For those who are unaware (and the general web-cosmos out there), I’m deaf.  Stone deaf.  Lost my hearing by way of genetic disorder and lost my hearing at 18.  I was implanted with a version of Cochlear’s Nucleus-22 processor (known as the ABI) but didn’t go through with having it “turned on” (so to speak) until October of 2001.

…and if I knew how well I would hear with this implanted device, I would have gone through with it much sooner. 

The thing is, with the implanted device, you have had to wear body-worn equipment to make it work.  Stuff on your person.  And for eight years, I’ve been wearing what essentially is a obsolete piece of equipment.  The Spectra-22 was originally state -of-the-art in about 1989 – give or take a few years.  While the entire concept of a late-deaf person hearing again is fantastic, technology sometimes does limit as much as it enables.   Like in my case.

I’ve been complaining to my audiologist in Los Angeles about hwo I cannot “turn the corner” with sound — while I hear and understand most everyday sounds, noises and what-have-you, I have an issue with understanding spoken word from people.  I’m not all that great understanding generally day-to-day talking.  Watching TV?  I need closed captioning.  Trying to chit-chat with family or friends?  Harrowing experience where I have to do more speaking than attempting to listen.  Group conversation?  Fughettaboutit.  There’s no friggin’ way I follow a conversation that is more than me and someone else.

Part of that is the limitation of the speech processor hardware.  Part of that is a limitation of the implanted device in itself.  Part of that is just me — after all, I started losing m hearing at around age 13 and conversation soon turned to blah-blah-blah unless I really focused.  calling it laziness wouldn’t be out fo the question.  In fact, part of me feels like that’s exactly what it is — laziness and lack of actual focusing on what I hear due to quality.  Oh, I can listen and follow music just fine…  Speech?  Different story.  Different complication.

One that I hope gets appended with a recent change.

In April I started having issues with my now-arcane Spectra-22.  I shot off an email to my audiologist about issues I was having and asked about replacing the device — I did have insurance on my equipment after all.  But my doctor explained that the Spectra had been discontinued as it was now technologically obsolete.

“No…  Really?”   I muttered with thick sarcasm from where I was sitting.  The hearing-noose that the Spectra is/was (and I’m not ungrateful, I’d gladly wear that piece of equipment instead of being deaf) was clearly dated with the technological innovations that were showing up elsewhere in society.  Of course, cell phone technlogy or computing technology isn’t quite comparable to a human prosthetic — is it?  From processors onboard your iPhone or Blackberry to different innovations with software that had certainly taken place since the Spectra-22 hardware was introduced, I have been pretty certain that “turning the corner” with understanding speech was only a speech processor upgrade away.

A couple of weeks ago now, I ventured to Los Angeles on my yearly sojourn to see my audiologist at the House Ear Institute.  This time around, instead of using arcane sofware tied to the arcane speech-processor I was wearing as I entered the building, we were going to be replacing that hardware with the new Freedom speech processor from Cochlear.

Cochlear's Freedom Processor BTE unit

One can see from the processor picture alone that there is a lot less hardware involved in the unit.  Instead of having to wear a body-pack to handle all the technological mumbo-jumbo, it’s all contained within the first 1/3rd of the prosthetic.  The rest?  Audio control and batteries.

It’s taken me a few days to adjust to sound as it’s relayed with the device – and when I mean sound I mean general hearing.  You have different aspects that you can tune with this device (the microphone volume and the microphone sensitivity) that both play into what you are able to hear.  On the Spectra, you only had the option of turning up or down the sensitivity of the microphone on the unit.  That led to a lot of noise clutter even as you used a second setting to reduce background noise.  It was part of why speech was only blah-blah-blah.  Though I must admit that i am yet to master the improvements that I can have with a strong sensitivity without a loud volume and what not.

Practice will make perfect, however.

