Lexie Who?

The time line is unclear, but I remember seeing my new friend’s cousin in the Seattle airport while travelling to/from, Montana/Washington State.  It had been years since I had seen him, but I recognized him immediately.  He was travelling with his young family, and was rounding up an errant toddler as I approached.  I made eye contact, and said his full name in a questioning manner.  Yeah, that’s me… He replied.

It’s me, Lexie!  I spat out excitedly. 

Lexie who?  He asked, and as he spoke I could tell he never outgrew the cute lisp he had as a child.

But I couldn’t hide my confusion; How many Lexies do you know?

Now, I may have just thought that was the question I should have asked, but I probably just sputtered Miller?  I was Miller when we knew each other!

Then the recognition came, I could see it on his face, but he just laughed, like he had been joking the whole time. He introduced me to his wife and kids, as an unbelievable skier.  That’s when I knew for sure he remembered correctly. We spent winter weekends together for what seems like years. No, we were never an item, we were simply skiing buddies.  My best friend and I would get to the ski hill by brothers, or bus, and we would meet up with the cousin and his friend, or friends, and spend the day together carving through mogels, shush bombing jeep trails, and jumping off natural cornices.  

I have skied since my TBI, twice, and probably just to prove to myself, I was still capable. The sport that had never been difficult, ever, kicked my butt.  It was a hell of a lot of work, and the kind of physical work I had no memory of; at least not in terms of skiing. I made a conscious decision to not ski again.  Also, it wasn't worth hurting myself.  

Now that I’m back in my home town, I see the cousin often, and we tell others the story of meeting in the Seattle Airport, over, and over again. And we still laugh.

Swimming Lessons

I could watch the swim lesson from the viewing room upstairs, I was told, so after getting my little boy fitted out in swim trunks, I led him to a bench by the pool and hobbled up to my assigned seating on the second floor. There was a small-scale set of bleachers, behind a large picture window, in the room overlooking the pool.  I saw some other kids, about his age, join him on the bench.  Most had smiles on their face, but not mine.  He looked cold, and miserable.

We hadn’t lived there long, and I’d hoped to meet other moms, there at the Y. But they must have just dropped their kid off.  It was the YMCA, in a small, religious community, after all.  Other matriarchs were probably headed to the windmill mall for coffee, or home to knit or sew or garden.  My TBI had left me overly cautious, though, and I didn’t knit, or sew, or garden so I was there for the duration. Then, just as the kids got into the pool, one lone mother came in and sat next to me.

The water must have been warm because my boy’s sour expression disappeared.  But this is not about my child’s inability to cope with being cold. It’s about how I met the cousin of a close, childhood friend.

The lone mom and I chatted, as we watched our kids below. When I told her I was from Kalispell, she asked me if I knew her cousin. Squealing in shock I said, Sure, I knew him!  We were great friends, growing up!  My head injury makes me less inhibited, and it’s still difficult for me not to say, exactly what I’m thinking. 

She was new to town, too, I think.  (When I reminisce, all my statements should end with I think, because of the memory issue.)  She was the first real friend I made, on my own, after my TBI.  She liked me, for me, and even though she had not known the old me, she accepted me with all the after affects a TBI can leave one with.  The head injury thing just wasn’t a big deal to her.  We became good friends, and our boys did too.

She had another child, our boys grew up, and she went back to work, in the big city next door.  sometime in there, we moved to Idaho.  

More on her cousin in my next post.

More Slang

It just really tickles me (older terminology) to hear old fashioned jargon used in the now.  That one’s current, and brings some Zen belief into the equation.

That Ts me off, is another of those vintage expressions.  I think the T must stand for tick, because you can be ticked, or Td off (either is paired appropriately with off.) It simply meant you were mad, or angry. 

Some sayings are over used quickly, and I tire of them before I even have a chance to use them.  That is, if I ever even wanted to use them in the 1^st place. Some are expressions that remind me of the type of person I usually don’t care for.  Like It’s all good, makes me think of friends that abandoned me after I divorced, so that’s out.

A term I’ve used, even though I dislike it, is awesome. Who am I kidding? I hate it!  In the world of education, it is used a lot, but now that I am out of the day-to-day, I can honestly say everyone, and everything IS NOT awesome!  And, that’s OK, because that’s how life is; some things just suck.

