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Following my fall there was no immediate cognitive malfunction. The week we were in Rarotonga for I managed to hold conversations, read for a reasonable length of time and not struggle to focus for longer than an hour. I was, for all intents and purposes, feeling as 'normal' as it gets for me, give or take the odd headache. That said life was running on island time - I was getting plenty of sleep in spite of my head bang and the sinus cold I contracted on the plane to Rarotonga (love air conditioning!), we spent the afternoons lazily watching the waves roll in and crash on the reef from our balcony and spent time hoping to see the migrating whales - which I was lucky enough to experience. Mornings were spent out and about - a safari trip, finding the brewery just out of Muri, wandering the market on Saturday in Avarua. No pressure!
It was on our return as I tried to launch back into the busy-ness of work, home and study that things deteriorated. Initially it was the head ache that got worse and, after two days at home, I began to curl up on the couch and sleep at random times of the day feeling sick and shaky if I did not do this. A workshop I was running on the Friday (day 3) after our return was time adjusted as I knew I would not last the distance to the advertised finish time.
The weekend is always busy with washing for our household, my parents-in-law who are in a home and prefer their whites to stay that colour, as well as getting things organised as I prepared to launch back into time away from home working, and of course trying to get my brain out of island time and into the study for my Learning and Behaviour university paper that was now to be my focus. By the end of the weekend I realised I should not be driving - my processing times were appalling and I was an accident waiting to happen.
Following my two days away attempting to work, and with my lovely husband driving me on his days off, it became obvious something was really wrong. I had two half days of meetings and work with students, with the other parts of the days supposed to be spent on the follow up paper work online. I struggled through the time with the students - could not get myself to write neatly by the second day, struggled to focus on the assessment answers I was being given that day and my brain was so stretched by the end of that morning that I could not work out how to choose the right-hand tap from a set of three. Actually I could not work out how to work that out...that was the moment it hit home. My brain was severely injured.
I have now spent two and a half months in this state with incrementally small movements forward. My concussion is actually now called a mild traumatic brain injury. I have problems with memory, speaking, spelling, typing, focus, and retention. I cannot do more than one thing at a time and even then struggle to complete it.
Memory - recall of words, information people are telling me and even basic things like whether I have brushed my teeth today. I was tempted to create myself a visual timetable like the ones I use with my students. As I progress and it is not just the basic hygiene things I need to remember I may well need to do this. Google Calendar and its notifications has been amazing. The only appointment I have forgotten is one that was not put in there. Part of my recovery toolbox included the need to use the three P's - Plan, Prioritise and Pace. I found myself writing lists on a daily basis then shifting things that had not been high enough on the priority list to the next day. Pacing has been my hardest thing to master. I am used to being able to go like the Energiser bunny for the day and into the night with very few brain breaks or feeding my brain caffeine in the form of Coke Zero. I am now faced with needing to take regular micro breaks where I close my eyes and use mindfulness techniques to let the brain rest. Initially it was every 5 minutes while I was on a screen which has now extended to every 10 minutes. If I did not do this there was no way I could remember what I had read for my assignment work. Pushing myself means that my memory is a Swiss cheese with more holes than cheese. I keep reassuring myself that this too shall pass and have some wonderful friends who have been in this situation reminding me I need to rest if I am to improve.
Speaking and processing what I am hearing - I have struggled at times to understand what people are meaning when they say certain things and have felt like a complete idiot more than once through misunderstanding the intention of what was said. Not great for your self confidence. Living in a household that survives on wit, puns, play on words and jokes has also been an uncomfortable place to recover - I do not always get what is meant and say things that are picked up on to be made fun of. I now completely understand how an autistic student feels when they can only understand the literal meaning of what was said - confused at why people are laughing, upset that I made a mistake, and a little less confident to say something the next time I am in a similar situation. I have found myself at times letting my husband do the talking.
The other side of that is trying to speak. I cannot always get the connection between my brain where the sentence is well formed and my ability to get that well formed sentence out of my mouth to co-operate. I find myself almost stuttering, using the wrong words between the time the sentence has been cleared for take off and when it actually launches into space, and if I am over stimulated I sound like a drunk by the end of an hour. Words are slurred and I cannot actually form the sentence fully in my brain anymore. If we are out and about that is a sure signal that it is time to leave and get some quiet time...actually that boat has sailed and I should have gone to the loo for quiet time well before that. I am slowly learning to read the body signals before they become flashing red lights with alarms going off! If I was a child in this situation in a classroom I would need never mind want to get away from the noise and the need to make my brain work. This is something teachers need to be aware of and ask about when a child asks if they can go and work somewhere else. I now know that desperate need for quiet and peace.
