine clothes, their astounding ideas, or their gotta-have magic solution </span></b><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">for sale. No one is pushing an agenda, no one if offering a miracle cure for sale... we all know there isn’t one....and everyone is there simply to simply support and be supported, to offer kindness and helpful tips. This conference is full or ordinary people whose lives have been profoundly shattered by loss, and who are left with humility, compassion and kindness. It is a place where everyone is accepted for who they are, and no one is expected to be perfect. </span></b><br />
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><br /><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">There are survivors, family members, professionals, and caregivers. Many people in various states of ability and disability, where it is ok to be flawed and human. <i>Everyone is accepted for who they are, and no one is expected to be perfect</i>. Can you imagine if the rest of the world were like that? Totally and completely free to be oneself without the pretense of perfection. It is free from superficiality and competitiveness, and is truly a profound experience I have rarely experienced elsewhere. A unique sanctuary of total acceptance of self and other. </span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">How did all these people get like this? There was a very large cost. It was best communicated by the keynote speaker, <a href="http://www.pjlong.com/">PJ Long</a>, TBI survivor and author of “Gifts from the Broken Jar”. In one of her workshops, she had us do an exercise. We essentially listed the eight things that we most identified with, </span></b><br />
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">that defined who we are, and that gave us a sense of self. If you want a profound experience, go ahead and list yours now.....</span><br /><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><br /><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><br /><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><br /><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b><br />
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<b style="font-weight: normal;"><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Mine looked like this (pre-TBI):</span></b></b></div>
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<li style="text-align: justify;"><b style="font-weight: normal;"><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Being a good mother</span></b></b></li>
<li style="text-align: justify;"><b style="font-weight: normal;"><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">My friends</span></b></b></li>
<li style="text-align: justify;"><b style="font-weight: normal;"><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">My work helping others</span></b></b></li>
<li style="text-align: justify;"><b style="font-weight: normal;"><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">My commitment to be of service to the world</span></b></b></li>
<li style="text-align: justify;"><b style="font-weight: normal;"><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Being with the love of my life</span></b></b></li>
<li style="text-align: justify;"><b style="font-weight: normal;"><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Being optimistic and happy regardless of the situation</span></b></b></li>
<li style="text-align: justify;"><b style="font-weight: normal;"><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Outdoor activity: hiking, kayaking, camping</span></b></b></li>
<li style="text-align: justify;"><b style="font-weight: normal;"><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Yoga & Dancing for joy</span></b></b></li>
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<b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><br /><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The next step is to take one of those things off, and imagine your life without it. Go ahead and try it. Then take another, and another, and another..... until they all all gone. Imagine your life now. That is the experience of TBI. Only you don't get to choose. You are left a stranger to yourself, with untold losses that defy anyone's understanding, even your own. As I looked at my list, I saw, that yes, one by one, all those things have been stripped from my life. </span><br /><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><br /><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">What is left? A profound relationship with Self. I am unsure of who that self is now or how it fits into the world, but I sense it is Strong, and it is Beautiful, and it too will find its way into a new life. </span></b><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgNaQ_Cp-Ojhcqm_fgspZyM2HoopUirkLVeyS74fHxDF3gec5OlM_9VlJ-ZV87InyPv9By31KW0zdBkU8mL8HH6_QChM5APzQKpcCSrnNus7Drc5i_7TVEpcFeMzxX_wIENVmr55qqSZKjg/s1600/flower+losing+petals.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgNaQ_Cp-Ojhcqm_fgspZyM2HoopUirkLVeyS74fHxDF3gec5OlM_9VlJ-ZV87InyPv9By31KW0zdBkU8mL8HH6_QChM5APzQKpcCSrnNus7Drc5i_7TVEpcFeMzxX_wIENVmr55qqSZKjg/s1600/flower+losing+petals.jpeg" /></a></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></b>Nathalie Kellyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05076749085597617788noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4652954801596904961.post-86617872424304923502012-10-03T12:50:00.000-04:002012-10-03T12:50:14.157-04:00APPRECIATING THE CONTRAST<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