Yet I had an event, just listening to sound like I normally would, that encouraged me.  Actually two.  One was listening to TV in my hotel room and having to turn off closed-captions due to them distracting me as I tried to listen to a talk show on TV.   Imagine that?  Going through years upon years of needing the crutch that is closed captions and then having to turn them off because they were distracting you.  Mind you, I was not picking up the full conversation that was going on but I was understanding key words being used instead of hearing the throw-away words like and, then, if, to, but that give no perception of what is going on in the conversation.  Instead, I was making out key words that gave me a gist of what was being said.  Add the tone of a speakers voice and their body language and you aren’t on the outside, looking in so much.  You’re at the doorway and you’re eavesdropping.  That’s what it felt like.

The other little ephinay I experienced was simply listenign to my iPod.  Yes, it’s odd that someone who is clinically deaf has an iPod to begin with…  let alone enjoys music at all but here I am.  Listening to music tended to be quite like listening to AM radio with outstanding reception, or FM radio for that matter.  Could have been better but it was great all unto itself.

And yet I listened to the typical stuff on my MP3 player — The Doors, REM, Counting Crows, Aerosmith, the Beatles, what not…  the quality was closer to CD quality than I’d ever had before.  CD Quality!  CD Quality!

That’s encouraging!  More than encouraging.  Sure, everything isn’t going to be perfect any time soon, but I look forward to trying to get there.

Technology can indeed be grand.

In May or 2004 — about six months after surgery — I switched from walking with a walker to walking with a cane. I quickly adjusted to life with another assistant device always clutched in my hand. I had just finished up with physical therapy, and I had been hoping I’d be past the need for anything to help me out.

So now it’s August 2008… Just days away from an anniversary of another major operation. Instead of marking the occasion with downer stories and worries and what not, I made a little choice during the day on Friday that’s effected my entire weekend and maybe my day-to-day life from now on.

I haven’t used my cane.

I own a pair of folding canes — one for the yard, the other for general use. I also have a solid wood one. All of them are scattered around the house, but out in obvious places as just-in-case reminders. The thing is, I haven’t needed them. I haven’t wanted them. I haven’t sought them. After 4 years of using them, I’m long overdue to take a liberating step without assistance. And that’s what I’ve done. Neighborhood walks, shopping walks, etc. It’s been a challenge but also a boost to my own self confidence in my physical ability.

It’s a small thing, really… And if i were sitting there reading this blog post, I’d be bummed out at the topic in the first place. But this isn’t supposed to be a post about tearing down as so much building up. A long overdue buildup. We’ll see how long this lasts.

Of course, I can revel in the fact that I can enjoy music again. I have been able to for some time as I think it’s been a tool for me to adapt back to the hearing world in one way or another. Sort of like a personal configuration utility for my brain — I remember how certain songs sound or certain tones I should be listening for — a cymbil crash perhaps, maybe the backign orchestra section jumping in during the refrain to “Hey Jude” — and press myself to hear these things. I use it as a gauge to see how well I am doing.

That took on a new dynamic last month as I had two cords, termed as Personal Audio Cables – sent to me by Cochlear Corp. These two wires — for personal media players or hi fi stereos/TV’s/computers — let me connect my body-worn speech processor directly to the aforementioned objects so I hear the tones or the music directly instead of trying to sort things out through a set of speakers.

But lets dispense with the technical crap. I got these things in January and I unpackaged one of the cables. I connected it to my PC speakers and then turned on iTunes… pulled up a song and started to play…

You seen the Matrix?

That scene where Neo gets combat training information uploaded to his head by Tank? It was kind of like that.

“Hey, I think Mikey likes it. Want some more?”
“Hell Yes!”

Now, nothing beats hearing and feeling music coming through the air and through the speakers. Nothing beats listening to smething in surround sound (for example) where you feel the sound waves and it adds to the effect of whatever you are listening to.

That aspect is lacking. But the aspect of having music beamed directly to my head? I’ll take it any day of the week. It’s been so awesome that I bought an iPod Nano and am experimenting with music I’ve never listened to before – which I wouldn’t try much when I was relying on the speakers alone.

