Saturday, December 31, 2016

Yes, I Speak



This goes with the video. It was too much to read out loud at one time. I talk throughout the day, but it isn't more than the following 5 sentences at a time. The rest of what I wanted to say is written in the last part.

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People have asked if I speak. Yes, I do.

That is an issue that was never fully investigated. Initially when I woke from the coma, I did not make any sound. There is a link in the description describing the incident. This is as much as I speak at a time.


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One day I made sound. It was many months after my coma. The speech therapist was shocked! I had an upcoming appointment for an ear infection. She accompanied me to the appointment and had me scoped. She wanted to know where the sound was coming from. The doctor determined everything was normal. I remember him saying, "Why shouldn't she [make sound]?" 

My insurance terminated soon after. I became government responsibility and government never investigated.

I formerly did Early Intervention for toddlers and babies. I had some speech training, but I was not a speech therapist. I've done what I could. A therapist can probably do better.




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1/4/2017  This shows the importance of continued speech therapy. It is not something to be brushed under the rug.

Wednesday, December 28, 2016

Keeping You In Thought




My hands are open. 

It wasn't always that way. At first they were closed. They were shut tight in fists. It's taken forever. Fourteen years isn't forever, but it sure is a long time. It's long enough for my children to grow up and for some people to die.

I had been getting stories out like this for seven years when a photo was taken on Mother's Day. My daughter was watching a friend's baby.


I expected to see my left hand open, not closed in a loose fist.

Now we get into Jung's theory of Collective Unconscious, or just "Collective Conscious" like many have used.

However by far the most important difference between Jung and Freud is Jung’s notion of the collective (or transpersonal) unconscious. This is his most original and controversial contribution to personality theory. This is a level of unconscious shared with other members of the human species comprising latent memories from our ancestral and evolutionary past. ‘The form of the world into which [a person] is born is already inborn in him, as a virtual image’ (Jung, 1953, p. 188).  http://www.simplypsychology.org/carl-jung.html
 
The picture was on social media. I complained about my hands. The picture had forty-one LIKEs and one share. At least 41 people saw it and read that I was working on opening hands.

That means I got at least forty-one positive thoughts from others. People were keeping me in thought.

Have you heard about the 'Power of Prayer'? Well, 'Power of Thought' is the same thing that doesn't conform to the regulations of a prayer. 

When a large group of monks meditated for peace (thought long and hard), city crime decreased Washington crime reduced by 23% by TM group in four weeks. Now this a correlation, but it's a good one.

I had a large group of people on the internet thinking about me. They were focused on one specific aspect. I possitively reached my goal. It's a correlation, but it's a good one.
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Let's put this 'opening of my hands' into perspective. I keep saying that I am slowly getting better. Some might look at the two photographs and think, "7 months to open hands. That is a long time."

The thinking is wrong. I really haven't been opening my hands since before my incident. My incident was in December of 2002. It's now December 2016. That means it took fourteen years to open my hands. THAT IS REALLY LONG!

Can I get an applause for staying focused for so long? Fourteen years is a long time.






 

Sunday, December 18, 2016

Is my body still in a coma and my mind awake?



Is my body still in a coma and my mind awake?

Where would I get such an idea? Take a look at the beginning of my last story.
It deserves to be front page news.  Medicare withholds food of a comatose patient to await a swallowing evaluation. They screwed up and made me comatose. I'm not worried about food but how to get it in. Rinse and re-use supplies risks infection. http://thoughtfulveg.blogspot.com/2016/12/im-not-going-to-die.html
I am experiencing problems where some say I am awake and aware, while others say I'm in a coma/vegetative. (FYI Medicare, swallowing is not it. You cannot determine a person is out of a coma if they can all of a sudden swallow. On the contrary, your actions could be detrimental to someone not as lucky as I have been. What if the person aspirates and dies? That makes your job easy.)


I tell an entire story of how a nurse talks to me like I am vegetative and I answer back like I am not. http://thoughtfulveg.blogspot.com/2012/02/a-special-kind-of-stupid.html

This happens quite a bit.

A music therapist relays this:
The below story is about my friend Angela; an amazing woman. I first played guitar for her when she was in the Sub-Acute area of El Camino Hospital. A nurse one day begged me to come and play for the people there that had no hope. They were what are referred to as "vegetables" and when I first saw them pushed into the room I was getting ready to play (in beds and wheelchairs)….I wondered will these people even be able to hear music… A sadness came over me as I looked at them. They put Angela in a wheelchair right in front of me and told me I could start playing. While I played Angela said to me, " I used to play that song on piano." I was shocked that she was able to speak and carry on a conversation - even though she was a little hard to understand in the beginning, http://thoughtfulveg.blogspot.com/2012/02/angela.html

It now makes me wonder "where" I am. I am not talking about my body's physical location. I am talking about "locality and non-locality of consciousness" that philosophers and other professions (such as physicians) think about. Sometimes they think about it in their spare time. I think about in a lot of my time. Where is mine and how do I get it back?
 
I am asked what is "non-local."
This is.