Spelling and typing - this was a shock for me. I have always prided myself on my spelling, something that was drummed into me as a child. Typing was also something I learned at secondary school and passed Pitmans exams in. So it was uncomfortable to be typing a response to an email and not be able to work out what was wrong with the word exersize. I knew it was wrong, that it didn't look right. In the end I actually had to put it into Google to correct it. Talking to one of the Occupational Therapists (OT) led to the understanding that the brain sees these tasks as superfluous to all the other functions that it is trying to repair connections for. As far as my typing goes I press the correctly positioned key on the opposite end of the keyboard eg a 'k' instead of an 's' or I will transpose letters inside the word - particularly at the end of the word eg 'liek' instead of 'like' or completely leave letters out as my brain has said I included them when I actually didn't. Thank heavens for the backspace button - mine will be worn out before long. This is now something I will ask a child about if they have had a bump on the head, been in some kind of traumatic event or seem to be struggling with this area when it has not been an issue in the past.
I guess it is a little like the repair on the road infrastructure in Christchurch following the earthquakes - important and heavily used routes were repaired and opened first with repairs to streets within suburbs coming later as they were further down the infrastructure list of importance. Spelling and typing will improve I am told, but it will take time. They need to join the queue for repair. Until then I am very thankful for the lovely little red lines that alert me to incorrect spelling or typos as I complete the work required for the online forums for my Massey paper.
Focus and retention - at the moment my focus length with new learning/information is somewhere between 40 and 60 minutes. My concussion OT is very quick to pick up that my eyes have gone glassy - often recognising my need for rest before I do. I have moved from needing to sleep after that length of time to needing to just close my eyes and listen to meditation music for between 15 and 30 minutes. I am struggling to retain the information gathered as I read for my paper and find myself rereading the highlighted parts several times as I put together my response to it. I have learned to get the key points of what I want to say into my doc first then go back and flesh it out. What used to take me about half a day to complete can now take up to four days due to the need for breaks, the shortened length of time I can work for anyway, the mistyping of my response leading to the need to reread and make corrections more than once, and the inability to retain the details like I used to be able to do. I am managing to complete the online forum work for my paper but that is it. The assignment work - creating and gathering artefacts showing my learning progression - will need to have an extension. I am so thankful to the wonderful Wendy who has been such a support through this.
Cognitively I sound fine for about an hour, I cannot remember things I am told - for example, some days my son will have to tell me three or four times what time he is finishing his shift at work - and I have lists everywhere. It is literally as the quote says at the top of this post sometimes I think I am coming right as I amaze myself, other times I can barely remember whether I brushed my teeth that morning. I am looking forward to the bruised brain beginning to function as sharply as it used to. I will feel a lot less frustrated.
It was on our return as I tried to launch back into the busy-ness of work, home and study that things deteriorated. Initially it was the head ache that got worse and, after two days at home, I began to curl up on the couch and sleep at random times of the day feeling sick and shaky if I did not do this. A workshop I was running on the Friday (day 3) after our return was time adjusted as I knew I would not last the distance to the advertised finish time.
The weekend is always busy with washing for our household, my parents-in-law who are in a home and prefer their whites to stay that colour, as well as getting things organised as I prepared to launch back into time away from home working, and of course trying to get my brain out of island time and into the study for my Learning and Behaviour university paper that was now to be my focus. By the end of the weekend I realised I should not be driving - my processing times were appalling and I was an accident waiting to happen.
Following my two days away attempting to work, and with my lovely husband driving me on his days off, it became obvious something was really wrong. I had two half days of meetings and work with students, with the other parts of the days supposed to be spent on the follow up paper work online. I struggled through the time with the students - could not get myself to write neatly by the second day, struggled to focus on the assessment answers I was being given that day and my brain was so stretched by the end of that morning that I could not work out how to choose the right-hand tap from a set of three. Actually I could not work out how to work that out...that was the moment it hit home. My brain was severely injured.
I have now spent two and a half months in this state with incrementally small movements forward. My concussion is actually now called a mild traumatic brain injury. I have problems with memory, speaking, spelling, typing, focus, and retention. I cannot do more than one thing at a time and even then struggle to complete it.
