Category Archives: TBI

Break for Freedom – Day 4 (Fabric softener)

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Day 4 – Monday, August 14, 2017

7:08 a.m. – This morning feels intensely like a maybe. This is wimpy on my part, but waking up later than usual throws me, and generously offers all kinds of reasons not to walk solo today.

8:14 a.m. – Just as I’m going out the door I’m raging with discomfort, I’m thinking the inside of my sweatshirt is way rough on my skin and how can I walk…

I walked anyway. Next problem. My t-shirt is soaked through in no time at all and, as that too starts to bother me, I remember that when I was a dancer, or playing sports, I loved being sweat-soaked, fully immersed in the task at hand.

There will be no fabric softener for this kid.

Break for Freedom – Day 3 (Spaghetti Squash)

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Day 3 – Sunday, August 13, 2017

7:26 a.m. – Ugly morning. First awake moments loaded with all kinds of discomfort, emotional, physical antsiness.  You don’t plan a day’s first moments; you live them.

In the shower, a few minutes ago, I realized the isolation has separated me from my body. This new awareness, I am pleased to report, riles me up, makes it far more likely I’m getting out the door this morning. I cannot shake the images of violence from the White Nationalist/KKK/Nazi march in Charlottesville, Virginia yesterday. I’m sure Donald Trump’s response-statement further secured his white-racist voting bloc.  If the man ever walks in front of my car I am not going to let my dislike for him have so much decision-making power it makes me to forget the brake-pedal is on the right.

8:47 a.m. – Home. God, what a beautiful word. I walked the same distance, again, without the armor of dog, walking stick, music, pepper spray.

It felt cool out. Three minutes in, I am soaked through and unable to tell if I am actually cold or not. A mishap of sorts from yesterday has me burst into laughter a few times, and that helped. I recently got on Instant Pot, a kind of pressure cooker. My friend, Annie, had suggested it as a help for someone like me whose patience mirrors the size of a gnat when it comes to preparing meals. I thought I’d begin with Spaghetti Squash.

I cut the squash in half, put some water in my new pressure cooker, saw it was set for 10 minutes, and on it went. I suppose the best way to let you know the outcome is to give you a paraphrasing of the conversation I had with Annie afterwards. I called her in Hawaii.

  • Hey, Annie. I just wanted to thank you for the Instant Pot idea. It’s great.
  • I’m so glad.
  • I had spaghetti squash!
  • Wonderful! How was it?
  • Drank it through a straw.
  • You drank – How much water did you use?
  • About three and a half cups.
  • Oh my God!
  • Too much?
  • (Laughing) Peter, maybe three-quarters of a cup.
  • I drank both halves.

Anyway, Day 3s’ walk is under my belt, next to the spaghetti squash.

Walking on eggs, patience, facing death & willpower

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I’m a patient man but I fought too hard for my life to walk on eggs for anyone all the time (back to this in a minute). I was held up and shot in the head in 1984 and live with the bullet lodged in my brain. The bullet tore a path that extended more than half way through the frontal lobe.

Surviving that, as you might imagine, requires you fight like hell for your life.

Along with my brain injury, the shooting experience contributed to a formidable PTSD presence in my life. For me, PTSD means certain events, sounds, smells, situations, and so on, cause flashbacks and flooding. Flooding means a particular emotion or emotional condition has overwhelmed the person’s in-the-moment experience. Stopping it on a dime is impossible. In my case the emotional condition most likely to flood is terror.

Knowing I’m safe intellectually doesn’t stop the terror. It takes hours for the terror to subside.

Okay. The egg thing,  patience, and willpower. Some years ago my friend (and in my heart, my brother) Dane Arnold, said, “You’re too patient with people.” Trust me, he said that to me more than once and he was right almost every single time. I’d be allowing someone to take advantage of me in one way or another, giving them chance after chance, when I should’ve cut them loose.

I rented a room in my lower east side apartment and one of my tenants was horrible about paying rent, cleaning up after herself in any of the common rooms. She had a marked talent for the woe-is-me ballad. So, I let things drag on until I finally realized she’d mastered the ballad but never lived the experience. The switch, as they say, flipped, and the she was out.

There are times people think patience, or, as the more common saying goes, niceness, is a sign of weakness. I can think of no bigger myth. One of the gifts getting shot in the head gave me is the awareness that the following paragraph describes an experience that underscores the active presence of willpower

Here’s the experience:

I am lying on the ground bleeding to death. I’ve been shot in the head and the top of my head’s been blown off. I can’t feel anything below my neck.  I’m blind. It’s around five in the morning on a residential street, it is dark and no one is out. I am alone and I know it. A few moments later I realize I’m standing up. My vision is back and I’m connected to my body again but I have no memory of standing up. But the truth is, I did. And I was alone.

