Spiritual Reflections on Living With Traumatic Brain Injury

How Hard to Push?

April 14, 2017

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Since I can only work on my book in spurts, I’ve been trying to find some way to fill the rest of my time.  I’m working to improve my swimming but that’s not enough so I decided to learn Spanish. I’ve been using Rosetta Stone’s Spanish tapes and other resources.

Yesterday, I was sitting on my sofa, working on Spanish when the phone rang. It was TJ.   Something physically had happened to her and she needed someone to pick up her prescriptions since it was painful for her to drive.   She asked me.  I had already decided to work on a Palm Sunday blog post and my Spanish. I don’t do well with change. My heart sunk.  I didn’t want to turn her down but I knew she really needed help and I could do it.

As we talked something shifted in me and I wanted to help her. My immediate reaction to change is always negative. However, when I give it time, I often come around.  I had to go to her house, pick up the prescriptions, then go to the pharmacy downtown.

TJ’s neighborhood is very confusing. People without spatial orientation issues have trouble finding her house.  Plus for some odd reason the GPS leads to another address.  She did tell me where on the route I could begin using it though and I did.  I brought Sparky since he loves going to new places.  This is a picture of him in the car.

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Sparky makes a squealing, whining sound when he’s excited. I tried listening to the woman’s voice on the GPS as Sparky squealed.  It’s hard to explain what happens to my brain when I go in circles as I did then.  I feel spacy and unstable.  At one point, I noticed I was passing a water tower for the second time.  This GPS doesn’t say “recalculating” when you take a wrong turn. It automatically makes the change.  Sometimes this means circling back and going the same way again instead of back tracking to make the correction

Using my GPS, I found Asheville Discount Pharmacy downtown. TJ said I could park in the “no loading” zone with my flashers on and run in to get the prescription. Into the store with Sparky, I went. He loves new places and he’s a friendly and happy guy so of course everyone wanted to pet him.  When it was time to go back to TJ’s, the GPS took me a different way home.

The trip took me a long time. However, I felt good.  Lately I haven’t been pushing myself and it’s a fine line between pushing too much and not enough.   If I push too hard, I become exhausted.  If I don’t push hard enough, I get bored and depressed.  I felt good then but “rested my brain” a little before going to choir.

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