As I said in October, I had graduated from High School that year, forgotten in a huge senior class at East Lake High. There was one quality I had, though, that stuck out which people may remember me by — my hearing was shit.

After graduating in June of that year – with about 25 percent or less of my original hearing, I basically did nothing. I was reached out to by no one and didn’t attempt it much myself because I was the wall-flower… I couldn’t hold a conversation with thanks to not being able to understand what people were saying (even with the help of a hearing aid). And at age 18? Who’s going to put up with that?

I sank into depression and my health deteriorated. This hearing situation had already led to my decision not to attend Flagler College in St. Augustine (where I had been accepted the previous spring) and now I was isolated and alone in a world I couldn’t take part in. My balance became somewhat less dependable than tuning into MTV and seeing a music video playing. I wobbled and swayed all over the place and depended on leaning where and when I could, onto stable and solid things… Anything to keep me upright.

that’s little ole’ me, circa November 1997

It was sometime in October of that year that I had an MRI performed on my head, and in a matter of days had a doctor tell me flat out that I could go to bed one night and not wake up the next morning. A 7 centimeter tumor effecting blood flow and cramping the brain will do that to you. Acoustic Neuroma is the scientific term to describe this, but the truth is it was the end of one life and the beginning of another…

It’s been ten years – not by choice, not by design, but by inevitability – that I’ve been deaf. Ten years since the natural hearing world escaped me and I was plunged into a more difficult version of society where one attempts to fit in while feeling like an outcast. Sure, I use a variation of the cochlear implant now (and have been for six years) and am doing quite well with it but I still haven’t turned a corner to make conversation easy to understand and take part in with strangers. I miss that the most…

It also doesn’t begin to describe the immediate aftermath aftermath — being trapped between worlds — a deaf person in a hearing world, a hearing person in a deaf world – where those around me refuse to adjust and demand my adjustment to them. Or being thrust into the paranoia filled bigotry of the deaf community where the hearing (or late deaf) were not welcome unless their commitment to the deaf life was total and utter.

Of course the flip side of this is that it got me involved on the Internet, which led to a job, which led to my web design talents, which led to a certain legal threat and a lot of pluses and minuses along the way.

10 years gone, and I’m still standing.

10 years gone, I’m still left wanting.

I’ve stayed the last few years north of the Mid Wilshire center, not quite Hollywood, not Downtown, not Wilshire and not that great a hotel but it worked in it’s simplicity. This time around, I pampered myself and stayed downtown at the Westin Bonaventure. I haven’t stayed at a hotel that nice before and a three star rating from certain online travel companies seems cruel. At any rate, the location is extremely centralized — blocks away from subway access, shopping, Union Station (Flyaway is a blessed thing) and what not. It was a bargain compared to my normal hotel – so I paid a few extra bucks to stay there.

What I didn’t take into account was being out of shape in my post-op condition. I also didn’t take into account my unfamiliarity with the building would lead to blood, pain, and embarrassment.

2400 miles from home without anyone to hang out with – I go stumbling around the Galleria in the first few floors of the hotel and try to find a skybridge to other buildings and there shopping offerings.

Cuz what else are you going to do when you’re bored and have a little cash to spend besides shop?

So I find this exit to a skybridge — whoo hoo! — and start walking down a long corridor with skylights. I ignorantly think I am on the skybridge itself (the Bonaventure has several and ALL are uncovered) when in fact I am walking beneath the pool deck/patio of the building.

So I come to the end of that hall and find a pair of double doors saying thank-you, leaving-the-hotel, blah-blah-blah…. I can see a flight of stairs down and a flight of stairs up a short distance in front of me. I swing those doors open and walk a few steps — never observing the two steps down immediately in front of me.

Anarchy ensues.

I tumble and smash my face into a concrete-ornamental-edging at the side of the wall. I wither and moan in pain. I’m shaking, I’m bleeding, I think I’ve broken my nose.

2400 miles from home, no family in the greater Los Angeles area… The gimp-with-a-limp has worked himself ineptly into a fine mess.