I may still be too patient with people at times. You see, I know a lot of people who’ve been pulverized by life so badly trusting those around them is a steep climb. An impossible climb for some, sad to say. But before I disengage, I’d like to know I I did all I could. Sometimes too much, perhaps.

Thing is, I’d rather be guilty of being too patient than not patient enough.

 

 

 

 

 

 

If you’re going to lie to me….

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I don’t ask for much in life other than respect, so, if you are going to disrespect me by lying  to me, the least you can do is make an effort to make it a good, show a little creativity for God’s sake.

I’ve decided to rummage around in my mind and, perhaps the minds of others, to develop some fun, at least for me, responses to people who lie to me so brazenly and obviously I don’t know whether to burst out laughing and ask them if they’re joking or simply stupid enough to think I believe them, or smack them upside their “head” with a verbal dagger that says, we both know you’re lying and you’re such a self-absorbed little twit you’re going to stand by your stench-rubbish anyway.

Anyone who knows me knows I have no ability to be silent when someone’s rights are being denied. I don’t care of it’s people with disabilities, people who are Jewish, African American, Latino, Muslim, veterans, members of the LGBT community, women, etc., etc., I’m not about to stay silent. People who know me also know it is very likely, particularly of you are a public official or someone in a position of authority, that I am going to expose your bigotry for all to see. 

All that aside, let me say there is a special place in hell for people whose claim to care about the rights of others is nothing more than lip-service smoke screens. A form of dishonesty so glaringly obvious I want to grab them by the throat and say, “Why not grow some backbone and say out loud that you don’t give a rat’s ass about these people and you just care about money and power?” 

What’s somewhat amusing is the feigned indignity performances I get to see when I call someone out for lying, for being a hypocrite. They put so much effort into their performance (without exception they’re lousy actors) I’m surprised they don’t snort and dribble out of the corner of their mouths, go into convulsions, and start speaking in tongues. Some feign astonishment to such I degree I expect them to allow their simian roots to take over and start pounding their chest.

Many of the lies I see these days  come from those who claim they are committed to protecting the rights of New York residents who live with brain injury disabilities. Since their commitment is limited to the effort it takes to say they are committed, the least they could do is make a commitment to develop their lying skills. I’ll probably catch them anyway, but at least catching them might pose a sliver of a challenge. However, exposing them will not.

So, here’s the thing, if you’re going to lie to me, make an effort, or give us both a break and shut up.

With their hearts on my mind

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I will be testifying today at a public hearing being held by members of the New York State Assembly about Governor Andrew Cuomo’s plan to demolish the lives of New Yorkers with brain injuries by moving them into managed care and annihilating the services they need and deserve to protect their independence – and keep their homes.

I’ve got plenty of motivation. In addition to my own brain injury, I live with a bullet lodged in my brain as a result of being held up and shot in the head, I know hundreds of New Yorkers with brain injuries. Incredible individuals who only ask for respect, and respect includes access to the care they deserve and the independence they have a right to keep.

  • I know a young man who suffered his brain injury in a car accident; he witnessed the decapitation of two of his friends during the accident.
  • I know a woman who one winter day was walking through a park with her husband pulling her two toddlers on a sled. A drunk snowmobile driver crashed into them. When this woman came out of a coma she learned she would never again move from the neck down, and she learned that both her children had died in the accident.
  • I know a brave woman who is a wheelchair user as a result of her brain injury, an injury caused by meningitis caused by a mosquito bite.
  • I know five good men who, like me, suffered their brain injuries from being shot in the head.

That’s just a sampling of the many survivors of brain injuries I know. I can barely see through the tears now as I think about them all, and contemplate the suffering  the Cuomo administration wants to inflict on them. I will testify today with the hearts of thousands on my mind. Not at all incidentally, the very people in Cuomo’s Department of Health who devised this plan openly acknowledge they know nothing about the brain or brain injury.

Now, there are some truly good people in the New York State legislature.  I’ve met them. I even believe in them.  I know too that to do the right thing for New Yorkers with brain injuries they will have to stand up to some intense opposition from a governor who many say is something of a bully.

I do not fear bullies. Not even a little.

I believe members of the state’s legislature have it in them to stand up and do the right thing. Consider the document below. It is the triage assessment of me the morning I got shot. The circled area says, in part, Patient walked into the ER accompanied by the police. Profuse bleeding from head wound. It was five in the morning when I got shot. When I regained consciousness, there was no one around. I got back to me feet and got myself help. So, if I can stand up and get myself help after being shot in the head at point blank range, I have no doubt members of the NY State Legislature have the capacity to stand up and do the right thing for New Yorkers with brain injuries. The question is, will they?

KAHRMANN 3