<b id="internal-source-marker_0.7849655742757022" style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Spending much of last month in my house with my eyes closed (in order to rest my brain from the overwhelming task of visual processing and the pain of light sensitivity) has opened my eyes to a new world. Honestly, I have spent much of the last two years in my house in the dark, but last month was extreme in the way that the first four months were. What happens when we go that far into the depths of our inner stillness and darkness? A lot, but that is not as interesting as what happens when we come out. </span></b></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEim1szJnYALYjj3DSjnRSYpl9JBQMayKbY8V2NiVWUC6ykwbi9LcBzAD84uImRoab4kVuszzKqW-G29bgHsSZBiNl6MrcfVsFhuKtjNH1Rup3gP8Nrt38aesMBaiPfpkqFJLD1m26tA9AKb/s1600/ladybug.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="150" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEim1szJnYALYjj3DSjnRSYpl9JBQMayKbY8V2NiVWUC6ykwbi9LcBzAD84uImRoab4kVuszzKqW-G29bgHsSZBiNl6MrcfVsFhuKtjNH1Rup3gP8Nrt38aesMBaiPfpkqFJLD1m26tA9AKb/s200/ladybug.jpeg" width="200" /></a><b id="internal-source-marker_0.7849655742757022" style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Coming out from the literal darkness, I am filled with awe and wonder. How can I describe the incredible beauty of the natural world we live in and are a part of? Such beauty pierces the heart wide open when we truly see it as if for the first time without the jaded lenses of our past. My eyes well with sweet tears at the sights and colors, the immense beauty and perfection of it all. I gaze in wonder at the many colors of the lichen on a fencepost for a long time, and marvel at all the mossy shades of greens and reds and browns until tears of joy pour down my cheeks. I sit and see the light shine through blades of grass or the joyous flight pattern of birds soaring overhead, and my heart is bursting with awe and wonder. </span><br /><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><br /><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Time and time again, I return from my brain’s scary episodes of complete meltdown and non-function, and it is the beauty of the senses that brings me back. The experience is one of being locked outside of my own body, and not knowing how to get back in. Each time, it is a soft touch on a single inch my own skin, the perfect vibrational note of a single pluck of a guitar string, or the healing green color of a single leaf that return me back to my body and to a place of calm. To see the world with the innocence of a child is a beautiful thing. Experiencing this exquisite dance of sensation requires s l o w i n g d o w n. Way down. I sit in the amazing magic of colors and shapes and textures in a flower, and what seems even more amazing is that the rest of humanity is missing it. </span><br /><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><br /><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Without a month in the dark, would I be moved to tears by the beauty of a butterfly landing? I think not. It is the magic of contrast that makes us appreciate and be grateful. We can bemoan the darkness, yet without it, would the light ever shine so brightly? The sun was not appreciated all summer as much as it was this morning when it was such a treat after a gray rainy weekend. As much as we would rather skip the dark moments of our lives, perhaps we can learn to be grateful for them, as they make the light so much brighter. They are two sides of a coin that make up the whole. It is all part of one whole amazing adventure in this miraculous vehicle we call body and this equisitely beautiful planet we call home. Let's take care of both this precious body and this precious planet. </span></b><br />
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<b id="internal-source-marker_0.7849655742757022" style="font-weight: normal;"><i><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiu7kmDywRY6dXZjWjnvLzBc8i2h4Db8bBe2ewmICVcsV0p0t37bXbaS-nFiKDO-_xmpPEM3Ifu7fRSWbH0gum7N4rezEOy-SHtMJvEDlIRq5BfeiAYTjTD-5K69d-Ir2LJGlFj2YR4RWdK/s1600/blake.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiu7kmDywRY6dXZjWjnvLzBc8i2h4Db8bBe2ewmICVcsV0p0t37bXbaS-nFiKDO-_xmpPEM3Ifu7fRSWbH0gum7N4rezEOy-SHtMJvEDlIRq5BfeiAYTjTD-5K69d-Ir2LJGlFj2YR4RWdK/s320/blake.jpeg" width="320" /></a></i></b></div>
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<b id="internal-source-marker_0.7849655742757022" style="font-weight: normal;"><i><b id="internal-source-marker_0.7849655742757022" style="background-color: transparent; font-weight: normal;"><i><span style="font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline;"> -William Blake</span></i></b></i></b></div>
Nathalie Kellyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05076749085597617788noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4652954801596904961.post-67157117129349892072012-10-03T10:25:00.000-04:002012-10-03T10:25:05.241-04:00My Friend Rita's Poem<div style="text-align: center;">
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; line-height: 15.454545021057129px;"><b><span style="font-size: large;">Recovering from a Brain Injury</span></b></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">I am exhausted but...</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">I can not sleep</span></div>
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My thoughts are here but...</div>
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I can not think clearly</div>
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My words are many but...</div>
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I can not speak</div>
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I can not see what you see but...</div>