I try my best to collect myself. Standing up — no, more like staggering to my feet. I get my bearing and see those stairs I missed, I also see the blood all over my hands and mutter a whiny “Oh shit” in response to this. I stagger up those steps back to those doors I mentioned… I find them locked from the outside. Imagine that.

Looking back, it feels like an eternity trying to decide what to do — go upstairs to who-knows-where or down to street level? I chose the former as to the latter and I find the pool deck of the hotel. I’m too shook up to really know if anyone who I passed spoke to me or even acknowledged me as I walked back to the hotel with blood flowing from my nose.

The fallout of all this is me walking bloodily to the lobby and asking for help, and the hotel springing to action to take car eof one of their customers. I appreciate the hell out of that but I’m stille mbarassed by being there while a convention was gathering and people checking in and out and what not. Of course, hotel security took care of that by getting me behind closed doors and takign care of me…

Probably the most anecdotal happening in LA in my time visiting the City of Angels on my lonesome. This would only have been better with company

There are some things starting to get to me though. I guess I was spoiled rotten during my hospital stay and my recovery and now I feel like I’m socially in a black hole. Limited reach outs from friends, limited shout outs and more, and less.

There’s also a lack of focus I am experiencing right now that un-nerves me. For the past 2 weeks I’ve been spot on with focus. On the ball. I see something that needs to be done, I do it. If someone else has something that needs to be done and isn’t sure of steps, I consult. I consult when not requested (and not in a rude way, it coincides needed productivity for a dormant product). I was all over the friggin’ place. AND I was hitting the ball out of the park on this shit! It was incredible, it was a rush…

…It was temporary?

I’m procrastinating more right now — with incoming emails, with to-do projects and what not — than I have at any time since I went to the hospital. There’s just this… social dread? I dunno… Part of me wants to get it done, knows I gotta get it done, knows I NEED to get it done.

The other part of me wants to chill out and surf the web and wait for someone to distract me. The people I want to distract me get credence while the people I don’t drive me back to work.

How about that? “Test your worth to John! Send him an IM during anti-social/anti-productivity hour and if he drops you for a project, you know your value!”

Newest skill test at the state fair, ya’ll. :-p

Oh, one other thing that is getting to me lately… Why can’t I enjoy movies any more? I feel a horrid pain when I watch Superman Returns (who hasn’t?) due to Bryan Singer’s epic scoping of the film and lack-of-editing to make Superman seem more likable. I saw The Two Towers before surgery and thought it (again) a disaster of editing proportions. That’s what I am seeing everywhere — edit, voice-over, edit, edit, chop, dissolve, blah, blah, blah… And these aren’t action sequences where I see them (most of the time)! Is it just heightened perception or should I burn my DVD Collection, get rid of my cable box and renounce Speilburg?

I mean, I’ve been home about 3 weeks so I really shouldn’t be bitching but having my bathroom totally demolished (tub removed, tile removed, vanity removed, mirror and medicine cabinet removed, etc, etc) makes things just a LITTLE hectic. I also feel bad for my younger brother who is doing all the work — kicking ass and taking names of course, but it’s a lot of work.

The new tub is in place now, that’s nice. When I can actually bathe again and use the facilities in peace will be even better. Maybe by the end of the month? **Shrug**

Oh, yeah… Dwelling on inevitability. Surgery. All that joyous stuff that makes life grand for me. August 7th, 2007 was an extremely surreal experience in that my focus had to be elsewhere instead of impending doom and gloom (thank you Oren Koules, Jim Sherrin and Doug Maclean). Surreal may be a strong word for it. A grand, welcome distraction might be a better phrasing. Having a friend come over to spend some time with me and further distract me only aided to things.

The next day was no better – wanting to deal with that story and yet lying in a hospital gurney most of the day while waiting an angiogram: the pre-operative procedure as bad as I dreaded (but with a great staff of physicians trying to deal with my issues and some medical breakthroughs since my last angiogram that kept me from being bed ridden).