Now that I’m out, I’ll never have to use awesome again. And now I can use a word my 5^th graders never could.  That word is sucks, because it made them sound uneducated. Continuing with my rant, I told them I knew that was not true, because I was educating them! 

But we say it at home!  They’d whine.  Great,  I’d reply, just don’t say it here.

Now, even I say it, (see above) hypocrite/cynic that I’ve become. 

I don’t like the fact that the words back in the day, can mean back in my day.  I feel old enough, and don’t need any help from current slang.

I’ll end with a favorite that came from my dad. If something went wrong, or didn’t end the way dad had envisioned, he would say that really gravels my ass.  I wish my brain would let me use it more often, because it paints a really detailed image.

An Occupational Therapist's Mistake

In physical therapy they taught me to use my not-so-great body parts as much as I could, but that’s not so easy to do, when it’s so much quicker, and easier, to use the parts that were not affected. Once I was upright, again, and walking, it was with a loft strand cane because my right side was not capable of using a walker. My physical therapist would remind me to step up/down, from the curb/step and lead with my bad left foot! 

Is he crazy? I thought. It doesn’t work! 

But in occupational therapy, it was another story. Soon after I came out of the coma, an OT stuck a pencil in my left hand (I was right handed,) and said: This is how you’ll have to write from now on. I took the pencil, and began to write. 

Sweet Jesus! That looks like crap! This hand only knows how to help!

That's what I'd say now, but then I just followed their directions. I was an easy patient; no agitation, or aggression here! 

But after I got home, things were different. Family friends were visiting from Canada, and I was writing a sloppy, almost indiscernible list. Their young son asked me why I was writing left-handed. I told him the truth. I wasn’t sure. 

Just try with your right hand! He said, I bet you can!

I tried, and haven’t written with my left hand since that day.

Honyock

Do you ever think of words you heard, when you were a child, but not anymore?  My mom use to call her kids honyocks,  there were 6 of us.  But she always said it with a smile on her face.  One who is wild, and/or crazy, is the definition I had in mind; a noun.  I looked it up, to see if I was right, and found that a honyock, usually a male, is crude, unsophisticated and acts like a peasant.  He is a rustic oaf.  But the definition includes that it is a playful term of address.  My memories were correct then, and mom was just being playful.

I thought about that word for the 1^st time, in a long while, during cross country practice.  I was on my 3-wheel recumbent (cool trike) I ride, to keep up with my middle school runners, and so that when I stop, I am automatically sitting down (the safest place for me.) As the kids circled the park we were in, the word appeared in my brain, out of nowhere. 

As soon as I turned to my co-coach, I knew he would be familiar with the word.  He’s a cowboy, from Eastern Montana (love the guy) and he grew up on a farm.  When I asked him about honyock , he laughed and said, Honyocker?

I told him I never heard Honyocker .  And quickly added, Honyocker would mean one who honyocks, and honyack would be a verb!  It’s a noun, Coach!

The word isn’t in Spell Check, and I had to look in a couple on-line dictionaries.  I found it in Dictionary.com, and indicated it came from their Slang Dictionary.

Even though I checked other on-line Slang  Dictionaries, I never did find Honyocker.   But, I did find someone who’s mom use to use it, often, and guess what?  She’s from Eastern Montana, too, so I guess it’s a regional MT thing.  Now I have a new word to use, and that's neat, I like new words :)

Delayed Recollections or How Easy it is to Make Lexie Laugh?

It's very easy to make me laugh, and my husband says some things that make me LOL (laugh out loud.) Sometimes text talk is handy, but not when I have to explain. 

He’ll be discussing something that is not funny, and he’ll drop in a word/words, that was/were in fashion when we were growing up. Did you know there are actually kids out there who refer to those words as Vintage?

Examples follow:

Driving down the road, he nods his head to the left, like you do when you want to show direction, and says, There’s the Fuzz up ahead – they turned left though – wow, lucky…

We were going out, and I was waiting for him (not uncommon,) and when it looked like he might finally be ready, I asked if we could go. He answered without hesitation, and in a curt manner, Roger, Wilco!

I sometimes ride along when my husband, and his best friend golf. We take two carts, and we were still in ours, moving along fairly quickly. The BF had already gotten out of his cart, and was jogging along the banks of a body of water, in search of his ball (also, not uncommon.) For a brief moment we were alongside the BF. My mate calmly said, He’s really bookin’ isn’t he?

