Roommates at CNS Apartments

On January 2, 2013 I was loaded into a van in my wheelchair and moved from Zale Lipshy at Parkland Memorial Hospital to the Centre for Neuro Skills in Irving. CNS owns and operates a residential care living facility – an apartment complex – in Irving, nearly four miles from their therapy clinic. That is where I lived for the next seven months while I was going to rehab classes at CNS.

There are about nine buildings, each having four apartments, each apartment housing two patients. For each pair of patients there are six Neuro Rehabilitation Specialists taking care of us – mornings from 7:30 am until we leave for class in one of several vans sometime between 8:30 am and 10:30 am, depending on when we start classes for the day. The patients then return to the apartments either at 3:30 pm or 4:30 pm, depending on our schedules, where we have NRS’s who are with us from then until their shifts end at 11:30 pm. There are then additional NRS’s in each apartment from 11:30 pm until 7:30 am the next morning. I was rarely awake and active overnight, except when I went to the bathroom, so I rarely saw the ones who worked that shift.

During those months in the apartments, I lived in four different apartments with five roommates: Charles “Bo” Lewis, Ashton Cerka, Bo again, Charlie Thums, William “Bill” Donaldson, and John Sims. Like all the other patients at CNS, my roommates had brain injuries, but each had unique symptoms from which they were recovering. Before I suffered my brain injury, I did not know anything about that condition, except when I would see a car park in a handicapped spot and appear to be perfectly healthy when they walked from their car. Then I would jokingly say, “It must be brain damage.” I have now learned quite a lot about brain injuries because I lived and learned with people who suffered from many different types of neural damage, caused from both physical trauma – car and motorcycle accidents, strokes, aneurysms, seizures, surgery, etc. – and poisons, like mercury and lead.

My first roommate, in my first apartment, was Bo. He was a fireman from Mineral Wells, in his fifty’s, maybe ten years younger than me, who was married and had two or three grown children. I think his injury was from an accident suffered on-the-job. He had severe memory problems, especially difficulty remember words, places and events. In fact, shortly after I shared an apartment with him, he left for about a month for surgery. And since I had my own mental problems at that time, I don’t remember much about him then, except that he did not talk much at all.

My second roommate was Ashton, and I really don’t know why he was there, except that he had problems using his arms. What I do remember is that, whenever he showered each morning, he would always have music playing. I don’t know if it was a radio or records or his cell phone, but I loved the music pouring out of the washroom. In fact, I did not like the way, whenever anyone entered the apartment – my roommates, the NRS, or anyone else – the first thing they did was turn on the television, whether they intended to actually watch it or not. They just wanted some noise. I did not. From Ashton I learned that having good music was much more pleasant than mindless noise from the television.

I hadn’t relearned to use my cell phone at that time, but I did have a lot of recordings at home on my desktop computer. So I had my son Evan copy all my songs – over a thousand of them – to my HP/Palm tablet, which I had purchased about a year before I was hospitalized, and asked him to teach me how to use it. I did not know how to find a specific song, so I just set the app to play them all, randomly. From then on, if no one was watching the television, I would turn it off and start my music on my tablet from wherever it had stopped when I last turned if off. In August 2013, about the time I moved out of the CNS apartments, I got a new cell phone onto which I had Evan load all my songs from the tablet, and which I have sense learned to use much more extensively. I still play it every day, and still set it to randomly play everything, mainly because all of the songs I play are my personal favorites!

After I’d been in the apartments for about a month, Ashton and I were moved to different apartments, him to live by himself and me next door to my first apartment. I do not know why these changes occurred, or maybe I did but cannot remember, but I was in an apartment alone for a couple of weeks, and then Bo released from the hospital and moved in with me again. He was talking a little bit now, but it was mostly just “God dammit” and “oh, shit” and very little else. They told me this was a function of his brain injury and to just ignore it. But it was funny.

One thing that occurred with Bo was related to the fact that I was getting all my nutrition from a feeding tube, because of my dysphagia (swallowing difficulty). One evening after Bo had finished his supper – he was not on a feeding tube – he had a small cup of chocolate pudding. Since he was still in a wheelchair and I was not, when I saw him trying to find a place to throw away the empty cup, I go up and threw the cup away for him. However, before I placed it in the garbage can, I took my finger, wiped off a little bit of pudding that was at the bottom of the container, and ate it. Nicole, our NRS, as she was required to do, wrote about what I had done in the record book she was required to maintain about everything that Bo and I did in the apartment. Apparently we all got in trouble when the people at CNS found out that I had eaten something besides the meals I received through the g-tube.

After two or three weeks with Bo, he was moved to another apartment and so was I, but not to the same place. I was moved in with Charlie, a patient with a very different set of problems. He was about 25 and had received damage to his skull from a motorcycle accident. His parents, Sue and Roger, who were divorced and lived in Wisconsin where Charlie had grown up, took turns living in Dallas in an apartment they had rented just to take turns staying near Charlie during his TBI recovery. Charlie did not have any physical problems, but suffered from severe loss of memory. In fact, he did not know that he even had any memory damage. He thought he still lived with his mother in her Wisconsin apartment, and would often try to find his room upstairs, not understanding that he was not in Wisconsin and that this apartment had only one floor. He also could not remember when he had eaten and would look for food over and over again. During the month I lived with him, Charlie gained 15 or 20 pounds. When I last saw him, about six months later, he had put on at least another 20 pounds. He would also want to look for the stuff he needed to take to school, things like his wallet, cell phone, keys and notebooks, all of which he neither needed nor had. Every morning and afternoon, when it was time to go to class or return home, he would delay the vans wanting to find one or more of these items.