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I am not blind</div>
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I can hear everything but...</div>
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I have to cover my ears</div>
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I get hungry but...</div>
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nothing tastes the same</div>
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I can stand still but...</div>
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I can not stop my world from spinning</div>
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I feel so all alone but...</div>
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I am surrounded by LOVE</div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">By my friend, Rita Chouinard, date of accident 4/3/11</span></div>
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Nathalie Kellyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05076749085597617788noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4652954801596904961.post-71387787150870586732012-09-13T18:21:00.001-04:002012-09-13T19:48:02.336-04:00Measuring Progress in Wonderland<b id="internal-source-marker_0.3550266777165234" style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">I am often asked what percentage better am I since the beginning of my TBI. Inquiring minds want to know! It seems like a good question … from the perspective of someone without a TBI. I used to have a numerical answer. When at three months I was 85% better and at one year I was even better at 50% better since the beginning, I gave up on numbers. That shifting number has twisted and turned, grown and shrunk, and finally turned into a bizarrely elusive concept. Like cutting a distance in half, and always finding you are at the same percentage there. I finally figured out why that is impossible to measure. </span></span></b><br />
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<b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="background-color: white; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: #cc0000; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">"Let me see: four times five is twelve, and four times six is thirteen, and four times seven is -- oh dear! I shall never get to twenty at that rate!" -Alice</span></span></b></blockquote>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><br /><span style="font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">A baseball player is trained to make home runs. The goal, is to get around the whole field back to homebase. I have been trying to get to home base, back where I started batting from. We call that “100% recovery”. When people ask “what percentage recovered are you?” They want to know, am I still on first base? Have I gotten to second? Am I on third and almost there? Are we there yet? Can we breathe a sigh of relief for you yet? How much longer?</span><br /><span style="font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><br /><span style="font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Imagine this baseball player up at bat. He hits the ball and this time it goes through a wormhole and lands in another field. Being a baseball player and only knowing baseball, he keeps running, looking for home base, trying to get to the goal. The problem is, when he went through the wormhole, he landed in another universe. In this universe, the floor undulates, things appear to move when they aren’t, or closer, or farther away, he is drunk without drinking, and he can’t connect with anything through all this pea soup that the air has become. “</span><span style="background-color: white; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Curiouser and curiouser! Everything just isn't </span><span style="font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">as it seems”, he says to himself. </span></span></b><br />
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<b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: #cc0000; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">"Off with her head!" -The Queen</span></b></blockquote>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Being a well-trained baseball player, he starts running towards first, saying, “I have to get to homebase!”. He runs and runs, determined to make a run. He knows he is making progress towards his goal. “I must be 85% there!” he says. After a couple years of running through this pea soup, he wakes up and realizes that this is a different Universe. He has gone through a wormhole. There is no homebase here. He has gone through the Looking Glass. He has landed in Wonderland. There is no going back.</span><br /><span style="font-size: 15px; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><br /><span style="font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Nothing is the same as he once knew, and he is stuck in this world of pea soup. "Hmm", he wonders in a moment of existential confusion. "What to do? Where to go? I am trained to run towards home plate and goals. Where is the goal? Is “goal”even relevant in this Universe? or is there just BEingness? How does one just BE forever with no direction to turn to? How do I get comfortable with living in Wonderland?"</span></span></b><br />
