Are You Smarter?

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My father asked if I was smarter. He already knew I was smart. -Angela

I know people click on "Phenomenal Recovery"  looking for reference to me. 

https://thoughtfulveg.blogspot.com/2019/04/phenominal-recovery.html

There is some but not a lot. It's more about that woman, Kate Allatt, in the second video. She had full recovery of speech and ambulation when it was thought that a stroke left her in a coma. She ended up being diagnosed as Locked-In Syndrome. 

If I was diagnosed Locked-In Syndrome, I might also be saying the same. I wasn't though. I was given vegetative, PVS. 

Some playing around with diagnosis has happened and I am now semi-vegetative. "Semi" takes care of this talking thing.

I don't say I've had a phenomenal recovery. I'm not done recovering yet. My diagnosis is still "vegetative." I know it has been 17 years since my stroke, but I continue to make progress.        

This is Orlando Serrell. He was hit with a baseball, and developed amazing memory. 
He continues to improve.

The person above had a brain injury, does something amazing, and continues to have progress. Those same criteria fit me. I continue to have progress (but it is called recovery, years later). This man has savant syndrome, though, and I don't. I am in an open-eye coma.

Savant syndrome wasn't ever a recognized disorder in the scholarly community. You can't look it up in the DSM or any other diagnostic manual. However, it was recognized in the media.

In 1988, the movie Rain Man was released

about a man with Autism who had 

Savant Syndrome.

I do something different. I talk, write, and get better. Talking and writing don't sound amazing until I tell you that I am in a coma. I'm vegetative, so it's a coma with my eyes open.

That doesn't sound right. It isn't. 

People don't talk in comas. What was thought to be a coma was really a pseudo-coma. No wonder why that woman was reclassified as Locked-In Syndrome.

There may have been a coma start. At some point there is transition to a pseudo-coma. In blind and low-vision persons there is no eye gaze. I am low vision.

He says to use eye gaze.

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I don't talk and write in a coma, giving me Savant Syndrome, Acquired. People are amazed that I am so smart, though.

I already was smart! 

I left high school when I was 16 and started college. I got my AA at age 18 when my peers graduated from high school. The following year I got my BA.

This is interesting, as in woo-woo.  My BA is in Psychology and I use it. I know diagnoses. Here's more woo. At 24 I got an MA in Early Childhood Special Education. I specifically worked with the child who had my current problem.

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I will go on to say yes, Savant Syndrome, but it is congenital. The cause of my brain bleed was congenital and it is very possible that it bled in utero while my mother was pregnant.

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Talking and writing are splinter skills.

The bleed wiped out everything. Development was done again. 

Two years after my stroke, my playground was cleared out and cleaned. I had neural repair surgery. My cerebellum was damaged in the prior bleed and it was cleaned and cleared of all damage. I played and grew on my new playground. 

Brain growth had to happen all over again. There was a second development, but it started with the splinter skills of the typical child development. It used what was already there.

Talking and writing are left over from the first time (development). As I remember, test scores on an annual achievement test were in the 99th percentile for verbal and non-verbal. The test also covered quantitative and spatial. These scores were high, but not as high. The first two were my strengths. (I don't know how far back CAT testing is saved, but scores come from there.)

"Savant syndrome, both in the congenital and acquired types, provides compelling evidence of remarkable brain plasticity"

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2677584/

This is that getting better I do. Here's your Savant Syndrome.

Talking and writing is where current savant syndrome will and somewhat has occurred. Is it possible to see how much brain growth has occurred since surgery? This may be beyond current scanning methods. This will let you know, though, if there is anything left to expect.

This is introspective. It has to go to a trained and licensed professional. It is officially written that I am vegetative. I am currently in a coma and can have no influence on my current diagnosis.

Am I smarter? I could be, but I don't feel it.

Updated 11/30/2019

I'll Say Congenital

Most know that I had a devastating  stroke, but I now write.  I can do other typical, and not so typical, things after the stroke. The things are amazing. What I am about to write is amazing. A person might say Savant Syndrome is involved. That disorder was never confirmed in diagnostic manuals.

My current diagnosis is "Semi-Vegetative." Vegetative is basically a coma, but the eyes are open. In my case, "Semi" was added when I started saying words. So, I am writing to you while I am in a coma.


Writing while being in a coma is amazing! Someone goofed long ago. I say long ago because the disorder Savant Syndrome was proposed long ago. It wasn't approved. A person with a disability could do something way beyond skill level. Now medicine is better. Something as menial as writing is astonishing when performed by someone "saved."

I once was in a full coma. That was years  ago. I was slow to open my eyes. That warranted the word 'vegetative.' Speaking, as I do now, does not.

I, and others, have disagreed with the government's diagnosis. I am in a pseudo-coma by their standards (which is currently not swallowing barium). Locked-In Syndrome is the appropriate name. My speech continues to be about simpler things, and writing contains more complicated ideas. I have noticed some change on video, so this is coming.

Writing occurs after a stroke, which can lead one to believe Savant Syndrome, Acquired.

You can acquire Savant Syndrome from a brain injury or CNS incident. I had a stroke and a car accident. This is the acquired form. There is another form. Some are born with Savant Syndrome. In this case the disorder is congenital.

I had my mother describe to me my early development. "...you had a foot that was more dominant and one foot that turned and dragged. You had to have a special shoe." It goes on. "Also your eyes didn't focus well and one eye drifted. You also used to bang your head on the wall purposely," Myra Metz.