One thing I remember from my time at those apartments was that about once each week we would have a fire drill. Everyone had to get out of their apartment and stand outside the fence until the NRS supervisors had checked each room to insure that everyone had left the buildings. After one “all clear” signal, when we all headed back to our apartments, Charlie went into the wrong one. They pretty much all looked alike, but when he got inside, he insisted that was his apartment and refused to leave. After that incident, I made a point after each fire drill to escort him back to our room so that would not happen again.

Because Charlie would often come into my room and take some of my things, I asked to be moved to another apartment. My next roommate was Bill, who was almost well enough to move back home. He would spend hours asking Nicole what he had to do at the apartments to “graduate” and move home. He was my roommate for only two or three weeks before he was able to go home, but one evening, as we were getting to know each other, I told him that I was 93 years old – I was only 63, but had difficulty with numbers and memory because of my injury. He was astonished, of course, and repeatedly insisted that I could not be that old, but I kept insisting, until I mentioned this to someone else, who know how old I was, and who set me straight. I was so embarrassed and I had to tell Bill that I was not really lying, I was just confused.

My last roommate, after Bill moved out, was John Sims, an engineer at Bell Helicopters. He was severely restricted to a wheelchair and had to be bodily moved from that to his bed or anywhere else. He also had limited speech, so we were not able to get to know each other much. He did have frequent visitors – his mother and children – with whom I was able to learn a bit about him, and I often saw him at the clinic as they work on his mental and physical difficulties.

In late July I was happy that I could move back home, but I will never forget the roommates I had there and all of the NRS’s, drivers and other friends I made at CNS, all of whom helped me in my TBI recovery.

I still go to therapy class

Lisa, graduate student at Callier Richardson

It has been over 22 months since I suffered a traumatic brain injury, being hit by a car as I walked across the street to work, November 1, 2012. After a couple of days in Parkland Memorial Hospital the doctors determined that my brain was swelling too much and needed immediate attention. During surgery a chunk of my scull, about the size of my hand, was sliced off and placed into a refrigerator for a couple of weeks to allow my brain to complete its swelling and return to normal size. During that time I was in an induced coma so I have no memory from the time I was walking across Inwood Road until I slowly started waking up seven weeks later in a hospital bed at Zale Lipshy, UT Southwestern Medical Center’s neurological diagnostic and treatment centers, adjacent to Parkland.

I was only at Zale Lipshy for a couple of weeks, where I started doing physical therapy (which was very similar to what I had been through nine years earlier, when I was learning to walk again while recovering from Guillain–Barré syndrome). At the same time I received rehab classes with a speech therapist because I could not read – at all. I could not even remember the alphabet.

On the 2nd of January, 2013, I was moved to the Centre for Neuro Skills in Irving, Texas, for more intensive rehabilitation. CNS provides postacute therapeutic rehabilitation and disease management services for those of us recovering from acquired brain injury. I spent eleven months at CNS undergoing daily classes for educational therapy (speech, language, memory and reading), physical therapy, occupational therapy, social counseling and other problems resulting from traumatic brain injury (TBI). Much of my time and therapy was done at CNS’s apartments where I lived full-time for seven months before reaching a level of recovery where I could stay at home and ride their van each day to rehab.

At the apartments there were CNS employees – neuro rehabilitation specialists – who lived and worked around the clock seven days a week. In addition to helping us through our day-to-day activities – going to the bathroom, getting around on the wheelchairs, getting to the clinic and back each day for therapy – they helped prepare us for the essential knowledge of how to live on our own in the outside world – the world beyond rehab. That training included how to do my own laundry, make my bed, prepare meals, learn to make grocery lists for meal plans, and even how to do simple things like take a shower or use the toilet – not easy to do when you are in a wheelchair.

After I left CNS, I really needed to continue my rehab – I still have severe memory loss and can barely read – so I enrolled in classes at Baylor Garland, the nearest TBI therapy clinic to my home. I started there December 10, 2013, less than three weeks after leaving CNS. At CNS I was in the therapy clinic six hours a day, five days a week. At Baylor I was with a therapist two or three days a week for just an hour each visit. Quite a difference, but then I was recovering each say, little by little so that was sufficient.

Unfortunately I only got to stay at Baylor Garland for less than a month because my health plan – ObamaCare – started January 1st and I had to pay the full cost for my therapy until my deductible was fully payed. Fortunately, my therapist, Carey Hammond told me about a TBI therapy program at Callier Center – where I worked at the time I received my brain injury – that was not tied to insurance plans. As a university they only charged a small flat fee per semester because the program was designed to teach UTD graduate students to become therapists. In fact several of the therapists I’d had at CNS had graduated from this program at UTD Callier.

