BRAINBLEED(s) - 3 weeks of ICU to UNLEARN

Rose-colored glasses await most of us who “want to feel good.” Reality though cannot be summarized by words, emoji, images, you name it.

Still:

When I fell on my bicycle, I was on my way to a pharmacy to get my Covid booster. About a month and a half later, during my “recovery,” after consulting with my GP, I went to get that particular shot, this time by walking one hour… and right by my side, this luxurious dwelling caught my eye.
I took it – stupid humans – as a kind of omen. The circle was completed this time, I did get the booster, and the “visuals” felt like a gift.

Luxurious setting, quiet street, REAL estate (as it is called!).

WORDS PLAY WITH US ALL THE TIME: (f)ALL RISK(s?)

Whether I keep updating these comments or not, depends on a few things:

1. I need to keep having something to add.

2. “Surviving” goes further… There is a blood clot in my brain. I can feel it as a particular pain in my head, sometimes more present than not.
Does it grow, is it stable? Is my blood pressure affecting it or not? It is clear: I need calm.
And sometimes, when I lie down everything spins…  Something else to get used to?

Another CATscan will reveal a variety of truths?

My GP’s Notes Around Our Meeting

An epitaph? Not very original…
Not knowing much about the future – “the curtain may drop at any time” – means not knowing much. It means that making plans & making statements is just about impossible.
Again I go back to Socrates: if I know anything, it is that I know nothing.
Good luck to everyone: please be as kind as possible with each other (and I mean animals and the planet – we are “them” too)!

Wounds, there are many types, are like cracks.*
Some are visible, some are not. From the outside, one can misjudge the situation.
Only since the concept of “PTSD” became a reality, the remnants – what remains of trauma – can be considered “devastating” (i.e. complete “destruction” is present).
If its presence is felt, nothing normal  makes sense: conversation seems trivial and is of no use.
In certain circles, it is often discussed that you can take the Jews out of slavery, but you cannot take slavery out of the Jews.
Maybe Cervantes’ “giving time to time” does not apply here?
*Please don’t give me Leonard Cohen’s “and that’s where the light comes in” –  the crack is a break.

As I said in 1975 or so in a video piece: “what you see is not…”

My dear mother said, after learning two more languages besides her native language, that she spoke “only foreign languages.” Even her ties to the language of her childhood had faded away.
The state of being estranged is hard to convey to people who expect language to be used in the most conventional way.
Distance becomes the only way to communicate at those times. As the surrealists pleaded back in the 1920’s: Let the infinite in!

OVERCONFIDENCE!

I am responsible…
All accidents feel very stupid: if only I had done this, gone another way, etc…

In my case, I was possibly too joyous – something was excessive – I decided to take a speed bump without slowing down, why not? This was a glorious day… (cf. Fall Season post).

The key issue here is that I am responsible for being at the bottom of this hole – how it feels (bad and depressing, if I am using words – not a necessity at all!) – and I am responsible for getting out.

I will be “there” for quite some time.

Fortunately, I listen to myself (as that other dumb cliché says!): sleep a lot, walk outdoors every day, and eat and drink (water) so as to regain the great weight I have lost.
Even though I write all of this down, there is absolutely nothing to say!
BUT I remember Jean Améry (Hans Meyer) pondering what the intellect(ual) can bring to torture (cf. At the Mind’s Limits).
Keep writing, and maybe like in a good conversation, you will discover something you  had no idea…

I remain in silence as long as possible. Silence has a great many layers…
[I dread noise – why do planes fly at 10:30 p.m. and 5:30 a.m.?]

I want “reality:” words that don’t feel like they come out of some ready-made wishes, and clichés.
Music that is sparse and knows its limits… but what is reality, that elusive concept (cf. my School of No Media)?

The new stats I am watching…

Almost three weeks later, I am home!
Being home, means one’s effort to be can BE that much more REAL than in a setting where’s one future is totally dependent on a bunch of strangers, who all play their part. “Public self” has a great many limitations.

Facial hair, because for quite some time, there were other concerns.