____________________________

I must be one of these,

How Some Patients in a Vegetative State Can Retain Awareness, Despite Appearing Unresponsive

http://neurosciencenews.com/vegetative-state-awareness-neurology-2993/ 
 
I somehow have come back from a vegetative state that wasn't recoverable.

I go back to my original question:
Is my body still in a coma and my mind awake?

The answer is no.

Instead of swallowing, look at these blog posts. You can probably tell I've gone from semi-vegetative to full consciousness. I started going through them a while back. Many of the first ones sound the same. I already had to be conscious to write in the first place. This is why I don't like the term "semi-vegetative." It implies part consciousness. There already is a term, Minimally Conscious State, or MCS. So when you read these, it would be "yes, she is fully conscious."

My body is disabled not in a coma. I would not magically instantly swallow. Medicare should be providing speech therapy. This doesn't happen. Instead I am left on my own to figure it out. Sorry, but I am not there yet. I am conscious, though.

Now how can I make such a statement? I am a psychologist that is currently unemployed. I last worked for the Sierra County Department of Mental Health as a Behavior Intervention Specialist, a behavior therapist.



Savant syndrome? That's a good possibility, but I will leave that  to others. This already looks like a manifesto. Where's the neuropsych? I've yet to see one.

Medicare has neuropsychological services.

Thursday, December 15, 2016

I'm Not Going To Die

It deserves to be front page news.  Medicare withholds food of a comatose patient to await a swallowing evaluation. They screwed up and made me comatose. I'm not worried about food but how to get it in. Rinse n re-use supplies risks infection.

I don't need to be rescued at this moment. If I go without food, I will. My emergency supply runs out next month, probably 1 or 2 weeks in. (My daughter was saving because of the coming zombie apocalypse. She watches a lot of TV.) I run out of feeding bags in 4 days. After that, I am fed by hand. It's the emergency bolus feeding. I found a picture.



The cost of feeding me is not an issue for the government. They can make one less bomb if it is. I'm being metaphorical, but you probably catch my drift. You adjust your budget as needed.

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I won't starve to death. All of my medical coverage wasn't stopped. I will be hospitalized before that happens and food will be reinstated under a different part of Medicare. It will be under the hospitalization part.

Which is more cost effective:  feeding or hospitalization?
 
Medicare/Social Security decided to handle this all on their own. My case should have been given to the National Institute of Health (NIH) long ago. I argued about being vegetative and being on my own. I was told I could as long as I'm not in trouble. It's funny but they are the ones now making trouble.

The bottom of this has the original e-mails with Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. I deleted names back then. Hopefully I didn't delete anything important. http://thoughtfulveg.blogspot.com/2013/02/im-still-vegetablethat-handles-money.html


Long ago there was a song about feeding 
the world at Christmas.

Friday, December 9, 2016

Fools! Bureaucratic Fools!


"Fools! Bureaucratic fools! They don't know what they've got there!"



The audacity! The stupidity! I don't know what to call it. Supposedly I am in a coma, unconscious to the world, and my food is cut off until I submit a swallowing evaluation. Where is the logic in that?

Here is where it says I'm in a coma. I took out every hospital name. It's me, all me, and I don't have any legal problems with myself. "I" am sharing "MY" information and I won't sue myself.

CLICK TO MAKE BIGGER
It says COMA in the bottom left corner.


 I keep getting asked what my GCS was. My GCS, or Glasgow Coma Score, was 3. That's the lowest you can get and still be alive. "Having no respiratory drive" means I wasn't breathing. I've written and have pictures of the hole left by the ventilator, http://thoughtfulveg.blogspot.com/2014/04/my-hole.html 

The person described is dying. She's not going to make it.

Something happened.

Now I am writing this. I write a lot of things. I somewhat talk also. This is blowing people away.

I'm not like I was pre-bleed. I'm not like that description above. I'm not like I was when I left the last hospital I resided in. I now have movement in my left hand and I am writing. That didn't happen in any hospital.

I don't appear to be in any coma what-so-ever!

I was in a coma from 12/2002 - 1/2003. My eyes were closed, and I was told I looked like I was sleeping. I have then been vegetative until present. The vegetative state is being called a coma. Maybe the last hospital should have changed that when I left, or maybe they thought I was finally going to die. Well. I didn't.
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Now this completely gets me...if I am unconscious, how do I swallow? I currently have a feeding tube. Formula is placed by a caregiver into a special bag and it is hung. It looks like an IV. (This also isn't normal outside of a medical setting, but it does happen. People do go home from the hospital with serious medical problems.) Why would Medicare decide now that I need to have a swallowing evaluation in order to get formula and feeding tube supplies?

Dear Medicare,  WTF?





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Everywhere I went (after the bleed), I was going to die. That should have changed in 2004. In 2004, I had surgery that took the death factor away. All this other stuff (progress in skills) has been on me. It's mostly exercise. The government doesn't pay for anything extra. I only have a few things I paid for or got from a friend. My prognosis should have been changed in 2004 and it wasn't. So what you have now is a miracle.

Again, bureaucracy prevails. An entire surgery is omitted because government didn't pay for it.