11.30.09 What were the odds of two men who each in their own way had huge impacts on my life I'd known being pictured at the same time in hazmat suits? One in particular because - does it erally make sense to have your FB picture as a hazmat guy?... in both cases maybe so.
It could just be the bronchitis talking but I was thinking I might be getting to where I'll be done with this site, this identifier. But then again- I may have developed a small, twisted and anonymous following- maybe an audience of one. Feel free to stop by Rev. Anti- Choice.
Part of what got me about 2006 and though I couldn't write about it- I probably could now. Any way what got me was that there's no making up source material that rich and unlikely. I was, and may again some day be an odd addition to the homeless crowd and maybe Ramon is right, maybe Michelle is as well and maybe I will book it someday but for now. Maybe considering the where and how that became this blog- maybe this is still part of that. I've told my biggest secret. So why not? Of course I'll leave it up- another failsafe mechanism, a place to direct some energy should need be or maybe a place to get where I never could get with a guy I met half a lifetime ago.
As I've procrastinated this long, I'm waiting until after the holidays for KY Adult Services. The holidays are hard enough, Kari may wind up getting a call and as she decided to go into a field with the highest yield of suicides. I'd hate to see what her odds look/ed like having already been doubled.
Now to home, after 15 months of homelessness, 351 days in a homeless shelter - I have one Oh look I buried my lead. What a surprise . And that's why over these years I've needed to process so much John rage see it's the Johns in my life that - well same lies, each one of them. Family is the first crack in the system I feel through; it's a phrase that gets spoken to me, of me regularly: "you feel through every crack in the system". Now that I've finally had access to those who actually know what brain injury is- see they've actually teared up because this sort of thing isn't supposed to happen.
My crash date was June 13, 2001 - amazing the size of the SOS I had to put out; I actually had to do it twice so the state would mandate me to accept help I'd been asking for and denied for 7 years. I hadn't applied for SSDI or SSI because it seemed an irrational notion: If on the state level my file didn't qualify me for assistance - well the idea that I'd qualify on a federal level - that didn't make sense to me- but that's the nice thing about brain injury- everything seems so simple: because you are that simple. It's the crappy thing about brain injury and not having a patient advocate . When I made those calls family were as family's always been.
I finally got the help I needed after two bosses failed to observe my limitations and I went into neurological freefall, not that hadn't happened once already when life required cognitive skills over time periods that I'm simply not capable of maintaining. I have window, once I reach that window I'm either allowed to cocoon with ample silence or white noise- OR, well the or isn't fun for anyone most especially me.
The moment a camera flash goes off unexpectedly and/or turning on a sealedcar's engine and the full sound shock of music set loud, for open windows and speed. That moment can go on for hours, days, weeks.
I'd always been a type A, I pushed myself- whatever it was I pushed and I wound up with something that essentially forbids that or at the very least I start bumping into things, the syllables of words -spoken or typed coming out in the wrong order. Sequence has been my constant nemesis, still is.
Some of the assistance I'd been applying for for years, 7 to be exact but there wasn't enough or the right things in my file. But if you fall hard enough AND publically enough so that there can't be anymore debate as to whether or not you qualify for help, and programs- that you have an actual medical condition. It never did occur to me to ask why HASCI had rejected me as a client, a neighbor years later had said that it didn't make sense. The reason I was rejected, I later found out, was they wanted more medical documentation: mobile PET scans, interactive MRI's. A nice little aspect of american healthcare-less system: though there are services avaliable unless you are already on public assistance or have kickass health insurance- the very system that is there to assist you can't and won't because you're not already in the system. Sounds circular doesn't it?
It took a little over 8 years from the TBI forward for me to get actual help, input, insight from anyone in the field of brain injury, a very limited pool in this state.
Though I haven't logged 10,000 hours- we'll see if I can write this thing.
About Me
- amcsquared
- In 2001 I sustained a brain injury which altered me as a person, my neurology and my abilities. Skills I had never thought of as skills disappeared entirely. One of those lost skills was the capacity to write and organize information. For over ten years I have been working diligently on regaining what I have lost while living in a state where, to quote a staff member at MUSC: "some people should be left by the side of the road to die". My name is Maren Alford and to borrow a line from Toni Morrison: I am not dead. To quote Patton: I shall return. I will make as close to full recovery as is humanly possible, or impossible for that matter.