Measuring Progress in Wonderland

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. 

"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

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?

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. “Curiouser and curiouser! Everything just isn't as it seems”, he says to himself.

"Off with her head!" -The Queen

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.

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?"

"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 am I?' Ah, that's the great puzzle!" -Alice