You know, I feel like I’m being shallow in the details but at the same time — there weren’t many meaty details before I was trucked off to the ninth floor at Tampa General Hospital where I stayed overnight before surgery. Besides pain issues with thanks to the angiogram, everything went swimmingly.

And how can I properly term my stay at TGH besides saying I was surrounded by good omens and positive energy? Days previous to surgery, I’d gotten a religious card sent to me with the only Patron Saint I identify with. It’s sorta grim but after I learned about him (and wrote about a poem where I invoked him) I didn’t see it as an ill omen as-so-much familiarity. I can deal with familiarity.

When I got to the ninth floor, who greets me warmly but an old friend from High School who works as an Registered Nurse on the floor? It was good mojo to see her, realize who she was and have come right up to me and say hi.

Another thing that was positive and yet drenched with negativity was a nurse I had overnight who I couldn’t understand due to her accent. She was warm, pleasant and tried her best to overcome things and I found myself mad that I had gotten frustrated with her.

Of course, all the while I had continued grim thoughts of impending doom. Was I due for a severe physical setback such as a stroke? Loss of vision? Hell, this was going to be the third time I had a variation of this operation and my luck was due to run out at some time — was this it? I started dreading the thought of the anesthesia mask and falling into the black void of the unknown outcome.

At 2 AM I asked for someone to talk to – anyone – and got a staff chaplain come up to my room. I’m not a religious person in the least but I know these people listen and speak where and when they need to and I needed to speak and get my worries off my chest. I’d already dealt with the unabashed “You’ve done it before, you will be fine” rhetoric from family and that did not address fears and concerns at all.

I felt like Neo in the original Matrix, facing Agent Smith’s “inevitability” rhetoric.

The Chaplain’s name was Ken and he did what I needed him to do — just to listen, just to interject where he could. I laid out my whole belief thing and rambled a bit about faith and my own cynicism… I told him that some of me was cocky and couldn’t see me not coming out all right from this major operation, and the other part of me was a realist that knew that things don’t go well all the time, things don’t always pan out.

I told him I was afraid of the reprocussions – being a burden on my family or leaving things unattended if the worst happened. And that’s basically been the hidden truth the past few months knowing that I had a major operation before me — I don’t want to be a burden on my family and I don’t want to be irresponsible and leave those I care for hanging.

There’s more but it’s been two weeks and I’ve forgotten it all by now. Ken prayed for me and promised to keep me in his thoughts during the day. It’s not the biggest promise one can make in the world but it’s something I needed to hear. It’s something I needed to be told. It was stuff I needed to say and needed someone to actually listen to and I’ll forever be grateful that I had this meeting.

So now the wheels are rolling and at 6:30 I’m carted off to pre-op. I ask the guy “driving” my hospital bed if he’s open to a bribe to take me anywhere else.

Not happening. Shit.

That sense of having to face impending doom was still with me but the staff — knowing i had hearing problems and what not already — were very accommodating. It was good mojo, it was good Karma. Fear was still there but something was working in my favor unbeknownst to me. I stress that… Everywhere I worried, things were working in my favor even if I couldn’t see them.

I saw two of my doctors in the OR emmediately before I was put under… It was reassuring, it was calming. I have to admit Harry van Loveren has a presence and Christopher Danner is a comforting soul. It really made a difference to see someone farmiliar in the room when you’re being prepped for surgery like that.

And then they gassed me…

One thing anyone who has never had surgery should wonders about is what you see and feel once you go under. I’ve had weird visions before, I’ve been able to fight anesthesia before and stay awake when I should have passed out minutes earlier… This time, the dark abyss came instantly when I went under. Besides some chaos and hockey — yeah, hockey… that’s what I think anyway — my sleep was pretty much fine. Fine, indeed, because I woke up.

I didn’t just wake up, I woke up knowing. I woke up comprehending. I woke up aware and whole. I was sure of it, I woke up whole.