I started at Callier about a week after my last session at Baylor and have been attended their classes ever since. In fact the new fall semester started a couple of days ago. Last spring and this fall semester I am attending one day a week, on Fridays. Over the summer semester I went Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, just to see if I really needed that much therapy.

The rehab classes at each facility are quite different. At CNS there were six hour-long classes each day, similar to classes at high school or college, except for the group counseling sessions which consisted of a coundelor and three to six patients. We also had an hour at noon for lunch and we each brought our lunch from the apartments or from home. Most of the time while I was in the apartments I was not able to eat meals at all – I was restricted to a feeding tube because of my dysphagia (difficulty swallowing). I got off the g-tube about two weeks before I moved home, so that was the only time I had anything at the apartments with which to make lunches. After I moved home I made lunch before the van picked me up each morning.

During my brief time in rehab at Baylor Garland I had therapy sessions for one hour a day two or three times each week. Like at CNS, these were one hour sessions one-on-one with a therapist, either Carey or Theresa Welch. At Callier I had Friday therapy class from 9am until 11:30am. The first hour was a group class with half a dozen patients and as many graduate students discussing current events gathered by the students during the week for which they collected news photos to show the class. After this segment we watch a brief portion (ten or fifteen minutes) of a movie or television documentary selected by the instructor – during the spring semester we watched the movie Remember the Titans with Denzel Washington, during the summer we watched Long Way Round, a documentary about two guys riding motorcycles from the UK across Asia and North America to New York City, starring Ewan McGregor and Charlie Boorman.

Finally we would spend 45 minutes one-on-one with one of the students. This would be things like having me read out-loud from a book or read a story and answer question. They would also give me some exercises to strengthen my memory and recall. But the parts I enjoyed the most were just talking about things like their educational goals or my writing of this blog. To me this is the best part of my therapy sessions.

Currently my memory is getting a little better every day, but my reading is not improving as much, if at all. I do not know how much longer I will need to continue therapy, but I will see what happens this semester and won’t have to decide until December.

Paying for rehabilitation

I worked at the University of Texas at Dallas Callier Center for a little over five years. As a part of the University of Texas school system, employees had very good insurance. I usually signed up for the lowest cost options because I rarely got sick. The UT insurance system, unlike most businesses, was based on the school calendar. That is, instead of our calendar year being from January through December, it was from September through August. That meant the annual insurance deductibles were due starting in September.

In July of 2012 when I signed up for the 2012-2013 school year, I looked through the new insurance options and decided that at age 62 maybe I should add long-term disability (LTD) to the products I signed up for. I really don’t know why I did that, but it turned out to be a very good decision.

When I was hit by a car on November 1, 2012, and taken to Parkland Memorial Hospital, I did not know what was happening. I remember nothing from the time I got off the DART bus on my way to work until about December 17 about the time I was moved from Parkland to Zale Lipshy, where I began waking up from the coma. Even after waking up, it took many weeks for me to understand where I was, how I got there, what was happening to me, and particularly how I was paying for everything.

BC/BS of Texas payed for my first two months, though I’m told the insurance carried by Maria Reyna Paculba, the lady whose car struck me, payed some of it. Her insurance covered only $30,000 – the minimum required by Texas law. I’m told I received about half of that, with the other half divided between Parkland and the doctors who took care of me. During my time at Zale Lipshy I was interviewed by people from various rehabilitation companies in and around Dallas, including Pate Rehabilitation, Centre for Neuro Skills and others, apparently because I needed therapy not available at Zale Lipshy.

On January 2, 2013, I was moved to CNS, where I vaguely remember signing a bunch of papers agreeing to donate my son and add CNS to my will – just kidding! I guess they told me then what the costs would be, but I don’t remember any of that. I do remember they told me to immediately begin filing for Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI), which I did, by telling my wife to find out what to do – I was in no condition to do anything. I had no idea at the time – even though I was probably told – how much any of that was going to cost, or how it would be paid. I do remember being told sometime in May that my Short-Term Disability from UTD had ended – it covered the six months from November 1st through the end of April – and that I was getting the LTD for which I had been paying. What I learned much later, is that while short-term disability pays 100% of your salary, LTD only pays 60%. So my take-home pay dropped from almost $3,300 to less than $2,700 each month.

However on the insurance side, things were good. My Blue Cross was paying 100% of my rehab at CNS, which was a lot. For the nearly seven months I lived at the apartments at CNS, the insurance costs were about $75,000 each month. After I left the apartments and moved back home, CNS would pick me up at my house and took me to the Irving clinic five days a week for another four months. That was costing BC/BS of Texas just $45,000 per month.

In July UTD ended my job at Callier Center. What that meant for me was I lost my insurance. Fortunately, the Consolidated Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act of 1985 (COBRA) is a law passed by the U.S. Congress, that mandates an insurance program giving employees the ability to continue health insurance coverage after leaving employment. What this law did was allow fired workers to get the same insurance they had received from their former employer by paying its full price, without the benefits provided by the company. In my case, instead of paying about $200 each month, I could get the same insurance for about $1,000 a month. I had come across COBRA several times in my career up to then, but had found it to be much too expensive to be useful. Now however, it was a bargain. In August of 2013 I signed up and began paying for my insurance through COBRA. This allowed me to continue my rehab at CNS. I had forgotten about the deductible that restarted each September 1st. I had to pay CNS for the $3,000 deductible (which I am still trying to pay now, and will probably keep paying until sometime in 2017, when it will be fully repaid).

