Closest to Mine

I had a brain injury, but I am smart. I once told someone that I should be "mental mush." People have a hard time understanding that a brain injury can make you smart. It's very rare,  but a brain injury can make you very smart.

Here is Jason Padgett's story.

Now his story is the closest to mine, from the brain injury to now. Before that it was like Doogie Howser and Malcolm in the Middle in childhood. Young adulthood doesn't have anything, although I suppose that if a young Doogie had dropped out of school, went to his local community college, and did psychology instead, you might have something. Oh yeah, Doogie would have to be female and have to have a couple of kids.

Doogie Howser

High School was 2 1/2 years for me.

Malcolm  in the Middle

 I was smart but fit in socially.

I had a stroke not a mugging. It was caused by a blood vessel in my head leaking blood, not the clogged arteries warned about. I also had very low blood pressure. So this is rare and unusual.

I had a bleeding (hemorrhagic) stroke.

Substitute a story for a picture. Jason Padgett sees geometric shapes and will draw them out. I will write, mostly about my experience, but there are a few other things out there. Jason is Pythagoras to my Shakespeare (Remember school?).

I will try to include neurological concepts. I've experienced so many that it just fits that I put them in my experience. My life story becomes a learning experience.
 

My brain injury happened the same year as Jason Padgett's injury, but I am not studied. My injury was much worse. My heart did stop. I wasn't breathing. It can be said that I died. Stop right there. A lot of people thought I was dead. When I came out of a coma, I appeared brain dead.

Surgeries were done that I wasn't expected to recover from. I did. It's been a long time recovering. I currently am "semi-vegetative." Technically, vegetative is still a coma. The eyes can be open, but recovery is not there, yet.
 

I'm still not done, but I write now. I WRITE. Obviously, I'm not brain dead. I'll most likely also go back to school. I'm not at that point, yet. So I don't make plans.

Tube Out

It disturbed quite a few people (that's how many it appeared to me) that a young woman had her feeding-tube removed. She subsequently died.

Through misfortune, I ended up vegetative with a feeding-tube, but later, with good fortune, I can have my feeding-tube removed and report back to those people and others. I am not totally without a tube, now. I just have a new one.

This video above just shows taking out a feeding-tube. It doesn't show another tube being inserted.

After the old tube is out, a new one is put in, in my case anyway. For a lot, once it's out, that's it. When I was in the hospital, I had the same tube for years. (I was in various hospitals 4 years.)

"Healing" for me when replacing my tube is swelling and leaking. After a few days that stops. All resumes as normal.

Since I am "aware", although my diagnosis says I'm not, I can replace my feeding-tube through my Medicare. My diagnosis is "Semi-Vegetative." That sounds different. I obviously talk now, so vegetative doesn't cut it. Doctors aren't sure what to call me.

There's no starving here. I may not be able to do a lot, but I can direct my care. It's good fortune that I tell you.

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Now remember how I said that it appeared to me that quite a few people were disturbed by what happened to this other woman? I've recently been adding quite a few to one social media site. (I belong to a few different Social Media programs, so look.) The following video was sent to me. I immediately thought of the woman who passed away.

Thank you congregation.
This video did not have any identifiers.

To the people who were bothered by that other outcome, the same thing didn't happen here. Nothing here is the same.

Neurogenesis is a Process

Without trying to sound like a total nut, I put my ideas forth. I do not have a lot of the evidence because I am in a government funded insurance program. I can only give gut feeling and my existence as proof. I ask for an MRI. They can't pay for that. I am writing, but all my brain lobes supposedly died years ago. I want to know what I am using.

The NDE probably enhanced what was done right in the initial surgery. Records aren't too clear. For example, I was treated for hypothermia (my body was cold). I doubt that I had been left outside in the snow. It was more likely that my body was chilled for surgery. I believe cooling the body is one of those right things. It's good I got surgery.

"Dead genes" turn on after death and do a lot of repair and emergency work. I had an NDE and had artificial respiration for a few months. My body probably thought it was dead. These genes would have turned on. http://reallifescifi.blogspot.com/2017/10/my-undead-genes-turned-on.html

I also have an undiagnosed disorder which is probably savant syndrome. I've been smart since gradeschool. I wasn't your typical poindexter geek. I was sickening smart, but social and earned nicknames like Brainiac. This disorder allows me to live outside a superbug factory (hospital) and probablly give better care. Oh, do I still have a lot of medical issues! I just don't need surgery.

I was a child genius that went on to other

things, namely this.  I was NOT a doctor.

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You are probably seeing neurogenesis. It's not a one time thing and it's done. It's a process. It's more like repeated neuroplasticity. In me it has lasted years.

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LOLLIPOP THERAPY

That's what I am calling it. It falls under oral motor exercises done with children. This is speech. You will hear my speech improve.

Something interesting has already happened since I regularly started sucking on lollipops. Heartburn has stopped. Ever since getting the g-tube, there have been problems with acid and formula reflux. Put it in me, and some would come right back up. This stopped with the introduction of lollipops.

I assume the flap from the esophagus to the stomach is stronger and is staying closed. A swallow study with a barium lollipop would be helpful, but those lollipops do not exist. One would have to be made.

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Neurogenesis may be more readily seen in me due to this undiagnosed disorder. The disorder magnifies it and then I point it out. Neurogenesis most likely is happening in others with brain injuries, but in subtle ways.

