One Woman on the Edge of a Life Less Ordinary - the ramblings

[pixie2308]

Yes; I am the heatlh and safety advisor who fell off a step ladder and landed on her head in the garden.... life has never been the same since that day.

Going into hospital I was asked the usual questions ... who is president? who cares my reply! same sort of response to all questions ... like I could remember anything much! Ask me one on sport I said .... what is LBW asked the New Zealand doctor... 'ah' said I ....'the trajectory of the ball leaving he bowler whereby if the batsman were not there the ball would remove the bales off the stumps and it would be OUT'. Oh good grief was his response ... this is serious we have a woman that understands cricket! .... and that was my last conscious thought. He did not know I had been scoring cricket matches for years but had no interest in politics or time lines.

Three years on and I no longer work and my mind is like a filing cabinet where someone has thrown it all round the room and taken the index cards .... I know the information is in there but it cannot control how it comes out or when!

Ask me a question today and I will forget it but will give you an answer in about 10days time! This is a good game as my friends and family try to work out who asked what question and what is the answer referring to and when. The classic answer 'crimplene' whilst going down the M5.

I can no longer get upset for long and smile a lot .... it is strange how much you miss crying and tears.

Annoyed and angry with life ... yes! i survived breast cancer and was looking forward to a life without that crap and hospitals all the time and I went and did this!

Lucky??? well yes the brain injury and my inability to answer questions made them do further tests and they found I had broken my C6 vertibrae two years earlier and it was getting worse so they have now fixed that.

So in short I am the health and safety officer who fell off the step ladder, and bounced on her brain.... but I know now that I have my head screwed on in the right direction as I have two spacers and an internal cage fusing my C5, C6 and C7 together.

I have learned how to speak again without stammering too much and to read and knit again. Books are a challenge as I put them down and forget it.

Cooking can be exciting as I forget I have put the cooker on! but that is another day ...

More ramblings from a Woman on the Edge of a less Ordinary Life will follow ....

[wirralt]

keep rambling if it makes you feel better i do ! x

[pixie2308 in reply to wirralt]

thank you; it helps knowing I am not alone in this funny little world xx

[mp3mills]

My husband's brain injury means he has a short term memory of less than 5 minutes on a good day. But every now and again something 'sinks in'. It seems to be totally random whether he will remember anything and therefore forgets that he has a brain injury...

I will be reading your posts with interest as you have already made me laugh with your random answer of crimplene. The description of your mind as a filing cabinet describes his memory pretty well too. We have been told that things go in but he just doesn't know where to look to find them again.

[supertwizzle]

I used to be a very emotional person myself ... I would cry at the drop of a hat (though why someone dropping a hat would upset me I don't know lol) but now I find it almost impossible to cry and I really miss having that release so I understand what you mean there.

[bonfire]

Hi pixie,

Keep writing please

[SAMBS]

yep I can relate to alot of what you all said - the good days when they happen now are very good and the bad are b.....y awful with too much confusion, memory, weight loss and balance issues and yep you said it pixie - the filing cabinet that jut been turned upside down and all its contents emptied out - then you have to try and re-organise it all - that's the harder part!

I can't remember now the last time I cried either, specially as I never seemed to stop initially, if someone asked how I was doing - just telling them I wasn't 'doing' made me breakdown, especially on the phone, so then they just stopped asking. Again it was the walk and talk syndrome - well if you can do that, what;s the problem then. How often do we hear that?

On a different type of forum discussion yesterday, where I've mainly had a lot of encouragement, - someone I don't know, (when I had just copied & pasted info to answer a dog question) who is a forum members wife, decided I was stressed (there wasn't anything to get stressed about) and so should s-d off! because I obviously didn't own dogs! No I don't, but.....

.....months ago that would have made me so angrey that I would almost have written a tirade of abuse back - but now I have become so philosophical about attitudes, that I just wrote a short polite reply, mainly because so many of you regular members here with your replies to posts, have made me realise that life [& s...t ] happens, so we eventually have to develop our own coping methods and Pixie, sounds like you are finding yours also, well done you. Incidentally, her husband the member, later wrote that she had just downed a bottle of Bordeaux!

So From one rambler to another :-)xx

[Danslatete]

That was a very interesting saga! I too forget the cooking and can tell what has been on the menu recently by the blackened shapes on the enamel inside to the pans, my oh went and got le cruset because they are heavy duty enough to stand my cooking style!

[pixie2308]

I have even trashed le cruset casserole dishes! .... another story!