Listen Gloria… I can’t cope with Facebook !

For reasons which will become clear further down I HATE FACEBOOK !

I only ever go on there if somebody sends me a friend request, writes something on my wall, or (for some strange reason) sends me a message there rather than e-mailing me direct.

This week one of my sisters started giving me a hard time on my Facebook wall about why I was even on there if I didn’t like it.  It was just getting to the point where I was going to write something very rude in large, unfriendly letters when she went quiet….

Until today, when I got an e-mail from Yahoo!

So, rather than air any more dirty laundry in public, I e-mailed her…….

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Hi Gloria,

Gloria Abcdefghi (Gloria)

would like to connect with you on Yahoo! so you can easily share each others’ Updates

So what does “share each others’ Updates” mean ? … Exactly the same as Facebook !

You seem to be missing something here babe…

Signing up to Facebook is not something I’ve only recently done, I originally signed up to it years ago, long before my accident and well before it was as popular as it is today, and probably because I was trying to trace a particular person.  Having got on there (and found it to be reasonably quiet) I just left my profile there so that anyone who wanted to track me down would be able to.  I very soon found out that all those little applications such as “wipe my dog’s bum”, most of which are operated by organisations outside of Facebook itself, always ask you to enter your e-mail address before you can use them to perform the function your friend has invited you to do.  There is no logical reason for that as far as actually “wiping the dog’s bum” is concerned… so why do they want your e-mail address ? (I’ll let you work that one out).  So I never respond to those things.

Since then Facebook has taken off in a big way with a lot of people who happen to have nothing better to do with their time than scrawl inane crap on their “walls” and poke their noses into other peoples business by looking at their walls. I have no interest, and have never had any interest, in such time-wasting trash. (My opinion, to which I am entitled).

I (reluctantly) leave my profile up there so that any long lost friends can make initial contact, after which I will/would divert them to telephone or e-mail which remain my preferred methods of communication.  I have been thinking about removing myself from it because, despite my very clear written comments, a couple of people seem to find it hard to understand them…. I rarely, if ever, visit Facebook by choice…  I have no wish to use it as a regular means of communication… I have no wish to “wipe anybody’s dog’s bum”.

And in any case, I find the whole layout of the thing to be counter-intuitive and always have difficulty finding my way around it, which is aggravation I do not need !

So anyway, I will not be accepting your invitation to do exactly the same sort of thing on Yahoo, thank you anyway, because I accidentally agreed to that with one person when these new facilities became available earlier this year without fully understanding what it was all about, only to find them pestering me with inane little messages day after day !  Eventually I got them to understand how annoying I find that, but it nearly ruined the friendship because they were not respecting my need for simplicity and a lack of interruption.

Since my accident in particular it has been necessary for me to make e-mail my preferred method of communication.  I don’t mind accepting phone calls, I do still enjoy a chat with people when I can manage it, but would like advance warning if possible (not compulsory) so that I can keep the time clear of other things otherwise I can get confused if interrupted in the middle of something.

The advantages of e-mail for me are that :

1)             it is not “immediate”, so I don’t have to try to think at a speed which may be uncomfortable for me

and          2)             I have an automatic reminder sitting there in front of me (in perpetuity)  to say that I need to respond to whoever it is, which means that I don’t have to make a separate note of it.  If I don’t have a reminder then I will, undoubtably, forget.  E-mails give me that reminder thrown in.

These problems of forgetfulness are nothing to do with “age”. [Gloria has said in the past "Oh, it's just your age, pet"] If they were then that would show up in some of the tests I have undergone over the last couple of years.  Those tests prove that my “condition” is not deteriorating (as it would do if ageing were a factor) although unfortunately it is not improving either, which is a great source of frustration to me, but there’s owt one can do about it.

I almost never go “online” on yahoo as to do so would be the same as sitting on Facebook waiting for the world to chat, and I don’t want that.  I only use it as a “backup” facility should Windows Live not be working properly, and I only use Windows Live (under an address that I keep secret) for camming with Amanda (at pre-arranged times).  I do have a spare address on there which I very occasionally use if I want to be online with anybody else, but then again it is only when pre-arranged as I do have difficulties communicating when alone (something people aren’t aware of when they see me with somebody else).

It’s a bloody nuisance, but things have to be like this for me because I get easily confused, have little or no sense of time, and have enough problems just getting through each day as it is.  It makes a big difference when I have Amanda around because I can “feed” off of her normal abilities to function throughout the day and to plan even a short time ahead.  But for the majority of the time I am on my own and have to “make do” the best I can, and the only way I can do that is by exercising what little control I still have over my day-to-day life by asking other people to respect my wishes with regard to (what I consider to be crap) things such as Facebook.

Most people are understanding enough to comply with those wishes, even if they don’t fully understand the reasons for them.

