Steph added a session for tomorrow morning so we don't have an 11-day gap between sessions. This will be my 14th medical-based appointment since Thanksgiving. I'm not sure if I've been to that many medical appointments in the rest of the decade combined - but that's neither here nor there.
I had my first pudding incident in weeks yesterday at my family's Christmas gathering at Mom's. It's a small place which hosted 17 people, all excited and talking and enjoying each other's company at the same time. I went about four hours as a normal person, but hit the wall around 5pm. I'm still woogy this morning.
Yesterday was the last major gathering of the major gathering season, thankfully. Don't get me wrong - I enjoy spending time with family and friends, but in my current state I'm better off taking everybody in smaller chunks. New Years' Eve will max out at eight people, then normalcy returns with small groupings peppering the workaday office-to-home daily grind. On the PCS front, I look forward to the relative simplicity of life being mostly Sally, the cats and me.
30 December 2007
23 December 2007
Progress Continues
Steph says I'm doing really well with the eye exercises. I have also been given clearance to start doing work-out-type exercises again, which makes me very happy. I'm starting small, but eventually I'll get back to the cross-overs and push-ups that had me running like a machine before.
The eye execrcises are getting more dizzifying, but I'm doing them anyway. Steph has confirmed that the sets I'm on now would make most normal people dizzy, so that makes me feel much less feeble.
I have a few days "off" now (meaning I don't have to drive to Medina to work... just Cleveland, Austintown, and Beachwood for holiday things), but Wednesday I'm back in therapy. January, I'll only be in therapy on Tuesdays - after that, who knows. Maybe I'll be normal again.
The eye execrcises are getting more dizzifying, but I'm doing them anyway. Steph has confirmed that the sets I'm on now would make most normal people dizzy, so that makes me feel much less feeble.
I have a few days "off" now (meaning I don't have to drive to Medina to work... just Cleveland, Austintown, and Beachwood for holiday things), but Wednesday I'm back in therapy. January, I'll only be in therapy on Tuesdays - after that, who knows. Maybe I'll be normal again.
14 December 2007
Therapy Gets Physical
I don't know if I've mentioned this (and I'm too lazy to look it up), but my PT with Tina and Steph is held at the Akron General Health and Wellness Center in Montrose which is largely a workout gym with doctor's office space and a Subway. Still, it's pretty kick-ass.
My last couple sessions with Steph have been held in the main workout area, since she was working with me and other patients in physical rehab simultaneously. My execrises are all eye-coordination based, so I'm standing facing the wall looking to the average observer like I'm doing nothing with a background of every concievable piece of workout equipment being operated by everybody from overachieving mall-walkers to mini-Scwarzenegger iPod-sporting walking muscles.
Between sets of eyeball exercises, I look longingly at all the wonderful exercise equipment. I miss working out even more than I thought I would, and seeing all these people freely exercising on world-class machinery makes me nearly drool with envy. While those sweaty-but-lucky stiffs work their obliques on equipment ergonomically and physiologically engineered to maximize muscular performance through resistance training and energy retention, I'm batting a lavender balloon back and forth with Steph (No shit - it was a test of my reaction time and reflexes. At least that's what Steph told me... either that or she's one of the shittiest balloon-batters on record - I actually kicked a few of them into play like a valiumed-up soccer ball they were so far out of reach!)
There's the balloon-batting exercise and the soccer-ball-swinging exercise where I hold the ball with both hands outstretched and focus my eyes on the logo while swinging it up and down, then sideways. The point of that exercise was to reacclimate me to the peripheral vision-blur of rapid panoramic motion, but I kind of cheated and turned into a bit of an oblique exercise by turning much farther than required. Sure, the blur nearly made me puke, but I snuck in an ab exercise under the radar. Tee hee.
After those highly useful yet decidedly unstudly exercises, Steph said that she noticed I was hunching my shoulders forward even while exercising (a common unconscious defensive reaction following a severe head-bonking). She then said the words I never thought I was going to hear again... "I'm going to set you up on one of these machines over here to work out your shoulders so they'll relax."
A physical therapist telling me to engage in physical exercise... with a cool machine and everything! It was just five minutes at a low setting on a handbike, but for the first time in four friggin' months, I felt like I was actually honest-to-Pete recovering all the way to the core of my being.
