Laugh Or Cry

It's not easy being me. You wouldn't be able to tell from the way I am able to function, but It takes me twice as long to do normal tasks and I can't focus intently on anything for more than 10 minutes.

My reading and writing skills are very limited, and it takes a great deal of effort to put thought to page, but if my story can help just one person know that being a misfit isn't a death sentence, it will be worth it!

When people ask me what's its like to have the kind of brain damage I do, i use a wonderful analogy of spoons.

When you ask a 'normal' person what they did in a day they might reply something to the effect of "I got up to get ready for work, ate breakfast, went to work and then came home"

But when you have a debilitating disease or suffer some brain damage like I have you have a limted number of spoons to accomplish your day, and every single task is a spoon.

Let us assume that i have 15 spoons to start my day and use the above example to break down how I would accomplish what seems like a very routine and normal day.

Wake up 1 spoon

shower and get ready 2 spoons

prepare and eat breakfast 2 spoons

driving to work - a process that requires focus, concentration and coordination 6 spoons

Do you see where this is going? I've arrived at work safely but I've already used half of my spons and I haven't even started to do a lick of work, and I still need to drive back home, fix myself dinner and get ready to go to bed.

You can 'borrow' spoons from the next day, but you pay for it in double damage. In other words, sooner or later you will burn out and it will take you twice as long to recover from the emotional damage.

I have learned coping techniques however, and one of the most valuable techniques I have learned is that we can choose how to react to the things that occur - Laugh Or Cry. There is no shame in crying, it can be quite cathartic but laughter is the more difficult choice and for me has been the most beneficial.

Here is my Story..

When I was only 4 years old, I suffered from severe pneumonia.

The doctors put me in an oxygen tent, and gave my mom a very difficult choice to make. They could give me some experimental drugs that would give me a 50/50 chance of living or she could do nothing and there was an 80% chance I would die.

My mom chose the drugs, and they did work - I lived. But the drugs had done additional damage to my brain that the full effects of weren't known until I was well into my 30s.+-+

The combined immediate results were that the pneumonia and the dugs caused anoxia - a severe lack of oxygen to the brain - for over 4 minutes!

When I got home from the hospital i was a completely different child. I couldn't walk or talk at all and I basically had to re-learn everything all over again. It was like the first four years of my life didn't even happen.

As if this wasn't bad enough, some time later I was run over by a car from a driver who didn't see me sitting on the grass near their driveway, from which my legs were sprawled. I did recover from that indident relatively unscathed but I never walked 100% properly after that.

This made me lack basic confidence in myself and I was very socially award. I was taunted and teased a lot and my usual reponse was either to say nothing, or act out in a way that would get people to laugh. I was bullied repeatedly, stuffed into lockers and the worst incident ever was when I was tossed into a dumpster at my high school.

Also in high school, I was a below average student, but for some reason I seemed to have a slightly better aptitude for math.

The results weren't reflected in my tests scores though, which led the teachers to believe that I was lazy and wasn't applying myself.

In retrospect, the real problem is that reading and the process of writing things down is extremely difficult for me and causes me to lose focus very easily. I would get halfway thru the test, and the time would run out and I'd have to turn my test in unfinished, it didn't matter that i did actually know how to do the work. If I had been allowed to take my tests orally like they do in some schools now, I think I would have done much better.

But all these setbacks started to add up, and when I finally had reached my 20s and had graduated from high school I had little to no self worth and caused me to have suicidal thoughts.

I half-hearted acted on these thoughts unsuccessfully several times, but the real attempt that was started to succeed was in my eating habits which at one point caused me to balloon to almost 600 pounds from which I had surely died if I had not made some positive changes and discovered a purpose.

This weight caused me to be even more introverted and socially awkward and miserable.

So to sum up, a lot of bad stuff has happened in my life and I spent the majority of it in a self-perpetuated downward spiral.

So how did I manage to put myself out? It was a long complicated journey that would require to long to explain in this story but If you would like to contact me directly, I will happily tell it.

What it sums up to is I had a choice to make laugh, or cry.. I chose to laugh and I will explain and close with this story within my story.

I was in my 30s, and had just moved to Alberta, Canada to apply for the disability program there called AISH. It met all of my needs, but was extremely difficult to get on.

In an effort to better define and explain my disability, my mom had paid for me to go to an institution called BROCK where they do specialized tests for dexterity, brain function and a bunch of other stuff I have conveniently forgotten about.

On the day of my appointment, we arrived and parked in the garage went thru the door. And was met by another door leading down a flight of stairs, so another door, which led to a hallway, and another flight of stairs.

We must have gone back and forth and up and down for almost 10 minutes but no matter which way we went, or how hard we tried, we just could not find the entrance for the elevator. I finally had to sit down, and I was super frustrated and felt like crying.

But out of nowhere a thought popped into my head, which I expressed out loud to my mom. "Maybe this is part of my test, if I can find the damned elevator I pass. I feel like a stupid lab rat"

My mom burst out laughing and the laughter was so contgeous, that I started laughing. The next thing I know I was back on my feet with my mom both of us laughing to the point of tears, wandering up and down the corridors making squeaking noises like mice.

We did eventually find the elevator and by the time we got to the ground floor, we could both barely breathe from laughing so hard. I'm almost 100% certain that everyone on that elevator thought we were escaped patients from some mental institution, but we didn't care. I finished my test, and my mom bought me lunch. It was a very plain meal but it was probably one of the tastier things I have ever eaten!

laugh or cry - the choice is ultimately yours but I recommend laughter whenever possible.