Category: Brain

Visit Therapist Friday

Darren LongLeave a comment

I had to visit the Speech & Language Therapist again this afternoon. It’s interesting to meet up with this person. Makes me feel good when I am shown one of the flash cards and I DO know what it is! I would know what all these are pictures of in my brain, but I just can’t get the name of it out of the mouth. This only happened a few times. A few. Just less than half.

  1. I saw the image of a window on a house.
  2. I was asked, “What is the white thing covering the window on the inside with the horizontal plastic  lines?”
  3. At this time  know what the item that I am looking at is because I have plenty in my house. I just don’t have the words to COME OUT OF MY MOUTH! I’m having to “REALLY THINK HARD” and get the answer to my mouth.
  4. On that single card (and two other cards) I had to give up. I just couldn’t get the remembrance of what the item was named out of my mouth. Then she would have to tell me it was just WINDOW BLINDS.

With this stack of cards, I had to do this thing twice. The second time I was able to name some of the ones I couldn’t do before because I just remembered after talk the first time. But there was still a few I couldn’t even remember the second time. This is driving me crazy!

With one of the things that I was trying to name, I couldn’t go through words in my head because the thoughts would just repeat the same thing (not it) over and over. Names of different items seem to have been erased from my brain after the surgery??? We’ll have to wait and see if this is ever going to work out right. (Interesting thing now is I can’t even kinda remember what it was a picture of to describe on that one.)

Now I have more homework to do before next Wednesday. I’ll take a break from it this weekend.

I also need to get back to “remembering” what it the heck I did everyday just to keep my daily log going. I am a few days behind.

Visit to the Neurologist & Therapists last week

Darren Long2 Comments

Today is a “Do Nothing” Day. I’ve been getting to the point where I almost think that I can get by with that on most days. I have to look at the calendar hanging on the wall to see what is happening on these days.

On Thursday last week… hold on, takes me awhile to just “think”… oh, I saw my Neurologist. He hadn’t seen me since the surgery back a month ago. He has such great things to say about me. He was very impressed with the way I looked…..and this blog. LOL! He likes my grammar and the way I write. Thinking about what to type and thinking while typing makes this thing great and very long to do. Now, the fact that I may take hours, or a day, just to think/remember things that I’ve done days ago. It’d be even harder if I was to tell you what I just did last hour! Short term memory sucks…

Wait, wait… We were talking about what the doctor thought. Let me get my thoughts back to that. He said that he was impressed with what I have done and accomplished so far. This pertains to what seems to be a better “thinking” process, while my scars on my head are looking pretty fine too. Eh, it was hard work to get all this personal skin healing done. I just have to pat myself on the back for it.

Now, I’ve also been going to these therapists (still) on a regular basis. As you’ve read, the physical one is pretty much easy since we are just doing physical therapy for a left-side too weak compared to a right-side really strong. It’s strong ’cause it shakes. “Why is the left so weak?” you may think. Well, I’m lazy. I just type. She wants to build my left-handed muscles. I’m not looking to build strong muscles on my left, because I have some already on the right. Ok, this physical therapy thing is just a “whatever”. It’s been 30 years and I know how this arm is just seeming to get better all the time after this surgery when I use it.

Okay, my Speech & Language therapist is being very helpful in pointing out “why” speaking or thinking of the real words that I want can just… take too long. I have trouble thinking of my words I need to say and the things we do are still hard and I need to really work at it to “maybe” get these words out of my mouth. It’s stupid that I just can’t think of these words to say. Need to keep working on thinking about what to say as long as I need or JUST STAY QUIET.

I have to do both therapies on Wednesday this week. Just the Speech & Language one again on Friday.

Hello Mr. Less Pieces of Brain????

Darren LongLeave a comment

These “pages” of “homework” that I am being given from my newest Speech/Language Therapist are to be done on my own without a booklet or Internet help to take home. Just work done on lots of papers.

“Where is the Leaning Tower of Pisa?” — ???

Woah? Tower of Pisa leans? See, I would know everything about this before this surgery into my brain before. Now that I think about it, I can see it in my head. Where is it? It’s that country that starts with an I—-…. See….  Italy. That’s good for me. Ahhh.. Maybe I just need to do all the damn questions on here to give myself time to think. 😉

“How many years are in a decade?” — 10 years

Lots are better and easier for ME. If I can guess the people who are unable to answer this question for they some reason, can’t do that….. ha ha…

The real problem is THINKING OF THE WORDS that I need to answer questions… But, right now is later in the afternoon. Above was earlier in the morning and I was thinking and typing faster. Almost 4 o’clock and I’m already getting tired.

Looking at my posts today…

Darren Long2 Comments

I was just looking at my previous posts in this system and looked back to the very first one. Today is the one-year anniversary of the whole thing of the beginning of the web site. Wow! Quite the time taken to think and type done by myself and my wife for this whole thing being done.

Now, at the beginning of my web site, I have a date that is equal to now, but I started the stuff before the date. Actually back in January of last year is when I agreed to start. 

I am having some pain in my head today. I don’t know why. Maybe thinking too hard about a year ago? 🙂 Maybe not. My skull still has pretty “dents” and “marks” after the surgeries that can be seen on the outside. Need to take some meds for the headache.

I still don’t have any memory of this last hospital stay and never will. That’s fine, but this head hurting is not as fine. Today my head has a pain, but I’m still living now. Need to go to bed because my head and eyes are just very tired. I believe this is a feeling I’m going to have at this time of the day for at least (maybe) for the next year or (hopefully) less. We’ll see…

Two Therapists…

Darren Long3 Comments

On Friday I had a schedule for two therapists. A Physical one for about an hour and then a Speech & Language one right after that. Did my usual type of physical therapy that I’ve done with the first one. Just doing some different things here and there in the room that we were both in. Tossed or bounced a large ball back and forth for awhile among other things I did during the time I was there with her. After I was done, I went back to the waiting room.

The Speech & Language therapist, a couple minutes later, showed up and brought us to a separate room from the work-out room where the physical therapist & I were. This is where we always go. We started by having me show off my crossword puzzles I had worked on from last week that she had given me to work on. Couldn’t look up the answers in anything, just in my mind… It was two crossword puzzles on two papers to do. Not the MOST complicated things in the world, just taking time. Did I finish them in two days like I thought I would and not did them earlier? No. There was just two or four words that I had unfinished on each page. Not a bad figure if I’m doing these straight out of my head being all screwed up right now. <grin> Need to finish them now. I was also given two more papers to do for next weekend. Don’t know what those are. Not supposed to look until I start. Eh, okay.