Of course as I type now after my fifth straight full workday in December as an accountant whose office went sans-receptionist this week (Jenna caught the infamous Thing Going 'Round), the inside of my skull feels like a used pipecleaner and my vision is so blurry I'd give Lindsay Lohan the keys... but dammit - I FEEL like I'm recovering!
My last couple sessions with Steph have been held in the main workout area, since she was working with me and other patients in physical rehab simultaneously. My execrises are all eye-coordination based, so I'm standing facing the wall looking to the average observer like I'm doing nothing with a background of every concievable piece of workout equipment being operated by everybody from overachieving mall-walkers to mini-Scwarzenegger iPod-sporting walking muscles.
Between sets of eyeball exercises, I look longingly at all the wonderful exercise equipment. I miss working out even more than I thought I would, and seeing all these people freely exercising on world-class machinery makes me nearly drool with envy. While those sweaty-but-lucky stiffs work their obliques on equipment ergonomically and physiologically engineered to maximize muscular performance through resistance training and energy retention, I'm batting a lavender balloon back and forth with Steph (No shit - it was a test of my reaction time and reflexes. At least that's what Steph told me... either that or she's one of the shittiest balloon-batters on record - I actually kicked a few of them into play like a valiumed-up soccer ball they were so far out of reach!)
There's the balloon-batting exercise and the soccer-ball-swinging exercise where I hold the ball with both hands outstretched and focus my eyes on the logo while swinging it up and down, then sideways. The point of that exercise was to reacclimate me to the peripheral vision-blur of rapid panoramic motion, but I kind of cheated and turned into a bit of an oblique exercise by turning much farther than required. Sure, the blur nearly made me puke, but I snuck in an ab exercise under the radar. Tee hee.
After those highly useful yet decidedly unstudly exercises, Steph said that she noticed I was hunching my shoulders forward even while exercising (a common unconscious defensive reaction following a severe head-bonking). She then said the words I never thought I was going to hear again... "I'm going to set you up on one of these machines over here to work out your shoulders so they'll relax."
A physical therapist telling me to engage in physical exercise... with a cool machine and everything! It was just five minutes at a low setting on a handbike, but for the first time in four friggin' months, I felt like I was actually honest-to-Pete recovering all the way to the core of my being.
Of course as I type now after my fifth straight full workday in December as an accountant whose office went sans-receptionist this week (Jenna caught the infamous Thing Going 'Round), the inside of my skull feels like a used pipecleaner and my vision is so blurry I'd give Lindsay Lohan the keys... but dammit - I FEEL like I'm recovering!
12 December 2007
6 December 2007 - Steph the Head Shaker and Vestibular Evaluation
I have to admit I was leery about "alignment" of "crystals", but I'm in no condition to deny myself any potential avenue of treatment, no matter how New-Agey it sounds. Turns out that within five minutes of evaluation with Steph, she had me diagnosed with something very sciencey-sounding.
When I bonked my head, something happenned with the relationship between my brain and my eyes. My eyes are acting like an eight-year-old in the candy section of the grocery store screaming "I WANT THAT!" at every visual stimulus within my panoramic view, and my brain is his Prozaced-up exhausted working mother saying "OK, Dear..." and shrugsmirking to her agitated fellow shoppers.
The eyes are taking in so much stimulus that the brain (which ain't exactly at top performance anyway) is even more overwhelmed, leading to dizziness, headaches, confusion and further exhaustion. Makes sense to me, but I'd never have thought of that. I guess that's why they have physical therapists.
I have a slew of follow-up appointments for the rest of 2007 (of which the first is tonight) and eyeball-discipline-training exercises to do every day. Over the weekend, I felt real change with the exercises, but the workweek has been so over-the-top nuts that I can't honestly claim noticing any long-term cumulative effects. We'll see tonight at 6.
When I bonked my head, something happenned with the relationship between my brain and my eyes. My eyes are acting like an eight-year-old in the candy section of the grocery store screaming "I WANT THAT!" at every visual stimulus within my panoramic view, and my brain is his Prozaced-up exhausted working mother saying "OK, Dear..." and shrugsmirking to her agitated fellow shoppers.
The eyes are taking in so much stimulus that the brain (which ain't exactly at top performance anyway) is even more overwhelmed, leading to dizziness, headaches, confusion and further exhaustion. Makes sense to me, but I'd never have thought of that. I guess that's why they have physical therapists.
