Breaking the 40 Hour Week Barrier

I'll start this post with something that will be fairly obvious: I love my job! Getting myself into a position where I could properly do it has been a focus for me right from the word, go (or maybe the words, severe brain injury :-) !

And by properly doing it, I do mean full time work. The problems with fatigue caused by my brain injury meant, for a long time, all I could manage was part time work: a few hours a day. After my accident, my first week back at work was only three hours long (for the entire week!). I could never enjoy doing my job part-time the same as I had doing it full-time. So my target was always a normal week's work for economic consulting: 40 hours!

It's taken awhile, but, with care and attention (using things like neuro-resting at work), I finally achieved it, three years and a bit years after my accident. It is difficult for me to communicate here how important a milestone this was for me.

I've prepared this graph to celebrate my rise of the phoenix. It sets out the billable hours worked (that is, those hours I could charge someone else for) since my accident, combined with a few important post-accident dates for me.


I think it is this graph that does the best job of setting out the progress I have made coming back since my accident. I've written one more post about it, Reasons for My Travel and Mike's World Tour. I'll also write another discussing the trends in this graph.

Cheers,
Mike

Keeping My Eye On the Ball

I've written about how, with care and attention, things can slowly come right after a TBI. I'm coming to see how the need for care and attention doesn't really change, though. I've been making good progress with my fatigue and have now managed a working week of 35 hours. Yet, I still need that care and attention. I still need to keep my eye on the ball!

I tried finishing my first week of working 35 hours with a bang! I hung around after work for Friday evening social drinks. And I did so without first neuro-resting. Bad mistake!

I got tired again ... very tired! My old nemesis, long term fatigue, started setting in. That's where where my fatigue builds up and up so that it takes days for my energy levels to recover. Fortunately, I retained enough sense to call it a night about 8pm. I went home and basically collapsed into bed, quickly aware of my mistake. That rapid retreat saved me from bad long term fatigue, but my energy levels were certainly not a 100% during the rest of the weekend.

Yes, my fatigue is a lot better than it was early on, but, no, that I still need to be careful. I still need to wonder if what I'm doing is much outside my new, post-TBI constraints. I still need to keep my eye on the ball!

Cheers,
Mike

The Slow Walk to Freedom

It's been a little over three years since my accident: three years of not driving; of hanging around, waiting for late buses; of always leaving time to walk to reach a place. Finally, earlier this week, I had my first post-accident, independent drive!



My return to driving was much delayed by the eye problem I mentioned in this post. I could have restarted driving despite that problem if I'd been willing to wear an eye patch. Given the way I think my brain works when I drive, unfortunately I felt that too dangerous for me to contemplate. I do not know how I would live with myself if, by taking unnecessary risk, I caused an accident like my own to someone else. Safety is paramount!

So, instead of driving while wearing an eye patch, I waited three years for operations to correct my eye problem. Two years is regularly taken to see if the problem might improve without surgery. In my case, it didn't, but surgery was further delayed by an extended period of travel (which I'll write another post about soon). I'll also add that my search for the right surgeon led me to write this post, I'm the Boss!

Fortunately, that search proved successful. The results of my first operation meant no further ops were needed. I'd been expecting to need two, three or even four operations to solve my problem well and I was hardly assured of a good outcome. I was absolutely amazed to have such an outcome after only one operation!

An additional bonus of needing to wait to sort out my eye problem was that I wasn't trying to drive while still learning to cope with a significant amount of fatigue.

I write this post not to crow about driving again; more to talk about how, with care and patience, abilities and the freedom they allow will often slowly return.

Cheers,
Mike

Neuro-Resting at Work

When I described The Neuro-Rest, I talked about how I can take one almost anywhere. One of the most useful places to use it is somewhere you wouldn't normally expect rest to happen - the work place.

My fatigue is mainly a mental thing. I can only concentrate for so long and then things start to go down hill. In the post, The Fatigue Bank Account, I described how I have to make sure I keep my rest up during the day. The extra concentration required at work means I need to be extra careful to stay on top of my fatigue.

A convenient way of doing so is neuro-resting at work. When I feel I'm getting tired, I just find somewhere around with no distractions, say a spare office or somewhere. I don't even have to be lying down; just somewhere with no noise I might focus on.

Given how much I enjoy my work, I think my recovering would be much more difficult if I hadn't realised I could neuro-rest at my work place.

Cheers,
Mike

The Fatigue Bank Account

My Mum recently reminded me of this analogy, which does a good job of describing fatigue. It involves money so it's particularly appealing to the economist in me. :-)

Fatigue is like a bank account. To make withdrawals from it (do stuff requiring concentration), I need either a positive bank balance or a credit rating to borrow. A positive balance comes from resting. I have a particularly good bank balance in the morning after a restful sleep and I can increase my balance during the day by neuro-resting.

