Well, glory hallelujah! Thanks to some strong-arming from my chair, my dissertation proposal defense has been scheduled for next Thursday (October 9) at noon.
It was another interesting day at work. I had a Hollywood VIP who had been coked out on a private island and ended up with a traumatic brain injury. He had absolutely no insight as to his deficits and his opinion of himself and his importance was quite grandiose. In fact, he insisted that Hollywood would come to a screeching halt if he were not allowed to get back to his work this very day (never mind that his accident occurred at the end of July and as far as I know, Hollywood has carried on just find without him). Not only was he insistent that he was perfectly fine and had no problems other than than that he falls sometimes and runs into things a good bit, he was sure that if we'd let him back in his work environment, he could teach us things about neuropsychology the likes of which we had never seen. He perseverated on the fact that the tests we wanted to do had nothing to do with his life, that he had no interest in them, and that they were "kindergarten stuff" compared with the things his brain worked with every day (if that were the case, then wouldn't you think it would be better to just demonstrate your superiority and be allowed to go home?). Our tests couldn't possibly capture his intelligence. Also, he's completely indifferent to the fact that his wife has left him (hard to imagine why, isn't it?) After some discussion with him by myself, my supervisor, and the (male) neuropsychology fellow, we thought he was agreeable to doing the tests (since it could indeed be his ticket out). But then when I started testing, we had to continually go back through the litany of why our tests were pure crap and were meaningless to him, because his brain worked different than ours, yadda yadda yadda. Ultimately, things escalated to the point that he had to be put in restraints, get some Haldol, and go to the hospital for a 72 hour hold (actually, it will probably be a 14 day hold, because they're probably going to have to get a conservatorship for him).
I'm telling you folks, you can't make stuff up that's this good! But the moral of the story is, don't let anything happen to your frontal lobes. It probably won't make you a pleasant person. Also, just like that old commercial from the 80s with the eggs frying taught us, your brain on drugs is not a good thing. And combining being high with getting a TBI is an even worse idea.
This afternoon, I got to see one of my favorite patients take her first steps on her own. I tested her about a month ago, and she's made great progress since then. I'll admit that it pisses me off a bit that there are people like her who are trying so desperately to get better and whose life was so cruelly blunted by a freak malformation in her brain, when there are jerks like the one I just talked about who not only put themselves in harm's way to get the brain injury to begin with but who are such assholes and take up our time to rehabilitate them. It's a sweet thing to see this lady with her husband though. He's so supportive of her, and although I think he isn't giving her the room to grieve the losses she's experienced, it's also completely obvious that
Ramy's murder trial is underway. He isn't feeling too confident about it, but he's holding his own with his cross-examinations, and hopefully he will feel better about it when he gets to launch his defense. Of course, the sad part of being a public defender is that you often don't get very much with which to work.
Rebecca is as delightful as ever. "Oh no" and "yippee" are her words of the day. And she's added more animals sounds to her repertoire. She now imitates the sounds made by a lion, tiger, monkey, dog, cat, duck, cow, bee, and frog. Nanny Rebecca and she enjoyed going out to get a banana smoothie yesterday, since it was so hot. (We're having a fall heatwave). Rebecca thoroughly enjoyed it. She's a happy girl, although I think she was a bit confused about Grammy's disappearance. She got up this morning and went expectantly into the guest room. I asked if she was looking for Grammy and she replied quizzically, "Geh-geh???"
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