I caught a glimpse of one of my doctors immediately post op when I was in recovery and I started touching my fingers to my nose — which is used as a test to see if you’ve had a stroke, doing this simple task. Me doing it caused the doctor to laugh but in reality, me doing it was a big “fuck you” to the guy for scaring me with this shit in the first place. He had laid the seeds of dread, of fear, of loathing and despair… and here I was…. Alive. Drugged. Whole.

Whole.

And it was proven further in ICU where I stayed Thursday night and most of Friday. One of my nurses wrote down a few questions asking me routine stuff and my first thought was “brain trauma questions” — something like a concussion victim would be asked. I tried to have (sane) fun with it but I was drugged and you never know how loopy some of the reactions may have come out. But mocking the president when asked about the year, making an odd remark about the floor which you are currently on in the hospital, that’s what came out with the honest to God answers of “2007″ and “5th”.

I knew damn well where I was, when I was, what was going on, what had happened…

Good mojo, mon. Excellent mojo.

That’s the only thing I can take from my experience. People may have said they were sending me positive thoughts but it was like I truly was engulfed in it. I had my aunt and uncle visit most of the weekend and they made time fly. I had my younger brother visit — and I know it’s hard for him to see me in the hospital – which made a huge impact on me just because I know how tough it is for him. I had friends stop by over the four days I was in the hospital… Four days! That’s less than most of my hospital visits! It all had such an effect on me. Great staff, good company.

Oh, and those drugs kicked ass too, make no mistake.

The title of this post is “the fallout” and the truth is the fallout happens to be I’m still here. I’m still kicking and while I’ve had my bang ups and my misteps and my aches, pains and long nights of suffering since I was released from the Hospital, I’m alive and optimistic once again. I’m “trying to get my head on straight” and have bouts of tunnel vision from my hospital experience which pisses me off at times because there is a world going on around me… But I’m improving and broadening my horizons again daily.

The fallout is that I’m fine. I’m good.

And St. Jude and lost causes are what I identify with… yet I’m no lost cause, not as long as I want. And to want is to strive. To strive is to live and to live is to be.

…And I be back.

So much I don’t want to do, so much I want to avoid, so much I want to be irresponsible about… and no time for it.

First off, the description of an angiogram doesn’t make it sound so horrible — they’re checking the blood flow in arteries to make sure there is no blockage and such… I’ve had one before and the procedure itself was no biggie.

Yeah, and then the pain killers wore off.

That procedure was exactly 11 years ago on the 16th or so. I wasn’t just bedridden in the hospital after but also an enormous among of discomfort as well.

“Discomfort” being insurmountable pain in my leg and abdomen. Being told not to move didn’t help things.

Maybe angiograms have improved in 11 years time and post procedure discomfort level is much less than I experienced in 1996… That’s about the only hope I can grab on to with this. An Angiogram the day before an operation on my noggin’… I guess Karma’s biting me in the ass (again) for whatever wrongs I have committed in my life, cuz all I have is dread now for August 8th and beyond.

I’m getting away from the fact that I said I haven’t talked about my health much at all on here lately. For the uninitiated, I suffer from a rare genetic disease commonly referred to as NF2. It’s a nasty little gem of a disease that doesn’t get much attention (besides an odd mention on House M.D. every-so-often). It causes benign tumors to grow mostly on nerves in the body. One of said tumors were the reason I began to lose my hearing as a teen and was rendered deaf 10 years ago last December.

It also gives me the supernatural abilities like super-intelligence, telekenisis and empathy along with…

Wait a minute, that was a John Travolta movie. Never mind.

Seriously… The last time I really brought up (bitched, moaned, vented, etc) my health was the summer and fall of 2003 when I hit a couple of hard patches and was frustrated, scared and just flat out torn up (to put it lightly). Blogging things publicly helped me get my frustrations and worries out in the open… or at least out of my head for the moment until the next panic hit.