Memory - recall of words, information people are telling me and even basic things like whether I have brushed my teeth today. I was tempted to create myself a visual timetable like the ones I use with my students. As I progress and it is not just the basic hygiene things I need to remember I may well need to do this. Google Calendar and its notifications has been amazing. The only appointment I have forgotten is one that was not put in there. Part of my recovery toolbox included the need to use the three P's - Plan, Prioritise and Pace. I found myself writing lists on a daily basis then shifting things that had not been high enough on the priority list to the next day. Pacing has been my hardest thing to master. I am used to being able to go like the Energiser bunny for the day and into the night with very few brain breaks or feeding my brain caffeine in the form of Coke Zero. I am now faced with needing to take regular micro breaks where I close my eyes and use mindfulness techniques to let the brain rest. Initially it was every 5 minutes while I was on a screen which has now extended to every 10 minutes. If I did not do this there was no way I could remember what I had read for my assignment work. Pushing myself means that my memory is a Swiss cheese with more holes than cheese. I keep reassuring myself that this too shall pass and have some wonderful friends who have been in this situation reminding me I need to rest if I am to improve.
Speaking and processing what I am hearing - I have struggled at times to understand what people are meaning when they say certain things and have felt like a complete idiot more than once through misunderstanding the intention of what was said. Not great for your self confidence. Living in a household that survives on wit, puns, play on words and jokes has also been an uncomfortable place to recover - I do not always get what is meant and say things that are picked up on to be made fun of. I now completely understand how an autistic student feels when they can only understand the literal meaning of what was said - confused at why people are laughing, upset that I made a mistake, and a little less confident to say something the next time I am in a similar situation. I have found myself at times letting my husband do the talking.
The other side of that is trying to speak. I cannot always get the connection between my brain where the sentence is well formed and my ability to get that well formed sentence out of my mouth to co-operate. I find myself almost stuttering, using the wrong words between the time the sentence has been cleared for take off and when it actually launches into space, and if I am over stimulated I sound like a drunk by the end of an hour. Words are slurred and I cannot actually form the sentence fully in my brain anymore. If we are out and about that is a sure signal that it is time to leave and get some quiet time...actually that boat has sailed and I should have gone to the loo for quiet time well before that. I am slowly learning to read the body signals before they become flashing red lights with alarms going off! If I was a child in this situation in a classroom I would need never mind want to get away from the noise and the need to make my brain work. This is something teachers need to be aware of and ask about when a child asks if they can go and work somewhere else. I now know that desperate need for quiet and peace.
Spelling and typing - this was a shock for me. I have always prided myself on my spelling, something that was drummed into me as a child. Typing was also something I learned at secondary school and passed Pitmans exams in. So it was uncomfortable to be typing a response to an email and not be able to work out what was wrong with the word exersize. I knew it was wrong, that it didn't look right. In the end I actually had to put it into Google to correct it. Talking to one of the Occupational Therapists (OT) led to the understanding that the brain sees these tasks as superfluous to all the other functions that it is trying to repair connections for. As far as my typing goes I press the correctly positioned key on the opposite end of the keyboard eg a 'k' instead of an 's' or I will transpose letters inside the word - particularly at the end of the word eg 'liek' instead of 'like' or completely leave letters out as my brain has said I included them when I actually didn't. Thank heavens for the backspace button - mine will be worn out before long. This is now something I will ask a child about if they have had a bump on the head, been in some kind of traumatic event or seem to be struggling with this area when it has not been an issue in the past.
I guess it is a little like the repair on the road infrastructure in Christchurch following the earthquakes - important and heavily used routes were repaired and opened first with repairs to streets within suburbs coming later as they were further down the infrastructure list of importance. Spelling and typing will improve I am told, but it will take time. They need to join the queue for repair. Until then I am very thankful for the lovely little red lines that alert me to incorrect spelling or typos as I complete the work required for the online forums for my Massey paper.
Focus and retention - at the moment my focus length with new learning/information is somewhere between 40 and 60 minutes. My concussion OT is very quick to pick up that my eyes have gone glassy - often recognising my need for rest before I do. I have moved from needing to sleep after that length of time to needing to just close my eyes and listen to meditation music for between 15 and 30 minutes. I am struggling to retain the information gathered as I read for my paper and find myself rereading the highlighted parts several times as I put together my response to it. I have learned to get the key points of what I want to say into my doc first then go back and flesh it out. What used to take me about half a day to complete can now take up to four days due to the need for breaks, the shortened length of time I can work for anyway, the mistyping of my response leading to the need to reread and make corrections more than once, and the inability to retain the details like I used to be able to do. I am managing to complete the online forum work for my paper but that is it. The assignment work - creating and gathering artefacts showing my learning progression - will need to have an extension. I am so thankful to the wonderful Wendy who has been such a support through this.
Cognitively I sound fine for about an hour, I cannot remember things I am told - for example, some days my son will have to tell me three or four times what time he is finishing his shift at work - and I have lists everywhere. It is literally as the quote says at the top of this post sometimes I think I am coming right as I amaze myself, other times I can barely remember whether I brushed my teeth that morning. I am looking forward to the bruised brain beginning to function as sharply as it used to. I will feel a lot less frustrated.
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