One of demeaning afflictions that I wrestle with is having a lack of ability in recognizing people. Actually, the problem is compounded. I may hesitate to greet a casual acquaintance by name in fear that my biological face recognition system has correlated the facial image to the wrong name file in my brain box database. Should the bolder half of my internal turmoil push aside my more cautious half and I awkwardly blurt out a monikor, invariably, and I am not exaggerating, I am always, consistently, and without fail, wrong.
Could this be a congenital defect? Could it be that some part of my embryonic spinal cord conked out before it divided and led to an underdeveloped neuro-mass?
Could the cause be a childhood head trauma? There are a few times that I remember playing at morning recess and regaining awareness in the last class of the day after sustaining a punishing blind side tackle in a friendly game of British Bulldog (at least that is what my classmates tell me). A small amount of internal bleeding could have drowned enough brain cells in just the right area. And please remember that concussions were far more acceptable back then and therefore more plentiful.
Then there were the phalanx of childhood diseases that could have done the job with pathological precision--brain rot pure and simple.
In any case, the burden is the same. I have trouble recognizing people. As outlined, these theories all indicate a physiological explanation. The other part of the conundrum that has left me batting minus 1000 in the “who-is-this game” is pure voodoo. Some greater humbling force is in play.
There is yet another curve comes my way. Women. Their hair style and colour can change at alarming rates. Great clues to ones identity, like clothing is changed with even greater frequency. Pregnancies, plus and minus 30 lbs weight swings, and plus or minus 30 lbs of makeup, render recognition an impossible challenge. How am I to cope?
My dear wife of 20 years cannot sympathize with my handicap. Her ability to recognize people transends space, time and the miriad of obstacles that plague me. She thinks I just don't pay attention. People that have evolved into other beings through calamity cannot fool her. The hordes of children that all look the same to me have individual names to her. Through her, I have discovered that the over employed starlet that frequents the Silver Screens is indeed many different ladies with distinct lives of their own.
I am not so far gone that I can’t recognize John Kennedy, although we never met. However, the average Joe and Joan leave me stumped. I suppose I am not as stressed by my own failings as I am by how offended people get when they think they didn’t make an impression upon me large enough to warrant having their name seared into some lobe of my grey matter.
The one consolation is that as age continues its advance my stated behaviour will become more acceptable and may even reach the level as charming in a quirky way.
Saturday, December 30, 2006
Sunday, November 26, 2006
Am I just a sockeye?
I am struggling right now. I am just 51 years old. I understand a few centuries ago this would have been considered a ripe old age. However, by today’s standard I am a young man. Unfortunately, no one told my body about it. Aches and pains are standard fare for me nowadays. I am at the stage where I cannot listen to any public recital of symptoms for any ailment without immediately noting that I am thusly afflicted. In fact I not only have the symptoms, I also have the great fortune to already revel in the plethora of side effects that accompany an advertised medical treatment. I want to make it perfectly clear. I am not a hypochondriac. My former doctor was convinced that I was, so I was not able to seek regress through him. He once hosted an intern and part of the training was to allow the intern to interview the patient before the doctor returned for the main appointment. When the doctor did return we had already amassed an entire page of ailments and another page of tests to be ordered. I had started at the top of my head and was working down and had only gotten to my waist. What lay beneath my waist was a real mess but it wasn’t to be. The doctor knowingly took the papers away, admonished his young charge, killing all hopes of an impending panacea.
I could go on about how my body has betrayed me, but I know it is I that betrayed my body. Here I will relate the self inflicted crimes to which I now pay penance. As a young man, bravado would necessitate picking up any object on a dare. Proper lifting techniques were for sissies. To empty a freezer before moving it was an insult. Padless tackle football was fun. Now it is payback time claimed by abused joints and tendons.
Even more offensive to my worldly vessel was a lifestyle of sheer gluttony. Tens of thousands of calories were consumed in short order. The closer the natural state of my intake was to pure glucose the more often it crossed my palate. Why savour one of those gooey Cadbury Easter eggs when you could eat nine at one sitting. Anything short of 16 ounces of steak was dismissed as eating like a pansy. These days as I never entertain a helping of seconds was once eclipsed by three trips to the buffet table. I may as well have taken a ballpeen hammer to my pancreas instead of prolonging the abuse. The high metabolism that maintained a reasonable figure of a young man masked the inner damage that was slowly accumulating.
I became enraptured with my Beloved and matrimony quickly ensued followed within the first year by the birth of my first child. This coincided with the slowing of my metabolism. As I am a sensitive and caring man I gained 10 lbs of sympathy weight with my first offspring and each of the next two lives I helped bring into the world. For the next 15 years my wife accurately made a point that she wasn’t married to 30 lbs of me. This extra mass only slowed me down as well as put greater stresses on various parts.
I became more of a spectator than a participant in athletic endeavors.
The stresses of raising a family ravaged my frame and brain. Work, the failing health of parents, and the terrifying onslaught of teenagerhood, and the continued existence as a couch watermelon, each took their toll. Although I look quite normal for a man of my age, I believe my own personal body image is perceived to be somewhat Gollumeseque.