It’s 4 years later and I’ve got problems again. Problems in my head this time that get the doctors attention. Now, from the smart-ass perspective, you’d quickly quip “Yeah, anyone who (inserts a thought, political idea, interest, etc) would be classified as having problems in the head!” but it’s a little more serious than that. About 5 centimeters worth of serious. Between-my-ears, behind-my-eyes serious.

I’ve been operated on twice up there before. Both times I had the operations in question out west with one of the top doctors in the world. This time around, I’m sticking in Tampa Bay and trusting a doctor who’s been heralded to me as one of the best in the world. He’s got books and awards and all that jazz. He’ll have some of my old friends along with him to make sure my ABI doesn’t get fudged up and what not.

Still, there are risks and even if they aren’t substantial — what they are is a worst case scenarios. So I worry about that, even though it’s almost like thinking about worst-case stuff when you go out and do day to day things.
“The worst case scenario while driving to the Supermarket to pick up milk is that an out of control mack truck with a drunk at the wheel, plows into my car and explodes…. Oh, and I don’t die instantly on impact!”

Rosy, cheery stuff like that.

So part of my mind (ha — the cause of all my problems) keeps wanting me to be responsible and at least report this upcoming operation, make arrangements for the “just in case”, “worst case scenario” type things. Every other part of me wants the status quo to remain — though that status quo is a deteriorating personal conditions where the changes in my health are more or less subtle until I get to a tipping point and things really get messed up and my life hangs in the balance.

Rosy, cheery stuff like that.

I don’t want to face the idea of things — out of my control — go bad and yet with responsibilities to friends and loved ones, how can I not?

Something’s got to be done in the near future and at the same time – the consequences if something goes wrong are immense.

I can’t convey how bad it was – I thought i was going to spend the rest of my life in a wheelchair. I thought I wasn’t goign to be able to physically perform with someone, I thought i wasn’t going to be able to go out and aout and more and would be at the mercey of someone who cared for me – or didn’t really but felt a responsibility.

At one point… exactly a year ago within the last few days — I got that wheelchair I worried aobut and my mom got upset… Telling me that if I get in one, I’m never getting out. Why would she say that? Basically it’s something that you see with elderly people who give up or who have their lives fall apart. Why try any more? It’s not like they will recover that well.

Meanwhile things continued to go down, get worse for me… It came to the point where physically trying was redundant because my body would fail onn me, int eh attempt.

Now it’s been a week since I got back from LA and it hits home every day when I think about how much things have changed in the past year. I didn’t give up, I didn’t stop fighting… I didn’t stop sticking my neck out either (but that’s a different story). The difference si night and day. Where I was doing physical rehab to try to keep some strength, now I am trying to use that strength I’ve regained to live my life agian.

Now if only I wasn’t stuck in the suburbs… but again, that’s a different story.

Oh Nurse, where are you when I need you?

I want my walker fix, I need my assistive walker fix! If I don’t have my fix, I go crazy! I have a difficult time doing routine things like, well, walking! I need to lean! I want to lean! I want your support walker! UGH!

Seriously though, folks, being a gimp as my medical posts have so often referenced, I’ve been using a walker since last August and I’m starting to get peeved I am still dependent on it. Oh no, it’s not because I physically can’t walk without it any more… It’s that… Well, I can’t LET myself walk without it. It becomes so difficult!

I looked around the Internet and I couldn’t find anything on the psychological dependence patients build towards assistive devices in case they are using them for a long time. I’ve been confident that exists for a very long time after seeing plenty of elderly people, after surgery, insist on continuing to use assistive devices that they no longer need. It’s easier that way. I have to agree with them but at the same time — I’m a 24 year old and walking around as a gimp without something to lean on kills my social life.

Friend: “So, you wanna hang out?”

Me: “Sure, just make sure you drop me off curb side because the pavement is cracked in front of the building. Also help me get to my seat — screw chivalry! — I look like a fool pushing this aluminum walking thing around.”

Fun stuff :rolleyes

SO I gotta try to kick the habit. Be that by upgrading to a cane and making it Swing or by just getting rid of the walker and forcing myself to walk without it. Easier said than don, either way.