Embarrassing stuff following a TBI: Google it!

(Please forgive the delay, but it's been a long while since I last posted.  I've been thinking about this post for some time, but haven't focused sufficiently to pull it together until now.  I regret that I've rather been distracted by a frustrating job search following my successful completion of my Masters thesis earlier this year.)

The brain seamlessly controls many, many things.  When we damage it, weird things can start to happen.  And we might not be comfortable talking about some of them.  They may in fact be down right embarrassing!  All is not lost, though.  There is one source of information that won't ask any questions about why you're researching stuff: Google!

Two embarrassing things have arisen during my recovery.  One of them I'm happy to talk about, but the other rates barely a mention.  That's because I remain too embarrassed to discuss it in such a public way.  (I'll leave you to guess from the first how I dealt/am dealing with the second!)  The first is that I (still!) have problems recognising people's faces and the second, that I have occasionally had problems with bladder control.

I am by nature a social person: being around friends and family matters hugely to me.  I find it very natural to be friendly with everyone, it feels energising to me.  I have absolutely no wish to be seen as unfriendly towards people.  Yet, an important part of being friendly is recognising people when you see them again.  If I've only met someone once or twice, though, this is the part I battle with: no matter how involved the conversation was, if I've only met someone the once, it's reasonably likely that I'll completely fail to remember who they are when I see them again.  (This issue is much more than just forgetting people's names, which I wrote a bit about here!)

For some, this might not be a major issue, but for me it definitely is.  Yet, how can I explain it to someone?  Even if I was comfortable with doing so, there would be only a very small number of specialists familiar with it in a small country like New Zealand.  I imagine many neurologists or brain injury specialists would look at it and say, show me a real problem.  To me, though, this is a real problem!

Google's not going to be worried about the seriousness of my problem.  If I input the keywords, brain problem recognising people, if faithfully reveals that I in fact have a condition called prosopagnosia.  Further searching reveals sites such as this one that say there is no formal treatment for the condition.  Sounds to me like an invitation for me to be determined to recover and think hard about how I might work around it.  When I meet someone, can I try remembering their hair colour and the facial features so I can remember them if I meet them again out of context?  With careful thought and a bit of research, surely it's up to me to work out how to recover!

Cheers,

Mike

TBI Recovery and a Higher Power

Recently, I’ve had many chats with a close friend recovering from a compulsive disorder.  While I won’t claim to understand everything he talks about, I am more than happy to chat through things with him and hope that my thoughts are in some way helpful.  Among the things I myself take from all our discussions are the parallels between recovery from his disorder and TBI recovery.

A major part of recovery for my friend is accepting a higher power can help us recover, but also learning to give up control to that power.  (Recovering alcoholics may know these as Steps Two and Three of the Twelve Steps of Alcoholics Anonymous.)  This may seem difficult to believe, but recoverers from compulsive disorders experience more control over their compulsions by wilfully giving up on having control!  That idea’s not a simple one –I think it took me some proper thinking to even start to get it – but please bear with me while I talk through what I think it shows for TBI recovery.

With this idea in mind, I thought through my TBI recovery and realised I’d touched on it in my post, Having Faith I Will Figure It Out.  In the post, I describe how I keep myself going by having faith that, sooner or later, I’ll work out a way of solving, or at least of significantly reducing, any problem I run into.  Sometimes I think me working it out comes from getting a sign – in the post, Listening to Your Body: Sweating and Cravings for Salt, I wrote about how I (eventually) realised one sign: my body was showing it was lacking salt by giving me cravings for salty foods.  Maybe my giving it up to a higher power is accepting that, whatever issue comes along, I’ll be given a sign about how best to deal with it.

On the question of fatalism versus freewill, I fall very much on the side of free-will: while I believe a greater power might give me a sign as to the right way, I believe it is entirely up to me to follow it.  Please let me know if you agree or have any thoughts about my attempting to reconcile fatalism and freewill for TBI recovery.

Furthermore, this is not a simple subject: like I said, I still think I’m figuring it out.  I also think it’s critical to the daily decisions we make in our recoveries.  Please feel free to comment on here if you any further questions on it.  If you’re wondering about something, no doubt others are, too.

Cheers,

Mike

Another Update on Mike's Recovery

Hi guys,

It’s been a while since I last posted, but, after a pretty busy first half of this year, I’ve recently decided to ease back a bit and live a more balanced life.  As part of doing that, I promised myself I’d restart writing posts for this blog.

