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Athletics
Relief Through Reading Part I
I am sorry, Readers, but I am going to subject you to a long, round about introduction to a posting about reading. It was inspired by two recent posts by bloggers that I have come to appreciated immensely. I can’t recommend their blogs highly enough. They are great people who have great stories to tell and tell them wonderfully. The postings that inspired this long post are Finding Strength to Stand Again http://findingstrengthtostandagain.wordpress.com/2011/02/17/hitting-my-head-on-glass-ceilings/
and Bended Spoon
How many of you remember the old tv commercial that ran regularly during major league baseball games? There would be a scene of a famous relief pitcher warming up, supposedly getting ready to go into the game. An off-screen announcer would say, “How do you spell Relief?” The camera would close in on the pitcher and he would say, “I spell it “R O L A I D S!”
How do you spell Relief? My wife spells it R E A D I N G !
I have been a voracious reader since I was a young kid. I recognize that there are ar least three types of reading. They are recreational, informational and work related reading. Recreational reading Is the act of reading to relax or escape. Informational reading is the act of reading to gain information or knowledge about a topic of interest not directly related to your work. Work related reading is the act of reading of material directly related to your work.
My wife and I are both aged-challenged. (We’re both eligible for Medicare this year. Please don’t tell her, I’ve told you how old she is.) We’ve been married for over 40 years and have known each other for almost 60 years. For all of those years, we’ve been readers, Although I must admit our reading habits are very different. My wife has always been a recreational and informational reader. She has always had two or three books in which she deeply engaged. Much of her recreational reading has included authors like Janette Oke, Terri Blackstock, Ted Dekker, or Frank Peretti. She also enjoys biographies and autobiographies. Her tastes in informational reading have centered on inspiration books like “Fear Not Tomorrow, God is Already There” by Ruth Graham or “Purpose Drive Life” by Rick Warren.
I have always been a voracious reader, but generally, “it had to have a purpose.” Since I have been in higher education all of my adult life, I have always owned a large collection of books. While I was in high school, my parents bought me the entire set of “Great Books of the Western World.” I set still have those classics, along with all the required readings from my college literature courses. I never sold a college text book or required reading after a course was over. Most of my other books are work related. Although I have some informational books that you would find in the “How –to” or Religious sections of Barnes and Noble. The How to Books were bought to help me with my latest DIY project. The religious books were to help me with a theme for the latest adult Sunday School lesson or a sermon that I was preparing. To borrow a phrase from Rick Warren and use it out of his context, my reading has almost always been “purpose driven.”
For years, my wife would chide me with the comment, “Why don’t you read something for fun?” I would reply, “I don’t have time for that.” Her response was “Try it, you may find that you like it.” My response back to her was, “The time that I want to dedicate to fun is better spent antiquing, exercising or doing DIY projects like remodeling rooms, insulating and putting vinyl siding on our old house, adding a deck, or enclosing our back porch.
Occasionally, I would watch sporting events like basketball, baseball or automotive races on television. My wife and I also both like to watch new segments of “This Old House” or “Antiques Road Show.” We would take this last passion one step further by trying to find unexplored antique shops and digging through them for undiscovered treasures. Those things were fun. Fortunately for me, my wife also suffered from the DIY and antiquing viruses. We spent many weekends together trying to satisfy the cravings that those bugs would cause. If we were not at home working on the latest DIY project, we would be on a road trip to find one more of those unexplored antique shops.
On a Saturday when we didn’t have a pressing DIY project hanging over our heads we would get up early, and tell our college-age daughters that we were going for a ride. The girls would glance at each other, and one would say, “We’ll see you tomorrow afternoon.” Many times they were right. After finding an unexplored antique shop and digging through it until closing time, we would find a nice restaurant and a cute inn or motel and spend the night.
On each of these trips, I did most of the driving and my wife would pass the time in the car reading one more fascinating chapter of her latest engrossing novel or biography. Every once in awhile she would stop reading and say to me, “You really should read this book, you would really enjoy it.” I would pause for a moment then in all seriousness say, “I can’t right now, I’m driving.” My wife would sigh and say, ”I didn’t mean right at this moment. What about this coming week?” I would respond by saying “I have some work that must get done this coming week and all my reading will have to center on that job.” She would sign again and go back to her reading. I guess she almost figured out that I was a lost cause, until she came up with a brilliant idea. She went to the local library and checked out some audio books, so on our next road trip, we both listened to someone read those books to us. Using this technique, we read Mitch Album’s “Tuesdays with Morrie” and several John Gresham novels, including “The Client” and “The Rain Maker” plus a number of cat mysteries. I must admit the audio books did help to make the miles go more smoothly. Although I can’t remember the titles or the authors, other than Album and Gresham, I do remember most of the story-lines and I will also admit that this was a fun way to read.
All of this changed for us on March 16, 2009. For those of you who are unfamiliar with my story check back to some of my early postings. On that date I had what appeared to be a stroke. However, it wasn’t a stroke, a blood vessel in a benign tumor attached to my brain exploded (surgeon’s word) and the tumor imploded (again surgeon’s word) creating all the symptoms of a stroke. After the removal of the remains of a dead tumor, I have battled balance issues, fatique, aphasia, epilepsy and most recently Parkinson’s disease. I took a medically induced break from my life as an academic administrator, first on disability and now officially on retirement. Supposedly that should give me more time to read. I will tell that part of the story in Relief Through Reading, Parts II through V. In these posts, I will also share how Finding Strength and Bended Spoons have inspired me to expand my reading list somewhat, read more and write about it.