I'm not in a coma, and BOOM one day I am awake. That seems how it happens, http://thoughtfulveg.blogspot.com/2012/11/seeing-obvious.html.  No, I am still in a coma. I bet that the "vegetative" people who are now showing signs of consciousness are just experiencing neurogenesis to a lesser extent. Maybe, BOOM, one day they will be conscious.

I've said it before...

"Their quantification of white matter reorganization shows long-distance rewiring in posterior medial cortices, possibly reflecting axonal sprouting or neurite outgrowth, maybe even related to neurogenesis " happens to be Steven Laureys describing a man who was MCS, but started talking nearly 20 years later. What he is saying is that tiny nerve fibers grew and rewired. This is most likely going on with me. http://thoughtfulveg.blogspot.com/2017/08/not-fast-enough.html

Growth does not happen overnight. So far it has been years in me. There's no BOOM.

The Government Failed Me

UPDATED 8/31/2018

I am vegetative and the US government has done squat to help me. In fact, some of their policies have caused death in others. "I am vegetative" is already a red flag. The statement means an error was made somewhere.

I have Medicare. I worked for it. (For those working, look at your paystub. A good chunk of money was taken out. You are paying for Medicare and disability.) It's real insurance; lousy  but real. I have/had Medicaid. They must be broke now because they won't cover the cost of my feeding tube supplies. Medicare won't either. I have to purchase supplement insurance through Blue Cross. (This hurts financially! They stopped at Christmas time- what a present! You know I already spent my money, so I was depending on donation.)

THIS goes back to Terri Schiavo. The government does not do long-term feeding for vegetative patients. If someone is in the hospital, a different program may be paying. It may still be government, but there are different people and different rules.

This will be weird trying to explain me writing this. I'm vegetative with a feeding tube. My eyes opened 15 years ago, but I couldn't speak. I was made vegetative. (Ha! I was conscious.) Slowly I've made a comeback. I got out of a hospital. Now I write. I still have medical issues, but know how to manage them. I am not a doctor, but notably I have been a care provider, social worker, and early intervention program manager for the disabled. I don't do surgery, but know how many human body systems work.

I'm not getting any assistance, financially. My caregiver's salary is paid through a state program.  My wheelchair and bed have been paid for through Medicare and Medicaid. When I needed a new wheelchair battery, my father had to pay for it (labor can be expensive).

The federal government hasn't done much to help me. Help has come from private citizens- a company or a university might be in there, but one of these persons started it. I'd be suspicious if someone from the government showed up now.

What Makes My Injury Different

I was on a ventilator a few hrs before surgery. I stopped breathing much earlier than surgery. My heart stopped during surgery. Records only say resuscitated, but not how long it was stopped. I figure it was beyond the limit considered to be okay because hospital staff from the1st hospital took a 2hr drive to the rehab hospital 8 mos or so later. For all I know, it may have been hrs without oxygen. I had weaned from a vent by the time that they visited which they found impossible.

It has taken me yrs to be able to write n not be in a hospital.

- Angela 8/6/2018

Smarts come first with me.
I am a big head.

Someone suggested a thesis topic, jokingly. I didn't do a thesis. I did Comprehensive Exams at the end of my MA program. I also didn't pay for the program. It was paid for through a grant. Every month school was in session, I went to the finance office to pick up a check for me. I had to attend classes. Comprehensive Exams are just as hard as doing a thesis, if not harder, because it tests your knowledge over the course of the entire program. You might have to remember material from a few years ago.

That's what makes my injury different. I still remember things for years. I was doing this knowledge thing way before I had a stroke. 

I played piano when little. The largest recital was probably about 300 people. I was 4 or 5. Music was a big deal. I taught myself, guitar as a teen. This musical gift happens to be a big descriptor of one condition. I had the stroke and now I write prose. I just started thinking about writing music. I haven't attempted to even try. I still have other topics. Writing is also creative and falls in the realm of this condition.

This next video shows only one type of brain injury causing a condition of creativity. Incidentally, I too had a stroke.
 

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You need to know about an extremely rare neurological disorder. It is so rare that it is not even a diagnosing disorder. People who have it have been side-show freaks and oddities of society. Only recently (last 100 years or so) has the disorder been studied. More specifically, it has been studied during my lifetime.

(Note that this can be caused by brain injury as well as a person can be born with it.) It's easier to see the condition. Please watch the video.

I show signs of this disorder BEFORE and AFTER a brain injury. That's unusual. In the past, it has been one or the other, not both. It makes sense when you consider my vast knowledge and memory that I have this.
 

Savant Syndrome will have to become a diagnosing disorder soon. This writing is not a figment of your imagination. It is, though, as long as I am still in a coma. How can a person write if she is not conscious?

This person was born with the condition.

Less Scary

This picture can be clicked.

The Vatican viewed my blog today. I give! Give me a halo and harp and wait for me to sprout wings!

Click
 

I've tried to be the level headed voice of reason. I can't reason with indoctrinated faith.

I want to make it less scary for people. I'm not an angel or a saint. I'm just a person relating my experience. If someone else goes through it, they will know what to do and maybe even improve upon it.

I have filled the job of the "missing thing."

In Early Intervention, parents would come home from the hospital with this itty-bitty thing that may have been born a few  months earlier. It may have been a grandparent, foster parent, adoptive family, etc that brought the child home. Maybe there was prenatal drug exposure. Sometimes it was the '80's "crack baby" coming home (This was a big fallacy. A lot of these babies ended up okay with some early intervention.)

They all experienced the magic of medicine. Medicine really isn't magic is it? I made it less mystical.

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This is life. You deal with it.