marichiko

I'm getting tired of writing PM's to my friends here, so for once and for all:

I had a CO detector that was faulty. It appeared to work, but didn't. I lived in a duplex that was owned by my mother at the time. Her former husband serviced the heater and other appliances in the duplex. This man did not know what he was doing, obviously, but both my mother and I trusted him. Stupid us. I suppose Jinx would refuse to trust LJ if he told her something was OK. My mother and I aren't as smart as Jinx.

I gradually got more and more ill and neither my doctors nor I could understand it. When the problem was finally discovered, I was told that I should have died. I didn't die, but I was pretty sick and unable to work.

Far from taking advantage of the system, I refused to ask for help from it. I had been a high functioning professional who had always stood on my own two feet. It was only after I had gone through all my savings and was getting fired from even the most menial jobs that I reluctantly went down and signed the paper work to apply for SSDI. This stubborness of mine hurt me, since SSDI is computed by your most recent work earnings. Had I cried, "Hallejula! I'll never have to work again!" and run down to social security the moment I was informed about the CO poisoning, I'd be much better off today. Instead, I made my second stupid move. I thought that I would get better right away and continued to try to work - I took any job I could find - dishwashing, janitorial, garden worker - you name it. I was fired from every one because I was too slow and couldn't remember directions.

The disability advocate who helped me told me that I shouldn't write letters on my own behalf to social security. He said I sounded "too intelligent to have neurological damage." He also told me that I should go into my hearing and "pretend to be brain damaged." I said to him, "I have neurological difficulties, what's to pretend?" and I fired him from my case. I went in alone before a Federal judge. He had my letters written as well as I have written anything on this board - probably better. He asked me questions for two hours. It was exhausting, but I answered honestly. Three months later I was finally awarded full disability.

My doctors tell me that my long tern memory is relatively intact. My verbal skills were largely spared, and I scored in the upper 1% of many of their tests.
The worst damage and the damage which I am told is probably permanent is to my spatial memory and skills. On some of those tests I scored in the LOWEST 1%.

Frankly, it is pretty scarey to have such a damaged spatial memory. i can remember places from before the CO poisoning, but learning new places is very difficult for me. I can drive just fine because I am OK in the moment. I know there's a car behind me or a stoplight up ahead. But my short term memory of these things does not get put into my long term memory. The same with people's faces and numbers. I live in a world full of strangers who know me, but I don't know them. That is very frightening.

UT asked me to discuss the impact of carbon monoxide on the blood system. Carbon monoxide binds preferentially with the O2 receptors in the haemoglobin molecule. It actually displaces the 02 molecules in the bloodstream. This is minor in the case of a few cigarettes aday, but become a major problem is you are consistently breathing air that is 2 or 3% CO or 140 -200 ppm as I was. The organs of the body that require the greatest amount of O2 become the most severely impacted - the heart and the brain. I have sustained damage to my heart which shows up as congestive heart failure. When it comes to the brain, those parts that are at the end of the blood supply suffer the greatest damage since the other parts have already snapped up the precious O2 molecules.

The part of the brain responsible for taking short term memory and making it into long term is at the end of the blood supply. So is something called the amalygia and the hipocamus - responsible for spatial memory and the control of emotions like fear.

I can discuss stuff like this because its long term memory - I studied biology in college and have two degrees in it. I mis-spell words because words are shapes - or letters are, anyhow. I stare at a familiar word and go blank. I can't remember how it looks.

People like LJ, Jinx, Beestie, UT, and Dagney have:
a) No grounding in medicine or biology
b) can't think outside the box
c) indulge in black and white thinking - either a person is a moron or they're just fine
d) have some vested interest in being "Better" than others
e) lack imagination and/or empathy

You people don't get to have my medical records. You don't get to have the 14 page decision in my favor made by a Federal Judge. This is just the Internet. I'm tired of the flak I get on this site. I've given this much of an explanation because of the friends I DO have here who have been supportive of me. I don't expect to change Jinx's or LJ's mind anymore than Martin Luther King could have hoped to change the mind of a member of the Ku Klux Klan in the South during Reconstruction. Their closed minds are THEIR loss. I'd rather have my damaged neurons. At least I remain open to new ideas.

OH, yeah. UT should have known at the time that the posts from me and Flippant/Atropos came from two ISP's. I don't know if UT can read folks PM's, but if he can, he'd see there was a lively correspondence between me and Flippant/Atropos. I've posted screen shots of my PM's in the past which the LJ/UT/Wolf crowd choose to ignore.

I feel sorry for the people Wolf works with. She has a degree in Geography and precious little insight into psychology or the workings of the brain beyond the most rudimentary. Being mean spirited and willfully ignorant doesn't make you better. It just makes nasty and stupid.