So anyway, that’s taken me well over two hours to write (because my typing is slower and less accurate than it used to be and I am always making loads of corrections as I go), and on an evening where I would have liked some peace and quiet and a chance to unwind because I’ve had two very tiring meetings over the last two evenings (the timing and locations of which have conspired to ensure that by the time I got home it was far too late to consider food), plus an emergency trip to the osteopath because my back is chicaned, and I always get home mentally knackered anyway after even a normal day at work.  I know I’ve got three important things I needed to do this evening but I can’t remember what any of them were now ….

I probably won’t bother with food tonight either because it’s too late for me to start thinking about doing anything (it takes me so long to do even the simplest thing), and it all started because you were giving me a hard time on Facebook instead of just accepting the fact that I simply don’t like it, and surely it has to be my choice as to if and when I remove myself from it without having to explain myself to anyone.

What time or mental capacity would I have for it anyway ?!

And yes, I know I’ve still got photos to send to you, Tracy, Anne and loads of other people, just like I have loads of other things that I haven’t gotten around to over the past few months….. TBI is a bitch ! [On reading this through in here I realise that I actually wrote "... have gotten round to ..." which might confuse her !]

Not being rude, pet, but I think you’ve used up your “quota” of my time for this week.

Take care of yourself.

Love to all.

xxxxxxxxxxxxxx

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Possibly not the nicest e-mail she’ll ever get, but why the hell should I have to angry with her in public (on the wall) when I’ve already made it quite clear that I don’t want to use Facebook as a means of day-to-day communication ?

All that is stated quite clearly on my profile, and gently repeated on my wall just about any time one of  my “friends” tries to start a conversation on there. All I do is e-mail them back or respond by asking them nicely to e-mail/phone me.

But some people can’t take a hint !

She seems to automatically assume that because I’m on there I want to participate in all the shite that goes on (my opinion again) even though I’ve stated quite clearly that I don’t.

And now that’s the whole evening gone by, and I’m even more tired… and hungry….

Movement, at last !

I haven’t posted for a while because I have been so wrecked every evening after doing a full day at work and at the weekends I’m just too tired to think, but at last there is some good news…

A few weeks ago I went to see my solicitor again (accompanied by Ellen from Headway, who has offered to act as mentor and advocate for me… bless you Ellen) and this week I finally got a letter from him saying that he had lodged the papers with the court to start processing my claim against the woman who ran me over.

Yippee !

We made it at last, just a week before the third anniversary of the accident.

It will probably still take another year for the whole thing to get sorted out, but at least a little of the tension has eased now because if the papers hadn’t been lodged by Sunday then I would not have been able to claim at all !

I will probably have to undergo more interviews and tests yet (set up by her insurers), but at least this time I will have some idea of what to expect.

Phew !

You know something ? … There are people out there who care !

It’s been a bad week, what with one thing and another, but in the midst of it two people have given me hope … Ric (from Toronto) and Ellen (the chair of our local Headway committee).

It’s late now (01:30) but I will explain in more detail over the weekend about how these people have helped me.

In the meantime, sincerely, thank you both.

Oh… p.s. … Check out this week’s post from Kara Swanson… another stunner !  Keep it up Kara, you’re amazing xxxxx

Cast iron proof that time is meaningless

This isn’t the first time such a situation has occurred, but it has happened again now so I can write it down while it is still fresh.

I need root canal treatment and/or extractions so, just like last year, I got myself added to the old Fife NHS Trust Dental Waiting List.  This is the one where you go on the waiting list for a couple of months or so for your initial assessment appointment (where you are looked upon as someone they have never heard of before) and then a few weeks later you get a letter telling you that you have been put on the waiting list to have the actual treatment.  That waiting list can be up to 3 months long.  Any pain you are suffering in the meantime is irrelevant.

Anyway, I got the original letter informing me that my Assessment Appointment would be on the 1st May.  Even I can remember that.  Nice and easy date to remember, even for me.

It was a date “in the future”. (Quite a long way in the future !).  I did manage to ring them up the day after I got the letter to ask if there were any appointments available at a more suitable time of day for me (10:30am is just about the most inconvenient time of day for me) only to be offered dates at the end of May if I wanted 9:00am or 4:30pm.  Odd that they managed to fill up 4 weeks of appointments in the time it took my letter to arrive but, hey-ho, I guess that’s why they are Appointment Secretaries and I’m not.

I decided that it would be best to leave it as 1st May because I need to be able to get the work done while Amanda is over here (from next week until the beginning of July) as she is the only person I have who can look after me for the required 24 hours after the anaesthetic.  So I apologised to my boss for the inconvenient time and dutifully logged the appointment in my PDA.

So, other than my perpetual sarcasm about the NHS, where’s the problem ?

Quite simply this…

This week I have noticed upon arrival at work each morning that the dates have been changing from 27th April to 28th April to 29th April (as they would) but this morning when I received a text message from somebody I happened to spot the word “Hospital” in the Appointments section on my PDA screen. ”Hospital” ?!… Why is it telling me “Hospital” ?

