Where Is My Mind (Computer problems part II)

“I need my checkbook!  I need to go back to the apartment, but they’ve torn up the floor, and knocked down the walls.  I don’t have my keys.  Where are my keys?  I need to get my checkbook!”  The distraught woman looked pleadingly at me, tiny her huge wheelchair. 

“Why do you need your checkbook?  The dance doesn’t cost any money – just come dancing with us.  It will be a lot of fun.”

“But I need my checkbook, I owe him $100!”

 “Don’t worry; it’s all taken care of.  I just paid him back.  You don’t owe anything, I’m paying for you.”

“Does he know?  Did you tell him?”

“Yes, I told him.  Everything is going to be okay.”  I put my hand reassuringly on the woman’s arm.  Comforted, the elderly woman stopped perseverating about phantom debts and lost checkbooks.

“How did you know to do that?”  asked the  girl volunteering with me.  She and a staff member had been trying to talk the woman into coming with us for fifteen minutes.  She had said she loved to dance, and would almost certainly love going, but the woman was trapped in her own world.  Listening to her growing increasingly agitated, I thought back to my own perseveration the previous night, and a light bulb went on.  I knew the situation from an inside perspective; I knew the trick to help others through situations like this:

 

Calmly reassure, explain, and calm them in a light, easy manner

Distract and redirect their attention – change the topic, focus , and location

Hold their attention until they are fully focused on the new topic

I hadn’t known what to expect when I signed up to volunteer for the dance at a retirement community.   When L, the team leader, instructed the volunteers to go bring the residents who wanted to come to the dance I was taken aback.  At all of the other NYCares senior activities the residents had been waiting for us, or the staff wheeled them in.  I was nervous, but interacting with this woman was like an answer to my prayers.  I’d heard TBI compared with early onset Alzheimer’s before, but until that moment, I hadn’t seen parallels other than memory loss.  This would help me fix something that had been bothering me all day. 

I had woken up feeling much better about the computer situation (especially when I found the T and M keys had stopped causing problems – the arrow keys still don’t work).  However I felt terrible about my interaction with J. 

I hadn’t given him any warning about perseveration or how to handle situations like that.  He had tried his best – everything would make a ‘normal’ girl feel better.   He’d offered to go down and talk to the people at the Mac store, said he’d lend me a computer, and a few other helpful solutions.  However, I wasn’t thinking logically and couldn’t begin to see a way out, let alone appreciate that he was trying to help me.  When approaching the situation from a pragmatic method didn’t work, he had called me to talk. Unfortunately that just made me think about it longer and did nothing but upset me further. 

That morning I wrote him a lengthy email explanation of how to handle me when I get upset or start perseverating.  He wrote back a sweet email saying that he tends to dwell on things too, but distracts himself with prayer.  It was touching that he tried to understand where I was coming from, but only served to show me how poorly I had explained myself. 

I attempted to clarify that in cases of perseveration, it is impossible to distract oneself without at least some degree of external assistance.  My interaction trying to get the woman in the retirement community to come dancing with us affirmed this belief.  It also gave me an excellent way to relate the problem to J in more relatable terms. 

If you look at it right, it’s great having a girlfriend with a brain injury – survivors are suggestible.  If we get frustrated, emotional, angry, or anything negative all you have to do is calmly redirect our attention and we’re happy again.  What man wouldn’t want a girlfriend like that? (Believe me, reading “brain injured patients are suggestible” still annoys me a bit, but it is good to know your strengths and weaknesses.)

Thrilled that I had learned a new method of explaining perseveration, my night only got better from there.  I had been skeptical when the team leader instructed us to move the residents in wheelchairs around the dance floor in time with the music.  I envisioned elevator music, bored residents, and volunteers enduring the tedium out of the goodness of their hearts.  I couldn’t have been more wrong.

“M will keep you dancing all night,” L said as he paired me up with the petite African American woman with sparkling eyes. Big band, rock and roll, salsa … it was a mix of upbeat music from every decade.  L and several other volunteers (excellent dancers) would periodically “dance” with the residents, or do impressive swing exhibitions with one another.   Fairly bursting with energy, my wheelchair-bound partner swung her arms in time to the music as I wheeled and spun the chair. 

 L hadn't been kidding, M would have danced all night if we’d let her.  The hours flew by, and we were all a little sad when the music stopped.  Taking M back to her room, she told me about how while she was growing up her mother encouraged her to dance.   “My aunts were against it, but my mother always told me to dance while I could.  I love it to this day,”  she told me with a broad grin.

I left the retirement community energized and excited.  “I want to learn how to dance now!” I texted J.   I hope that I am as fun-loving and quick-witted as M when I am her age.  Does her love of dance and movement help keep her mind sharp?  The Feldenkrais method is based on body awareness, and in New York, all library books on the subject are housed in the dance section of the Performing Arts Library.  I wonder….