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<b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: #cc0000; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="background-color: white; font-weight: bold; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></span></b><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: #cc0000; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="background-color: white; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">"I wonder if I've been changed in the night? Let me think. Was I the same when I got up this morning? I almost think I can remember feeling a little different. But if I'm not the same, the next question is 'Who in the world </span><span style="background-color: white; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">am I</span><span style="background-color: white; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">?</span><span style="background-color: white; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">' Ah, that's the great puzzle!" -</span></span></b><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: #cc0000; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="background-color: white; font-weight: bold; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Alice</span></span></b></blockquote>
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<b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><br /></span></b>Nathalie Kellyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05076749085597617788noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4652954801596904961.post-41261607159507978402012-09-07T18:50:00.002-04:002012-09-07T19:09:00.096-04:00Opening to Brighter Futures<b id="internal-source-marker_0.38744082767516375" style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br />While I had so many things I wanted to write about this week, the powers that be had other plans for me. It has been a rough week and a half. I have spent it horizontal, unable to open my eyes or move, very much like I felt in the early months of this journey through a brain injury. Visual processing takes so much energy for me. After ten minutes with my eyes open, looking at stationary objects in my house, I feel nauseaus, my brain feels exhausted and I have to close my eyes and rest for a half-hour. It is as if my brain is under a huge strain, understanding the images my eyes are relaying. My dizziness is so severe, any slight movement of my head or eyes causes extreme disorientation. When I walk, my feet step into mid-air, having no clue where the ground is. I am feeling a little better now after ten days. So last night I dared carefully picked up three beans off the kitchen floor and became so disoriented, I had to rest again for 45 minutes. Not so better.</span><br /><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><br /><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I have a constant sensation of falling. When I am lying down, it feels like falling through space, endless falling all night with no bottom to land on. It makes sleep impossible. I have headaches, I’m nauseous with any slight movement, and I feel that strange sensation in the back of my head that isn’t supposed to be there. The one that used to scare me and make me think “something is not right in that part of my brain.” Indeed, it turns out that both the visual cortex and the cerebellum are back there. Which correspond with visual processing, balance, and movement. What this amounts to, is seven days with eyes closed much of the day, laying down, barely moving. I haven’t even gone outside during this glorious last week of summer, because the light is blinding and painful. The daily exercise of a waddle around the block with trekking poles, has become a waddle around the house I managed twice. I live under my eye mask, in this version of hell, wondering if this will be all there is for the rest of my life.</span></b><br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjYtMRmy4b1gr6vNzwWVQGox1yIxaYlwkkh0dlTBQK5WF27n0yHv1HJp19Zg7L4kEBH6vvl4gwU9TYymJ0IApIzYlbTNEmHDvl4X2t7_21y_aYySF_-N-gZwUogTJ00S_ikGpBxwmfOcIGI/s1600/eye+mask+images.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjYtMRmy4b1gr6vNzwWVQGox1yIxaYlwkkh0dlTBQK5WF27n0yHv1HJp19Zg7L4kEBH6vvl4gwU9TYymJ0IApIzYlbTNEmHDvl4X2t7_21y_aYySF_-N-gZwUogTJ00S_ikGpBxwmfOcIGI/s200/eye+mask+images.jpeg" width="171" /></a><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: Arial;"><span style="font-size: 15.454545021057129px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></span></b><br />
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Every brain injury is different. Our brains are responsible for every one of hundred of function in our bodies perform. A TBI can affect any one of those. It can affect hormones, blood pressure, sexual function, coordination, hearing, smell, muscle strength, fine motor skills, you name it. Amongst other things, I have visual processing issues and a busted </span><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vestibulo-ocular_reflex"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">vestibulo-ocular reflex</span></a><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. Two years ago, I never even knew I had such a fancy sounding reflex! It is amazing how much I have learned about the brain after two years of trying to figure my new self out. The vestibulo-ocular reflex is how our eyes communicate with our sense of balance to figure out where our body is in space. My brain literally isn’t getting that message.</span><br /><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><br /><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">My doctor says that my brain got twisted in the fast rotation of the boat in the accident. The boat spun in a 360 degree flip in less than a second, with me inside it. My doctor says it is as if my eyes are facing forward, but the part of my brain that interprets the images is facing backward. This is what is feels like. The constant pain in my left eye feels like a pulled optic nerve straining to do it's job. It takes all my energy to just have my eyes open, and for my brain to figure out what my eyes are seeing. Eyes closed is the only time I truly feel calm and safe. </span></b><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjGvVUyq-IsL0BIvD-T-mLUh1cIDkqNnl4UsZX5DLx8osoyq3MEc5O3q9UB4-xVB5tAns2aGIMqBPlTNrTlbp4OB-xs727BzUfkM9Lidold4IfWfn8zTdKrZ91r25THdXuTg_3sKk7YPDwL/s1600/dizzy+images.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjGvVUyq-IsL0BIvD-T-mLUh1cIDkqNnl4UsZX5DLx8osoyq3MEc5O3q9UB4-xVB5tAns2aGIMqBPlTNrTlbp4OB-xs727BzUfkM9Lidold4IfWfn8zTdKrZ91r25THdXuTg_3sKk7YPDwL/s400/dizzy+images.jpeg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">This is what my world looks and feels like.</td></tr>