As an update, things are well here.  As you may have seen from my previous posts, I completed the first of two major goals for this year back in March: racing the Ironman New Zealand triathlon.  I had hoped to be finished with the second goal, completing a Masters thesis in Economics at a New Zealand university, around the middle of this year.  Regretfully, my progress towards that goal hasn’t been quite as smooth and I now hope to have it (nearly) all done by the end of this year.

As I said and in spite of still having a bit to do, more balance in my life means more writing for this blog.  First up, is my post, TBI Recovery and a Higher Power.

Cheers,

Mike

Media Coverage of My Story

Of course, with my accident, recovery and build-up to Ironman, there's been some media coverage of my story. That culminated in the week of Ironman with a story about me being aired by the New Zealand current affairs television programme, Campbell Live.

The story's available on Campbell Live's website here (regretfully, I'm unable to embed the video).  I think it may be most interesting to my readers because it contains a whole series of videos of me shortly after my accident.  Be warned, I'm not in a good way in those.  Fortunately, though, I've improved since then and firmly believe, it's the comeback that counts! :-)

(With Ironman now over and out of the way, I'm enjoying the return to the quiet life and not having nearly so much fuss around me!)

Cheers,
Mike

Finally Running Home an Ironman!

During a quiet training ride, just two weeks before I was to race Ironman New Zealand 2005, I had a spot of bad luck: I was involved in what should have been a minor traffic accident.  Because I was on a bike, however, it was anything but.  I suffered a severe traumatic brain injury and missed my race, what would have been my first Ironman, because I was still in hospital in a coma!  I lost my health, I lost my career, I almost lost my life!  Through all of it, though, I never lost my desire to race an Ironman, slowly but steadily rebuilding my strength, fitness and abilities.

On March the 6th this year, five years after I should have, I finally ran home an Ironman!

(This is my favourite photo from Ironman because, while it shows me running towards the finish, it doesn't actually show me crossing it, as if my race isn't over.  I like it because, as I explain below, I don't feel like "my race" is over yet!)

For me, Ironman (which involves a 3.8k swim, 180k cycle and then a 42k run) wasn't what I'd expected at the start of the day.  I had a good swim...

(A shot of the mass start involving over a thousand swimmers - I'm in there somewhere)

... and a reasonable bike ride... 

(looking settled)

... only to have problems on the run!

(feeling the pain!  That is a frown, or as much of one as I can manage!)

Unfortunately, I became quite ill about a quarter of the way through the run.  However, after the saga that's been my build-up to Ironman, I wasn't going to let a bad stomach get in the way of finishing.  Things gradually improved, particularly when four supporters came off the sidelines and starting running with me.  Gradually, my running style came back together and I truly enjoyed the final stages of the race, running home in a time of 12.54.

(me with my fantastic support crew afterwards!)

How does it feel to have finally completed my goal and raced an Ironman?  In a word, fantastic!  Ironman has been such a saga these last five years; although my race wasn't the best, I feel like I've been released, like I can now go on to other things.  And there are indeed other things!  Of course, finishing my 50,000 word Masters thesis is currently my biggest goal, but really there's a whole bunch of things I want to improve at.  My recovery - my race - isn't over yet!

I remain committed to the process of recovering.  Ironman was only a step along the way and I hope for all the best in furthering recovering.  I wish other recoverers out there well and hope I hear stories of things other people have gone on to do, following their brain injury.

Cheers,

Mike 

An Update on Mike's Recovery

It's about time I wrote an update on how my recovery's going. As readers may have noticed, I've had little time recently to write posts for this blog. That's because my recovery's all go! Right now, there are two major parts to it and it's these I want to fill readers in on.

The first part is my second attempt at racing the Ironman triathlon in Taupo, New Zealand in March 2010. Readers may have seen in other posts that I received my brain injury in a traffic accident I had while training two weeks before the same race in 2005. An intense desire to race Ironman is something that's always been a special motivation for me to recover more. I'm really looking forward to finally achieving this goal.

The second part is a Masters degree I recently started in my favourite subject, economics, at a university here in Wellington, New Zealand. The degree involves the preparation of a 30-40,000 word thesis, which I am hoping to complete about June next year.

I continue to think about brain injury recovery and what readers might like to hear about my experiences as I attempt to complete these two goals. Unfortunately, finding time to write them up and put them on here is a bit of an issue, right now. But readers can rest assured that I'll get them up here at some stage soon(ish).

Cheers,
Mike