I feel I am trapped inside a dendritic forest (the header image above should show you what this looks like. If you see a man on a bicycle then click once on the post title for the correct image).
Not only am I trapped inside a dendritic forest, I am also trapped inside my own Groundhog Day. This morning is eerily akin to yesterday. The same morning chill, the same dawn quiet, the same bright sun at the window. The chief difference is that today my body is badly beaten up. It wears all the effects of a four hour hike: sore leg muscles, blistering on the left heel, the sense of having been pummelled in a rock slide. But there are positive aspects: bedtime was at 2100, I slept through the night uninterrupted, and obtained a full nine hours of rest.
I was up before six and spent the first hour of the day attempting to asses my situation. I believe I am tip toeing around another depressive event. I am invoking all of my defensive tactics:
- I undertake long walks in an attempt to regulate mood.
- I treat myself to a rich diet in an attempt to cheer myself up.
- I engage in avoidance activities. Before the accident this would involve a retreat into reading. Since I now have comprehension problems, my avoidance activity takes the form of photography. Took more than 5 GB of images yesterday. I would normally shoot half of that, or less. The avoidance extends from image capture through to the work required in post-production. I spent four or five hours on post production yesterday.
- I attempt to discover, or create, some element of beauty as an antidote, or response, to a harsh and uncompromising world.
- I seek to intellectualize the issue of concern. I respond by trying to define and understand the trigger event, place it in some form of context, obtain a theoretic understanding, and plan a set of responses to re-mediate the situation. The first waking hour of today was spent in this activity. This blog post is an extension of it.
This morning I am oscillating wildly between a set of competing desires: 1) cook up and gorge on a fat laden breakfast of hash browns, grilled tomato, huevos rancheros with doubled sour cream and hot salsa, and thick slabs of toast dripping with butter; 2) spend the day going through my two terabyte image catalogue in search of the “perfect” image; 3) retreat into bed, pull the covers over me, and attempt to ignore the world; 4) study the problem and beat it to death. I am trying to stay focused on option 4. What makes it difficult is the last entry in my accident log from yesterday: “I am so f**ked.”
Situation Analysis – No Actual Problem
It is entirely possible I am making a mountain out of a molehill. Under this thesis my poor recall is normal for my age group; I am attaching much greater significance to these events than is warranted. In essence, I have become concerned about nothing. I am making a hypochondriac’s response to a non-event.
Despite trying to convince myself of the truth of the foregoing, I cannot bring myself to believe it. When I worked for Gargantua Computer Corp I would frequently have customers describe an unusual problem. The symptoms would trigger memory of an interaction with a past customer who had described a similar problem. I would then search my case record file, locate the prior case, and determine any similarities in equipment type, operating circumstance, and fault symptoms.
This diagnostic activity represented the application and utilization of memory data acquired in conversational interactions weeks, or months, prior to the immediate interaction. I had the clear capacity to remember conversational data after an elapsed time measured in months. I now encounter difficulty remembering conversational data from within the last 24 hours. This is a significant change from my pre-accident performance.
I retain an ability to remember details from decades ago. There was a period when images and events from my past would suddenly pop unbidden into mind. These memories had a startling clarity. [ I believe I posted on this topic previously – Brain Injury Impacts provides a recounting of the sudden emergence of a childhood memory ]. I cannot remember any such recall events within the past month. But, if my recall is so poor, how can I trust my memory of recent events? How can I trust my own perceptions?
The problem with making any reliance on my own recall is that I am an unreliable witness. I have recognized for some time that I cannot trust my own perceptions, that I must check and double check everything that I do.
It is also possible that what I experience is normal for my age group. I lack the knowledge to evaluate this fact.
There is another argument to make. This concerns the logical possibility that nothing noteworthy took place in the meeting therefore there is nothing noteworthy to remember. If a fire had broken out across the street, and the fire trucks summoned, this action would have been noteworthy and would therefore be remembered.
The counter argument to the forgoing is that there was a noteworthy event. This consisted of a bout of laughter which was remarkable for the fact that I had not experienced laughter for an extended period of time. It was precisely the fact of this noteworthy event that resulted in an impulse to record and examine it in a blog post and it was this impulse which lead to the awareness of an incomplete, or inadequate, memory.
The thesis of no actual problem therefore earns the Scottish verdict of case not proven.
Situation Analysis – Variations on Denial
I have come to understand that I spent 50 odd years of my life engaged in denial. There were physical facts that were unpleasant, or uncomfortable, so I simply denied their factual existence.
This is an interesting philosophic problem; in order to lie one must have some awareness of the truth. The subject knows a truth that he / she wishes to conceal and therefore prevaricates with the objective to mislead. This is a conscious, volitional act. In the case of denial, I was completely unaware of what I was doing. I am making a distinction here between an act of psychological denial and an act of base mendacity. I believe these to be two very different forms of behaviour.
My memory appears to be affected by aversive events. After consulting Dr L, I was able to recall in detail those tests I greatly enjoyed. These were primarily intellectual puzzles. There were other tests on which I experienced great difficulty. I cannot remember the content of these tests.
This suggests that my memory is biased in favour of the positive. I have a tendency to remember “feel good” events and to not remember negative events. I suspect this bias is basic to the psychology of our species.
The event of immediate concern was an episode of laughter. It was a positive event. If the above bias is accurate then this positive event should have been remembered. And it was remembered. But the circumstance surrounding it was not remembered. I remembered a physical activity (laughing) but not the conversational detail in which that activity was embedded. I can remember being wet; I cannot remember our discourse.
