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.
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