In the course of attempting to perform the simple task of pulling interesting nuggets from the AL, I became sidetracked into doing a full file clean-up, moving materials from the AL into other files. This soaked up two hours. It is now getting late and I have not accomplished a key task that I wished to complete this evening.

I have left the text in the prior post in very rough form with all of the spellings as contained in the original file. The barbarian neurologist who did nothing to assist me, who told me “there is no physiatrist for you,” also complained about my spelling. In the view of the barbarian, it was impossible for me to have a brain injury as I spelled words correctly. The barbarian appears never to have heard of something called a spellchecker.

Two things stand out from the review. Perhaps three.

Pompeii Moments Review Item 1

A sense of frustration and resentment that I am stuck with the injury. Meanwhile, Dr X lives the high life on payments he accepts from the state. But he does not bother to keep himself current in his field. Why bother.
Factor 1 = Resentment.

Pompeii Moments Review Item 2

This has to do with the recognition of little of no change, the fact of my being stuck in the injury. This forced awareness of the injury comes from the constant confrontation with it, the inability to escape it. I feel as it I am a prisoner of the injury, bounded by invisible walls that I cannot surmount, or break through. Even at those times when I believe I am operating well, I will later discover the work to be riddled with manifold errors.

In the period after the injury, I had difficulty reading. When I tried to read books, I was unable to get past the first few sentences. The same was true of material read on-line. My work-around was to read the comments. These were only one, or two, sentences long, short twitter length pieces of text. I could read these short items.

Several months later, I found I was also able to read the longer comments. And, a few months after that, I found I could wade through the actual news article and make some sense of it. These past few months, I have been forcing my way through research papers. Given enough time and effort, I can make sense of some of them. But it is difficult work. I am doing the work the barbarian neurologist should have performed. I am forced to learn neuro-science because the barbarian neurologist fails to understand the complexities of his own profession. A professional is normally someone who sets high standards for his/her own performance. But not the barbarian neurologist. Why should he? The state pays him if he does good work, mediocre work, or barbaric work.

A second example comes from the blog. At the start, it was immensely difficult, It took one or two days to hammer out a post, gather the image, put the finished entity on-line. By the end of a year, I noted that the work had become easier, I was more comfortable with the effort of writing, was able to complete posts within hours, rather than within days.

In both these examples, I noted the presence of change, of improvement. I have been working hard at TAQ submissions for over a year now. They are not getting any easier. I am growing more resentful of the demands they make. I recoil from the way they expose the fact of the injury and my inability to demonstrate competence.
Factor 2 = Lack of progress

Pompeii Moments Review Item 3

This has to do with the Pompeii Moments, the fact of my shuffling through the house and finding evidence of the person that I used to be. As I am riffing through his clothes, and his artifacts, I find little clues to the sort of person he once was. I find other elements that I cannot fathom at all. There is a sense of sneaking around in another person`s life. It reminds me of accident investigation when we stepped through the scene in the attempt to puzzle out exactly what had occurred, the chain of events that lead to injury, or fatality.

I also experience considerable sadness. My hunch is that this is some product of this awareness of meeting a dead man, and the recognition that the dead man will never fully return to the land of the living. The dead man is me. The life I find strange to encounter is the life lived before the injury.
Factor 3 = Death of the self