The See Saw of life

1/31/07 Wednesday
Another early morning wake up. It’s 5:00 A.M. My mind has come up with a better way to make the support brackets for the chimney. We’ll see how that goes. After yesterday’s simple tasks becoming so difficult I don’t have much faith in this mind. Think I’ll go check E mail right now. Not real speedy judging from how hard I have to work to formulate these words.

It’s nine now and the daily see saw of my life is continuing. I am sharper than I was earlier. Running an average 7 on the bob scale. This roller coaster of mental acuity will always be a source of frustration and uncertainty. I never know how the day will be. There are sometimes periods of clarity that last one or even three days and then there are times I lose a whole day, unable to function except at maybe a third grade level or something. I’m not sure that analogy is a good one. How can I convey what this is like? It’s like getting drunk or being on drugs without the drugs. Confusion, forgetfulness, inability to focus, poor emotional control where I get angry or depressed, saying things without thinking, physically impaired as the brains ability to control my right side is affected, and on and on. Then I am sharp and lucid, a great guy who laughs, jokes, and carries on deep conversations. My joke, my attempt to lighten this up is “I am either the smartest dumb person or the dumbest smart person you will ever meet. It just depends on the moment you meet me”.

How can my beautiful wife handle this? What a sacrifice she made when she remarried me. Our divorce twenty one years ago was because of emotional control problems caused from another brain injury when I fell out of a tree, breaking my neck, back, and sustaining a concussion. Then seventeen years later she sees me on TV as Toledo’s John Doe with a much more severe brain injury. How ironic, a brain injury tore us apart and a brain injury brought us back together. This is love folks, the kind of love you read about in heart wrenching best sellers. It’s hard on both of us but when we look at each other the worries fade away like a movie segway. Her face comes into focus and everything in the background disappears.

I’m going to get moving now. Cherie is going to fix pancakes. Today I will continue on the chimney and will try to incorporate the new design my brain seemed to develop as I slept. It’s a simple design really, nothing a grade school kid couldn’t come up with I don’t think. Simple works best for me anyway. It’s when simple tasks become hard that I get frustrated. But I don’t quit. You watch. It’ll be four years before the land is freed up to use and in those four years I’ll have all the pieces in place to create an agricultural company that can be used as a model for other self sustaining organic enterprises. Or I’ll have a heck of a garden. Either way I will love life and always be aware that every day I wake up is a gift.

Just remembered I need to run the trash to the landfill so I’ll write it down to help make sure it happens. Also told Cherie so she can help me remember.

Got the trash down to the landfill. Noticed a bunch of old telephone poles that had been dumped there, probably by the phone company. I’ll have to find someone there to see if I can have them. They would be great for the raised garden beds I have in mind. After that I picked up the mail. Got a packet from Amy. The note said it was some things she had collected for us. I think its things people she had shared our story with had given her for us. There was a neat pad of notepaper that fits perfectly with this farm. Has pictures of plants and spices around the edge. There were gift cards for Lowes, Bed Bath and Beyond, and Starbucks.

When I got home and showed these to Cherie she kind of cried and kept asking “Why is she doing this for us”. I didn’t know that Cherie was going through a depression this morning so didn’t understand her reaction. It got worse and I didn’t deal with it well. Got upset because she was crying. That’s not the right way to handle a crying woman. I went outside to work on the chimney and stayed out till Cherie came out. We talked about it but I still didn’t handle things well. I’m just not very good at this. Getting upset and saying things like “Why don’t you quit feeling sorry for yourself” make things worse.

I got allot done on the chimney but will have to finish it up tomorrow. Lost much of my motivation because of all this. When Cherie’s not happy I’m not either.

My former secretary, Eileen, called. She had finally been able to get online after months of not being able to and read the blog. I’ll have to write about all this later. Just don’t feel like writing right now. Got to go.