My interactions with Dr D are enjoyable. I am always very glad to see her. I have frequently gone to see her feeling down and disconsolate and come away from our meeting in a much more optimistic and positive frame of mind. I do not know how she performs that particular magic but I greatly value our interaction and her support and guidance.
Situation Analysis – Evidence for the Problem
The primary evidence comes form the fact that I saw Dr D from 1030 to 1130, remembered the laughter event on the drive home, and thought to make it the subject of a blog post. When I followed up on this intent, I discovered myself unable to perform recall of an event less than three hours after the event had taken place.
I believe this is evidence of a problem. There is considerable supporting evidence;
- Successful performance in my prior job was in part dependent on excellent recall
- My university performance was abetted by excellent recall
- My daily foibles also revolve around poor recall. I just found an entry in my Accident Log detailing how I put a pot on the stove to make soup and then went to do something else. But I never turned the stove on. When I returned expecting to find bubbling water, I found a stone cold pot instead. I have no memory of this event other than the note entered at the time of occurrence.
In the post Blogging & Avoidance I describe a letter that was delayed in mailing. In actual fact this letter had been in preparation for several months. I forgot about it and failed to attend to it.
In the post A Litany of Forgetting I describe several other incidents of poor memory. I had forgotten about these events until I reread the post.
In the post Self Portrait at 100 I again describe an incident of forgetting. I also describe an outreach incident where there was a delay of over two months when I thought the interval was only two weeks.
In the post Blog Hiatus I describe a two month break in blogging. What is not mentioned in the post is the fact I thought the break in blogging was closer to two weeks instead of an entire two months.
The upshot of this blog review was that I went to bed and sought sleep in an attempt to blot all these events out. This attempt at avoidance didn’t work. These issues continued to churn in my mind as I sought to gain perspective on the problem. After an hour, I came back downstairs and continued working on this post.
When I was assaulted on the 20th of February, the person who punched me was less than two feet from me. I was looking directly at him. Yet I was unable to recall an image of his face despite looking directly at him. When I had communications in regard to classmates from Hudson High, I was unable to recall their faces. I was able to remember places, and activities, and clothing ( A boy named Malcolm always wore distinctive tartans ), but I was unable to remember their faces. I do not know if this is the same thing. I do know that I am unable to recall the details of my last meeting with Dr H. I know I filed a complaint with Dr H2 which he rebutted by providing clinical notes showing details of a conversation we had had, the details which I had been unable to remember. I was extremely embarrassed by this error on my part.
In the post Brain Centers and How They Work I captured a number of items that may have bearing on the memory problem.
” . . . even survivors who have a great deal of difficulty remembering new information generally have no problem remembering all of their skills.”
This may explain why I was able to perform so well on Dr L’s logic games and puzzles. Philosophical investigations, logic, and intellectual puzzles, have been a major part of my life since childhood. This activity was initiated as a compensatory mechanism in response to childhood trauma but has proved very valuable as a general life skill.
My first experience of photography dates back to when I was eight. While I lack experience of writing, I have been a heavy reader since kindergarten. I started cooking at an early age in an attempt to surprise my parents ( boy, did I ever succeed in that! ). All of these activities: analysis, the written word, cooking, and photography constitute deeply embedded personal routines. These four activities comprise 90% of my activity. In the year and a half prior to the accident I had taken up water colours. But I have done nothing with this since the accident. I have done nothing with any of my artistic materials; art was a comparatively recent addition to my behavioural repertoire. In the months after the accident I found myself photographing the same images on different days. My photography had a sort of robotic quality to it; I continued to perform photography in a kind of mindless way..
“Accessing stored knowledge also involves a robust network that is rarely destroyed by TBI. For this reason survivors who cannot remember what they did yesterday have no difficulty remembering what they did on their first date, or their first prom night, or their first job, even if it was many years ago.”
This explains why I can remember events from childhood, or from ten or twenty years ago, while at the same time being unable to remember recent events.
I have also realized just why I am so unsettled by this evidence of memory problems. In all prior instances of poor recall there was a physical object involved. I lost the car, or lost my keys, or forgot an object, or missed performing some action. All of these involved outcomes with tangible, physical results. If cannot find your car, you know you have a problem.
In response to these failed outcomes I invoked a wide variety of compensatory mechanisms, each of which seeks to address and remedy a memory problem. I park the car in the same place so that I know where to look. I carry the camera and photograph the parking spot as an aide to remembering where the car was left. I maintain a series of checklists to ensure I always turn off the stove, remember what articles to bring with me, what tasks I must complete on a trip to Montréal, etc, etc.
But, in this latest instance of forgetting, there is no physical evidence associated with the memory failure. I remained blissfully unaware of the deficit until I attempted a blog post and then found myself unable to remember the circumstance that gave rise to the topic.
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Update
In the Situation Analysis – No Actual Problem segment, I contrast my present recall ability with my recall ability when I was employed prior to the accident. I believe I had excellent recall prior to the accident and only experienced a recall deficit subsequent to the injury.
I note as well that this recall deficit was one of the three key factors that triggered my first awareness of something being wrong with me. In the spring of 2012, I volunteered to perform telephone out-call work in the hope of landing a job. I was surprised to experience great difficulty performing work which was much less complex than the work performed during my IT employment.
It remains my belief that if I had not suffered job loss immediately subsequent to the accident event that I would have quickly noted the effects of my injury through decreased work performance. Even if I did not notice this performance decrement, the QA personnel and my supervisors would have noted it and brought it to my attention. This would have led to my seeking medical attention and treatment.