I have a slew of follow-up appointments for the rest of 2007 (of which the first is tonight) and eyeball-discipline-training exercises to do every day. Over the weekend, I felt real change with the exercises, but the workweek has been so over-the-top nuts that I can't honestly claim noticing any long-term cumulative effects. We'll see tonight at 6.
03 December 2007
3 December 2007 - Tina, Results of the ImPACT Test and Memory/Speech Therapy
Even my good news sucks.
Results of the ImPACT test weren't particularly surprising or telling... my short-term recall is less than the average person's especially when wordless pictures are involved, and my reaction time is a little below average. The bad/good news came during the therapy session.
Tina asked me all kinds of easy questions like name different animals, drinks, words that start with the letter "d", so on and so on. Some I did well, some not so much. Then she gave the The Ultimate Test. She wrote twelve words on a sheet of paper, gave me three minutes to study them, then I had to write them down on a separate piece of paper straight from memory.
I immediately started grouping words together using silly mental pictures as a memory tool. I think the first three words were "Turtle" Hand" and "shovel", so in my mind, Cecil Turtle was playing in the sandbox with a hand shovel. I did a bunch of those, then when my three minutes were up, wrote all twelve words down in order.
Tina was stunned, and she said I'm functioning on too high a level for her to help. She's a toolmaster - she comes up with devices to help with memory like the goofy picture thing. I listed all the techniques I was using during our tests, and she basically said I already knew everything she could teach me.
Tools aren't my problem - I've got the tools. It's just getting into the woodshed is more of a chore than it needs to be. At least Tina was honest and didn't try to milk me for a few more sessions.
Thursday morning will be Steph the Head Shaker. If she can fix my equilibrium, I'll be more than half way home.
Results of the ImPACT test weren't particularly surprising or telling... my short-term recall is less than the average person's especially when wordless pictures are involved, and my reaction time is a little below average. The bad/good news came during the therapy session.
Tina asked me all kinds of easy questions like name different animals, drinks, words that start with the letter "d", so on and so on. Some I did well, some not so much. Then she gave the The Ultimate Test. She wrote twelve words on a sheet of paper, gave me three minutes to study them, then I had to write them down on a separate piece of paper straight from memory.
I immediately started grouping words together using silly mental pictures as a memory tool. I think the first three words were "Turtle" Hand" and "shovel", so in my mind, Cecil Turtle was playing in the sandbox with a hand shovel. I did a bunch of those, then when my three minutes were up, wrote all twelve words down in order.
Tina was stunned, and she said I'm functioning on too high a level for her to help. She's a toolmaster - she comes up with devices to help with memory like the goofy picture thing. I listed all the techniques I was using during our tests, and she basically said I already knew everything she could teach me.
Tools aren't my problem - I've got the tools. It's just getting into the woodshed is more of a chore than it needs to be. At least Tina was honest and didn't try to milk me for a few more sessions.
Thursday morning will be Steph the Head Shaker. If she can fix my equilibrium, I'll be more than half way home.
02 December 2007
28 November 2007 - Tina, Speech and Memory Therapy Person and the ImPACT Test
Dr. Sanchez set me up to take this thing called an ImPACT test. Beats the hell out of me what the capital letters mean, but that's what the thing was called. At 5pm Tuesday, I went into Tina's office and sat through a battery of the same questions I have been asked and answered at least fifteen times since this all started. Normally, that would grind me, since redundancy is a raging pet peeve of mine, but since (a) different people are doing it, (b) each one has a different specialty and will pick up on something new in each of my answers and (c) my memory so entirely sucks that I can barely recall doing this before, I gladly comply.
As I was describing my dizziness, a lightbulb went on over Tina's head. She said that I was describing sensations which are spot-on something that her colleague Stephanie works with - Vestibular Alignment. Beats the poo out of me what that means too, but Tina described it as putting some equilibrium crystals in my skull back where they belong after they got knocked out of place by the pipe incident. That sounds rather new-agey, but Akron General sponsors it and Anthem covers it - and at this point if a doctor told me sacrificing a chicken to Guluundu at dawn would work (and Anthem covered it), my alarm is set and knives are sharpened.
Then we did the ImPACT Test. It is a battery of little computerized mental exercises that evaluates short-term memory, reaction time, and brain-hand-eye coordination. One of the tests was as simple as "Hit the Q key when you see a red circle and the P key when you see a blue square." Some were more brain screwing-withing such as "Click the mouse when the color of the word and the word itself match" then they slap you with the word "GREEN" written in blue, the word "BLUE" written in red, and so on. I felt my brain sweating by the time I was done with that thing.