As indicated above on March 16, 2009, I was introduced to a new phase in my life that supoosedly should give me more time for reading, but I must admit that old habits die hard. It has taken me two years to get to the point where I can pick me a book and almost read it just for fun. However, instead of throwing open my reading list to many more recreational reading books, I have taken up more informational reading. I have dropped the DIY readings and picked up readings about neurological dysfunctions, such as “The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat” by Oliver Sacks and ‘ My Stroke of Insight” by Jill Taylor, and higher education like Charles Murrays’ “Real Education” or Mike Rose’s “Lives on the Boundary.”. The neuologiacl books are helping me understand what I am going through and what I can expect ahead of me. The higher education books are keeping me in touch with the academy. The next three books on my reading list are “Awakenings” by Sacks, “Always Looking Up” by Michael J. Fox, and “Reading in the Brain” by Stanislas Dehaene.
Living with Epilepsy, Aphasia and Parkinson’s is like Happy Hour at a Nascar race
Sometimes I feel that living with aphasia, epilepsy and Parkinson’s is like driving a NASCAR race car. No, I’m not talking about living in the fast lane, going 200 miles per hour. I am thinking more about what goes on during “Happy Hour.” For those not familiar with NASCAR terminology, at most races between qualifying, where the starting positions for the race are fixed, and the race itself, there is one final time of practice that is called “Happy Hour.” For those of us with aphasia, epilepsy and Parkinson’s, sometimes I think it would be nice to have a Happy Hour when we could run through a practice and find out where we operate best before going out in the race of life.
Why is this practice time called “Happy Hour?” First of all, it usually lasts one hour. That part makes sense. Why happy? For many of the drivers and crews that work on the cars it is not necessarily a “happy” time. However, since it is the last time that teams can see how their cars and drivers are going to react to racing conditions on the given track, it is a frenzied time. Drivers try different lines (in racing terminology, normally called “grooves”) to see where on the track their cars can get around the track the fastest. Since many tracks are not flat, but highly banked, contrary to general intuition the fastest way around a track is not always the shortest distant around the track. Sometimes the fastest way around the track is actually the longest way around, where you drive as close to the outside wall as you can. If you do this correctly the combination of centripetal force and friction between the car’s tires and the track’s surface helps hold the car in place and you don’t have to use your brakes as much if you were running at the bottom of the track, and you can maintain full speed all the way around the track. Sometimes drivers will find because of the way their cars react to track conditions, the best line for them is the high line on two curves, and the bottom line on the other two curves. Happy Hour is the time when you can try these things out. If you watch Happy Hour on television, this is what the announcers are indicating when they say the drivers are moving all over the track. They are trying different lines to see which one is best for them in each part of the track.
It would be nice for those of us with aphasia, epilepsy or Parkinson’s to be able to try different lines on the track of life to see which line works best for us.
Happy Hour is also the last time before the race that the driver can communicate operational problems to the crew. The following are two hypothetical conversations between a driver and a crew chief during happy hour.
CREW CHIEF: What’s wrong with the car? You’ve slowed down noticeably on the last two laps.
DRIVER: This car is a piece of junk. It won’t turn going into or coming out of the corners.
CREW CHIEF: Bring it in and we’ll change tires, spring rubbers and adjust the sway bar
DRIVER: Okay, I’m coming in next lap.
The driver brings the car into the pits area and the pit crew changes tires (Cars normally operate best on new tires); spring rubbers (taking out or putting in spring wedges between the coils in the suspension springs will change how the car reacts in the corners of the track, or adjusting the sway bar which change how well the front end and the rear end of the car are coordinated as they go around corners). This is similar to a medical team adjusting medication to help improve performance.
Second hypothetical conversation over the two-way radio in the car:
CREW CHIEF: What’s wrong with the car now? You were the slowest car on the track that last lap.
DRIVER: I don’t know. The engine feels like it is missing (slang for one or more spark plugs is not firing).
CREW CHIEF: Okay bring the car into the garage and we’ll run the diagnostics on the engine.
DRIVER: Okay, I’m there the next lap.
The driver pulls the car into the garage and the pit crew plugs in all the diagnostic equipment and runs the tests. Sometimes the tests show something wrong and other times they don’t, or sometimes they indicate something is wrong but don’t pinpoint the problem. That sounds very much like what happened to me the last time I was in the hospital for observation. The tests indicated problems but couldn’t pinpoint the exact nature or location of the trouble. What do the experienced crew chiefs do in this situation? They rely on their experience and make changes to the car that have helped other cars in similar situations. What do experienced doctors do? They rely on their experience and make changes to medications or treatments that have helped other patients in similar situations.
One very important component of this process of “fixing a car during Happy Hour” that I have not heavily touched on is communications. The driver and the crew chief (the patient and doctor) have to be able to communicate and understand what’s wrong and whether “fixes” worked fine , didn’t go far enough or went too far.
Living with aphasia, epilepsy and Parkinson’s can be like experiencing happy hours at NASCAR races. The best teams that communicate well usually do well in the race, and often win.