That's a special needs child being described. There was a previous brain bleed. I hold a degree in Early Childhood Special Education. I ran a home-visiting program just for this type of baby. Identifying the special needs child is second nature.

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Growing up, I'd hear the horror stories of my birth.

My mother died during labor and had an out of body experience. Forceps had to be used to pull me out. If you never heard of these things, they were these giant salad tong things invented to grab and pull a baby out of the birth canal. These things aren't widely used anymore. There were too many complications. My mother now suspects these things in creating the AVM anomaly in my head that bled 32 years later.

"You were born much too early." I am almost 50 and still hearing about it. "You were induced."

Then it clicked. That description of my early childhood was of a baby that had a CNS incident. I was induced, most likely due to fetal distress. Doctors didn't tell patients crap back then. Of course it was a horror story. 

If those forceps had caused the AVM in my head, there also would have been gore and I wouldn't be here to hear the story. Forceps would have had to squash my head nearly flat to create an AVM that deep. Sorry Mom, but the AVM was already there. They are congenital. It would also be the cause of your pain. Bleeding caused fetal distress and set off your whole cataclysm of events.

Everything resolved nicely. I went on to play piano, and then excelled academically. Now I had a stroke and am writing in a coma. This last sentence doesn't sound right. Maybe Savant Syndrome should have been made a disorder.

Preconceived Notions

I was in a coma for 5 weeks. (My eyes were closed for 5 weeks. I think this eye-open coma is not a coma.)

Doctors didn't expect me to make it that far. Organ donation paperwork had been started.

The day life-support was to be removed, I opened my eyes. Everything changed. 
 

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Pseudocoma is also called Locked-In Syndrome. That diagnosis was ignored at the beginning of my stroke, and now there are problems. Not moving or speaking can be vegetative. It can also be Locked-In Syndrome, although this is rare. Locked-In Syndrome is conscious, I have limited speaking which continues to slowly improve and I write a lot. It sure looks like that is what I had. I can tell you everything that happened while I was "vegetative." And now? I'm still vegetative.

First, the writing, speaking, and increasing limited movement I am showing are all products of me coming out of Locked-In Syndrome. Second, I write. This appears to be Savant Syndrome, but it is not yet established as a diagnosing disorder. Gee, the rehab had suspicions years ago, but there was no where to note them. They successfully terminated my payee back then. I could manage money in a coma.

This secondary condition, Savant Syndrome, is harder to prove, for the condition. It can be seen in this here writing. At times it appears paranormal. The behaviors can't be explained, but the behaviors shouldn't be ignored. It will be hard to say that this writing doesn't exist.This condition needs to be made a diagnosing disorder. Then it can be studied. Even I am overwhelmed into believing I have paranormal powers. People unrelated to the situation need to look at it.

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What is death? I bring this up because it may not be what has been believed. I died in the beginning of my stroke.

I wasn't breathing and my heart stopped. There's nothing mystical about that. I was resuscitated. I am here now. That isn't mystical. In between then and now, that time is boring to me. So why is this a miracle? Leave something out and it will be.

We are finding that chemicals are being released in the brain when the heart stops. These chemicals may be responsible for the Near Death Experience, NDE. This experience can be mystical. The chemicals are not. I can see these chemicals as being responsible for great healing.

To a friend

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 We don't really know.

 

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.

Idiocy

It now approaches idiocy to continue saying that I am vegetative, or not conscious. Now that I get ideas across, it is extremely difficult to say that I am not conscious. What is vegetative in me then? Nothing. The quality of being "Vegetative" exists in your perception of me. As time goes on, I adapt and technology improves. Your perception of me changes.

In this next video, if you take away the man's computer, what do you have?

Oh my!

When I left the hospital I was not typing. I did not have the hand dexterity to hit a selected computer key. Computers existed and so did trackball mice for computers, so there's no excuse for the technology not being there. A mouse can select characters, and I had enough movement for a mouse.

A trackball mouse works opposite of the standard computer mouse. The mouse is stationary, and the hand or thumb moves a trackball. The ball controls the cursor on the screen of the computer.

I plan to order this for my right hand.

The person who knows this technology is lacking in most places. Traditionally, this role has been filled by the Occupational Therapist (OT). I don't think the OT at that last hospital I was at knew much about computers.

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I think it's funny that I got, read, and responded to an e-mail explaining to me that I am in a coma, http://thoughtfulveg.blogspot.com/2014/05/dear-vegetable.html

http://thoughtfulveg.blogspot.com/2014/05/dear-vegetable.html

This will happen in a pseudo-coma. Yes, pseudo as in fake. People, doctors, were fooled. I came back to tell them.

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Pseudo-coma is also called Locked-In Syndrome. That diagnosis was ignored at the beginning, and now there are problems. I have limited speaking which continues to slowly improve and I write a lot.

First, the writing, speaking, and increasing limited movement I am showing are all products of me coming out of Locked-In Syndrome. Second, I write. This appears to be Savant Syndrome, but it is not yet established as a diagnosing disorder.

This secondary condition is harder to prove, for the condition. At times it appears paranormal. The behaviors can't be explained, but they shouldn't be ignored. It will be hard to say that this writing doesn't exist. This condition needs to be made a diagnosing disorder. Then it can be studied. Even I am overwhelmed into believing I have paranormal powers. People unrelated to the situation need to look at it.

This is from the movie Michael. 

The actor is hiding angel wings under his coat.