In the fall of 2013, our federal government began offering (requiring?) the Affordable Care Act, or Obamacare. With a lot of help from Brian White, my Counselor at CNS, I looked into Obamacare and found that, compared to my COBRA options, I could get pretty much the same health insurance for half the cost, after figuring in the subsidy. So I signed up and got coverage nearly identical to what I had before. What I did not consider was that this new insurance is on a calendar-year basis, that is, I had to pay the deductible again on January 1st. Because the TBI rehab I was getting at Baylor Garland (after leaving CNS) cost $242 a day, and not being able to afford that out-of-pocket, I had to quit rehab. Paying that was not an option I could afford.

Thankfully, Corey Hummel, my therapist at Baylor Garland, told me about another TBI rehabilitation program available at Callier Center, where I had worked before! This program did not require any insurance – the program existed as much for the masters program students, as for the patients – it only cost $150 per semester. So I have been attending rehab there for two semesters this year (spring and summer), and plan to keep going there through the fall semester.

How I learned to love to exercise

I spent all my life avoiding any kind of athletics and exercise. At twelve I was on a Little League Baseball team, where I must have been the worst player in that league. Throughout the entire season of about 10 or 12 games I only played one inning in the field, at first base, and only batted once, striking out on three pitches. The next year the league instituted a new rule, which still exists, which requires all players to appear in each and every game. My family called that the “Pat Spreng rule of 1962.”

In junior high and high schools I was in the band partly so I would not have to take gym or physical education (PE). In college, we were required to take four semesters of PE, so I took archery, probably the least demanding athletic activity there is, even a little less demanding than bowling, another sport at which I excelled.

So on January 2nd, 2013, six days before my 63rd birthday, I arrived at the Centre for Neuro Skills where my daily rehab class schedule included not only reading, mathematics, counceling and occupational therapy, but also physical therapy. I thought that was totally unnecessary. Unlike many of the other TBI patients, I had no physical injuries (except for a strained left elbow, probably from landing on the car’s hood or windshield). I had brain injuries.

Although I arrived at CNS in a wheelchair, I had stepped out of that before my son’s wedding, just over a month later. Once I could walk again, I started walking around the CNS building each day that the weather was nice, using the treadmill equipment whenever it was not.

Then I started really thinking about my situation. I was serious about losing a lot of weight and here I was about to spend ten or twelve months rehabilitating my brain while working every day with a team of people who were the most highly-trained physical therapists in the world, not to mention being stocked with some of the best training equipment anywhere. I would be a fool not to work hard and take advantage of it all while I was there.

Let me tell you about some of these people, starting with Sunil, Vanessa and Whitney. Also Milena, Karla, Chris and many others whose names I can’t remember. Sunil is from India and has a terrific sense of humor. Early on he flat out just told me to stop using the wheelchair and just get up and walk. It wasn’t quite that easy, but within a week I was comfortable without it, and after a few more days I could climb up into the vans CNS used to carry patients between the apartments and the clinic each day.

Shortly after I began walking, Milena, a physical therapist from Maracaibo, Venezuela, told me that six or seven times around the building was about a minute. It took me about a month to work my way up to walking that far and I found out that in the 50 minutes I had for each class at CNS, I could usually make about 12 or 13 laps. So I would start as soon as I came into class, about five to seven minutes before class time to start, allowing me enough time to do fourteen laps, about two miles. My instructor for that day soon knew that that was what I wanted to do each day, and would allow me to do that unattended, as long as I promised to come back. There were a few times when something else was planned for my hour and they would flag me down and tell me to come back in, but that only happened three of four times, and was not a problem for anyone.

It has now been eight months since I left CNS with my daily two-mile walks around the building, but I have continued to do my walking, doing two or three miles three or four times each week. In fact, I reached a personal milestone this past week, my weight dropping below 200 pounds for the first time in about forty years. I intend to continue walking this much as long as I can for the rest of my life.

I’m still learning to read again

My mother tells me that I had learned to read, tell time and use a calendar before I started Kindergarten at five years old. So it was quite a shock when I began awaking from a coma in Zale Lipshy University Hospital and found that I could not read at all. I could not even remember the alphabet. In fact, when shown the alphabet written on a page, I could not even tell you what each letter was.

I was only at Zale Lipshy for a couple of weeks, from December 17, 2012 when I was moved out of Parkland, until January 2, 2013, when I was moved to Centre for Neuro Skills in Irving. At Zale Lipshy I had rehabilitation in reading therapy and physical therapy, along with how to feed myself, bathe and dress myself. I was so angry with myself for not being able to read, I’m sure I was exceedingly disagreeable to the girl who was struggling to help me learn the alphabet again. I wish I could remember her name, just so I could apologize to her. Still, while I was able to make some progress in my physical rehabilitation and life skills, I was still struggling with my reading when I arrived at CNS.