This image is only reinforcing by my lack of sleep lately. Again, being a sensitive and sympathetic man, I am now bearing the hardship of menopause.
If my Beloved cannot sleep I will not sleep. The TV is given a 30 minute timer to lull her to sleep which usually occurs within 3 minutes. I spend the entire next 27 minutes tossing and turning trying to block out the light and noise. I am too exhausted to jump up and locate the remote which has mysteriously vanished anyway. Should gentle slumber finally come my way, it is interrupted by the whooshing of bedding being hurled off my hot flashing bed partner. This is always accompanied by a loud nocturnal sigh. When the hot flash has disappeared and a chill set in she will take the bedding and wrap her self up in a cocoon. She emerges the next morning like a beautiful butterfly (please allow me the artistic freedom to use “butterfly” as calling “my partner for life” a moth does not portray as positive an image) Meanwhile, whether it is a hot flash or a chill I end up without covers. Most of my energy that should go to repairing my body at the cellular level has been expended in delivering me from hypothermia.
I know that today’s post seems bleak. I sound like a salmon that has spawned and has drifted to a shallow gravel bed with one eye to the sky. Did my wedding vows actually say “unto my death do us part”? Am I just an old air mattress with one too many repairs sitting crumpled in the bottom of a storage tub? Am I an old magazine that has sat by the toilet for enough years that every portion of text has been read a dozen times and is on the verge of incineration?
NO! There is still a spark of life. The winds of change are making that tiny ember glow ever more brightly. There is hope. I have a new boat!!
I could go on about how my body has betrayed me, but I know it is I that betrayed my body. Here I will relate the self inflicted crimes to which I now pay penance. As a young man, bravado would necessitate picking up any object on a dare. Proper lifting techniques were for sissies. To empty a freezer before moving it was an insult. Padless tackle football was fun. Now it is payback time claimed by abused joints and tendons.
Even more offensive to my worldly vessel was a lifestyle of sheer gluttony. Tens of thousands of calories were consumed in short order. The closer the natural state of my intake was to pure glucose the more often it crossed my palate. Why savour one of those gooey Cadbury Easter eggs when you could eat nine at one sitting. Anything short of 16 ounces of steak was dismissed as eating like a pansy. These days as I never entertain a helping of seconds was once eclipsed by three trips to the buffet table. I may as well have taken a ballpeen hammer to my pancreas instead of prolonging the abuse. The high metabolism that maintained a reasonable figure of a young man masked the inner damage that was slowly accumulating.
I became enraptured with my Beloved and matrimony quickly ensued followed within the first year by the birth of my first child. This coincided with the slowing of my metabolism. As I am a sensitive and caring man I gained 10 lbs of sympathy weight with my first offspring and each of the next two lives I helped bring into the world. For the next 15 years my wife accurately made a point that she wasn’t married to 30 lbs of me. This extra mass only slowed me down as well as put greater stresses on various parts.
I became more of a spectator than a participant in athletic endeavors.
The stresses of raising a family ravaged my frame and brain. Work, the failing health of parents, and the terrifying onslaught of teenagerhood, and the continued existence as a couch watermelon, each took their toll. Although I look quite normal for a man of my age, I believe my own personal body image is perceived to be somewhat Gollumeseque.
This image is only reinforcing by my lack of sleep lately. Again, being a sensitive and sympathetic man, I am now bearing the hardship of menopause.
If my Beloved cannot sleep I will not sleep. The TV is given a 30 minute timer to lull her to sleep which usually occurs within 3 minutes. I spend the entire next 27 minutes tossing and turning trying to block out the light and noise. I am too exhausted to jump up and locate the remote which has mysteriously vanished anyway. Should gentle slumber finally come my way, it is interrupted by the whooshing of bedding being hurled off my hot flashing bed partner. This is always accompanied by a loud nocturnal sigh. When the hot flash has disappeared and a chill set in she will take the bedding and wrap her self up in a cocoon. She emerges the next morning like a beautiful butterfly (please allow me the artistic freedom to use “butterfly” as calling “my partner for life” a moth does not portray as positive an image) Meanwhile, whether it is a hot flash or a chill I end up without covers. Most of my energy that should go to repairing my body at the cellular level has been expended in delivering me from hypothermia.
I know that today’s post seems bleak. I sound like a salmon that has spawned and has drifted to a shallow gravel bed with one eye to the sky. Did my wedding vows actually say “unto my death do us part”? Am I just an old air mattress with one too many repairs sitting crumpled in the bottom of a storage tub? Am I an old magazine that has sat by the toilet for enough years that every portion of text has been read a dozen times and is on the verge of incineration?
NO! There is still a spark of life. The winds of change are making that tiny ember glow ever more brightly. There is hope. I have a new boat!!