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<b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: Arial;"><span style="font-size: 15px; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Perhaps I am being called to a deep silent dark place inside. Perhaps, I am meant to keep my eyes closed. This isn’t easy, when there are responsibilities to attend to, and a child to raise, not to mention the Earth’s beauty to behold. I often try to pretend I am blind, but that disorients me further since the only way my brain has any clue about where my body is, is by what I can see. Most blind people have a sense of proprioception and balance, giving them </span><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equilibrioception"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">equilibrioception</span></a><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> and ability to move through space that I am lacking. </span></b><br />
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<b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">After two years of intensive Rehab and complementary therapies, when I can’t even open my eyes or move my head in the slightest, I am having to face that this could be all the healing I get. I might spend the rest of my life like this. I am left with some big thoughts and feelings. Is this a life worth living? What is the purpose of a life spent laying still with eyes closed? How can I find purpose? What do I have to contribute that is of any value to the world? </span><br /><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><br /><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I spend much time in prayer and meditation, not knowing what else to do. In some small way, I feel that this is my contribution right now. I pray for healing. I pray for people. I pray for the Earth and all it’s inhabitants. I pray for the waters around Japan and for peace in the Middle East. The prayers are short as is my attention span, and I wonder, “What if our state of being was actually our biggest contribution?”. That has always been an intellectual concept for me, but now I am forced into that being my reality. Does our state of consciousness still count as a contribution if we are home alone and don’t interact with other people? </span></b><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">My Dad used to say “If a tree falls in the forest and no one is around to hear, does it still make a sound?” </span></b><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">How do I find meaning in this new life? This blog is essentially my cathartic quest for understanding and meaning amidst great challenge.</span></b><br />
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<b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I am doing a full moon meditation today with the </span><a href="http://www.glcoherence.org/"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Global Coherence Project</span></a><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> on “Releasing Negative Projections”. (I know the full moon was 8 days ago, but that is how long it takes me to edit my dictated writings when I can only open my eyes ten minutes at a time.) We are focusing on releasing the way we humans stand in the present moment, and project all the negative scenarios that we think will be our future. It is the perfect theme as I lay here, wondering if this hell is my life forever. I realize that I am fine and at peace in each moment. As I told my laboring women for so many years “you can do ONE contraction, and really that is all that is asked of you at any one time”. It’s when we project “Oh my God, if I have to do this forever, I can’t possibly make it” that we get into trouble. It’s the thoughts that take us out of the present and create the despair and pain. We can do THIS moment, and truly that is all there ever is.</span></b><br />
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><br /><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">As bad as it all seems, what if we could really trust that it is ok? What if we could really trust that everything is perfect just the way it is. Perhaps some greater picture is unfolding and someday, hindsight will illuminate the divine perfection of all we experience? Just because I haven’t fixed my vestibulo-ocular reflex in two years of intense trying doesn’t mean it will always be this broken! So my mind, desperate to get out of pain, immediately wants to release negative projections about my circumstances being the same. I will be all better, right? Hope, it is a tricky place. It takes one out of the present moment. Sometimes we have to hold onto hope, sometimes we have to just accept what is.