One of the first things they needed me to do when I first arrived was take a number of tests to establish the starting points of my rehabilitation process. The fact that I could not read made this process quite difficult. In addition, the first few days I was there, I contracted something that caused me to be unable to keep any food down. The first morning I arose at CNS, my NRS (Neuro Rehab Specialist) fixed me a terrific breakfast, which i promptly threw up all over the breakfast table. At that time CNS did not have anyone in the apartments during the day to look after patients like me, so I had to go to the clinic. At the clinic I spent my first few days lying on a cot in the physical therapy room where clinicians and therapists would come in and ask me the questions they needed answered, to establish my base line brain skills and memory. During these sessions I would periodically lean off the edge of the cot and vomit into a pan provided for just that purpose. I’m sure I made quite an initial impression on the therapists with whom I would be spending my days over the next year.

Each day at CNS included Speech Therapy, Education Therapy, Physical Therapy, Occupational Therapy, Counseling, Case Management, Nursing, Social Counseling, and lunch. My education therapists consisted of Amy Stalcup, Beth Cook, Julianna Richardson, Maribel and most especially Kimberly Webb (next to me in the photo at the top of this page). Most of the patients at CNS did not enjoy education class; mostly they wanted to get back to being productive, which meant recovering their physical abilities (PT), job skills and learning to drive again (OT). My primary focus was being able to read again. Kimberly saw that and responded by giving me a great deal of attention. Each day at CNS they posted that day’s schedule for each patient, but that schedule only told you which department and which hour you had that course. You had to go to each department’s area in the building to find out with which teacher you were scheduled to meet. Before the first hour each day I would go to the education department to see who I was scheduled with. Usually it was Kimberly, but often, when I was scheduled with someone else, by the time later that day when I arrived for that class, Kimberly had changed the schedule so that she was assigned to work with me. I understood that she did that out of compassion for my need to read, nothing else. But still, whatever the reason, I appreciated her dedication to helping me to read again.

I had the opportunity to experience education classes every day for nearly a year, and it allowed me to get where I can read a little bit. Over that time we worked on helping me to identify the letters of the alphabet, read words, short paragraphs, and other tasks. There was a list of short words that I would read out loud while Kimberly monitored how long I took to read it. As is common with TBI patients, I had little problem with longer words, that are easier to recognize, but had problems with words like WHY, WHO, WHERE, WHEN, IF, OF, ON, IT, IS, etc. At the end of my work at CNS, near the end of last November, my Reading Fluency was at grade 2.3, as measured by the Woodcock-Johnson III: Tests of Achievement.

I still struggle with my reading. When I need to read something, as with a bill or other business letter, I first determine whether I really need to read it at all or, can I skim it, or if I need to highlight, underscore, or circle important words. This applies to emails, magazines, news papers, and anything else I read. Probably my biggest problem is reading signs along the road as they move past me faster than I can read them. I also have a problem at movies when they have subtitles. They don’t stay on the screen anywhere near as long as I need to read them. At least when I watch TV at home, I can pause such things and take the time I need to fully read them. These problems are more nuisances now until I am able to read fast enough again. When life moves too fast, you often learn that you can do without it.

To All the Girls I’ve Loved Before

There are many girls who have been important in my life, each more beautiful than the last. This treatise will not cover two of them – my mother and my wife – because my thoughts about each of them needs much more than a summary like this.

Sande, my sister, helped me in many ways, most especially when I learned to communicate with her and treat her as a friend. We had been the usual rival siblings, fighting with each other, until I got to college and wanted a car. I quickly saw that my parents would not be able to get us each one so we needed to settle our differences and work together. We needed to combine our efforts and find a way to share. Since I did not need a car at school, where I could walk to class each day from my campus dorm room, we decided that she could use the car during the week and I would use it on weekends after I got home each weekend from ETSU. I worked weekends for my mother in her decorating business so I was already making the one-hour trip between home and college each weekend.

It took a lot of effort for Sande and I to agree on a car, but we both compromised a little and settled on a 1962 Chevy Bel-Air (this was in about 1970) that we could both enjoy. This worked quite well and we have been good friends ever since.

Betty Rushing was our neighbor across the street from the time we were both eleven years old. That first winter we both got guitars for Christmas and learned to play. On our first date, at fifteen, I took her to see The Beach Boys at the Dallas’ Market Hall. I say “I took her” but actually, my mother took us there. I don’t remember if my mother went back home during the concert, but she probably just parked and stayed nearby until it was over. As a trivia note the night before that concert in Dallas, The Beach Boys had performed in Houston, after which Brian Wilson had left the tour and gone home to California. Brian was replaced for the remainder of their tour by a little-known studio guitarist named Glen Campbell! Betty and I spent much of our high school years swimming in our back-yard pool, but never really dated except for that concert.

I am posting this blog entry as much to find and reconnect with a few of these girls with whom I have lost track over the years. After I graduated from college, got married and moved away, Betty and I never kept in touch. Last year she passed away from cancer. I never made the time to reconnect with her and I am so sorry about that.

