I have established a new process for reading Ghost in My Brain. I keep the book by my bed and in the morning, when I wake, and am fresh, I open the book at random and read as much as I can. I am attempting to balance learning about the author’s injury with my own abilities. This process will be modified to capture the page number of the associated text. This process improvement will be incorporated at next reading.

The author, Clark Elliott, describes using all of his cognitive capacity to do one thing. His cognitive system is damaged in some way and he is able to force compensate by devoting all of his cognitive ability to undertaking the impaired cognitive function. Instead of doing many things, he can now only do one thing.

I recognize in this my involvement with document production. I have focused all of my effort on the creation of documents and letters, and complaint reports of various kinds. I did this on a more or less continuous basis up until the summer of 2014 when I abandoned these efforts as being completely hopeless. It was at this time that I began to focus on walk therapy.

Elliott’s major impairment appears to involve his vestibular system, the inner ear process that helps establish balance. I only experienced these effects in the period within the approximate first three months of the accident. I came close to falling when standing up in the kitchen. There were other occasions on which the world appeared to sway and I felt I was about to fall. My assumption at the time was that our area had experienced a temblor (The Ottawa area exhibits a high level of tectonic activity). I would search news sources for confirmation of the temblor and find nothing, and assume this was because it was a relatively minor earthquake. Since there was no major damage, it simply went unreported.

I also experienced trouble on stairs. I fell on the stairs at one point but I fell forward while I was going up the stairs. I also experienced vertigo when attempting to descend stairways (the house has two stairways). During this immediate post accident period, I became very slow on the stairs, going down one step at a time, taking all the time necessary to feel secure. I also used a mountaineering three point contact system, maintaining two points of contact while I moved the third, always remaining ready to arrest any potential fall. I think I overcompensated for the level of risk but I have a background in marine safety and ship’s ladders are a significant fall hazard. I decided to take my time and play it safe.

I still feel uncomfortable on stairways and will hesitate at the top while I assess the drop, identify the supports offered, and then go down, slowly, one hand on the banister.