Yes, it definitely says “Victoria Hospital: Friday 10:30-11:30″.

“What appointment on Friday at 10:30 ?”, I think to myself.  I look at the calendar and discover that this coming Friday is 1st May.

… (pause)…

Oh!!!  May follows April ?!!!?

Not only was that something of a shock to me (because I wasn’t really tuned in to having to think in terms of months), but even as the dates in April have been reaching such dizzy heights it hadn’t occurred to me that we are getting near the end of the month.

For me today’s date is just a number.  It has no relevance or bearing on what has been or what is to come.  As I am writing this it has passed midnight so it is now 30th April.  Because I am concentrating specifically on this issue while writing about it I can take some mental “time out” to work out that the 30th is the last day of the month (which day of the week are we in now ?… oh yes, Thursday) so tomorrow (which will probably be Friday) will be the 1st of….yes, May.

It sound odd, but that is how I have to work through time associations… slowly and methodically in order to work out what follows what.  I cannot picture in my mind how long it is until the appointment, but I will have to try to remember when I get to work in the morning to remind the boss that “that annoying appointment” is on Friday (tomorrow).

Whenever any thought of the appointment went through my head, even in the last few days when the biting easterly wind whistled straight up through one of the cavities and I thought “I wish my dentist had at least put a temporary filling in there”, the appointment was, to me, still “many weeks away” on 1st May.

“Time” is totally meaningless to me.  It has no shape, form or sense in any cognitive way that I can see.  Just looking at my computer screen now I can see that it is exactly an hour since I started writing this post and that it contains over 750 words now, but if I were to be asked how long I thought I have been writing it I would probably say, at a guess, about 3 minutes.  I have no idea !

That PDA was the best investment I have made in a long time (even though it has bugs).  I don’t think I would function at all if that wasn’t constantly reminding me about all the important stuff in my life.

And it’s full of surprises !

Thanks for listening.

Another day of holding back the tears

Today at work I really thought I was finally going to break down.

My boss had been finding a number of mistakes I had been making recently which, although she is very patient, given my recent particularly confused state and lack of confidence was already starting to make me feel quite low.

Then there is this analysis that she wanted me to finish off for her….

Too late….

This morning I went to see the Psychologist/Psychiatrist and although I went in expecting that it would be a total waste of time I must say that I came away feeling that she had been able to say something of value to me.

At lunchtime I logged on to msn to chat with Amanda and the first thing she asked me was “What did the lady at the hospital say ?”

This is the mental picture I had of this morning’s meeting !

 

Nothing !

That completely threw me because, up until then, I felt I had remembered sufficient of it to be able to relate at least something of it if asked.

I was intending to report on it here, but still nothing will come back. It will do, in time, but at the moment all that comes to mind is that there was one occasion where I completely lost the thread of what I was saying. Other than that, still nothing.

Thanks for listening.

Needing help with day-to-day affairs

I can’t remember if I have properly explained on this blog that my wife is Chinese and, unfortunately, still lives in China.  Anyway, over the weekend we were talking on msn and the subject of insurance came up.  As Amanda is coming over in a couple of weeks I was concerned about the level of medical cover she had for the journey and, as it turns out, the (12 months) insurance she bought last year is totally inadequate.  “Okay”, I said, “Leave it with me and I’ll investigate.”

Bingo again

I’ve mentioned before that I go to the pensioners Bingo nights some times and explained how much trouble I have keeping up with them (I’m only 55).

However, I also try to use it in a positive way to help “retrain” my brain.

I play a full sheet of six cards so that I know that I have every number from 1 to 90 but before each game starts I locate the positions of the numbers 1, 11 and 90.

Having found them I make a “sweep” with my dabber in the air over the page some four or five times, drawing out the shape that is defined by the relative positions of the three numbers.  That shape may be like a tick mark, an inverted tick, or a smoother curve such as one might imagine on a graph, but the idea is that if I can remember the shape for the particular game being played then I can more quickly identify the positions of those numbers when called, thereby easing the problems of my slower reactions that I detailed before.

This does seem to work, and I would say that I can now remember the shape for about 90% of the games being played.

It may not be major progress, but it is progress.

Thanks for listening.

Update 09.04.14

For anyone else who, like me, is burning the midnight oil, I have now written the Education page.

I deliberately don’t mention in there that I use too many commas and exclamation marks on the basis that, if you’ve been reading this blog so far you will already have picked that up.

Good luck !

Thanks for listening.

Update 09.04.09

Have completed the “Overview” of my history tonight.
Feel free to gaze thereon.
Actually managed to get out for the evening too, the local Pensioner’s Bingo Easter night out… there was a disco so listened to some good music, all oldies stuff… really my scene, 50’s, 60’s , 70’s
Great night… and free too (including drinks) !
Result !
God, I miss my music
I had actually been thinking over the past week that I really do need to start playing my music again, and then I get a free evening of it ! Yippee !
I feel alive again !
Thanks for listening.