Tuesday, January 17, 2006
We are all Mortal -Some more than others
We are all mortal. There are times when personal situations make us even mortaler. It must have been a half score years ago when I took my couch potato frame and attempted some now deliberately forgotten Olympic feat. Needless to say, pain ensued. The source of the pain was my left knee. Medical consultation recommended surgery. I was reassured that this was a simple procedure --- Arthroscopic surgery. They were just going to have a little peek inside to assess the best course of action. Any nip and tuck could be done through the smallest of breaches into my inner body.
Therein laid the problem. They could have split my chest open with a chain saw, removed my organs, juggled with them and then haphazardly thrown them back in to the gapping cavity. They could have removed my entire cranium, gently folding my face and scalp down around my neck, beat my exposed brain with a tennis racket until I smelled an entire buffet of burnt toast and then replaced the bone and sewn me back up pretty as a parcel. In either case, I knew that I would be alright because such is the marvels of modern medicine. The procedure that I was to undertake was so minor, so undeserving of attention and the fact that life had a habit of beating me with its fists of irony – it was obvious that I was going to die!!
My execution day soon arrived and I found myself lying on death row. I had only a hour left to live and I could not confess my fears to anyone in case someone would think I was fearful. A nurse came to explain the procedure. Not too bad I thought to myself. Then she said “I must tell you that some people react to the anesthetic.” I then did the impossible. While lying flat on my back --- I fainted. This seemed to cause a little stir in the ward. They soon established that my blackout was due to pusilanimity (a word not even in my vocabulary) and that I was healthy enough to undergo the knife . I was given the smallest of pills to put under my tongue. “Cyanide?”, I half jokingly inquired. The other half of me seemed relieved at the thought of being put out of my misery. “No, it is a tranquilizer” the nurse replied.
That one little pill put me in the grandest of moods. I was now having fun. They taped me down in a horizontal crucifixion position and whisked me off to the operating room. Wheeeeee!!
What fun we had there! Chatting. Laughing. I was on top of my game. I was so clever and witty. What a ball!! It ended all too soon and the convalescing began.
Within a year, I found myself repeating the whole adventure after another failed Olympian feat. I swear I was in the same bed, and though it was much more muted, the same fears were plaguing me. The nurse approached me and reading from a sheet said “Yes, here is your tranquilizer” I was able to infer that on the sheet there must have been a large bold check mark beside “gutless mega-weeny-wimp”. I took no umbrage and gladly partook of the offering. What fun we were going to have today!! I was live!! Bring on the show!!
I don’t know what other dire warnings were on that sheet of paper but I had barely entered the OR where the good time would roll, and the world went black.
Looking back it was odd that the anesthetist would have dove across the room to stab his needle into my carotid. Impressive aim. Portocol should have suggested that I would have first been hooked up to monitor my vitals. No doubt the immediacy of relieving my fears must have taken priority.
What caring practitioners!!
Therein laid the problem. They could have split my chest open with a chain saw, removed my organs, juggled with them and then haphazardly thrown them back in to the gapping cavity. They could have removed my entire cranium, gently folding my face and scalp down around my neck, beat my exposed brain with a tennis racket until I smelled an entire buffet of burnt toast and then replaced the bone and sewn me back up pretty as a parcel. In either case, I knew that I would be alright because such is the marvels of modern medicine. The procedure that I was to undertake was so minor, so undeserving of attention and the fact that life had a habit of beating me with its fists of irony – it was obvious that I was going to die!!
My execution day soon arrived and I found myself lying on death row. I had only a hour left to live and I could not confess my fears to anyone in case someone would think I was fearful. A nurse came to explain the procedure. Not too bad I thought to myself. Then she said “I must tell you that some people react to the anesthetic.” I then did the impossible. While lying flat on my back --- I fainted. This seemed to cause a little stir in the ward. They soon established that my blackout was due to pusilanimity (a word not even in my vocabulary) and that I was healthy enough to undergo the knife . I was given the smallest of pills to put under my tongue. “Cyanide?”, I half jokingly inquired. The other half of me seemed relieved at the thought of being put out of my misery. “No, it is a tranquilizer” the nurse replied.
That one little pill put me in the grandest of moods. I was now having fun. They taped me down in a horizontal crucifixion position and whisked me off to the operating room. Wheeeeee!!
What fun we had there! Chatting. Laughing. I was on top of my game. I was so clever and witty. What a ball!! It ended all too soon and the convalescing began.
Within a year, I found myself repeating the whole adventure after another failed Olympian feat. I swear I was in the same bed, and though it was much more muted, the same fears were plaguing me. The nurse approached me and reading from a sheet said “Yes, here is your tranquilizer” I was able to infer that on the sheet there must have been a large bold check mark beside “gutless mega-weeny-wimp”. I took no umbrage and gladly partook of the offering. What fun we were going to have today!! I was live!! Bring on the show!!
I don’t know what other dire warnings were on that sheet of paper but I had barely entered the OR where the good time would roll, and the world went black.
Looking back it was odd that the anesthetist would have dove across the room to stab his needle into my carotid. Impressive aim. Portocol should have suggested that I would have first been hooked up to monitor my vitals. No doubt the immediacy of relieving my fears must have taken priority.
What caring practitioners!!
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