</span><br /><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><br /><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Maybe it won’t get better. Maybe releasing negative projections isn’t to put a positive spin on everything, but to release the meaning we are assigning to the uncomfortable circumstance. Maybe I will still be sitting in the dark, under my eye patches, unable to move or turn my head 30 years from now. But <i>what if</i> I were sitting in bliss with that? Releasing negative projections doesn’t mean everything will be perfect. Even before a TBI, life has never been “perfect”. It is messy. There has always been some circumstance in my life that has felt intolerable. What if we could find the gifts in the imperfections? What if the challenges themselves become the rich experiences of a path that we wouldn’t chose to skip if we could. Mind you, I am playing the “what if” game, knowing that years of distance can provide a different vantage point. Because right now, I would give anything to have my vestibulo-ocular reflex back! When we stand in the question and open ourselves up to greater possibilities than we can see from where we are standing, everything feels lighter. Where are you projecting negative futures in your life? The future just might be brighter than we think, without or even <i>with</i> the circumstance we can’t tolerate. </span></b><br />
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<b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></b>Nathalie Kellyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05076749085597617788noreply@blogger.com11tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4652954801596904961.post-9849804463508094902012-08-18T10:30:00.000-04:002012-08-20T13:06:25.004-04:00Hitting the Two Year Mark<b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Six months into my </span></b><b id="internal-source-marker_0.20937373884953558" style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Traumatic Brain Injury</span></b><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, my friend and healer, Taj, said “you need to give it a year or two.” “Really??”, I couldn't believe it. It would never take </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: italic; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">me</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> that long. I was going to be better any day now. I was a healer. I understood healing. “A whole year?”, I asked her incredulously. “Or two”, she reiterated, “a TBI takes a while!” So I set my sights on a full recovery beyond the “any day now” mantra I had constantly repeated to myself and believed, to mostly recovered "within one year", and a full recovery in "two years at the </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: italic; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">very</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> outside". I still believed it wouldn't take me that long. I believed that my sheer optimism alone would get me there. I believe in spontaneous healing. At the time of the accident, I was on my way to becoming a "Heal Your Life" workshop leader for Louise Hay. I was in negotiation to create a series of "Heal Your Life" CDs. Healing was my life's passion.</span></b><br />
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<b id="internal-source-marker_0.20937373884953558" style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b id="internal-source-marker_0.20937373884953558" style="font-family: Times; font-size: medium; font-weight: normal; white-space: normal;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Last June 29th, </span></b>I met that two year mark of the sailing accident which caused my TBI. </span></b><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I dreamed of the second anniversary as the time when I could look back and reflect upon all the trauma and challenge that I had survived. Having been to hell and back, and having great words of wisdom and pearls of insight to share. </span></b><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I thought I would be looking back, as if upon an interesting but challenging trip to a foreign land. Like going on a trip to Africa to help villagers and contracting malaria, and be able to say “wow, that was an interesting experience! I am richer for it and I am glad it is over.”</span></b><br />
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><br /><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The second anniversary came and went, and unfortunately my symptoms haven’t come and gone so easily. Recovery is painstakingly slow, and a constant test of patience. I am still in the midst of living with a brain injury, unsure I have made much progress. I still struggle to figure out where the floor is and where my body is in relation to it. I still struggle with any movement, including simply moving my eyes, my head or riding in a car. I struggle with coordination, reading, writing, memory, focus, concentration, exhaustion, and overstimulation. To reflect back up on the latest overwhelming difficulty, I only have to go back a few hours, not two years. </span></b><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Even though as a healer, I may have thought I understood healing, I hadn’t accounted for my inability to apply the principles of healing due to the fundamental operating system, the brain, being the part that didn't work.</span></b><b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><br /><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I had nothing inspiring to say to honor the second anniversary, so I chose to say nothing at all. It’s a choice I make frequently now, as I sit as a silent observer of life going by. As more time goes by, I am more and more separate from the daily rhythms and interactions and thoughts, that used to comprise my life. They have become a distant memory in a now very limited version of that life. </span></b><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Now I look back and know that two years is just the begining of this long road to a new life.