The most recent was when I asked him if he could grab something, for me, out of the kitchen, and he quickly said, No Sweat.

I laugh every time he does that; like he hadn’t used that particular term since back when everybody did!  It's not like I've forgotten, it's more like there is a permanent delay, before every recollection of past events.

Bleak Times?

I realize I'm not necessarily doing what I said I'd do in my blog. My plan was to share my daily struggles, and I speak of bleak episodes.  Well, to tell you the truth, my life is pretty damn good!

      My family is healthy

     My kids are happy

        My husband is a gem

        I have a new home

        Bike path is close (it will be eventually)

       I’m surrounded by unimaginable beauty

     A best friend lives on Flathead Lake   

         I have time do the things I need to do, 
    so I'll stay mobile, and live with less pain

                                                       We get cable TV

     I certianly have nothing to complain about. Today, fresh snow on the peaks of the Swan Range has taken on a pinkish, orange hue, called alpenglow. It’s as if the summits are all dressed up for a fancy night out. 

·       
     Injuries I have suffered, led to most of my bleak times, but I've made a conscious decision to take better care of my physical self, and I even remember, mostly!

The Fabulous Doc John

The teeth in the front of my mouth aren't mine, because when I crashed, my head hit the side window either before, or after my face hit the steering wheel. Whatever the sequence, the results were the head injury, and a broken jaw.

Because my jaw was broken in two places, some of my teeth were probably going to die. So they took me across the street to a dentist, and he did some root canals while I slept in his chair. Hey, I had just come out of a coma!  The root canals didn't work, though, so they ended up pulling those teeth, and the dentist built a tooth bridge, using two good teeth as anchors.

When my then-husband first saw me, after the accident, the doctors focused their discussion on my main problem; the head injury.  They may have said Traumatic Brain Injury, or a Closed Cranium Trauma, but I always refer to it as my head injury. Almost as an after-thought, they said maybe my jaw was broken too. Hubby saw me yawn, and my lower jaw did some wacky shucks and jives, and he realized that maybe was the wrong adverb. The jaw was definitely broken.  So it was wired shut to heal.

Funny high light:  I was out of the hospital, but returning each day for outpatient therapies, and had my first temporary bridge in place.  On our way into L.A. from the Antelope Valley, we stopped for donuts.  As I bit into a glazed twist, my bridge stayed in the donut as I pulled it away. And with a squeal I turned to my ex.  He pulled the car to the edge of the freeway, reached across and calmly replaced my teeth.  As luck would have it, the dentist was arriving for work just as we pulled into his parking lot.

Yesterday, I spent four hours in my dentist’s chair, as he prepared my mouth for its third such bridge.  My teeth were simply chipping away, and I could actually see metal.  It took Doctor John, and his helper (are they called nurses?) quite some time to get my old bridge out. As he hammered away, his nurse commented on my brain rattling.  His reply came quickly:  Her brain was rattled a long time ago!

Finishing up, after those 4 long hours, he said he owed me a bottle of wine for letting him torture me.  My mouth was still full of stuff so I held up two fingers.  We all laughed, and he left the room.  On my way out, the girls at the front desk stopped me. Doctor John had left me two bottles of wine.  I think he is the best dentist, on this continent, for sure, but I hope this bridge lasts forever.

Error

OK, readers, after reviewing my last post I realized that there was a error.

I work real hard to check my posts before I publish them. Sometimes...who am I kidding? I always quadruple check.

Here is the problem sentence:

He began by teaching me, from a prone position, how to sit up.

No, my physical therapist did not instruct while laying down.  I was the one laying on therapy table. The sentence should have read:

He began by teaching me how to rise, from lying flat, to a sitting position.

So now you know. I am a Grammar Nazi and I won't apologize ! Just deal with it.

Head Injuries and Kyle

Kyle was my physical therapist. After coming out of the coma my car crash put me in, I was sent to a rehabilitation hospital. Some people believe in angles on Earth, and if there are such beings, then Kyle is one of them. In my car crash, I hit the left side of my head, and all functions of my right side were wiped out; I lost all the motor skills in the right hemisphere of my self. They were gone.