Priscilla Sue Wood is another lady with whom I have also lost track. I was her steady boyfriend during all of my junior year in high school. We were in the band together and met there.

Laurie has been an extremely accomplished singer throughout her life, and we got to work together through music from the time I was a senior in high school. While we spent quite a lot of time together with our music, I only dated Laurie once, but not for my lack of trying. I asked her out many times, but she always had other obligations or excuses not to go out with me. Since I moved back to Garland in 2007 Laurie and I have managed to stay in touch and even play a little music together on occasion.

I worked with Loretta Sue (Mayberry) Beard, for a few years while I was working at TJM Corporation (1973-75), a company that sold printed business forms. Her job was designing custom forms for our customers and she taught me how to design and build those forms, too. We would often have lunch together, either at my desk or at nearby fast food places, talking and sharing our lives and goals. As usual, we lost touch, but I did know that she married a guy from Pittsburg, Texas, and moved there to have a family.

I met and worked with many people during my years with Lone Star Gas/ENSERCH Corp/Enserch Exploration, Inc. (1977-1994). One of my roles there was working with newly hired employees to learn and understand our systems and methods. Nancy Reeves was one of those lovely ladies, both with LSG and continuing at ENSERCH. When she got married to Trey Reeves, I was her friend and the photographer of their wedding. After they were married, they moved to Plano, but I have since lost touch with them.

Kristine Charlotte Blackmon, nee Clement, worked with me at Enserch Exploration and Lone Star Gas from 1980 to 1992, when she went to work at American Airlines in Fort Worth. One of my life-long difficulties at every job I had was not staying focused on what I was supposed to be doing. Kris was very helpful making sure I stayed on track. We became close friends and learned about IBM personal computers during those years, working with Lotus 1-2-3, IBM DisplayWrite, The Forbin Project’s Qmodem, and many other business apps. After we no longer worked with each other, I tried to phone her each year on her birthday, but now, while her phone number still rolls to voice mail, I have not received any replies for a number of years. I hope she calls me back sometime.

I worked closely with Marga Chavez at Enserch Exploration during the 1980s and even went to visit her near Houston about twenty years ago. She was the secretary in the department I worked in and was the only office assistant I knew who worked hard enough to get promoted to analyst. We have managed to keep in touch over the years.

I met Kayoko “Miki” Benesh online when I worked as webmaster for Whoopi Goldberg (Whoop, Inc, aka whoopi.com). Miki would email me asking about Whoopi because she was such a huge fan, even though she was from Japan. Kayoko met Darek online, and are now married with three precious children. We still keep in touch and in 2006, when I was in Chicago on a business trip, I met her and her husband for a tasty lunch at a Japanese restaurant.

While I was at the Centre for Neural Skills in Irving in 2013, one of my first Neuro Rehabilitation Specialists (NRS) was Nicole Douglas-Barclay. Over the seven months that I lived in the rehabilitation apartments owned by CNS, I was in four different apartments. Nicole was so helpful and so dedicated to her profession that my wife requested from CNS management that Nicole also be moved to work with me in each of those four apartments. Nicole helped me in all areas of my rehab, exercising my skills at reading, memory, telling time, walking, remembering names and places, how to do my own laundry and even flossing! I would never have recovered as much as I have without her persistence in working with me. I only hope that someday she will contact me via email so I can thank her for how much she helped me.

There are many other girls who have been instrumental in my life: there were dozens I dated in school and many other friends I’ve had over the years, including Sara Harris, Margo Menconi, Sandy Paige, Shirley Smith, Karen Lee Finlay, Erin Noll Halovanic, Ronda Tyson, Michala Christianson, Christine DiPinto, Theresa Haralson, Shirley Seydel, Sarah Hawthorne, Kim Knapp, Angie Miller, Kay Perry, Karen Richards, Linda Sommerville, Sheila Willson, Bonnie Wright, my son Evan’s beautiful wife Mirjam, and many, many more.

To all the girls I’ve loved before
Who traveled in and out my door
I’m glad they came along
I dedicate this song
To all the girls I’ve loved before

To all the girls I once caressed
And may I say I’ve held the best
For helping me to grow
I owe a lot I know
To all the girls I’ve loved before

The winds of change are always blowing
And every time I try to stay
The winds of change continue blowing
And they just carry me away

To all the girls who shared my life
Who now are someone else’s wives
I’m glad they came along
I dedicate this song
To all the girls I’ve loved before

To all the girls who cared for me
Who filled my nights with ecstasy
They live within my heart
I’ll always be a part
Of all the girls I’ve loved before

The winds of change are always blowing
And every time I try to stay
The winds of change continue blowing
And they just carry me away

To all the girls we’ve loved before
Who traveled in and out our doors
I’m glad they came along
I dedicate this song
To all the girls we’ve loved before

Songwriters – Albert Hammond & Hal David

Where I am now

For those who have read my posts about recovering from a traumatic brain injury, I want to let you know, in summary, where I am now and a bit about how I got here. This does not mean I want you to stop reading the details of my last 19 months, but just if you haven’t seen me in person, you might wonder about my current status.