</span></b><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhitt3aNoP4f_w9A5FZPWXkqv4plllaCfLmYeod6ovQEM8xvZ3xJPAFWCaYOdyYWxCA985iO89kI8kATmukJefIXqcgUi2B-qh3Xdw2ES8I24ILUFLkMtmLyA01DXen6XZ5kUcnnPhEEH6r/s1600/Slow-Road-Sign-378px.gif" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhitt3aNoP4f_w9A5FZPWXkqv4plllaCfLmYeod6ovQEM8xvZ3xJPAFWCaYOdyYWxCA985iO89kI8kATmukJefIXqcgUi2B-qh3Xdw2ES8I24ILUFLkMtmLyA01DXen6XZ5kUcnnPhEEH6r/s320/Slow-Road-Sign-378px.gif" width="320" /></a></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: Arial;"><span style="font-size: 15px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I have always been a positive and optimistic person. I have always taken the great challenges in my life and turn them into opportunities for new possibilities and found beauty in every storm. I thought my two-year anniversary, I would be telling tales of the beauty slowing down, the learning to ask for and accept help, the profound of simply sitting and being, my deeper understanding of healing, and all the wonderful ways that this has made me a better person. </span></b><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">My life has always been about contributing to the world, and I knew I would never be given such an ordeal without also giving a gift to elevate those around me. </span></b><br />
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<b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The truth is, there aren’t a whole lot wonderful things to say about a traumatic brain injury. Finding something wonderful to say, requires such a deep stretch of the imagination, it doesn’t feel authentic (yet). I haven't visited a foreign country and returned to tell the tale. So far, I got stuck there. </span></b><br />
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<b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">TBI is horrifying and tragic experience that has created loss in every part of my life, and in the lives of 1.7 millions of Americans each year. That means 3.4 million unfortunate Americans of all ages and backgrounds who have joined this club just since I have. It truly can happen to anyone. And it is heartbreakingly tragic beyond belief. I met with a young woman yesterday whose symptoms are similar to mine. Sitting with this beautiful, bright, athletic 20 year old, who had her whole life ahead of her, whose capacities are now so limited she cant even watch a movie, </span></b><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">even though she looks fine, </span></b><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">broke my heart to pieces. A life full of limitless possibilities can become so limited, so quickly.</span></b><br />
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><br /><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">What I can say reflecting on this second anniversary, is that I have learned to look better. Well enough in fact, for people to never guess there is anything wrong with me. I rarely stutter now, because when I feel like it is just too hard to speak, I don’t, I choose silence. When I can't follow a conversation, I just pretend to get it, because I've learned that if I am doing poorly enough to ask, I probably wont understand the reiteration either. I can walk short distances fairly well because I have learned to always hold onto someone or use trekking poles-- in spite of every rude stranger’s remark about skiing. I am becoming aware enough of my body to remember to put decent clothes on in the morning, and am now able to understand approximately what top goes with what bottom. I have learned to use Dragon Dictation to write this to cover up my clumsy dyslexic typing. I looked well rested, and less stressed than before the accident, because I sleep so much. I don’t fall asleep in the middle of restaurants anymore, because I know not to go to busy restaurants, parties, or other public places. They are simply too overstimulating, and caused me a lack of function that results in embarrassment. Yes, I can say that I have learned to look darn right functional. On the outside, to everyone’s relief, it looks like a complete recovery.</span><br /><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><br /><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Here is what they can’t see....</span><br /><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><br /><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> -To be continued-</span></b><br />
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<b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Please become a blog follower so you don't miss the rest of the story. Thank you for your interest!</span></b>Nathalie Kellyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05076749085597617788noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4652954801596904961.post-24762269821636051132012-03-03T13:31:00.003-05:002012-03-03T13:31:49.949-05:00March is National Brain Injury Awareness Month, and I feel it is my duty to raise awareness of this heart breaking tragedy and speak for my brothers and sisters who can't. Speaking is easier for me than writing, so here is my recent 10 minute talk at the Brain Injury Association, on just a few challenges of living with a TBI. Enjoy, and please post your comments. Thanks!<br />
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<a href="http://vimeo.com/31859490">Watch Nathalie's talk here.</a><br />
<br />Nathalie Kellyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05076749085597617788noreply@blogger.com0