When your brain is whacked, the part that was hit dies. It doesn't rebuild, or heal, it is dead.  But, and this is important, other parts can take over the jobs the dead part was doing. That is, if the brain sees the need.

At least that is how I came to understand the whole fiasco of my TBI, and is how I explained it to my 5th grade students, at the start of each new school year. Therapy, then, would include training parts of the brain to do things they have never done. But all I was concerned with, when I started to come around, was that I needed to be able to walk.

From day one, at the new hospital, nurses would transfer (that's an important word) me from my bed, to a wheelchair and wheel me to the physical therapy area. Let's call it a gym; lots of physical stuff happened there. When I got to the gym, Mighty Kyle would transfer (there's that word again) me to a low, padded therapy table.  He began by teaching me, from a prone position, how to sit up.  That seems easy, but not if you're half paralyzed.  The dead part of my brain had been responsible for sending messages to muscles in my right leg, foot, arm, and hand.  I know movement requires many muscles, tendons, and ligaments, but I'll just use those four main extremities.  Those areas were deaf to any communication regarding movement.

Kyle taught me how to initiate movement with my still working left side. He would move my limbs, in the correct direction and sequence, to put me into the needed position. He was, in effect, teaching new parts of my brain to send the messages.  He took me, physically, from no where to somewhere.  He was both kind, and firm, and his encouragement helped me to want to do everything he asked of me. The smile rarely left his face, and I never thought There is no freakin' way I can do that! If Kyle said I could do it, then I did it.

Learning to Transfer safely, came first.  From bed to wheelchair, then from wheelchair to therapy table, and eventually to toilet.  In the beginning I had a catheter, and it sprang a leak during therapy with Kyle.  The cute PT getting soaked with my urine, caused a bit of embarrassment, but I should have been mortified.

My parents visited from Montana often, and those of you who knew my dad, or read earlier posts, know that he was a very friendly guy.  He and my mom had been watching me run for years, so I wasn't surprised to see them in the gym, watching me rehab.  They befriended Kyle as they had every coach I had run for, and I cried when, during my last session with him, they gave him a picture of me hurdling at the University of Oregon.  That's what my dad did, he showed others the love, and pride, he had for his children.

After leaving the hospital, my therapies continued on an out patient basis.  I would report each morning to a facility, across the street from where I spent the previous four months, and my treatment continued; occupational, speech, cognitive, and physical therapies.  At the end of my day, however, I got to go home!

One day, my new PT took me for a walk; back to the hospital.  She wanted to show Kyle, I was walking on my own.  Upon our arrival he was in the hall outside the gym, and walking towards us. My new PT gave me the go ahead to walk on my own, to meet him.  Sure, I thought, I can do this! Off I went but, after a few steps I faltered and was going down.  I had developed a new skill though, so I fought to correct myself before I actually hit the floor. At the same time, Kyle was moving forward, like the super hero he was, and caught me just in time.  He was impressed, but mostly with the move of trying to save myself.  He congratulated me because I was still improving, and I realized he was th PT I'd always remember.

If You Can't Laugh, You're Screwed

A very good, forever friend said to keep writing; that I was good.  Aside from my siblings she holds the longest run as my friend.  Of course, I love those comments, but what I really want to know is whether or not anything funny is getting through. I think if you can't laugh at yourself, or situations you find yourself in, than you're pretty much screwed. Without laughter you might as well give up, especially after sustaining the all encompassing head injury.

After the accident, I admit, I didn't laugh so much.  At first, it was because my broken jaw was wired shut.  After I was wire free, my lack of laughter was because I was still very messed up. 

No laughter, but I did do a lot of crying.  I shed tears like rain falls in Seattle.  They would erupt without warning and my husband, at the time, would simply send one of my children to give me a hug.  They were both sweet, huggable toddlers at the time. Most often their embrace would quell the flow.  Probably because I didn't know why I was crying to begin with. Later, though, the tears came from my realization that I was physically broken and my brain was the problem, and the part still functioning probably knew I'd never be the same.

Those around me did laugh, however, and sometimes it was because of something I said. Their laughs made me happy.  I'll say this just once: When I ran, I loved to win, but now, I love to make people laugh. 