After two months at Parkland Memorial Hospital and Zale Lipshy University Hospital in Dallas, I was moved about twenty miles to the Centre for Neuro Skills at 1320 W Walnut Hill Ln, Irving, Texas. At CNS I continued my rehabilitation, which is still ongoing, though not quite there yet. When I arrived at CNS I was in a wheelchair, which I would need for about another two months. Also I could not read at all, a lot of my memory was blank and I could not swallow properly (dysphagia). For the first seven months I lived at CNS’s apartments, a residential care living facility for brain injured patients, at 3915 Portland St in Irving, about four miles from the clinic.

Classes at the clinic were six hours a day, plus an hour for lunch, Monday through Friday. I had therapy classes in Speech, Education (Reading), Physical, Occupational, Counselling and other areas like Social Development and treatment for my swallowing disorder. Because of the swallowing problem, I had a gastrostomy tube (g-tube) through which I received all of my eating, usually five or six times each day. I had to learn the alphabet again even before I could read anything. I still have difficulty reading certain letters and read very slowly. Even reading this blog is hard for me, but I have to keep reading because that is what I love. One of the areas that most of the other patients I was with at CNS were anxious to be able to do again was to drive a car. I didn’t really care about driving – I have been a dedicated user of area transit for 37 years, and still am – I just wanted to be able to read again. A lot of my classmates didn’t really like their Education classes, but I loved it and really looked forward to learning to read again.

Another class that I hated at first, but really grew to love, was Physical Therapy. I have never enjoyed exercise – part of why I was in the band throughout high school was my wanting to avoid any physical exercise. But because of the fantastic training specialists and resources available at CNS, I looked forward every day to using the treadmill and other facilities available. I also walked around the building every day, weather permitting, so that I could regain my ability to walk and to continue to lose some weight. The therapists told me that seven times around the building was about a mile and I found that I could do nearly two miles in the 50 minutes I had for PT each day. I would start walking each class even before my 50 minutes started, in order to get my two miles in. More than once I was called back in from my walking because they had something else planned for me that hour, but most days it was known that I was outside walking. Now, more than a year latter, I try to walk a mile or two each day, usually getting to do that three to five times a week.

In August of 2013 I was able to move back home, but I still went to CNS for six classes a day, five days a week, plus three or four hours a day for the trip each way from home to CNS and back. So my days were about twelve or thirteen hours long each day for the next four months until I finally “graduated” from CNS on November 21, 2013, a week before Thanksgiving. By that point I was stronger, happier and healthier than I have ever been in my life. I had lost a lot of weight, learned to exercise, learned to read at about a 2nd grade level (still too slow), lost my job (a topic for a future post), and pretty much eating again (not what my therapist Debbie wanted).

Since then I have continued my therapy at Garland Baylor for about a month and then switched to Callier Center – Richardson, where they have a brain therapy program that costs only $150 a semester. I went there once a week during the 2014 spring semester, and now plan to continue three days a week for the summer semester.

I am still working on my reading, getting more and more of my memory back, and enjoying every day, still getting stronger and still losing weight. This is where I am now and I expect to continue to recover for the rest of my life. Thanks for reading and please comment if you have any questions or want further information about where I am, or just want to talk.

The next few days: the prequel

Shortly after my previous post about how I became brain damaged, received the following response from Alyson Abel Mills, a co-worker of mine at Callier, who was walking across Inwood Road when I was hit by that car. Here is her memory of that morning:

“You and I were crossing the street from the bus stop. As always, we had pushed the button for the cross walk sign[al] and waited. We didn’t start crossing until the light changed. You and I were talking so we were walking close together. I know you were on my outside (right side) and think you were a few feet in front of me. The next thing I remember was you being hit by the car which came from behind us, turning left [northeast] onto Inwood from UTSW [Southwestern Medical Ave.].

“You bounced off of the car and landed on your side (right side?). Blood started coming from your head and your eyes were kind of flicking around, not focused. A number of people had stopped, were calling 911 and taking care of you. There was more than one nurse there [including Maria Reyna Paculba, who was driving the car] so I stepped away so they could help you.

“They had safely turned you to your back and were giving you CPR. Jim Latham [my boss] was on the other side of Inwood and safely crossed when he could. I got your cell phone and tried to call your wife. I think I first called your mom but eventually called your wife. The ambulance came and took you, and Jim got your things.

“People from Callier were outside and standing with me. I talked to the cops on the scene who, frankly, were complete jerks. I ended up calling the boss of one of them and complaining.

“That’s pretty much all I remember off the top of my head.”

At this point I am posting the text of the police report that was filed:

“Unit [Ms. Paculba] was turning from eastbound 5600 Southwestern Medical Dr. [sic] to northbound 1700 Inwood Rd. Driver of unit 1 stated that she was blinded by the sun as she turned and collided with the pedestrian [me] who was walking eastbound in the crosswalk. Witness Able was walking beside the pedestrian and witnessed the crash. Witness Fox, who was traveling northbound on Inwood in front of unit 1, stated she witnessed the crash through her rear view mirror.”

The next few days

Zale-Lipshy

The first memory I have from the accident (see previous entry for what happened) was almost two months after November 1, 2012. I can remember just a little before I was hit, and then my mind is a blank from the time I got off the bus to walk across Inwood Road until late December, just before Christmas 2012.

