The Challenge of Difficult

The semester is over and I survived.  It took a lot of work, but it felt good.   It was a different kind of work than regular life.  Life is hard; it  can tire you out emotionally and beat you down.  While school is difficult, it raises you up.  That is the difference between school life and regular life, one is difficult and the other is hard.  Not that there isn't growth that I appreciate in the hard things in life, it is just nice to have a break from hard to enjoy the challenge of difficult.

Living in the Twilight Zone

I stepped back out of the hospital door and looked around.  Where am I?  An all too familiar feeling of panic swept over me.  had become allhadJust take one step at a time, I thought to myself.  Slow and easy.  Not too far and don't turn in any direction; keep the door you just exited in sight.  One step.  Look around.  Cars in a parking lot, business buildings, and a few homes.  Nothing familiar yet.  One step more.  Where is everybody?  Where is anybody that could help me? 

My memory of this incident unfolds like an old black and white Twilight Zone episode: A woman steps out of a building and finds herself in a different country where she had never before been.  Talk yourself through this, Lori.  You were at Mark’s office for cognitive rehabilitation.  You have to get back there to find your car.  Another step.  Glance back.  The door was still there.  Don’t go too far.  One more step.  He sent you across the street to the hospital to deal with billing.  He took you outside of his office and pointed the way.  It was only across the street.  Pause; look around. Panic; my heart was racing.  But I’ve never seen these buildings before.  I’ve never seen that street.  Where am I?

I continued trying to figure out where I was and how to get to my car.  If he sent me across the street, his office must somehow be across the street from where I am.  One more cautious step.  My view expanded around the neighboring building to the right, and across the street.  A school.  A playground.  A memory: the directions to his office said it was next door to an elementary school.  That must be the building.  My car must be parked behind it. Yet I’d been going to cognitive therapy for months.  Possibly even years.  And I’d never seen that building before.  I cautiously walked across the street to the rear of the building … where I found my parked car.

The accident was almost eleven years ago.  I don’t know how long I’d been in rehabilitative therapy.  Long enough to know it was a safe harbor in a tumultuous sea of confusion.  It didn’t matter how often I was there or that it was only one turn in the hallway to the office—it was understood that I

couldn’t find my way from the waiting room by myself.  While others would respond, “Oh, I forget where I park my car all the time,” in cognitive rehabilitation, it was understood that getting lost in a parking lot wasn’t anything like “forgetting" where I parked my car.  It was not knowing where I was or how I got there.  And that no matter how many times it happened, it was frightening.  So mostly I stayed home; going to rehab was one of the few times I left the house.

Growing up, school, like everything else, came fairly easily.  I was an honors student—especially in math—who could miss any number of classes and still get A’s.  Putting off assignments until the last minute, I'd whip off my homework and be out the door for a late evening.   I was adventuresome, outgoing and social, and that was where my energy went.  Each day, with minimal sleep, I jumped out of bed full of life, starting my day made-up and dressed to the "T."  I juggled school, work, and lots of social life—and still got all A’s.  After high school I traveled Europe. I had a fun, spontaneous life-style. I don’t know that I knew where I was going, or cared.  Self –discipline, direction and real hard work weren’t anything I ever knew, desired or thought I needed in any area of my life.  But that was then.  

This is now:  Daylight.  I roll over and look at the clock.  Ten hours.  Lori, you’ve been in bed ten hours.  Get up!  I can’t; the exhaustion is too much, I think back to myself.  You have so much to do today.  Get up!  The further we get into the semester, the more sleep I need.  Mark from cognitive rehabilitation warned me, what seems like a lifetime ago, that chronic exhaustion would always be my worst enemy.  

Ten a.m.  The day’s half gone.  I run and wiggle my way through half the laundry and half the dishes—only the necessary chores.  I don’t have time or energy for more.  I run and wiggle because I don't have time or energy for a proper warm up for the stretching that is a necessary part of my pain management.    

Mark also taught me about “energy dollars.”  I only have so many in a day; when they are gone, they are gone.  My daily tasks, he compared, take as much brain energy from me as the amount of brain energy it takes for a healthy-brained woman to work on her thesis.  At the end of her thesis, she crashes.  At the end of each day—often times sooner—I crash.  I also need days of “recovery time,” when I do nothing.  Nothing to others means watching TV or reading.  “Nothing” to me means nothing.  TV and reading take brain energy.  Everything takes brain energy.  Noise takes brain energy—even casual conversation.  I live in a world of silence and isolation.  That is how I function best.  That is how I preserve energy for the things I must accomplish.

When putting away laundry, I open my undergarment drawer.  Letters.  What are they doing in there?  Oh, I need to take those with me over Christmas.  They had to be put where I will see them every day or they’d get lost in one of my many piles.  And every day I ask the same question, “What are they doing in there?”–before I remember the answer.  My Christmas trip is three weeks away, but my initial thought to take the letters with me would not return in that time on its own.

 I consider balancing my checkbook.  Even though there are never more than four or five entries, I decide I don’t have time.  Any kind of math is a struggle.  Next to chronic exhaustion, problem solving and organization are my worst enemies.  But yesterday I figured out an efficient way to store my plastic containers and lids.  I couldn’t do that last week; this week it came naturally.  I’m getting better.

Two-thirty p.m.  You leave for class in an hour and you haven’t showered or eaten.  You won’t get enough calories to make it!  How do other people find time to eat?  I live on things that I can grab after I haven’t eaten and no longer have time:  nuts, peanut butter, raisins and apples.  The hours disappear; it takes me five to ten hours a day to complete my freshman English class assignments—far longer than it should.  Whose idea was this anyway?  Me going back to school!  I should have started back in the sixth grade instead of college.  I quickly shower.  For the most part, I have the choice of spending energy getting ready to go out in public, or going out in public.  I can't do both.  At least I'm clean.  I throw on sweats and a t-shirt.

At school I'm surrounded by people.  Some look familiar.  But out of context I rarely can put an identity on anyone.  It is difficult to have meaningful dialogue when I can't remember anything about a person.  And at inappropriate times, I might blurt out thoughts before they get lost in my brain. My efforts at being friendly end with me feeling socially awkward.  Staying home would be easier, safer.

But here I am out in the world; Heavenly Father has a different plan for me then staying home waiting to die. It’s a plan that I didn’t imagine possible in my years of cognitive rehabilitation.  It is a plan that has evolved through my life’s experiences.  I still don't know the details of my potential or where I will end up. But when I now ask, "Where am I?  How did I get here?  How do I get where I’m going?"  no panic sweeps over me now. I know the answers.

Sharing Religion 212

Tim brought Miriam home for dinner.  I had been curled in bed most of the day catching up on my reading for my N.T. class. The whole Book of Revelations with study guide readings and commentary.  I wish I could spend every Saturday curled in bed with the scriptures and commentary.  I was getting pretty excited about what I was learning by the time Tim and Miriam arrived for dinner.  I began sharing what I had learned.  With my memory that means reading it to them, which turned into a bit of a long process.   Miriam was polite; she acted as if, and  said, she was interested. (And I believe she was.)  Tim lightly laughed here and there throughout at how "long the quote was."  I thought about it afterward.  This was serious business.  We were talking about the end of the world.  And Tim was laughing!

But they made homemade noodles for the first time that were delicious.  And it was a nice evening after all.

Where did 19 and 20 go?

Okay. Okay.  So that wasn't my last two required posts.  I'm sure there were 18 before I published those and now there are still 18.  Hmm.  Where did the other two go?  Fortunately I have a "blog storage file" where I can pull out an old blog draft that never got published.  It will be out of order, but it will meet the requirement until I have more time to write something current.