Some of the feedback was instant, some is to be evaluated by Dr. Sanchez and Tina to give them and idea of just how messed up I am so they know when and how to proceed. I'll probably find out more tomorrow morning when I meet Tina for my Speech / Memory Therapy session.
As I was describing my dizziness, a lightbulb went on over Tina's head. She said that I was describing sensations which are spot-on something that her colleague Stephanie works with - Vestibular Alignment. Beats the poo out of me what that means too, but Tina described it as putting some equilibrium crystals in my skull back where they belong after they got knocked out of place by the pipe incident. That sounds rather new-agey, but Akron General sponsors it and Anthem covers it - and at this point if a doctor told me sacrificing a chicken to Guluundu at dawn would work (and Anthem covered it), my alarm is set and knives are sharpened.
Then we did the ImPACT Test. It is a battery of little computerized mental exercises that evaluates short-term memory, reaction time, and brain-hand-eye coordination. One of the tests was as simple as "Hit the Q key when you see a red circle and the P key when you see a blue square." Some were more brain screwing-withing such as "Click the mouse when the color of the word and the word itself match" then they slap you with the word "GREEN" written in blue, the word "BLUE" written in red, and so on. I felt my brain sweating by the time I was done with that thing.
Some of the feedback was instant, some is to be evaluated by Dr. Sanchez and Tina to give them and idea of just how messed up I am so they know when and how to proceed. I'll probably find out more tomorrow morning when I meet Tina for my Speech / Memory Therapy session.
01 December 2007
27 Nov 2007 - Dr. Sanchez, Concussion Doctor
For the first time in this three-month-plus ordeal, I found someone in the medical industry who actually gave me a course of action with respect to addressing the source of my troubles. Dr. Sanchez works mainly with athletes to get them back to playing shape as quickly and safely as possible after concussions. His therapy is exercise-based - very similar to the one that Sally discovered online from the University of Buffalo.
Unfortunately, Dr. Sanchez said we can't work on the therapy until I'm done showing symptoms of the concussion - mainly the dizziness and headaches. However, he did outline a plan of attack. First thing I needed to do was take this thing called an ImPACT test, a computerized test of hand-eye-brain coordination, to get a baseline. Periodically, I'll retest and see how far along I've come. Once I hit a particular level (I don't know what that is) and the dizziness goes away, I can start exercising again.
Once I get to execrise, I may begin to feel useful again. At this point of the ordeal, by far the worst symptom of my Post Concussive Syndrome is having to watch my beloved wife Sally try to keep up with everything - job, housework, yardwork, James-and-Jon maintenance, groceries, and now Holiday crap - while I sit around uselessly. It's not unlike prison, really, except the food is better and my butthole is safe. Every extra day I have to sit like this raises the bar on The Worst Day Of My Life. Pretty wicked downward spiral, this.
Consequently, every day sooner I can get over this stage of PCS is one day closer to my contributing to a positive quality of life in this house. I'm no big flag-waver for Hope, when Hope is all I have to make myself worth a lukewarm damn, I need to remember to get on the bandwagon.
Unfortunately, Dr. Sanchez said we can't work on the therapy until I'm done showing symptoms of the concussion - mainly the dizziness and headaches. However, he did outline a plan of attack. First thing I needed to do was take this thing called an ImPACT test, a computerized test of hand-eye-brain coordination, to get a baseline. Periodically, I'll retest and see how far along I've come. Once I hit a particular level (I don't know what that is) and the dizziness goes away, I can start exercising again.
Once I get to execrise, I may begin to feel useful again. At this point of the ordeal, by far the worst symptom of my Post Concussive Syndrome is having to watch my beloved wife Sally try to keep up with everything - job, housework, yardwork, James-and-Jon maintenance, groceries, and now Holiday crap - while I sit around uselessly. It's not unlike prison, really, except the food is better and my butthole is safe. Every extra day I have to sit like this raises the bar on The Worst Day Of My Life. Pretty wicked downward spiral, this.
Consequently, every day sooner I can get over this stage of PCS is one day closer to my contributing to a positive quality of life in this house. I'm no big flag-waver for Hope, when Hope is all I have to make myself worth a lukewarm damn, I need to remember to get on the bandwagon.
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