I have learned some of what happened to me during that time from my wife, my son, and others I have spoken with since then:

Jean (my wife) says that Nana (my mother Vesta Spreng) called her around 8 am. She had just received a call from someone at Callier Center, where I worked, to say that I had been hit by a car and a co-worker had my phone. They had probably called Nana because that was the first person they found on my phone. Jean repeatedly tried to call my phone, but nobody answered. Jean says she did not know what to do so she called Father Lawrence, pastor at Christ The Redeemer Anglican Church. About 8:30 Judy Lewis at Callier finally answered my phone. Judy said the ambulance had taken me to Parkland Hospital ER. The next thing Jean did was call Evan (our son, aged 25, who was driving to work at that time) and tell him that I was at Parkland and to meet her at their emergency room.

Jean says that after learning what had happened to me, she was in no condition to drive herself to the hospital, so she asked our neighbor Marsha to drive her to Parkland Hospital’s ER. When they arrived Evan was already there and had spoken with me briefly before I was taken to the x-ray room. Evan told Jean that I hadn’t spoken much. He said a doctor had asked me a few questions: I did know Evan’s name and who he was, but I was confused about other questions: I did not know where I was (I thought I was in Garland, my home town) or what day it was or who was the president (this was just five days before the November 6 election). The doctor who had been asking me these questions also said that I would probably be able to return home after staying at Parkland a few days for “observation.”

Jim and Dave (my boss and co-worker from Callier) came to the see me at some point Thursday morning and they were told I was going to be fine. Jean and Evan went to lunch (about 3 pm) while I was cleaned up and moved to Parkland’s Intensive Care Unit (ICU).

Friday night I was moved from ICU to the 5th floor at Parkland. There I was asked “Are you in pain?” Emphatically I answered “NO – I’VE GOT FEELINGS”, which probably meant “YES.” Mostly I just wanted to sleep, but they wouldn’t let me. Saturday morning my mother (Nana) and sister Sande came to see me, and I was getting worse. I was very agitated. That is also when they moved me back to ICU. The doctors (led by Kim Rickert, M.D., an expert neurosurgeon at UT Southwestern Medical Cente) soon realized that my brain was swelling too much and that surgery was necessary to relieve the pressure. Jean and Evan were then asked to sign dozens of forms to approve the surgery, which could either put me into a vegetative state or (more likely) leave me with a traumatic brain injury with unknown damage to my brain. According to Wikipedia, TBI [surgery] can cause a host of physical, cognitive, social, emotional, and behavioral effects, and outcome can range from complete recovery to permanent disability or death.

I was taken to the operating room at 7 pm Saturday. My family was told that it should take an hour and a half. I came out of surgery three hours later. The left side of my skull was removed from just above my left ear to the top center of my head, from my forehead to just behind my ear. The doctor who did the cutting of my skull told my family they had never seen a skull as thick and hard as mine. They even had to rig a stronger tool, because the one they normally used couldn’t cut through mine.

Again, according to Wikipedia, depending on the injury, treatment required may be minimal or may include interventions such as medications, emergency surgery or surgery years later. Physical therapy, speech therapy, recreation therapy, occupational therapy and vision therapy may be employed for rehabilitation. I need all of the above forms of therapy, which required me to be moved from Parkland to the therapy center Zale-Lipshy. On January 2, 2013 I was moved from Zale-Lipshy to the Centre For Neuro Skills, where I spent the next eleven months undergoing daily rehabilitation for each of those needs. Even today I am still going to part-time rehab on an outpatient basis.

How I arrived here

I’ve spent the past 18 months recovering from a traumatic brain injury (TBI).  I was struck by a car as I walked across Inwood Road on my way to work November 1, 2012.  The lady who hit me (she was a nurse) called 911 and then ran over to me to find that I was not breathing and that my heart had stopped – I was dead. She started giving me CPR until the ambulance arrived, saving my life. I spent the next two months in Parkland Memorial Hospital – mostly in a coma – and the next eleven months at the Center For Neuro Skills, a TBI rehabilitation center in Irving. I am now at home, but I am still doing rehab several times a week on an outpatient basis.

I have severe aphasia (difficulty remembering words) and loss of memory, I can read only at a 2nd-grade level, and I have swallowing problems which limits what I may eat – some of what I swallow goes down into my trachea (windpipe) instead of my esophagus. Physically I received little damage – just a bloody bump on the back of my head and a very sore left elbow.  But I am in excellent condition. Actually, because of daily physical therapy, I am now in better condition than I’ve ever been in my life! I’ve lost over 100 pounds (and still losing) and walk about two miles three or four days each week.

My company, the University of Texas at Dallas – Callier Center, decided not to wait for my recovery and terminated my employment at the end of July 2012, probably a wise decision considering it will likely take many years (if ever) before I can recover enough to return to developing computer software.

I am now retired and living on Long Term Disability (LTD) and Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI) for the next year until I turn 66 and can get Social Security retirement income.

I am writing this blog as part of my recovery, to help with my memory and my reading ability.

Thanks for reading this.