"How Many Times Do I Have to Tell You?"

 I don't hear this phrase.

My husband is incredibly patient--a truly good man who has been working through all this with me. He's a partner in every sense of the word. We do this together.

However, I know a lot of people with brain injuries, nowadays, and some of them hear this on a regular basis.

I know this is something a person would normally say to someone who has forgotten something a few times, but again, it's a loaded question. How many times? Well, all of them. Granted it's a rhetorical question, you aren't expecting an answer. But when a person's memory is bad, and they know their memory is bad, they're already feeling awful that they've forgotten, possibly for the -nth time.

It could take 2, or 7, or 12 times to remember it, or it could be so gone it's never going to come back. You'd likely be surprised how often that happens. When your memory is working, you go through life remembering things in the right order, within a reasonable amount of time to when the thing happened or was said, and most importantly, it stays there.

Not for us.

For us, memory is a fleeting thing. When a person has memory issues and proper therapy, we acquire coping skills. We have tips and tricks. We have the cheat codes. We have external memory--i.e. apps, calendars, notebooks, reminders, etc. We can physically access memory, in other words. 

If we don't, it will likely be gone. For some of us this will take a few days. Some will take a few hours. Some will take a half hour. Some only minutes, or less. 

It's not an intentional thing. Its a brain damage thing. 

We work with strategies within strategies, even. One of these is Sensory Memory. For instance, I'll often hear someone say the date of an appointment, then repeat the info back to them to make sure I have it right. Then I'll either enter it into my calendar or write it down. That covers four senses: You hear the date, you say the date, you feel the date being written, and lastly you the see the date. Heck, if you were having a particular drink when you made the appointment, you'd even have taste in there.

This does not mean it's definitely in our memory, however, we now have multiple impressions, and it's more likely to at least be saved. At the very least, we have a physical reminder. 

I've learned all of this, and more, from my Speech Pathologists over the years. As I've mentioned, they do the human skills, things people usually do without a second thought, but we have lost the knack of through our injuries.

There's a lot to learn, to be honest. Different things for each of us, but all things we knew before, and lost.

I understand that having people forget what you say is frustrating. You may feel your time and energies aren't valued. You may even feel that your words carry no weight with the person. This isn't true. You could be the most respected and loved person in their life, but that's not going to make the brain any less damaged. It's not intentional, even if it seems so. They're not trying to hurt you, they're just struggling.

But what can you do to help? Maybe you could read up on Sensory Memory and trying to help them employ those strategies themselves. It would have a far more positive effect than a frustrated sentence, or worse yet, an angry diatribe. It wouldn't even change the world much, but it could change your life, and theirs.

"You're lucky to be alive."

 Today, and possibly for a few posts, I've decided to cover commonly heard phrases. 

There are a lot of them, really, but the title is one I've heard a few times. Not a lot, but it's definitely been said. I don't disagree when people say it, but it comes with problems. 

There are all sorts of people with brain injuries. Some, you can tell by looking at them or talking to them. Many, you can't.

If you tell someone who acts and moves and speaks like your average person that they're lucky to be alive, they may even have agree with you. However, they quite likely don't feel the same way. 

I mean, it's a fraught statement, right? It implies good luck. It implies an acceptance of their new circumstances. It implies that living through whatever ordeal they've survived should be enough. 

It's not aways enough. 

Don't get me wrong, a lot of us are very much aware we could be exploring the Great Beyond instead of living our lives. We know that we could be in far worse shape, or still comatose, or in a persistent vegetative state, or this, or that, or the other thing.

We know. In some cases, we were there, and even if we don't remember it, we still know. We likely remember the therapy to come back from it, too, and that's no picnic, folks. It's a lot of work. 

When you think of all we did to get to where we are now,  luck likely had nothing to do with it. We quite likely had amazing family, incredible doctors and superhero therapists who helped us get to where we are at that moment. 

I mean, sure, we lived though our event, whatever it was. Probably. Maybe. I know several people who technically didn't, actually. The fact that they're still here isn't luck. It was hard work by a lot of people. You've maybe heard that it takes a village to raise a child. Well, it takes more than a village to help a person with a brain injury to recover. 

So, maybe, if you're ever tempted too tell someone they're lucky to be alive, you'll remember this post, and say instead "you've worked so hard to get to where you are now. It's amazing."

It wouldn't take to much of a thought change to acknowledge the work that went into the person you're talking to. It wouldn't hurt to turn it into a positive accomplishment on their part as opposed to blind luck at what was likely the most unlucky event of their life. 

Positivity is what pushes us on. Positive growth, forward motion, achieving goals and making new ones, these all come into play. 

Please don't chalk it up to the same thing that helps someone win big in Vegas.