WyzWmn's World©

How weird must it be for a person who spent their whole life being Type A to all of a sudden not be any more?

To spend years and years being hyper organized and detailed and having everything under control in both your personal and professional lives and then all of a sudden you hit your head one too many times and that’s gone?

To go from making lists and (sometimes) frantically acting upon them and being hyper focussed on everything you do to making lists and then making lists of your lists…but never actioning them?

That’s me.

Almost every day I say exactly the same thing to myself…. “Today I really must do such and such”…. And then tomorrow morning, I say to myself “today I really must do such and such”….and the day after, and the day after that.

There’s no frantic (unless I’m in a crowd) there’s no hyper focus, there’s no guilt about not getting things done and often it may take me a week or several to get a job accomplished… It’s not like there’s anything in the way and it’s not like I’m lazy.

This is what living with a brain injury is like.

I’ve always thought there has been some kind of neuro spicy going on in my brain. I’ve always thought that I don’t react like others, and I don’t view many things like others… and in spite of family members and loved ones, always telling me that I am smart, intelligent articulate. I have always felt that I was missing something…that I wasn’t quite getting the point.

Well apparently one too many knocks on the head has allowed me to just “let it go…”

My father spent his whole life telling me to just let it go. He’d be so proud of me now.

I have Dupuytren’s contracture in my left hand… I thought it was as a result of that scooter accident last fall in October but it turns out it’s actually genetic, and it’s mostly genetic in people who came from Europe and their descendants. They actually also called it the Viking Disease as it was exacerbated by Viking swords once upon a time.

I’m pretty lucky because my Dupuytren’s so far has not contracted many of my fingers…just possibly the baby finger on my left hand… And it’s kind of sore right now because I’ve been over using my left hand as a result of wearing a sling for my right elbow.

Anyway, it is an abnormal thickening of the tissue in the palm of your hand (called nodes) which can cause your tendons to no longer work there by causing your fingers to not straighten out.

My case is pretty mild so I don’t have to have any medical intervention at this point. The doctor said that some people have it constricting movement of the fingers which requires a very painful surgery. He offered me a shot of cortisone but as mine is not restricting my fingers at this point I said no thanks.

While I was there, I had occasion to speak to the orthopaedic tech that worked in the same clinic… he asked what I had done to precipitate wearing a sling, and I told him that I broke my elbow… and while my elbow doesn’t hurt daily, the rest of my arm does. He said… “Let me guess you wear the sling when you’re out of the house, but at home you don’t?”

Truth. He said the sling I was wearing was too small and that I need to wear it all the time I’m awake or my arm won’t heal properly. I feel like it’s some kind of a setback… wearing the sling full-time, but I want this thing to heal so I’m gonna.