There I was put into a Shriners Hospital outpatient program, where every six months I would be examined by doctors (you know the rest). Anyway I was under their "care" for 16 years. My mom was only told to protect me from physical harm. That meant no physical education, nor anything that would physically wear me out. Thus started my lack of social skills. At age 6 or 7, I was involved a telephone pole-car accident where the front of my head was split open by hitting the cord that is always attached to the back of the front seat (1956 Plymouth) head on.
At age 13, my mother & brother were killed in an auto accident with my whole family (parents and a brother and a sister). My brother was to be 17 in 2 days. My father had fallen asleep at the wheel in the middle of the afternoon and failed to avoid an oncoming car that was on the right side of the road. My dad wasn't. My mom was killed almost instantly and my brother was critically injured and never made it to the hospital. My dad was sedated that afternoon and immediately went into a coma. My sister was injured across her nose and cheek bone. My dad had cuts on his forearms and insteps. I just had a bumped elbow & a bruised leg. My dad came out of his coma the next morning. At age 15 1/2, I was put under the knife for corrective knee surgery.
At age 16, I was sent out into the world with no guidance on how to avoid the pitfalls of life. That was very minor to the problems I faced throughout my life.
At age 50, after a year of working in a insurance processing area of a large insurance company, working under a quota, that I was never REALLY able to maintain, unbelievable stress was prevalent. One day in August of that year. My ability to do my work decreased dramatically. So dramatically, that I found myself being retrained. This didn't make me too good in the eyes of my superiors. A year later, it happened again, not as dramatic as the first incident, but enough to wonder what was happening to me.
My sister suggested I check it out with my doctor, especially when the prevalent notion of what happens to a person with "MD" is to be ultimately bound to a wheelchair for life, or degenerate to death. Neither was the result of my so-called "MD". I went to the doctor, he suggested I try to obtain the medical records from the Shriners Hospital. The whole procedure took about 2 months. Shriners closed down their San Francisco hospital and opened a brand new one in Sacramento, CA. They even name a wing of the hospital after the doctor that checked me out every 6 months for 15 years.
Anyway, when the records finally arrived, I took them to my doctor and he examined the one inch wide folder, and could not see any major reference to MD. There were references to a general muscle weakness and signs of "Hydrocephalus" but no major signs of MD. He wanted a 2nd opinion, so I was sent to a Neurologist who took an MRI scan of my head and also did the various reflex tests that the Shriners people did. The results from the scan showed signs of hydrocephalus, which, due to the space of time, has been reassigned the title, "static encepholapathy". The doctor felt that this "could" be the reason for the loss of brain power and such.
Since then, I have been fired from my job and have been out of work for 3 weeks. I have hit rock bottom financially, but still have my house from an inheritance from my dad. I am seeing a psycho-neurologist and a vocational rehab counselor to help me through this unemployment period and to, hopefully, find a job, more suiting my disability, and my own interests and capabilities. The employer that fired me, never acknowledged my disability, and I am in the process of proving it legally. Oh, by the way, I lost my dad in a job-related accident and heard the news of HIS death over the car radio. Due to the way my dad died and how it created a "uproar" in the area where he worked (Montgomery Street in San Francisco, which is something like Wall Street in N.Y.), it was NEWS. The policy on death in a newsy item was, at that time, "Once the next of kin, my step-mother for a year, and it is news worthy. . . It's news!!!!!!
There I was driving and my dad's name is mentioned as an "obituary" "news" item.
Anyway, How this disability or, as my psycho-neurologists calls it, a "cognitive processing (reasoning) disorder", is affecting my home life, besides making me one of the MANY unemployed in the greater Phoenix area, is that I have many periods where I leave something around and 5 minutes later, I am unable to locate the object. I have difficulty when I am given several things to do at the same time, and I seem to want to not work at a high rate of speed in anything (i.e. - results of the "quota"). The latter two are job descriptions I will always have to look out for, especially the quota (production standard) requirement at the place of employment, when looking for a job.
Is there anyone that can relate to any of these sign posts of my life with hydrocephalus?
Email Carl
View Guestbook Sign Guestbook
Visit My Message Board
Visit My Calendar
owned by Carl Dorskoff. [Join Us-Next-List Sites] |