It has been almost a month since my last post. This makes creating posts difficult. I have a month’s worth of notes in my accident log and lack the time to sift through them and properly develop them into posts.

I walked 150 miles in May and am on track to do 150, or more, in June. I do not get the same sense of benefit from walking as I did when starting up. At present I can log a 10 mile day and experience no problems with the effort.

As an element of the TAQ proceedings I have been reviewing and correcting some of my prior submissions. I am embarrassed to say that I found many errors. These errors were introduced despite my making every effort to double check all of my data and calculations.

I was also able to drive the analysis forward. The table below is an excerpt from one of the updated exhibits.

I realized after I completed this work that the major part of my injury would have been associated with the rear of the brain rather than the forehead area which is the area most typically injured. I found a statement in one medical paper that spoke of the rear part of the brain as having responsibility for “arousal” with arousal understood as the means by which the brain puts various cognitive elements into play.

Up to this point I had looked at my injury as something akin to backing the car out of the driveway and squashing the lawnmower. A crushed and mangled, damaged lawnmower will clearly not operate very well, if at all.

My new sense of the injury is that the lawnmower was largely unscathed. The part that was damaged was that component that brings the lawnmower to life.

When I look at the history of my injury from this perspective I have a better understanding of why it took so long for me to become aware of the injury. The damage to the arousal centers damaged my ability to generate self-awareness. Dr H described this as apathy. I do not like that word as to me it means a lack of interest. In my injury I have an in interest but I lack the ability to arose all of the cognitive components that work to create the necessary awareness.

This effect is seen in my lack of anxiety, in my inability to utilize primitive heuristics, my need to resort to logic and blunt rationality, the need for lists and task outlines, my willingness to perform highly routinized fairly menial volunteer job functions.