The good
– I get my dreams back (I had not realized I had not dreamed in the hospital). It is like a friendly blanket, another “me” meeting me, regardless of the dreams. Officially I am told: REM sleep is back.
– I am like a sponge with silence: give me more!
– I sleep a lot, more than eight hours per night.
The hard
– My previous brain-bleed (cf. this site) is of no use. There is no comparison. I am even more so on my own, and more specifically: I have no idea which way is up. There is no path, no ledge onto which I could ponder anything.
The concept of healing or of any kind of roadmap is unavailable. I am there,where there is no “there.”

Making it home means one has done enough “genuflections” (passing the tests to demonstrate one is functional enough). I remember in rehab a four hour psychological evaluation starting at 8:30 a.m. where one element included the need to recall more than once a list of a great many disparate objects, and keep a friendly attitude. Towards the end of that morning, without any break, I asked if I could play on my phone some background music (Satie) to soften the hardship of these non-stop exercises. I was allowed to do so.

If one’s relationship with oneself is barely alive:
To speak (= to have to conjugate verbs) means affirming one’s ”I,” one’s identity.
When someone else wants any kind of attention – could be something as trivial as a “how are you?” – it is impossible to respond properly.  There is nobody home, nobody who could  properly answer.
If one is unpleasant to the outside world, it is because one has not yet established some kind of self.
It is impossible to speak without a well established subject, That’s why one shouts (as a way to say most indirectly: “I am not ready to engage in a conversation of selves!”).

And loud sounds and noise make themselves known as disturbances, absolutely invasive, and preventing any link to self.
Is that kind of hypersensitivity a phenomenon I should expect? Like a great many other questions, I am in the dark.

SURPRISE: “here is your book to take home” 271 pages…

I spend two and a half weeks in a hospital setting…
It is “hell” – there are so many kinds.
This one is made of:
– I am moved from one room to another but… both rooms, both men/neighbors are screaming day and night, and moaning. I cannot believe I am supposed to heal in that environment. I slowly learn that  I am in the “trauma unit,”  where trauma is king.
– I speak to three “case-managers” – someone should be supervising my healing.  All three tell me they will get back to me, but they don’t.
– By the time I leave, I have managed to communicate what I would consider to be eatable by me.
The kind of depersonalized bland cafeteria food I was given feels like being fed by a conveyor belt in a stable. I cannot imagine any kind of senior housing or nursing home food… And the lack of actual privacy.

Dinner = white bread with processed cheddar cheese.

– The morning “doctors rounds” end up being a predictable daily disappointment: I never get a sense of an overview, nor of what is a stake. They do show up, doctor and residents, but before I can have any concrete conversation,  they “have to run elsewhere.”
Every nurse seems to come from a different country – one small way to escape and to find stimulation where I can.

Picture without the screams & moaning & bed-alarm by the next bed…

P.S.:  A friend told me that this reflects the state of the health system in the US. A doctor I spoke with later confirmed that.
NOT to take it personally! [reminds me of Ajahn Sumedho‘s important book: Don’t Take Your Life Personally.]

ADDENDUM!
Just learned much later, that I was in a geriatric trauma unit, nobody told me at the time… but that explains the two different rooms with two screaming neighbors. They should have done some kind of assessment, and possibly put those two together!

Yes indeed, and of course… I did not see it coming.
On a beautiful fall day – upon getting on my bicycle, I remember clearly having that  “sense of well-being” –  not only did I feel fit on my bike – I had biked and swum earlier – the temperature and sunny afternoon seemed to say “take a bite of life!”
I vaguely remember some speed-bumps that I was going to take in a fun way – without slowing down – after all, I felt good, the terrain was flat and there was no traffic.
ALL ACCIDENTS ARE STUPID – how I would like to rewind and be “more something” (fill in the blank).

Next step is… I am in the ICU at BJC hospital, and I don’t remember anything of the fall, as is well known by all survivors of concussions.

Photo Alma M.

Slowly, it is hard to gather all of these facts, I learn that I have: a broken clavicle, blood in my brain and in my arm, some kind of crack in my skull, and in my jaw, an ear that needs sewing to prevent “cauliflower ear” – and facial, hand and knee bleeding – and…  I hear something very subtle like some faint breathing in my right ear, specially in a quiet environment. And most likely a coccyx that has some damage.