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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.

 

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Moody’s Investors Service’s Take on Higher Education

The headline for the January 16, 2011 article in The Chronicle of Higher Education , ” Financial Outlook is Brighter for Some Colleges,but Still Negative for Most” doesn’t tell the whole story. This story may be found at http://chronicle.com/article/Financial-Outlook-Is-Brighter/125973/?sid=at  (Note: YOu may need a subscription to The Chronicle of Higher Education to view the article.) If the bright side is that a “relatively small number of colleges may be stable (no worse than what they have been), what the down side? The down side is that the financial outlook for most college will be worse. The Moody’s report will be available to Moody subcribers later this week.

What does Moody’s think is the secret to do as well as you did before? You must be well-managed and be diversified, i.e., not too dependent upon one source of income, such as tuition, advancement dollars, auxiliary enterprises or state support.

If the outlook for the have’s is stability, what’s the outlook for the have-nots’? Moody’s suggests that it will be a very bumpy road. They are projecting a number of institutions will have to retrench, merge or fold completely.

According to Moody’s the primary three factors driving the 2011 outlook for colleges are:

1. “Weakened prospects for net tuition growth because of a market preference for low-cost or higher-reputation competitors.

2. “differing degrees of pressure on non-tuition revenues” such as philanthropy or research money.

3. A “need for stronger management of operating costs, balance-sheet risks and capital plans.”

For all who don’t think that higher education is or should be a business, all these negative signs are closely tied to operations of a business. Moody is suggesting that if we don’t operate our colleges as well-run business, we may not be operating at all.

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After hundreds of years of debate, we finally have a defintion of a religious institution of higher education

What is a religious institution of higher education? After centuries of arguments and debates, finally, we have a definition. It comes to us from an impeccable source. An Acting Regional DIrector, of Region 2, (NYC, NY) of the National Labor Relations Board. The NLRB was forced to define a religious institution because of a suit brought against Manhattan College by it Adjunct Faculty Union, supported by the New York State United Teachers, AFT?NEA/AFL-CIO.

The core of the matter was that the adjunct faculty of Manhattan College sought to unionize, but Manhattan College argued that because they were a  Catholic institution, they did not have to recognize an employee union.

After listening to the arguments from both sides and reading hundreds of pages of material published by Manhattan College, the NLRB ruled that Manhattan College was really not a Catholic institution. Manhattan for its entire existence has claimed to be a Catholic institution in the Lasalian order.

However, the NLRB based its ruling on evidence provided by Manhattan that attempted to described it religious ties in wording so vague that most secular institutions could use to describe their missions. Manhattan described the Lasalian philosophy as a belief in “excellence in teaching, respect for individual dignity, and commitment to social justice.”

The Regional NLRB continued by stating that  the primary hallmarks of an authentic Catholic college or university are exclusionary hiring, a proselytizing atmosphere, and dogmatic inflexibility in the curriculum. If this ruling stands, these could become the guidelines for judging whether an institution is a religious institution or not.

Why do I believe that this is not the final word on this issue?

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Surprise, Surprise: Given the Information, Parents Prefer College with Better Graduation Rate

A new report issued by the American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy entitled “Filling in the Blanks: How Information Can Affect Choice in Higher Education written by Andrew P. Kelly and Mark Schneider strongly suggests that if parents had accurate information about the graduation of two  public institutions being consider by their child, they would very heavily prefer the institution with the higher graduation rate.

The report also suggests that providing this information widely will have several positive results. The first is that if consumers are provided information on costs and graduation rates will they use it in decision-making.  (Oops sorry we are not supposed to consider students and their parents as consumers, even though they do.) The second positive result is that as institutions with the poorer graduation rates lose students to the institutions with the good rates. The suggested result of this is that the institutions with the poorer rates will take steps to improve their educational outcomes. If students consistently select an institution with a better graduation, more of them will graduate. Thus, the third positive result for the country would be an improvement in the overall graduation of students in American higher education

An executive summary of the report may be found at  http://www.aei.org/print?pub=paper&pubId=100186&authors=<a href=scholar/100064>Andrew P. Kelly</a>, <a href=scholar/100006>Mark Schneider</a>

A PDF of the entire report may be found at

http://www.aei.org/docLib/fillingintheblanks.pdf

Isn’t it surprising, how many times common sense can be a fairly accurate description of reality and a decent policy guide to follow? Even if the results may not be good for our institution in the short run.

