Ping Pong balls

5/25/07 Friday
It’s a little tough this morning. The pain level is high as it has been a lot lately. I am moving a little slowly and the brain is operating at a six on the bob scale, a little slower than normal. The part of the brain that controls movement is working lower than that. This is hard to describe but what you see is me moving in a sort of slow motion. Just not zipping along at all. What it feels like to me is as if there is a resistance, like I am moving my arm through a muddy mixture. These are another form of partial seizure. I’ll get more into this on the paper I’m writing on TBI but seizures are where certain parts of the brain get overactive. The best description I’ve found was one given by Doctor Glen Johnson, a neuropsychologist who is the Clinical Director of the Neuro-Recovery Head Injury Program in Michigan. He wrote a book called “Traumatic Brain Injury Survival Guide” for survivor’s and their families. It is written in simple terms that avoid medical jargon.

Visualize a room full of mouse traps. Instead of putting cheese in the mouse trap, we put a ping-pong ball on each trap, and there's not a bit of space in this entire floor where I haven't put a mouse trap and a ping-pong ball. What if I just throw one ping-pong ball into that room? What's going to happen? It's going to hit one, which will bounce, hit two, which will hit four, which will hit eight and before long, the entire room has got ping-pong balls flying in it. That's a little bit like what happens with a seizure.

Anyway, I will put a link to this book and would like to encourage all of you to take the time to read it.

Cherie is off to work and I am plugging along as best I can. Took a pain pill this morning and will take another at 1:00. I am real careful with these because I understand the potential problems they can bring. I cut them in half like the doctor suggested. I have to lay down and put the laptop on my raised knees for sitting up with it on my lap hurts too much.

I plan on planting beans today. Got all kinds of beans here so the first order of business is to go online and research the proper way to do this for each type of bean.
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Busted my butt digging the rows I’ll plant the beans on. I had barely gotten started when I had a slow down. Not really a problem cause when I have one I like to find something simple to do that I can focus on. Unfortunately I was preparing each row differently as part of my learning what does and doesn’t work. I poured goat crap soup on the first one, I put slow release nitrogen fertilizer on another, I mixed dry goat manure on yet another, and I did something else with a different one. The problem is other than the first row I am clueless on which one I did what with so all the rest of the rows are mysteries.

I had to take a break because all the digging was killing my back. Went in and asked Cherie if enough time had passed for me to take another pain pill. Then I took her out to show her what I had gotten done. We were looking at the corn when Janie called. I was down to a three on the bob scale and when it’s that bad you can hear it in my voice. Janie had called earlier today to see if we could meet her and “the guys” at I-Hop tomorrow morning. I said I would have to check with Cherie so Janie was calling to verify we could go. I was slow and Janie was a little loopy from not getting any sleep due to her flight being delayed and not coming in till something like five this morning so I handed the phone off to Cherie. I’m not really good at conversation when slow. Just to fill you in, Janie and “The Guys” (don’t know what else to call them) are going to see what it takes to get a hot water heater put in. I am sure there are more details about this that I’ve been told but I can’t really remember. I’ll fill you in later as things unfold.

I’m pretty sure I will be moving slow in the morning because I over did it working in the garden. Hurt pretty bad now despite medication. Walk like I’m ninety years old. Don’t really care cause I like to work and hurt anyway. Besides it makes my body stronger to work so there’s a long term benefit. I’m gonna call it a night so I can be rested up for tomorrow.