I was still in the hospital, in a physical therapy session, when something I said resulted in loud guffaws. My therapist was Kyle; a young, very cute Asian. I'm sure the only reason I knew his name was because each session, twice daily for almost 4 months, began with him telling me his name.  It surprises me that I knew any other names, because there were about a bazillion people in the room, but I knew Jim.  

This is how I learned to walk again

    

This is where I always rested

Jim was the therapist who had helped Kyle use a shopping cart to get me walking for the first time, (maybe that's why I remembered his name.)  Jim held the front end of the cart,I held the handle, and Kyle moved my legs. This particular day, Jim was across the room and I was sitting on the side of one of those low, padded therapy tables resting.  I did that a lot. 

Well, I looked across the room at Jim, shook my head, and said, to no one in particular, Jim needs a haircut.  Kyle laughed like a hyena!  I was out of earshot (is that a word?) and Jim didn't hear me, but Kyle called him over and, between chuckles, told him what I had said.  And then they both had a good laugh, together.

Random Thoughts

I sometimes think the effect of my TBI mirrors ADHD.  I was in education for quite a while, and subject to many children, both medicated and not, who suffered from ADHD so I know exactly what it looks like; a child can be questioning, how do I...? and then the subject changes entirely to, Did you know my little brother is trying to teach himself to burp the alphabet?  It seems I have the same randomness. Here are some of those moments:

• My oldest sister hand made me a beautiful quilt that I took to college, and because I washed and dried it so much it literally disintegrated.  My sister-in-law did the exact same thing after my accident.  The quilts, in my mind, were almost identical!  I am washing the one that's still alive less, and I only dry it part way, and then drape it over a chair to finish the process.  Still, I wonder, are the quilts really so much alike or is that my mind playing tricks?
• The best time to play Fox & Geese is after it snows because there needs to be a very evident trail that the geese must stay on as the fox chase them.  As a child we played at night, mostly, and my oldest brother always created the trail stomping an erratic path in the snow.
• I asked my husband to bring a lawn chair from the garage, to our patio.  It has a foot rest that pops out and is really comfy, and I was thinking I could read my Kindle out there.  But then I remembered it had snowed another 3 inches last night, and that I live in Montana.  I guess I'll have to wait.
• It amazes me that a simple smell can bring back childhood memories.  When I smelled the smoke I did, (smoke has so many different odors,) my thoughts were only of 5th Ave East; the burn barrel, in the back yard.  That's where we burned all our household refuse.  Can you believe that was allowed?
• My son's dog, Dante, has a wandering eye.  He and his gal Brittany say the eye is wonky, and often times just call the dog Wonk.  My left eye wanders too; it doesn't appear to be looking straight when my other eye is. So, maybe I should change the way I refer to my that eye.  But, then I think, it's not just the eye, my whole right hemisphere is compromised.  And then I say to myself Compromised is a cool word too!  But back to wonky. From this time forward, my compromised right hemisphere will be referred to as being wonky.  That is, if I remember.

The Memory Issue

I've just returned from Target, very disappointed.  The $50 gift card, my loving son gave to me for Christmas, was burning a hole in the proverbial pocket.  I looked, and browsed, and looked some more and I ended up leaving having spent only $1.89 on a pop, and a Christmas ornament marked 90% off.

A list of the things I might need does not hang on an bulletin board in the enterance to my brain.  I laugh when I think of the contents of my brain scattered about my home.  Actual thoughts, ideas, needs, and wants draped over pieces of furniture, hanging out of open drawers, laying quietly on the garage floor, waiting to be retrieved.  With actual objects, I'm a fairly organized individual.  But, I need to beable to see and touch and feel the things I'm organizing.  Unless I have something written down, it's lost to me.

And even if it's written down, there's a good chance I'll forget to look where it is written!


Early on, I figured I could keep track of all the notes I wrote myself in one place.  I wrote all of my notes to myself, no matter what they were about, in a small notebook.  That little book was always kept in one of two places; in my purse, or on the kitchen counter, by my calendar.

That worked...for awhile, but then I forgot the plan.

Efficient Paths

For Christmas, my brother sent me @xkcd, volume 0  (an online comic book) and when I ran across this, I knew I had to share!

I especially like how I can say I do the very same thing he does!  He describes himself as an awkward science nerd, but I'd like to point one thing out.  At one time, he was a NASA physicist. 