Early on after my TBI, I had no credit rating at all. So there was no way I could borrow and make withdrawals without first having a positive bank balance. I couldn't have a tiring day and expect to get away with only a good night's sleep that night. Instead, I'd continue to feel tired for days afterwards. Nor could I have a shortened sleep one night and expect to operate properly the next day. I was almost completely reliant on having a good bank balance.

Slowly, my credit rating improved and I could get away with doing more without resting adequately first. That has been a long process and three years on, I still think I'm 'sub-prime' or, if you want to get more technical, at least non-investment grade. Slowly, though, I'm getting back up there.

Cheers,
Mike

Know Your Enemy

You didn't think my combative language had gone away, did you? :-)

I've written about the size of the problem fatigue was for me, especially early on. Like all the effects of my TBI, fatigue is one of my enemies, to be struggled against and, in the end, to be beaten. You can better do those two if you better (as the saying goes) know your enemy! In this post, I'll write a little more about my fatigue and show you better how seriously I took it.

This website sets out the various forms of TBI fatigue. Of them, I suffered solely from mental fatigue, which the website says affects 70% of TBI recoverees. My mental fatigue is basically like I get drunk. I start slurring more words, my balance and coordination get poorer, my decision-making skills suffer. Unlike feeling intoxicated, however, there isn't anything positive about mental fatigue. It's not a good feeling and I've become very conscious about the danger I am to myself when I'm fatigued. I quickly learnt that the only way to 'sober up' was to neuro-rest.

Early on, when becoming fatigued could do the most damage to my recovery, I could barely manage an hour of concentration on anything at all without neuro-resting. The amount I could do slowly, but steadily increased. Still, any activity that required more serious concentration, such as working (in my job as an economist) or even just writing an email on the computer, would tire me a lot faster.

One of the biggest risks with becoming fatigued is that it can build up and up. Becoming really fatigued one day may mean I feel tired for days and days afterwards. The way I found that out is one of Mike's Regrets.

Each day fatigue gets a little better, though, and my fatigue slowly changed. I eventually found that I could neuro-rest by simply changing activities to one requiring less concentration. I am now three years on from my accident and, while much less of an issue, my fatigue is still there. My fatigue has been a big enemy to take on, but taking it on is what I have been doing and will continue to do.

Cheers,
Mike

The Neuro-Rest

I wrote here about the problem that fatigue was for me. In many ways, it was like a big monster. But, when big monsters come a'calling, it's time to bring out the big guns to hunt them with! And, luckily, I thought of one big gun during my recovery - the neuro-rest!

It sounds a little complicated, but it's actually very simple. Neuro-resting is simply when I shut my eyes and try to stop thinking about stuff. So, no talking, no listening, no interaction with anything in my environment! Basically, I do my best to fall asleep. Sometimes, I'm successful in doing so and that's great. But it doesn't matter if I can't. My brain neurons still seem to get rested!

The reason such a simple thing is still a 'big gun' is that neuro-rests can be done anywhere. All that's needed is for me to be able to fall asleep. So I can do it sitting up in a room pretty much anywhere. For instance, I can do it while travelling in a car or plane. I can even do it where there's background noise as long as I'm not listening to it.

The other good thing about the phrase, neuro-rest, is that it's a normal-sounding name for a rather unusual activity. So, if a family member or friend sees me awake, but just sitting there with my eyes shut, they can say, oh, he's just neuro-resting. And they don't feel like they should come over and talk to me.

So welcome to what armed me the best to cope with my recovery - my big gun, the neuro-rest.

Cheers,
Mike

Everyday It Gets Easier!

Sometime in to my recovery, I was lucky to hear the wise words of a nice man, himself a stroke victim. He told me something that helped me a lot with managing fatigue. He said, the thing with most brain-injury fatigue is that every day it gets a little bit easier. Every day you get a little bit stronger and last a little bit longer.

Remembering that did keep me going. For me, fatigue was such a long battle. But it felt good to think everyday, I was getting a bit stronger. And everyday, I was winning my battle a bit more!

Cheers,
Mike

The F Word!

The biggest thing for me in my recovery was fatigue! That was partly because it was unlike anything I'd come across before - prior to my accident, having a nap or some quiet time every so often was just not the way I did things. And it was also because, particularly early on, it had a tremendous impact on my day-to-day life - early on in my recovery, I wasn't able to sustain more than one hour's concentration basically on anything at all.

And there was simply no way of avoiding fatigue - I had to learn to deal with it! If I ever let fatigue build up, it would get a massive amount worse on me. So bad that I could barely do anything except stay in bed at home for days at a time!

Fatigue is one of the topics that I most want to write about on this blog. I want to write about the things I did that went badly and lead me to spend days at home. And I want to write about the things that went well for me and made me feel like my fatigue was nothing at all. I continue to look forward to telling you more on here.

Cheers,
Mike