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Bits and Pieces Part I

As I have stated in previous posts, one of the reasons that I started this blog was requests from professionals working with persons with aphasia and their care givers to describe what aphasia looked and felt like from the inside. This post addresses one specific question that I was asked. The question was: “How do I proceed when I face the dilemma of not being able to think of the right word or not being able to put together my thoughts on a particular topic?”

Let me try to explain the process I use by giving you two examples. The first example occurred last week and I will describe it in this post. The second example happened several weeks ago and I will describe it in another post.

Now to the first example: I woke from an afternoon nap with a melody running through my mind. I knew it was a song from the 60’s because I remember playing it as a teenager on my piano in my parents’ basement. Although I could remember playing it and hearing it on folksy radio stations of the era, I just could not remember the title or really any words from the song.

After humming the tune repeatedly, one phrase from the song finally came to me. The phrase was “jigger of gin.” I don’t know why this bit or piece of the song was the first to come back to me because I have never been a drinker. I have no idea what gin tastes like.

My wife and I had been invited out that particular night for dinner with a group of friends, so on the way to and from the restaurant I kept humming the tune silently putting the phrase “jigger of gin” in whether it made sense in the tune. When we got home that night it was too late to get on my computer to check out the phrase that was stuck in my head. I went to sleep humming the tune.

The next week morning I was still humming the tune and before I got on my computer, a second phrase and the name of the group that sang the song came to me. The second phrase was “Scotch and soda” and the group that sang it was The Kingston Trio.

I went to my computer at this point and was able to find a You-Tube video of The Kingston Trio and all the lyrics to the song, that was variously named “Scotch and Soda” or “High as a Kite Can Fly” on different websites.

So in this case I struggled trying to find an answer, until bits and pieces started coming together. When I thought I had enough bits, I enlisted the aid of the internet to fill in the pieces until I had a complete picture.

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Bits and Pieces, Part II

I began the previous post, entitled Bits and Pieces, Part I, by addressing the specific question of how do I proceed when I face the dilemma of not being able to think of the right word or not being able to put together my thoughts on a particular topic? The simple answer was I used the bits and pieces that I did have until I had enough information to be able to put together the whole puzzle. I tried to rely heavily on my own memory and thought processes before enlisting outside resources like the internet.

Let me try to explicate the process further, by giving you a second example. This example occurred several months ago. I was trying to write an essay on different views and definitions of liberal arts.

Because I had been working on this essay for a number of months, I had the ideas generally formulated. What I wanted to do was introduce the topic by referring to a scenario that occurred many times in ancient Greece when two protagonists had differing ideas. They aired those ideas in a public setting. This is where I was lost. I couldn’t think of the word to describe that public setting.

So with this information, I went to a friend to ask him what word was I looking for. He gave me a word. Unfortunately, it was not the word I wanted. The word he gave me was forum. It was a good word, and perfectly described the process that I was trying to describe. Why wasn’t it the right word? Unfortunately, this word is Latin and not Greek.  But now I had enough information to go to a second source who knew right away the word for which I was searching. The word was agora. In Greek, it means “market place.” In each city in ancient Greece, there was an open area where merchants came to sell their wares. This area was the same place where orators would come to try to get people to buy their thoughts. So now I had two words that I could use, one Latin and one Greek, depending upon whether I wanted to reference ancient Greece or ancient Rome.

What was my process in this example? As soon as I had a general idea of what I wanted to express, I took those thoughts to a friend to ask for help in finding the best way to express my thoughts.

In the terminology of a popular television show, in both cases, I used a lifeline. The difference was when I employed that lifeline. The first big lesson that I have learned from this whole experience is that eventually everyone will need a lifeline. The second big lesson is that when you need a lifeline, use it!