I've talked about how I limp, or the hitch-in-my-get-along.  I use the word hobble to describe my mobility. But I had an  acquaintance once cringe at that word, telling me I was degrading myself by speaking that way.  My response? Oh, well.

Why this comic?  Because, like I said earlier, I do the same thing, ALWAYS! Not only do I hobble, my balance is also way out of whack.  And, you know the cliche: If I had a nickle for every time I've fallen, I'd be rich!  Well, maybe I haven't fallen that much, but after the first thousand or so times, even my children's concern for me diminished.

Suffice it to say, I don't like to be on my feet!  Therefore, the shortest route between where I'm at, and where I need to be, is always foremost in my mind. When I'm on my feet, my primary concern is always what's the shortest route?Even in my own house, I consider the routes available.  The shortest distance between my car, or where I'm sitting, and anywhere I habitually wander, is cemented in my brain.  
I take that back, I never just wander.

Swimming, it Isn't

I love the water, but I can't swim.  Very much like I can't run.  Let's talk more about my lost motor skills.  Upon arrival into the waking world, my physical therapist started by teaching me how to sit up.  I lost virtually all the motor skills on my right side.  I think it's called hemi-paresis, anyway, I had it. Early in my rehab I was put into a pool, at least that's how I remember it.  The timeline in my head may, or may not, be correct; remember memory is an issue.  

The pool was nice, I felt unencumbered, and semi-mobile.  Most of my rehab was done on ground, however, and was very intense.  An athletic background helped me just work and not think Why do I have to do this? Or This is hard, can't I take a nap?  And, I really couldn't say anything, because my jaw was broken and had been wired shut.  

Let's get back to what I actually do in water, if I can't swim. The pool I exercise in is on the far edge of town. Maybe that's why there is never a huge crowd of hot, lean, fit babes or excessively attractive, muscle bound, beefy men.  So I don't have to hobble through those types on my way to the pool.  And the pool itself is usually empty. If not, the people in the water are usually physically compromised like me.  It seems the gym/pool is paired up with a physical therapist's practice. Misery might love company, but comparing physical hardships with strangers lost its appeal a log time ago. 

Bottom line: I like to flail about in the water, in the name of exercise, alone. My routine includes:

• variations on form running drills my cross country/track athletes begin practices with, but while holding foam dumbbells
• weird stretches on a long bench that runs the length of the pool
• more weird stretches on the stairs/hand rail leading into the pool 
• even more weird stretches on the latter in the deep end
• water aerobic exercises I remember from classes in Lynden, and Boise
• survival-type swimming on my back, kicking the length of pool, hands at my side

And when I'm not exercising in the pool, I simply enjoy being in the water. Here I am in Lake McDonald, located in Glacier Park, which is in my backyard!

• 

Hitch in My Get-Along and Swimming

I remember when my ex and I lived in Spokane, the valley. One brutally cold night we decided to go for a run. What were we thinking? Oh, that's right, we were young.  The route we chose to run was a little-travelled-country-type road, and the night sky was crystal clear.  The heavens were chock-full of stars and, it was as if the silence had wrapped us safely in its cloak. 

Interesting. Of all the thoughts in my damaged brain, that's what shows itself! I don't remember being miserable, or how long we ran, or what we talked about. But the image of that cold sky, and the silence is what stuck.

Swimming has never been a favorite, maybe because I had so little body fat, floating wasn't easy. More about swimming, and why I now love it, later. 

Now, I have mobility issues: a hitch in my get-along. Everything seems to be able to do what is suppose to do, but there is a disconnect between my brain and Everything, so the job is compromised.

The job: Getting me from here to there, on my feet. I can only walk absolutely correct for not so many steps. Therefore, I limp and, try as I might, I can't NOT LIMP!  So, if walking is difficult, what are the chances that I can run?  

I cannot run.  Soon after my TBI, I thought that, over time, the kinks might smooth out.  Eventually, I thought, I'd be able to, at least, jog!  I always hated distance work.  To me that meant anything longer than 1/4 mile! But, there I was, working towards distance work!

But, time didn't help the disconnect, and I never have been able to run.  Sad.

Water arobics is how I started to love swimming,  and I realized how much I loved being in the water; period!

Happy.  Swimming is so dang cool because: 

1. I can't fall down 
2. I don't over heat
3. Our best friend lives on Flathead lake
4. The Noodle was invented